Neg Nukes Good Bad

UMKC SDI 2008 NUCLEAR POWER
Winfrey/Dietrich 1/35
NUCLEAR POWER GOOD/BAD INDEX

NUCLEAR POWER GOOD/BAD INDEX....................................................................................1
NUKE POWER BAD......................................................................................................................2
Solvency Frontline...........................................................................................................................3
NUKE POWER INEVITABLE.......................................................................................................5
INCENTIVES FAIL........................................................................................................................6
URANIUM SHORTAGES.............................................................................................................9
LOANS = DEFAULTS.................................................................................................................10
Terrorism Turn...............................................................................................................................11
Nuclear Power = Terrorism............................................................................................................12
Accidents Turn...............................................................................................................................13
Ext- Nuclear Power - Accidents.....................................................................................................14
Proliferation Turn...........................................................................................................................15
NUKE POWER EXPENSIVE.......................................................................................................16
A2: WARMING ADV....................................................................................................................18
POLITICS- NUKE POWER IS PARTSIAN.................................................................................21
Politics Links- BIPART.................................................................................................................22
POLTICS- PUBLICLY POPULAR...............................................................................................23
POLITICS- PUBLICALLY UNPOPULAR..................................................................................24
NUKE POWER GOOD.................................................................................................................25
Nuclear Power Solves Warming....................................................................................................26
NUCLEAR POWER SOLVE OIL DEPENDENCE.....................................................................28
A2: Accidents.................................................................................................................................29
A2: TERRORISM..........................................................................................................................32
A2: WASTE...................................................................................................................................34
A2: PROLIFERATION..................................................................................................................35
1
NUKE POWER BAD
2
Solvency Frontline
1. STATUS QUO SOLVES LOAN GUARANTEES EXIST NOW
CBO 08 (Congressional Budget Office, “Nuclear Power’s Role in Generating Electricity,” May 2008,
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/91xx/doc9133/05-02-Nuclear.pdf)
Current energy policy, especially as established and expanded under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct),
provides incentives for building additional capacity to generate electricity using innovative fossil-fuel
technologies and an advanced generation of nuclear reactor designs that are intended to decrease costs and
improve safety.2 Among the provisions of EPAct that specifically apply to newly built nuclear
power plants are funding for research and development; investment incentives, such as
loan guarantees and insurance against regulatory delays; and production incentives,
including a tax credit. Since the enactment of EPAct, about a dozen utilities have
announced their intention to license about 30 nuclear plants.
2. PLAN DOESN’T ENSURE PLANTS WILL BE BUILT

Daks 07 (Martin C. Daks, NRG Seeks The Lead in Going Nuclear, Oct. 1, 2007,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5292/is_200710/ai_n21269535)
Another federal benefit that Crane calls a "significant motivation" for NRG's decision to move ahead is a provision
that lets the secretary of energy authorize loan guarantees for up to 80 percent of the cost of a nuclear plant.
"We believe this will encourage banks to extend loans for projects like the Texas generators," says
Crane, who adds that NRG expects to tap its own resources for about 20 percent-or $1.2 billion-of the estimated
cost, with banks and capital markets making up the difference. The 2005 Energy Act also provides tax breaks for
operators of new nuclear plants based on the energy they produce, and requires the federal government to indemnify
operators in the event of an accident. While such provisions may add up to a sweet deal for new
entrants into nuclear power, they don't guarantee that any proposed projects will actually
get built. For one thing, there's plenty of opposition to nuclear power from organizations like
Common Cause that question the safety of such plants and note that there is still no federal repository for
federal waste.
3. SHORTAGES IN URANIUM PREVENT SOLVENCY

Harding 07 (Jim Harding, a consultant from Olympia, Washington. He's worked on a whole series of energy and
environmental issues, “Council on Foreign Relations Symposium: American Nuclear Energy in a Globalized
Economy, Session II: What Is the Investment Climate for Nuclear Energy?” Council on Foreign Relations, June 15,
2007, http://www.cfr.org/publication/13717/council_on_foreign_relations_symposium.html)
On the uranium issue, this is a very peculiar commodity. Today, world consumption -- let me state it
differently -- world production of uranium is about 60 percent of consumption. It doesn't happen in
turkey, butter, milk or many other commodities. And the reason for that is that you need to procure uranium quite a long ways in advance, and
beginning sort of in the mid- to late 1970s, people had ordered a lot of reactors in the U.S., Western Europe and Russia, secured long- term
contracts -- meaning seven to 10 years for uranium -- at a high price, and they cancelled the plan. So all that secondary supply came into the
market, depressing the price. It was followed by privatization of centrifuge -- of enrichment in the United States. We also bought lots of surplus
So we're
enriched uranium from Russia. And most recently, we are blending down or diluting surplus weapons uranium into U.S. fuel.
running the global nuclear industry on a secondary supply that pops pretty quick. And it's
had the unfortunate impact that existing contracts have fixed prices for uranium; the same is generally true on the
enrichment side. You need to procure the product about four years in advance of burning it.
We're at a price of $135 a pound, pretty much a historical peak. Utilities for the most part run out of
their existing supply by 2012, 2013. They've got to get back into this market. And it's hard to tell what the long- term price
will be. This is not -- it's not a physical shortage of uranium, it's a shortage of milling capacity and also enrichment capacity. The enrichment
issue was somewhat complicated, because when you go to a higher uranium price, you want to decrease the tails assay at the enrichment plant.
3
Effectively, you reduce the output of that plant by 30 percent. We don't have the capacity to do that and meet demand. So utilities are also --
there are two possibilities. One is, utilities are going to pay -- are going to buy more uranium than they'd ideally like, or enrichers are going to
use market power to the same extent that uranium miners are going to use -- based on this set of problems, we came up with significantly higher
numbers in the Keystone report for future nuclear fuel. It's about three times current levels, at the low end, and about five times
at the high end -- now, not a big number, but it is a -- for a
utility thinking about a building a reactor
today, they have to worry at little bit about whether or not there are sufficient fuel supply
and enrichment capacity out there to meet their needs, because the mines may not exist to
support that purchase. You could buy it, but we've got to double enrichment and mining capacity in the next
few years to meet demand, even without significant growth in this industry.
4. EMPIRICALLY LOAN GUARANTEES FAIL- PLANTS ARE NEVER BUILT

Clayton 07 (Mark Clayton, Staff Writer, Christian Science Monitor, Nuclear power surge coming, Sept. 28, 2007,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0928/p01s05-usgn.html)
The nuclear industry has already put Congress on notice that it could require loan
guarantees of at least $20 billion for planned projects – and more later, NEI officials told The New York Times in
July. The reason is that nuclear power plants are far more expensive to build than coal- or gas-fired facilities. For
example: On Monday, New Jersey-based NRG Energy Corp. filed its application with the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to build two reactors in Texas at a cost between $5.4 and $6.7 billion. That huge startup cost might
make financial sense, given a reactor's low operating expenses, especially if government begins to charge utilities
for the greenhouse gases they produce. Nuclear power is virtually emission-free. But the last time that the
nuclear industry was on a building spree – in the 1980s – roughly half of the power plants
proposed were never finished, in part because of fears caused by the accident at Three Mile Island. Those
that were finished were delayed for years and cost far more than estimated. A number of power
companies went bankrupt. In late 2003, NRG – the company that filed Monday's permit application – emerged from
bankruptcy caused by overexpansion in the 1990s. If defaults occur in the new round, critics worry
federal costs will be huge. "This is the second or third 'nuclear renaissance' I've seen," says Tyson Slocum,
director of energy program at Public Citizen, Ralph Nader's consumer-protection group. "When you look at the cost
of these plants and the massive financial subsidies by US taxpayers, I think that money would be better invested in
cheaper sources of emissions-free power that don't have the fatal flaws nuclear power does." In 2003, a
Congressional Budget Office analysis warned of potential default rates of 50 percent or
more on new plants.
5. NOT ENOUGH SITES FOR MORE NUCLEAR PLANTS

Co-op America 05 (Ten Strikes Against Nuclear Power,
http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/climate/dirtyenergy/nuclear.cfm)
6. Not enough sites – Scaling up to 17,000 – or 2,500 or 3,000 -- nuclear plants isn’t possible
simply due to the limitation of feasible sites. Nuclear plants need to be located near a
source of water for cooling, and there aren’t enough locations in the world that are safe from
droughts, flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes, or other potential disasters that could trigger
a nuclear accident. Over 24 nuclear plants are at risk of needing to be shut down this year
because of the drought in the Southeast. No water, no nuclear power. There are many
communities around the country that simply won’t allow a new nuclear plant to be built –
further limiting potential sites. And there are whole areas of the world that are unsafe because of political
instability and the high risk of proliferation. In short, geography, local politics, political instability and climate
change itself, there are not enough sites for a scaled up nuclear power strategy. Remember that climate change
is causing stronger storms and coastal flooding, which in turn reduces the number of
feasible sites for nuclear power plants. Furthermore, due to all of the other strikes against nuclear power,
many communities will actively fight against nuclear plants coming into their town. How could we get enough
4
communities on board to accept the grave risks of nuclear power, if we need to build 17, let alone, 17,000 new
plants?
NUKE POWER INEVITABLE

Nuclear power inevitable
Holt 07 (Mark Holt, Specialist in Energy Policy, Resources, Science, and Industry Division, “Nuclear Energy
Policy,” July 12, 2007, http://sharp.sefora.org/issues/nuclear-energy-policy/)
Nevertheless, the outlook recently has been improving for the U.S. nuclear power industry,
which currently comprises 104 licensed reactors at 65 plant sites in 31 states. (That number includes TVA’s Browns
Ferry 1, which restarted May 22, 2007, after a 22-year shutdown and $1.8 billion refurbishment.) Electricity
production from U.S. nuclear power plants is greater than that from oil, natural gas, and
hydropower, and behind only coal, which accounts for more than half of U.S. electricity generation.
Nuclear plants generate more than half the electricity in six states. The near-record 823 billion
kilowatt-hours of nuclear electricity generated in the United States during 2006 was more than the nation’s entire
electrical output in the early 1960s, when the first large-scale commercial reactors were being ordered.
Status quo solves- the next president will support nuclear power
Miller 07 (William H. Miller is a professor at the Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute at the
University of Missouri and at the University's research reactor, Financing the next generation of nuclear
power plants, Sept. 23, 2007,
http://publicutilities.utah.gov/news/financingthenextgenerationofnuclearpowerplants.pdf)
It's encouraging to know that, despite differences over energy policy, several presidential candidates
recognize the need for additional nuclear power. Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Barack Obama, D-
Ill., and John McCain, R-Ariz., support federal incentives to power companies to build more
nuclear plants. McCain says there is "no way that you could ever seriously attack the issue of greenhouse gas
emissions without nuclear power, and anybody who tells you differently is not telling the truth."
5
INCENTIVES FAIL
LOAN GUARANTEES WON’T SPUR NUKE POWER THE INDUSTRY IS DEAD NO
AMOUNT OF GOVERNMENT INCENTIVES WILL SOLVE
Parenti 08 (Christian Parenti, What Nuclear Renaissance?, April 24, 2008,
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/parenti)
In an effort to jump-start a "nuclear renaissance," the Bush Administration has pushed one package of subsidies after
another. For the past two years a program of federal loan guarantees has sat waiting for
utilities to build nukes. Last year's appropriations bill set the total amount on offer at $18.5 billion. And now
the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill is gaining momentum and will likely accrue amendments that will offer
yet more money. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) expects up to thirty applications to be filed to build
atomic plants; five or six of those proposals are moving through the complicated multi-stage process. But no new
atomic power stations have been fully licensed or have broken ground. And two newly
proposed projects have just been shelved. The fact is, nuclear power has not recovered
from the crisis that hit it three decades ago with the reactor fire at Browns Ferry, Alabama,
in 1975 and the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Then came what seemed to be the
coup de grâce: Chernobyl in 1986. The last nuclear power plant ordered by a US utility, the
TVA's Watts Bar 1, began construction in 1973 and took twenty-three years to complete. Nuclear
power has been in steady decline worldwide since 1984, with almost as many plants canceled as
completed since then. All of which raises the question: why is the much-storied "nuclear renaissance" so slow to get
rolling? Who is holding up the show? In a nutshell, blame Warren Buffett and the banks--they won't put up the cash.
"Wall street doesn't like nuclear power," says Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental
Research. The fundamental fact is that nuclear power is too expensive and risky to attract the
necessary commercial investors. Even with vast government subsidies, it is difficult or
almost impossible to get proper financing and insurance. The massive federal subsidies on offer will
cover up to 80 percent of construction costs of several nuclear power plants in addition to generous production tax
credits, as well as risk insurance. But consider this: the average two-reactor nuclear power plant is estimated to cost
$10 billion to $18 billion to build. That's before cost overruns, and no US nuclear power plant has ever been
delivered on time or on budget.
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY DOESN’T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO

IMPLEMENT THE LOAN GUARANTEE PROGRAM
EESI 07 (Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Loan Guarantee Provisions in the 2007 Energy Bills:
Does Nuclear Power Pose Significant Taxpayer Risk and Liability?, Oct. 30, 2007,
http://www.eesi.org/briefings/2007/energy_climate/10-30-07_loan_guarantees/Nuclear_LGP_Issue_Brief_2007.pdf)
A provision of the Senate bill exempts DOE’s loan guarantee program from Sec. 504(b) of the Federal Credit
Reform Act of 1990 (FCRA). The Senate provision allows, among other things, for DOE to write
unlimited loan guarantees without Congressional oversight. If adopted, this provision removes
Congressional authority and the safeguards in place through the appropriation process, and shifts the financial risk
from private lenders to taxpayers. Initial analyses of the loan guarantee program have shown that
DOE lacks the infrastructure necessary to effectively implement its program. Reports from the
GAO and DOE’s Office of the Inspector General state that the necessary policies, procedures, and staff
remain absent, raising questions about DOE’s ability to manage its loan guarantee
program. This Issue Brief explores these issues raised by the 2007 energy bill provisions, as they pose potentially
significant risks and high costs to America’s taxpayers.
6
INCENTIVES FAIL
An increase in loan guarantees is inadequate- there are problems in how they are applied
Schoen 07 (John Schoen, Senior Producer, MSNBC, Does nuclear power now make financial sense?,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16286304/)
Nukes for sale
But it’s far from clear that this new round of plants will ever be built. Even if all goes as
proponents hope, the first plants won’t come online before 2014 and will cost an estimated $4 billion each. Before
ground is broken for the first new plant, the power industry will have to convince state regulators and investors that
the numbers add up. To do that, they face several important hurdles. Most of these projects are expected to be
financed by bonds. To help reassure investors that the bonds are a safe investment, Congress
has provided loan guarantees for 80 percent of the financing for the first several projects to
win NRC approval. But that critical guarantee has already hit a serious snag. Typically, these
projects would be financed with 80 percent debt and 20 percent cash or equity put up by the owner of the plant. But
federal officials in charge of loan guarantees have interpreted the law to mean that those
guarantees apply only to the debt portion of the financing package. Using that math, the
loan guarantee — 80 percent of 80 percent — will only cover about two-thirds of the total
cost. That could be more risk than Wall Street is ready to assume — especially for the projects that
go first. Congress to the rescue? Though the current interpretation of the rules could throw cold water on efforts to
raise money, many in the industry expect Congress to clarify the rules to provide more
generous guarantees. “You had a lot of people who voted for the (Energy Policy Act of 2005) that have a pet
project at home that they thought they were arranging a loan guarantee for,” said Tezak, the energy industry analyst.
“But it has the potential to be a deal breaker.”
PLAN DOESN’T CHANGE DOE REQUIREMENTS TO RECEIVE GUARANTEES

MEANS THEY WILL ONLY BUILD 3 REACTORS
CBO 08 (Congressional Budget Office, “Nuclear Power’s Role in Generating Electricity,” May 2008,
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/91xx/doc9133/05-02-Nuclear.pdf)
The maximum coverage available under the loan guarantee program—a guarantee on debt covering 80 percent of a
plant’s construction costs, which implies that investors’ equity would cover the remaining 20 percent—would most
likely reduce the levelized cost of new nuclear capacity by about 10 percent. But not all prospective nuclear plants
would necessarily receive a guarantee of debt covering 80 percent of construction costs because the criteria for
qualifying are restrictive. The Department of Energy has indicated that it will deny a utility’s application
for a loan guarantee if the project is not deemed to be both innovative (essentially, in the case of
nuclear technology, a plant design that has not been built in the United States) and commercially viable, and
that no more than three plants based on each advanced reactor design can be considered
innovative. The 30 plants currently being proposed use five reactor designs, so at most, 15 of those plants would
qualify as innovative. In addition, just because a plant is considered both innovative and
commercially viable does not mean it will receive the maximum guarantee of 80 percent. Under
the base-case assumptions, covering 80 percent of construction costs would require guaranteeing debt with a face
value of $4.5 billion to $7.5 billion for each plant (depending on the size of the reactor). Providing the maximum
coverage to three plants based on each of the five reactor designs would result in roughly $100 billion in loan
guarantees, a commitment that has not been proposed, let alone funded. (The President’s budget proposed a limit of
$18.5 billion [in nominal dollars] on the cumulative amount of loan guarantees for new nuclear plants over the
2008–2011 period.)4 The loan guarantee program could encourage investors to choose relatively risky projects over
more certain alternatives because they would be responsible for only about 20 percent of a project’s costs but would
receive 100 percent of the returns that exceeded costs.5
7
INCENTIVES FAIL
INCENTIVES WILL FAIL TO REVITILLIZE NUCLEAR POWER
Walsh 08 (Bryan Walsh, Is Nuclear Power Viable?, June 6, 2008,
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1812540,00.html)
That's debatable, to say the least. There's no question that a nuclear plant, once it's up and running, produces
comparatively little carbon dioxide — a British government report last year found that a nuclear plant emits just 2%
to 6% of the CO2 per kilowatt-hour as natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel — but nuclear energy still seems
like the power of yesterday. After a burst of construction between the 1950s and late 1970s, a new
nuclear power plant hasn't come on line in the U.S. since 1996, and some nations like Germany
are looking to phase out existing atomic plants. That reverse is chiefly due to safety concerns
— the lingering Chernobyl fears of nuclear meltdown, or the fact that we still have yet to devise a long-
term method for the disposal of atomic waste. But to Amory Lovins — a veteran energy expert and
chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute — there's a much better green reason to be against
nuclear power: economics. Lovins, an environmentalist who is unusually comfortable with numbers, argues
in a report released last week that a massive new push for nuclear power doesn't make dollars or
cents. In his study, titled "The Nuclear Illusion," he points out that while the red-hot renewable industry —
including wind and solar — last year attracted $71 billion in private investment, the nuclear
industry attracted nothing. "Wall Street has spoken — nuclear power isn't worth it," he
says. More nuclear subsidies, which many on Capitol Hill are pushing for, won't do the trick either.
Lovins notes that the U.S. nuclear industry has received $100 billion in government subsidies over the past half-
century, and that federal subsidies now worth up to $13 billion a plant — roughly how much it now costs to build
one — still haven't encouraged private industry to back the atomic revival. At the same time, the price of
building a plant — all that concrete and steel — has risen dramatically in recent years, while the
nuclear workforce has aged and shrunk. Nuclear supporters like Moore who argue that atomic plants are
much cheaper than renewables tend to forget the sky-high capital costs, not to mention the huge liability risk of an
accident — the insurance industry won't cover a nuclear plant, so it's up to government to do so. Conservatives like
Republican presidential candidate John McCain tend to promote nuclear power because they don't think carbon-free
alternatives like wind or solar could be scaled up sufficiently to meet rising power demand, but McCain's idea of a
crash construction program to build hundreds of new nuclear plants in near future seems just
as unrealistic.
8
URANIUM SHORTAGES
Uranium shortages will thwart a robust nuclear energy program
7. Not enough uranium – Even if we could find enough feasible sites for a new generation of nuclear plants,
we’re
running out of the uranium necessary to power them. Scientists in both the US and UK
have shown that if the current level of nuclear power were expanded to provide all the
world's electricity, our uranium would be depleted in less than ten years. As uranium
supplies dwindle, nuclear plants will actually begin to use up more energy to mine and mill
the uranium than can be recovered through the nuclear reactor process. What’s more,
dwindling supplies will trigger the use of ever lower grades of uranium, which produce ever
more climate-change-producing emissions – resulting in a climate-change catch 22.
9
LOANS = DEFAULTS
Defaults likely
Hill Heat 07 (Loan Guarantee Provisions in the 2007 Energy Bills: Does Nuclear Power Pose Significant
Taxpayer Risk and Liability?, Oct. 30, 2007, http://www.hillheat.com/events/2007/10/30/loan-guarantee-provisions-
in-the-2007-energy-bills-does-nuclear-power-pose-significant-taxpayer-risk-and-liability)
Not only is the cost to the taxpayers potentially very high, so is the risk. The Congressional Budget Office has said
there is a good chance that the DOE will underestimate the costs of administering these
loans and that more than 50 percent of new reactor projects will default on their loan
repayments, leaving taxpayers at risk. U.S. taxpayers will be fully liable for any potential shortfalls. The
nuclear industry ask is $25 billion for FY 2008 and more than that in FY 2009-more than
$50 billion in two years. According to the Congressional Research Service, this is more than the $49.7 billion
spent by the DOE for all nuclear power R&D in the 30 years from 1973-2003. This is also well over the
Administration’s target of $4 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear and coal for FY 2008.
Over 50% of nuclear projects will default

Nayak and Taylor 03 (Navin Nayak is an environmental advocate with U.S. Public Interest Research Group
and Jerry Taylor is director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute, “No Corporate Welfare for Nuclear
Power,” June 21, 2003, Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3134)
The most egregious proposal in the energy bill has the federal government providing loan guarantees
covering 50 percent of the cost of building 8,400 Megawatts of new nuclear power, the
equivalent of six or seven new power plants. The Congressional Research Service estimated that these loan
guarantees alone would cost taxpayers $14 to $16 billion. The Congressional Budget Office
believes "the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high -- well above 50
percent. The key factor accounting for the risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic
to operate because of its high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources." But
that's not all. The bill also authorizes the federal government to enter into power purchase agreements wherein the
federal government would buy back power from the newly built plants -- potentially at above market rates.
PROBABILITY OF DEFAULTS ARE OVER 50%- IT’LL COST TAXPAYERS

BILLIONS
Public Citizen 07 (Congress Should Not Bow to Nuclear Industry Demands for More Than $50 Billion in Loan
Guarantees to Build New Nuclear Reactors, July 31, 2007,
http://www.tradewatch.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2488)
These loan guarantees would put taxpayers – rather than investors – on the hook to pay back the
loans should any of the plants default. According to a May 2003 Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
report, the risk of default on loan guarantees for new nuclear plants is “very high – well
above 50 percent.” “With those odds, U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook for billions of
dollars when the nuclear utilities default on their loans,” said Michele Boyd, legislative director of
Public Citizen’s Energy Program. “This outrageous demand from the already highly subsidized nuclear industry
amounts to highway robbery of U.S. taxpayers.” Although the company receiving the guarantee is
expected to pay the “subsidy cost” of the guarantee (the net present value of the anticipated cost of
defaults), a June 2007 CBO report on the recently passed Senate energy bill concluded that it is “more likely
that DOE’s loan guarantee portfolio will have more projects where the subsidy fee has been
underestimated than overestimated.”
10
Terrorism Turn
NUCLEARK POWER= TERRORISM
Motavalli 04 (Jim Motavalli A Nuclear Phoenix?: Concern about Climate Change is Spurring an Atomic
Renaissance, E The Environmental Magazine, http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3780)
In spite of its obvious benefits, nuclear power may simply be too risky. Opponents of the nuclear
renaissance point to a host of serious concerns. “They’re proposing a replay of a demonstrated
failure,” says Paul Gunter, director of the reactor watchdog project at the Nuclear Information and Resource
Service (NIRS). “The financial risks have only gotten worse, and our concerns about safety issues are
heightened now that these plants are known terrorist targets.” Alex Matthiessen, director of
Hudson Riverkeeper, declares, “In the post-9/11 era, nuclear power plants pose an unacceptable
risk.” He points out that NRC studies conclude that a serious accident at one of Indian Point’s two working
reactors could cause 50,000 early fatalities. Al Qaeda operatives have, by their own admission, considered
attacking nuclear facilities. And according to Riverkeeper, only 19 percent of Indian Point guards
think they can protect the facility from a conventional assault, let alone a suicidal mission.
Riverkeeper says that the proposed evacuation plans for the area are woefully inadequate, and
the site is vulnerable to an airborne attack. Plant operator Entergy refutes these charges, and says that
the 3.5-foot steel-reinforced concrete containment structures protecting the reactor and other radioactive materials
are “among the strongest structures built by man.”
TERRORISM LEADS TO EXTINCTION

Alexander 03 (Yonah Alexander, professor and director of Inter-University for Terrorism Studies, Aug. 28 2003,
Washington Times)
Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically that the
international community failed, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications
of the terrorist threats to the very survival of civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for
decades tended to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than a critical strategic challenge to their national security
concerns. It is not surprising, therefore, that on September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned by the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al Qaeda
terrorists striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military powers. Likewise, Israel and its citizens, despite the
collapse of the Oslo Agreements of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism triggered by the second intifada that began almost three years ago, are
still "shocked" by each suicide attack at a time of intensive diplomatic efforts to revive the moribund peace process through the now revoked
cease-fire arrangements [hudna]. Why are the United States and Israel, as well as scores of other countries affected by the universal nightmare of
modern terrorism surprised by new terrorist "surprises"? There are many reasons, including misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors that
contribute to terrorism's expansion, such as lack of a universal definition of terrorism, the religionization of politics, double standards of morality,
weak punishment of terrorists, and the exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their historical
contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in terms of
counterparts,
conventional and unconventional threats and impact. The internationalization and
brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an Age of
Super Terrorism [e.g. biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber] with its serious implications
concerning national, regional and global security concerns.
11
Nuclear Power = Terrorism

NUCLEAR PLANTS ARE EASY TERRORIST TARGETS
3. National Security – Nuclear reactors represent a clear national security risk, and an
attractive target for terrorists. In researching the security around nuclear power plants, Robert Kennedy, Jr.
found that there are at least eight relatively easy ways to cause a major meltdown at a nuclear
power plant. What’s more, Kennedy has sailed boats right into the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant on the
Hudson River outside of New York City not just once but twice, to point out the lack of security around nuclear
plants. The unfortunate fact is that our nuclear power plants remain unsecured, without adequate
evacuation plans in the case of an emergency. Remember the government response to
Hurricane Katrina, and cross that with a Chernobyl-style disaster to begin to imagine what
a terrorist attack at a nuclear power plant might be like.
12
Accidents Turn
NUCLEAR POWER IS INHERENTLY UNSAFE- ACCIDENTS ARE INEVITIBLE
Olson 06 (Mary Olson, Director of the Southeast Office, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Confronting
a False Myth of Nuclear Power: Nuclear Power Expansion is Not a Remedy for Climate Change, Commission on
Sustainable Development, United Nations, May 3, 2006,
http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/climateandnukestalkunmay32006.pdf)
Finally, as a crowning point – nuclear power is not qualified to operate in extreme weather. As cited
above, nuclear reactors – all of them – depend on energy from the grid to operate. Since the
core of a reactor continues to generate heat for years, even “off-line,” it is vital that emergency cooling equipment be
operable around the clock. As is sensible, every reactor site is equipped with back-up power, most often in the form
of diesel generators. Unfortunately these generators, in part because of intermittent use, are not terribly reliable.47
When both the grid and the back-up power fail, the site is said to be in “station blackout.” According to the US
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, station blackout contributes a full one-half of the total risk of a major reactor
accident at US nuclear power stations.48 Recent years have seen an escalation in all kinds of
extreme weather: intense heat, drought, blizzards, tornados, and perhaps most compelling – hurricanes and
cyclones. All of these conditions may contribute to electric grid failures. The loss of grid power will
not necessarily trigger a nuclear crisis, but there is an elevated risk. Overall blackout risk increases as the number of
outages increases. Nuclear energy is an enormous liability in these turbulent times.
THIS TURNS THE CASE- 1 ACCIDENT MEANS THE END OF THE NUCLEAR
INDUSTRY
Boyd 08 (Robert S. Boyd, McClatchy Newspapers, Feb. 9, 2008, Despite doubts, nuclear energy making comeback,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/science/story/26864.html)
Accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in 1986 continue
to shadow the industry, even though advanced reactor designs make such mishaps less likely. ``One
incident could put a stop to nuclear energy in the United States,'' warned James Miller, the chief
executive of PPL Corp. of Allentown, Pa., which operates atomic reactors in Pennsylvania and Montana.
``Nuclear power continues to pose serious risks that are unique among the energy options
being considered for reducing global-warming emissions,'' said David Lochbaum, the director of the Nuclear Safety
Project at the Union for Concerned Scientists in Washington.
13
Ext- Nuclear Power - Accidents

ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN
4. Accidents – Forget terrorism for a moment, and remember that mere accidents – human error or
natural disasters – can wreak just as much havoc at a nuclear power plant site. The
Chernobyl disaster forced the evacuation and resettlement of nearly 400,000 people, with
thousands poisoned by radiation. Here in the US, the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979
triggered a clean-up effort that ultimately lasted for nearly 15 years, and topped more than one billion
dollars in cost. The cost of cleaning up after one of these disasters is simply too great, in
both dollars and human cost – and if we were to scale up to 17,000 plants, is it reasonable to
imagine that not one of them would ever have a single meltdown? Many nuclear plants
are located close to major population centers. For example, there’s a plant just up the Hudson from
New York City. If there was an accident, evacuation would be impossible.
14
Proliferation Turn
Expansion of nuclear power increases the risk of proliferation
2. Nuclear proliferation – In discussing the nuclear proliferation issue, Al Gore said, “During my 8
years in the White House, every nuclear weapons proliferation issue we dealt with was
connected to a nuclear reactor program.” Iran and North Korea are reminding us of this every day. We
can’t develop a domestic nuclear energy program without confronting proliferation in
other countries. Here too, nuclear power proponents hope that the reduction of nuclear waste will reduce the
risk of proliferation from any given plant, but again, the technology is not there yet. If we want to be serious
about stopping proliferation in the rest of the world, we need to get serious here at home,
and not push the next generation of nuclear proliferation forward as an answer to climate
change. There is simply no way to guarantee that nuclear materials will not fall into the
wrong hands
Prolif leads to extinction

Miller 02 (James D. Miller, (assistant professor of economics, Smith College), January 23, 2002, National
Security First: Stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.,
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-miller012302.shtml)
The U.S. should use whatever means necessary to stop our enemies from gaining the ability to kill millions of us.
We should demand that countries like Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea make no attempt to acquire weapons of
mass destruction. We should further insist on the right to make surprise inspections of these countries to insure that
they are complying with our proliferation policy. What if these nations refuse our demands? If they refuse we should
destroy their industrial capacity and capture their leaders. Once a dictator has the ability to hit a U.S., or perhaps
even a European city, with atomic weapons it will be too late for America to pressure him to give up his weapons.
His ability to hurt us will effectively put him beyond our military reach. Our conventional forces might even be
made impotent by a nuclear-armed foe. Had Iraq possessed atomic weapons, for example, we would probably have
been unwilling to expel them from Kuwait. Even the short-term survival of humanity is in doubt. The greatest threat
of extinction surely comes from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. America should refocus her
foreign policy to prioritize protecting us all from atomic, biological, and chemical weapons.
15
NUKE POWER EXPENSIVE

Nuclear energy is extremely expensive and unreliable
Greenpeace 03 (Nuclear Reactors are an Expensive and Dangerous Source of Electricity, May 19, 2003,
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/nuclear-reactors-are-an-expens)
At the dawn of the nuclear era, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission predicted that nuclear power would
supply "electrical energy too cheap to meter." However, the meltdown at Three Mile Island and the explosion at
Chernobyl irreparably altered the image of nuclear power, causing this prediction to prove false. The dramatic
decrease in nuclear construction can be directly tied to the meltdown at Three Mile Island.
The horrific images of the Chernobyl disaster and the ever-growing death toll are a constant reminder of the dangers
of nuclear power. However, the risks of nuclear power are only part of the problem. It has been the nuclear
industry's inability to manage the construction and operation of its nuclear reactors that has solidified public
opposition to nuclear power in the United States. Chronic escalation of construction costs coupled
with high operation and maintenance costs have sealed nuclear power's economic fate.
When construction costs skyrocketed and operation and management costs spiraled out of
control, nuclear power became an economic disaster. The U.S. Department of Energy compared
nuclear construction cost estimates to the actual final costs for 75 reactors. The original cost estimate was $45
billion. The actual cost was $145 billion! Forbes magazine recognized that this "failure of the U.S. nuclear
power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster of
monumental scale." According to Forbes, "only the blind, or the biased, can now think the money has been well
spent." Despite talk of a renaissance, nuclear power is actually in decline in the United States. U.S. utilities
have canceled almost as many nuclear reactors as they have constructed. No nuclear reactors
have been ordered and subsequently completed in the U.S. since 1973. The last nuclear reactor to be constructed in
the United States was completed in 1996; the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar reactor took almost 23 years to
build and cost nearly $8 billion. Not exactly electricity "too cheap to meter."
Loan guarantees will cost billions

Public Citizen 07 (Congress Should Not Bow to Nuclear Industry Demands for More Than $50 Billion in Loan
Guarantees to Build New Nuclear Reactors, July 31, 2007,
http://www.tradewatch.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2488)
These loan guarantees would put taxpayers – rather than investors – on the hook to pay back
the loans should any of the plants default. According to a May 2003 Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) report, the risk of default on loan guarantees for new nuclear plants is “very
high – well above 50 percent.” “With those odds, U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook for
billions of dollars when the nuclear utilities default on their loans,” said Michele Boyd,
legislative director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. “This outrageous demand from the
already highly subsidized nuclear industry amounts to highway robbery of U.S. taxpayers.”
Although the company receiving the guarantee is expected to pay the “subsidy cost” of the
guarantee (the net present value of the anticipated cost of defaults), a June 2007 CBO report on
the recently passed Senate energy bill concluded that it is “more likely that DOE’s loan
guarantee portfolio will have more projects where the subsidy fee has been underestimated
than overestimated.”
16
HIGH CONSTRUCTION COSTS WILL TRANSLATE INTO HIGH ELECTRICITY

PRICES
Johnson 08 (Keith Johnson, It’s the Economics, Stupid: Nuclear Power’s Bogeyman, Wall Street Journal, May
12, 2008, http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/05/12/its-the-economics-stupid-nuclear-powers-
bogeyman/)
It turns out nuclear power’s biggest worry isn’t Yucca Mountain, Three Mile Island ghosts, or environmental
protesters. It’s economics. Rebecca Smith reports today in the WSJ (sub reqd.) on the biggest hurdle to the
nascent nuclear-energy revival in the U.S.—skyrocketing construction costs. Though all power sectors are
affected to different degrees by rising capital costs, nuclear power’s vulnerability puts it in
a class by itself. Notes the paper: A new generation of nuclear power plants is on the drawing boards in the U.S., but the projected
cost is causing some sticker shock: $5 billion to $12 billion a plant, double to quadruple earlier rough estimates. Part of the cost escalation is bad
luck. Plants are being proposed in a period of skyrocketing costs for commodities such as cement, steel and copper; amid a growing shortage of
skilled labor; and against the backdrop of a shrunken supplier network for the industry. Over the last five years, cost estimates for new nuclear
power plants have been continually revised upward. Even the bean counters can’t keep pace. The paper notes: Estimates released in recent
weeks by experienced nuclear operators — NRG Energy Inc., Progress Energy Inc., Exelon Corp., Southern Co. and FPL Group Inc. — “have
blown by our highest estimate” of costs computed just eight months ago, said Jim Hempstead, a senior credit officer at Moody’s Investors Service
credit-rating agency in New York. Why is that such a big deal? Coal plants have been shelved recently because of rising capital
costs, and renewable energy isn’t immune, either—and the nuclear power industry enjoys healthy loan
guarantees and other federal subsidies designed precisely to alleviate those kinds of
uncertainties. It matters because nuclear power’s ability to provide electricity at a competitive
price compared to regular sources like coal and natural gas depends largely on those
construction costs. Fuel costs for nuclear power are miniscule. The only way to handicap the field in nuclear power’s favor is to put a
big price tag on emissions of carbon dioxide. Since nuclear plants don’t emit CO2, they win when legislation penalizes carbon-heavy sectors like
coal (and even natural gas). The Congressional Budget Office just finished a rosy-glasses report on nuclear economics. Even while
acknowledging that historical costs for nuclear plants always doubled or tripled their initial estimates, the CBO took heart from promises made by
manufacturers of next-generation reactors and a single on-time and on-budget project in Japan to project cheaper nuclear construction costs in the
future. And if those cost estimates are wrong? From the CBO: If those factors turned out not to reduce construction costs in the United States,
nuclear capacity would probably be an unattractive investment even with EPAct incentives,
unless substantial carbon dioxide charges were imposed. Everybody from John McCain to Newt
Gingrich to Patrick Moore is pitching more nuclear power as a zero-emissions answer to America’s energy needs.
The question, though, is the same: Who’s going to pay for it?
17
A2: WARMING ADV

NUCLEAR POWER CAN’T GROW FAST ENOUGH TO SOLVE WARMING
An extensive 2003 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology30 investigated the future of nuclear power,
including its potential to combat climate change. MIT’s nuclear boosters project that expanding nuclear
generating capacity worldwide to 1000 billion watts would be required to address the
climate problem to any meaningful degree. This would roughly mean adding one new
reactor every two weeks until 2050. In the USA, some of the last reactors to be built (Vogtle 1 & 2) cost
more than $4 billion each! The industry has recently asserted that it will be possible to build reactors for $ 2
billion31 -- ½ the previous actual figure; this however, is speculative. Even taking the $2 billion industry
“guestimate,” it would require trillions of dollars to implement this supposed “fix.” It is plain that
a similar investment in efficiency in the USA and other energy-hog nations, and investment in wind energy
worldwide would be a far more cost-effective use of capital. One can only imagine the results if a fraction of the
residual funds were invested in technology development in solar, appropriate hydro, appropriate biomass and other
sustainable power innovations!
Making nuclear power emits tons of C02 and relies on coal plants
Ewall 07 (Mike, Environmental Justice, Nov. 2007, Fact Sheet: Nuclear Power,
http://www.energyjustice.net/nuclear/factsheet.pdf)
While the nuclear reactors themselves release few greenhouse gases, the nuclear fuel cycle
is a significant contributor. In 2001, 93% of the nation’s reported emissions of CFC-114, a
potent greenhouse gas, were released from the U.S. Enrichment Corporation, where
uranium is enriched to make nuclear reactor fuel. These facilities are so energy intensive
that some of the nation’s dirty, old coal plants exist just to power the nuclear fuel facilities.
Uranium shortages will cause more emissions

7. Not enough uranium – Even if we could find enough feasible sites for a new generation of nuclear plants,
we’re
running out of the uranium necessary to power them. Scientists in both the US and UK
have shown that if the current level of nuclear power were expanded to provide all the
world's electricity, our uranium would be depleted in less than ten years. As uranium
supplies dwindle, nuclear plants will actually begin to use up more energy to mine and mill
the uranium than can be recovered through the nuclear reactor process. What’s more,
dwindling supplies will trigger the use of ever lower grades of uranium, which produce ever
more climate-change-producing emissions – resulting in a climate-change catch 22.
18
A2: WARMING ADV

NUCLEAR POWER CAN’T SOLVE WARMING
1. There are emissions in the nuclear process 2. A massive amount of new plants are needed
The uranium supply is also an issue. On the spot market, uranium prices have soared as existing
reactors have worked through supplies from mothballed plants. Demand is projected to
exceed supply and push prices higher. The shortfall in uranium mining can be at least partly made up in
uranium enrichment (an outgrowth of atomic bomb development), but capacity is limited there, too. Uranium
enrichment also aggravates both global warming and ozone depletion. The single remaining
uranium enrichment plant in the U.S., Paducah Gaseous Diffusion in Kentucky, emits highly destructive
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used to dissipate heat generated by the compressors. And the plant is fired by two
large, extremely dirty coal power plants. Although nukes avoid the smokestack problem, the nuclear process
is not emission-free. The cycle from uranium mining to milling and processing, as well as
waste storage and transportation, all involve greenhouse gas emissions. In his book
Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change (IEER Press), Brice
Smith admits that, when compared to fossil fuels, nuclear power emits far lower levels of
greenhouse gases, even when mining, enrichment and fuel fabrication are taken into
account. But to effectively challenge the global warming problem, he says, a new reactor
would have to come online somewhere in the world every 15 days on average between 2010
and 2050. Even with this growth, he calculates that the proportion of electricity coming from nuclear sources
would grow only slightly, from 16 to 20 percent over the period. Also, says Smith, a huge nuclear expansion would
increase the dangers of nuclear proliferation. The world’s capacity to enrich uranium would have to go up
dramatically by a factor of 2.5 to six. A dozen new enrichment plants would produce thousands of tons of highly
deadly plutonium each year. And just one percent of that capacity would be enough to support the construction of
210 nuclear weapons per year. NIRS argues that, in the next 60 years, the industry is capable of
building only half the 1,500 new reactors needed to significantly offset global warming, and
that the enormous construction costs—estimated in the many trillions of dollars—would be much more effectively
spent on renewable energy projects. “Even under an ambitious deployment scenario, new plants
could not make a substantial contribution to reducing U.S. global warming emissions for at
least two decades,” says the Union of Concerned Scientists.
19
A2: WARMING ADV
NUCLEAR POWER EMITS JUST AS MUCH C02 AS ANY TRADITIONAL ENERGY

SOURCE
Nuclear power is being widely promoted as a “solution” to global climate change. Unfortunately nuclear power
is not a solution and it is further counterproductive to any real remedy for human impacts
on climate.3 Those selling the expansion of nuclear power are on a par with any salesman of counterfeit
medicine; one must closely examine the motives of anyone associated with nuclear schemes of any kind.4 In the
service of this disinformation campaign U.S. Vice President Cheney has publicly stated5 a falsehood: he asserted
that nuclear power is carbon-free. Nuclear power is not free from carbon emissions. A number of recent
studies have found that when mining, processing, and extensive transportation of uranium
in order to make nuclear fuel is considered, the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) as the
result of making electricity from uranium is comparable to burning natural gas to make
electric power.6 Additional energy required for decommissioning and disposition of the wastes generated increases
this CO2 output substantially.7 Nuclear power is not only dependent upon fossil fuels for the
production of uranium fuel, decommissioning, and the disposition of wastes generated: it is
also dependent upon a grid that is powered by other sources of energy, typically coal. This is due to the
simple fact that nuclear reactors cannot “black start”8 – in other words, they depend on electric power from the
external power grid to be able to come on-line. Transition away from the combustion of fossil fuels cannot be
accomplished solely by the expansion of nuclear power since it depends on the grid being powered up before
reactors can come on-line.9
20
POLITICS- NUKE POWER IS PARTSIAN

LOAN GUARANTEES FOR NUCLEAR POWER ARE SUPER CONTENTIOUS- IT
SPARKS HUGE POLITICAL BATTLES IN CONGRESS
National Journal 05 (National Journal's CongressDaily, May 16, 2005 Senate Panel Slowed By Nuke Aid Talk, LN)
The idea sounded simple enough for a Congress controlled by business-friendly Republicans: Utility companies said they
could help offset the high cost of oil by putting a greater reliance on nuclear energy, if only
the federal government could offer incentives to limit the risks of building and operating new reactors.
But a move in that direction is now stalled in the intersection between what is politically
palatable and economically feasible, leaving the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee uncertain how to proceed
as it tries to wrap up work on comprehensive energy legislation. "Everything is on the table," one exasperated committee aide said late last week,
noting that new ideas are still welcome until the committee starts marking up nuclear issues next week. The nuclear knot is not the only issue
holding up the committee. It is also trying to figure out, among other things, how to settle disputes between states and the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission over where to allow liquefied natural gas import terminals and relicensing hydroelectric dams. But the reactor riddle is
Some foes worry that financial incentives
particularly hard to solve because of the varied reasons driving the opposition.
will deepen the federal deficit, others object on environmental grounds, and still others
worry that the reactors will become new terrorist targets. There is also the question of where to store nuclear
waste for thousands of years. The flip side of the argument is that if new reactors are not built, the cost of electricity might become even more
tied to the price of oil as aging reactors leave the power grid and are taken out of service. A nuclear reactor has not been ordered in the United
States since the 1970s. Without incentives such as liability limits and tax restructuring, utility executives say they cannot afford to invest in new
reactors and move through the complex and expensive regulatory process. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Domenici and Idaho
Republican Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo met with a group of nuclear energy officials in March to begin deciphering what incentives might
Senators included loan guarantees
be feasible. Weeks of work by the committee staff have not yet led to concrete answers.
in energy legislation in the last Congress, despite the combined opposition from fiscal
conservatives and lawmakers who are concerned about nuclear waste. Those guarantees were dropped
during conference talks with the House in favor of production tax credits that would not kick in until a nuclear reactor comes on line. That
approach would not address the issue of companies taking on huge financial risks with no return during the years of construction and licensing
hearings that predate the production and sale of energy from the reactor. That attempt to write a comprehensive national energy bill failed,
leading to this year's effort. But even if the Senate does find a solution, the fight is far from over. The energy bill passed by the House last month
does not include the nuclear incentives, so a conference committee would have to settle the question. President Bush has instructed the Energy
Department to work with Congress to offer federal risk insurance to mitigate costs incurred by bureaucratic delays in the licensing of new nuclear
plants once they have been built. An aide said the committee continues to consider insurance, loan guarantees and production tax credits, along
with the less likely option of investment tax credits to cover up-front construction costs. Utility executives say Congress should give the nuclear
industry flexibility to choose what combination of incentives would be best for them. "It's not a question of one incentive over the other," said
Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the largest trade association for the industry. "We would like to see a mosaic of
Nuclear energy advocates, though, continue to face some stiff political
financial incentives in there."
opposition from lawmakers who remain concerned over continued waste problems in some
states, even though both the chairman and ranking member of the Senate energy committee support the industry.
The concern over nuclear waste has been further exacerbated by delays in the Yucca Mountain national repository
plan.
LOAN GUARANTEES FOR NUCLEAR POWER ARE CONTENTIOUS IN CONGRESS

Choe 05 (Stan Choe, The Charlotte Observer, August 4, 2005, Are we ready for a nuclear comeback?, LN)
President Bush has been a champion for the nuclear industry, becoming the first president to visit a nuclear
plant in 26 years when he recently stopped by a Maryland plant. "There is a growing consensus that more nuclear power will lead to a cleaner,
safer nation," Bush said at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, according to Bloomberg News. "It is time for this country to start building
The battle is most pitched on Capitol Hill, where Congress is hashing
nuclear power plants again."
out an energy bill that could help a nascent nuclear resurgence explode or fade. The
Senate's version, passed in June, is packed with incentives to get the nuclear industry rolling,
such as a subsidy for new reactors and loan guarantees for their construction. The House's version doesn't
include those packages. A 2003 study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology advocates combining the ideas of nuclear plants'
21
proponents and opponents. The country, it said, needs more nuclear energy, but it also needs more renewables, such as wind, and more
conservation.
Politics Links- BIPART

CONGRESS SUPPORTS LOAN GUARANTEES FOR NUCLEAR POWER
E & E News 08 (Environment and Energy Publishing, NUCLEAR POWER: Former NRC head Curtiss
discusses future of Yucca, expansion of nuclear in U.S., Jan. 24, 2008, LN)
Jim Curtiss: Well, I think there are a number of dimensions of that. The financial community, in terms of funding
new nuclear, has in recent years understood that plants can be operated safely and efficiently. Thirty years ago I don't
think you would have had that kind of view right after Three Mile Island until we saw the improved operation of the
plants. But from a financial standpoint, the ability to bring plants online and fund those plants is a key part of this
next generation of plants. Of the 18 companies that have announced plans to go through the permitting process for
32 plants none of those companies has yet decided to build a plant. So there's a lot of attention with Wall
Street talking with the industry about the importance of some of the things that Congress
has done, the establishment of the loan guarantee program in the 2005 Energy Policy Act is an
important piece of this. The Department of Energy recently published guidance on how they're going to implement
that program that's very positive and has a loan guarantee program that will provide for the risk support that we're
going to need as we get back into nuclear construction. The U.S. Congress just in the appropriations
process, here before they left town in December, authorized $18.5 billion for loan guarantees for
nuclear projects. So there's a lot of support with some key financial issues that will need to
be addressed going forward.
LOAN GUARANTEES POPULAR IN CONGRESS

Daily Record 07 (USEC applauds Congress, Dec. 28, 2007, LN)
USEC Inc. commended Congress and the administration for their strong support for the renaissance of the nuclear
power industry through the loan guarantee program administered by the U.S. Department of Energy, included in the
omnibus appropriations legislation (H.R. 2764) signed Wednesday by President George W. Bush. The legislation
includes loan guarantee authority for up to $38.5 billion in energy projects, including $18.5 billion of loan
guarantees for nuclear power facilities. USEC, a Bethesda-based global energy company, intends to pursue a DOE
loan guarantee for construction of its American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio.
22
POLTICS- PUBLICLY POPULAR

Incentives for nuclear power are popular with the public
WNN 08 (World Nuclear News, April 29, 2008, Opinion favours nuclear, http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-
Opinion_favours_nuclear_2904089.html)
Unrelated surveys of public opinion have found continued support for the use of nuclear energy in both the USA and
Russia, while US citizens are firmly in favour of federal incentives for the development of
carbon-free energy options including nuclear. A survey of 1000 US citizens carried out by Bisconti
Research and published by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) found broad support for possible future nuclear
construction projects, strong support for the continued use of the country's existing nuclear plants, and even
stronger support for the use of federal incentives to promote the development carbon-free
energy technologies including advanced-design nuclear power plants. Eighty-four percent
of those polled agreed that the USA should take advantage of all low-carbon energy sources
including nuclear, hydro and renewable energy, with nearly 80% feeling that financial incentives such as tax
credits should be used to help push the development of such technologies. Some 78% agreed that electricity
companies should be preparing now so that nuclear plants could be built in the next
decade, if needed, while 59% agreed that the US should "definitely" build more nuclear power plants. Overall,
63% of those surveyed favoured the use of nuclear energy in the USA, with 33% opposing it, with
the proportion of people "strongly" in favour, at 28%, double the 14% who described themselves as strongly
opposed to nuclear.
23
POLITICS- PUBLICALLY UNPOPULAR

Plan is overwhelmingly unpopular with the public
Daks 07 (Martin C. Daks, NRG Seeks The Lead in Going Nuclear, Oct. 1, 2007,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5292/is_200710/ai_n21269535)
According to an April poll by CBS News and The New York Times, 58 percent of Americans disapprove
of nuclear energy and 59 percent don't want to see a nuclear power plant built in their
community. And at a June conference, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a free-market
think tank in New York City, doubts were raised about the ability of companies to secure financing for nuclear
power projects. "While the government has never reneged on a loan guarantee once issued, the political climate
for other subsidies that could make or break nuke projects could change as federal
administrations change," the institute warned in a report on the conference.
24
NUKE POWER GOOD
25
Nuclear Power Solves Warming

Nuclear power key to solve warming
Motavalli 04 (Jim Motavalli A Nuclear Phoenix?: Concern about Climate Change is Spurring an
Atomic Renaissance, E The Environmental Magazine, http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3780)
Nuclear power has already won some powerful allies in the environmental community. Fred
Krupp of Environmental Defense says, “We should all keep an open mind about nuclear power.”
Jared Diamond, best-selling author of Collapse, says, “To deal with our energy problems we
need everything available to us, including nuclear power,” which should be “done carefully,
like they do in France, where there have been no accidents.” To which Stewart Brand, another
apostate green who founded The Whole Earth Catalog and Whole Earth Review, adds, “The only
technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is
nuclear power.” James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory about the planet’s self-regulating
systems, has called for, to quote The Independent, “a massive and immediate expansion of
nuclear power.” Actor Paul Newman visited New York’s Indian Point plant and praised its
climate role. In many cases, these environmentalists see nuclear as only a temporary fix.
Even if nuclear power isn’t an absolute panacea, it is necessary to solve any warming
Bowman 08 (FRANK L. (SKIP) BOWMAN, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nuclear Energy Institute,
Remarks at the Nuclear Energy Assembly, Facing Facts, MAY 6, 2008, Nuclear Energy Institute,
http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/speechesandtestimony/2008_speeches_and_testimony/bowmanspeech_050508/)
The most recent World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency, perhaps the pre-eminent global
energy forecast, showed world nuclear capacity increasing by about 12 percent from today’s 368 gigawatts even in
its business-as-usual scenario. IEA also produced a “450 Stabilization Scenario,” to identify what must happen to
stabilize the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million. In that scenario, world nuclear
capacity must more than double – from 368 gigawatts today to 833 gigawatts in 2030. Obviously, that
additional nuclear capacity does not shoulder the entire carbon reduction load: end-use
energy efficiency, improved efficiency of coal-fired power plants, major gains in CO2
capture and storage are also necessary – but without nuclear power, we simply can’t get
there.
26
Nuclear Power Solves Warming
NUCLEAR SOLVES THE ECONOMY AND WARMING

CDP 08 (Congressional Documents and Publications, May 12, 2008, Analyses Show Lieberman-Warner Depends
on Significant Nuclear Energy Increases, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, LN)
The expansion of nuclear energy will be a key debate if the America's Climate Security Act - S.2191 (Lieberman-
Warner) cap-and-trade bill comes to the Senate Floor. As economic analyses show, significant carbon
reductions are contingent on the construction of extensive numbers of new nuclear plants.
FACT: Economic analyses show Lieberman-Warner would require massive development of nuclear energy, up to
268 new plants by 2030, according to the Energy Information Agency's (EIA) most recent analysis: that's two and a
half times the number of plants we have operating today - an increase so massive and unrealistic as to be fictional.
In addition to EIA, the chart below shows the necessary projections as determined by the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and the Clean Air Task Force (CATF): EIA's analysis
further showed that merely limiting the construction of new nuclear plants dramatically increased allowance costs
and electricity costs, while decreasing reductions in carbon emissions. This clearly indicates that nuclear energy is
the key to reducing carbon emissions and reducing the costs of any such effort. Proponents
of climate change legislation can't continue to reject the world's largest source of carbon-
free energy. However, any large-scale development of nuclear energy will face several challenges including
regulatory predictability and waste management, but perhaps the most significant challenge will be the
scale of the financing needed to accommodate such a large number of projects. The Electric
Power Research Institute's projection of 64 new plants by 2030, which is considered an extremely optimistic goal by
industry experts, would require the industry to find financing of approximately $384 billion. Companies looking to
build just one or two plants may need financing equal to half of their total market capitalization. CEO's will not
gamble the health of their companies if the financial risks are too high or if political support is shaky. One of the
ways the federal government can address this situation is by helping to create a stable financing platform upon
which executives can base their decisions. Loan guarantees is one such tool. If proponents of climate
change legislation are serious about reducing carbon emissions, it's time to stop dodging
the issue and embrace nuclear energy. Robust construction of emissions-free nuclear plants requires
robust support from the Congress now.
NUCLEAR POWER CAN SOLVING WARMING EVEN WITH VAST INCREASES IN

ELECTRICITY USAGE
The case for Dominion as a friend of the Earth is based on a few simple facts: It generates 45 percent of
Connecticut’s electricity and 30 percent of Virginia’s without taking a huge toll in smokestack-emitted global
warming gas. In fact, there are no smokestacks, because (aside from the occasional release of radioactive
material) the only thing nuclear power plants vent is steam. What’s more, in contrast to the
modest current capacity of wind and solar power, nukes can produce very large amounts of
electricity—enough to counter global warming by taking highly polluting coal-burning
plants offline even as electricity demand increases.
27
NUCLEAR POWER SOLVE OIL DEPENDENCE

Nuclear power key to energy independence
Huber and Mills 05 (Peter W. Huber, Mark P. Mills, Why the U.S. Needs More Nuclear Power, City Journal,
Winter 2005, http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_1_nuclear_power.html)
The power has to come from somewhere. Sun and wind will never come close to supplying it. Earnest
though they are, the people who argue otherwise are the folks who brought us 400 million extra tons of coal a year.
The one practical technology that could decisively shift U.S. carbon emissions in the near
term would displace coal with uranium, since uranium burns emission-free. It’s time even for Greens to
embrace the atom. It must surely be clear by now, too, that the political costs of depending so heavily on
oil from the Middle East are just too great. We need to find a way to stop funneling $25 billion a year (or
so) of our energy dollars into churning cauldrons of hate and violence. By sharply curtailing our dependence on
Middle Eastern oil, we would greatly expand the range of feasible political and military options in dealing with the
countries that breed the terrorists. The best thing we can do to decrease the Middle East’s hold on
us is to turn off the spigot ourselves. For economic, ecological, and geopolitical reasons, U.S.
policymakers ought to promote electrification on the demand side, and nuclear fuel on the supply
side, wherever they reasonably can.
Nuclear would lower electricity prices and solve our dependence on foreign energy
Spencer 07 (Jack Spencer is the Research Fellow in Nuclear Energy at The Heritage
Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, “Competitive Nuclear Energy
Investment: Avoiding Past Policy Mistakes,” The Heritage Foundation, Nov.15, 2007,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2086.cfm)
The near death of the U.S. nuclear energy industry has harmed both investors and
consumers. First, ratepayers eventually pay for the increased costs of generating electricity. More important, by
removing nuclear energy from America's energy portfolio, anti-nuclear activists have limited the choices available to
America's energy producers and consumers. Limiting choice has two inevitable results: higher prices
and lower quality.Without nuclear energy as an option and with coal being frowned upon, utilities
started moving toward natural gas power plants. This growing reliance on natural gas has
caused electricity prices to follow the volatility of natural gas prices. As demand for natural
gas has increased, prices have become even more volatile.Perhaps more ominously, it positions
the United States to increase its reliance on foreign energy significantly. Today, America's energy
dependence is largely a function of foreign petroleum and the transportation sector. The nation gets only about 2
percent of its electricity from oil-fired plants. However, the growing U.S. dependence on natural gas is
beginning to exceed domestic supply. This has resulted in increasing natural gas imports. Importing energy
is not necessarily a problem if those resources are coming from stable, friendly countries, but foreign natural
gas reserves are located largely in many of the same, less predictable countries that have large
petroleum reserves.
28
A2: Accidents
NUCLEAR PLANTS ARE SAFE!
Kart 08 (Jeff Kart, Bay City Times, NUCLEAR ENERGY: THE 'NEW' ALTERNATIVE TO COAL?, Feb. 6,
2008, http://www.mlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2008/02/nuclear_energy_the_new_alterna.html)
Forrest J. Remick, professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at Penn State University, calls nuclear power
"very safe." The industrial accident rate for nuclear plants is 14.6 times less than for all
manufacturing industries, Remick asserts in an article on the Penn State Web site. As well, no member
of the public has been killed or injured from radiation during the nearly 50 years that
commercial nuclear plants have been operating in the U.S., according to Remick and others. Gard said the
money spent on another Fermi plant would be better used to help reduce energy demand in Michigan, by offering incentives for homes and
businesses to install energy- efficient appliances and equipment, for instance. If forced to choose, Gard said he'd rather see a coal plant that
captures its carbon dioxide than a new nuclear plant generating more nuclear waste. For their part, Consumers Energy officials have said it would
take too long to permit a nuclear plant here before demand outpaces supply. The utility plans to install additional pollution controls for a new coal
plant in Bay County, leaving room for carbon capture technology in the future, said Jeff Holyfield, a Consumers spokesman. Last year, Cravens,
of Long Island, N.Y., published a book, with references, called "Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy." She said most
people don't realize that a nuclear plant can't explode like a nuclear bomb, and the
industry's two most prominent accidents weren't as catastrophic as many people believe.
According to a fact sheet from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the partial meltdown of the reactor
core at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 "led to no deaths or injuries to plant
workers or members of the nearby community." The accident caused the NRC "to tighten
and heighten its regulatory oversight" and "had the effect of enhancing safety," the agency
says. The 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine was much worse, but involved a bad reactor design
that is not used in the U.S., Cravens and others argue. Twenty-eight workers died in the first four months
after the Chernobyl accident, but the majority of 5 million residents living in contaminated areas around the site
received only small radiation doses, according to the NRC. Soot in the air from coal generation, on the
other hand, is estimated to cause more than 20,000 premature deaths a year in the U.S.,
according to a study done by a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Radiation from nuclear plants is a
concern. But that's why the reactor at Fermi is shielded by 10-12 inches of steel and about 12 feet of concrete, said John Austerberry, a DTE
spokesman. The plant also has numerous backup water and power systems to make sure the reactor operates safely. Adrian Heymer is a senior
director at the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group in Washington, D.C. After a 30-year lull following the Three Mile Island incident, U.S.
The NRC has
utilities have recently submitted 17 applications for as many as 30 new reactors around the country, Heymer said.
revamped its licensing process, and the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides incentives for utilities to
construct new plants. DTE could be eligible for up to $300 million in incentives for Fermi 3. France already gets 80
percent of its electricity from nuclear power. The U.S. gets more than half of its power from coal, and 20 percent
from more than 100 nuclear reactors. The next generation of U.S. nuclear plants will be even safer
than the current fleet, Heymer said. The industry hopes to move to an integrated spent fuel management
system, with advanced recycling and processing. That would reduce waste and eliminate generating a stream of
plutonium during recycling "that makes things go bang," Heymer said. "The systems are very reliable,"
he said of the next generation of nuclear plants. "You've got less to go wrong. They are simpler,
with fewer components, fewer moving components, so there's less to break down. Your probability of
having an event that causes the fuel to melt is a lot lower. ... "The probability of having a
Three Mile Island type event today, with existing plants, is about 1 in 100,000. "The
probability on some of the new designs is close to 1 in 500 million."
29
A2: Accidents
NEW PLATS ARE SAFE- WE AREN’T RESPONSIBLE FOR OLD PLANTS
Schoen 07 (John Schoen, Senior Producer, MSNBC, Does nuclear power now make financial
sense?, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16286304/)
Proponents of new plants point to several changes that they say will be advantageous in getting the
next generation of plants off the drawing boards: Standardized designs: The existing fleet of U.S. power
plants was largely custom-built, a one-at-a-time process that all but insured delays in approval and
construction, along with runaway costs. Today, with several standard designs already approved by
the NRC, builders of nuclear power plants say they are much better able to manage costs
and maintain quality control. Large, standardized components are expected to be built off-site and then
delivered and assembled at the plant.
Improved safety features: New designs include “passive safety” features; for example, “gravity-fed” water
supplies to cool a reactor core if it overheats, reducing the risk of pump failure. In some cases, nuclear proponents
say, design simplifications have reduced both risk and cost.
THE LIKELIHOOD OF AN ACCIDENT IN THE US IS NIL

In terms of public health consequences, the safety record of the U.S. nuclear power industry in
comparison with other major commercial energy technologies has been excellent. During
approximately 2,700 reactor-years of operation in the United States,15 the only incident at
a commercial nuclear power plant that might lead to any deaths or injuries to the public
has been the Three Mile Island accident, in which more than half the reactor core melted. Public exposure
to radioactive materials released during that accident is expected to cause fewer than five deaths (and
perhaps none) from cancer over the subsequent 30 years. A study of 32,000 people living within 5 miles of the reactor when the
accident occurred found no significant increase in cancer rates through 1998, although the authors noted that some potential health effects “cannot
be definitively excluded.” The relatively small amounts of radioactivity released by nuclear plants during normal operation are not generally
believed to pose significant hazards, although some groups contend that routine emissions are unacceptably risky. There is substantial scientific
uncertainty about the level of risk posed by low levels of radiation exposure; as with many carcinogens and other hazardous substances, health
effects can be clearly measured only at relatively high exposure levels. In the case of radiation, the assumed risk of low-level exposure has been
extrapolated mostly from health effects documented among persons exposed to high levels of radiation, particularly Japanese survivors of nuclear
The consensus among most safety experts is that a severe nuclear power
bombing in World War II.
plant accident in the United States is likely to occur less frequently than once every 10,000
reactor-years of operation. (For the current U.S. fleet of about 100 reactors, that rate would yield an average
of one severe accident every 100 years.) These experts believe that most severe accidents would have
small public health impacts, and that accidents causing as many as 100 deaths would be
much rarer than once every 10,000 reactor-years. On the other hand, some experts challenge the
complex calculations that go into predicting such accident frequencies, contending that accidents with serious public
health consequences may be more frequent.
30
A2: Accidents
REACTORS ARE CLOSELY REGULATED- THIS PREVENTS ANY ACCIDENTS
Holt 07 (Mark Holt, Specialist in Energy Policy, Resources, Science, and Industry Division,
“Nuclear Energy Policy,” July 12, 2007, http://sharp.sefora.org/issues/nuclear-energy-policy/)
A fundamental concern in the nuclear regulatory debate is the performance of NRC in
issuing and enforcing nuclear safety regulations. The nuclear industry and its supporters have regularly complained
that unnecessarily stringent and inflexibly enforced nuclear safety regulations have burdened nuclear utilities and their customers with excessive
costs. But many environmentalists, nuclear opponents, and other groups charge NRC with being too close to the nuclear industry, a situation that
they say has resulted in lax oversight of nuclear power plants and routine exemptions from safety requirements.
Primary
responsibility for nuclear safety compliance lies with nuclear plant owners, who are required
to find any problems with their plants and report them to NRC. Compliance is also monitored
directly by NRC, which maintains at least two resident inspectors at each nuclear power
plant. The resident inspectors routinely examine plant systems, observe the performance of
reactor personnel, and prepare regular inspection reports. For serious safety violations, NRC
often dispatches special inspection teams to plant sites. In response to congressional criticism,
NRC has reorganized and overhauled many of its procedures. The Commission has moved
toward “risk-informed regulation,” in which safety enforcement is guided by the relative risks
identified by detailed individual plant studies. NRC’s risk-informed reactor oversight
system,inaugurated April 2, 2000, relies on a series of performance indicators to determine the
level of scrutiny that each reactor should receive.
NEW SAFETY MEASURES HAVE BEEN IMPLEMENTED

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States raised concern about nuclear power
plant security. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 includes several reactor security provisions, including
requirements to revise the security threats that nuclear plant guard forces must be able to
defeat, regular force-on-force security exercises at nuclear power plants, and the
fingerprinting of nuclear facility workers.
THE INDUSTRY HAS LEARNED FROM PAST MISTAKES- NO NEW ACCIDENTS

Stuckey 07 (Mike Stuckey, Senior News Editor, MSNBC, New nuclear power ‘wave’ — or just a ripple?,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16272910/)
In the U.S., chastened nuclear operators focused on improving safety and efficiency at existing plants. They were
successful: There have been no notable U.S. accidents since Three Mile Island and the U.S.
reactor fleet has produced at about 90 percent of licensed capacity since 2001, up considerably
from efficiency figures of the early 1980s. Nuclear plants today produce about 20 percent of the electricity used in
the United States. Industry improvements are “an outgrowth, in all honesty, of the Three Mile
Island accident," NEI's Kerekes said, "because the steps that were taken after that do a better job
of sharing information in our industry and applying best practices.”
31
A2: TERRORISM
SAFETY MEASURES PREVENT TERRORISM
Holt 07 (Mark Holt, Specialist in Energy Policy, Resources, Science, and Industry Division,
“Nuclear Energy Policy,” July 12, 2007, http://sharp.sefora.org/issues/nuclear-energy-policy/)
Nuclear power plants have long been recognized as potential targets of terrorist attacks,
and critics have long questioned the adequacy of the measures required of nuclear plant operators
to defend against such attacks. All commercial nuclear power plants licensed by NRC have a
series of physical barriers against access to vital reactor areas and are required to maintain
a trained security force to protect them. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001, NRC began a “top-to-bottom” review of its security requirements. A key element in
protecting nuclear plants is the requirement that simulated terrorist attacks, monitored by
NRC, be carried out to test the ability of the plant operator to defend against them. The
severity of attacks to be prepared for are specified in the form of a “design basis threat” (DBT).
After more than a year’s review, on April 29, 2003, NRC changed the DBT to “represent the
largest reasonable threat against which a regulated private guard force should be expected to
defend under existing law.” The details of the revised DBT were not released to the public. The
Energy Policy Act of 2005 required NRC to further revise the DBT based on an assessment of
terrorist threats, the potential for multiple coordinated attacks, possible suicide attacks, and other
criteria. NRC approved the DBT revision based on those requirements on January 29, 2007. The
revised DBT does not require nuclear power plants to protect themselves against deliberate
aircraft attacks. NRC contended that nuclear facilities were already required to mitigate the
effects of large fires and explosions, no matter what the cause, and that active protection
against airborne threats was being addressed by U.S. military and other agencies.
EPACT05 also requires NRC to conduct force-on-force security exercises at nuclear power
plants every three years (which was NRC’s previous policy), authorizes firearms use by nuclear
security personnel (preempting some state restrictions), establishes federal security
coordinators, and requires fingerprinting of nuclear facility workers.
32
A2: TERRORISM
NO RISK OF TERRORIST ATTACK ON PLANTS
Huber and Mills 05 (Peter W. Huber, Mark P. Mills, Why the U.S. Needs More Nuclear Power,
City Journal, Winter 2005, http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_1_nuclear_power.html)
How worried should we really be in 2005 that accidents or attacks might release and
disperse a nuclear power plant’s radioactive fuel? Not very. Our civilian nuclear industry
has dramatically improved its procedures and safety-related hardware since 1979. Several
thousand reactor-years of statistics since Three Mile Island clearly show that these power plants
are extraordinarily reliable in normal operation. And uranium’s combination of power
and super-density makes the fuel less of a terror risk, not more, at least from an
engineering standpoint. It’s easy to “overbuild” the protective walls and containment
systems of nuclear facilities, since—like the pyramids—the payload they’re built to shield is
so small. Protecting skyscrapers is hard; no builder can afford to erect a hundred times more wall
than usable space. Guaranteeing the integrity of a jumbo jet’s fuel tanks is impossible; the tanks
have to fly. Shielding a nuclear plant’s tiny payload is easy—just erect more steel, pour more
concrete, and build tougher perimeters. In fact, it’s a safety challenge that we have already
met. Today’s plants split atoms behind super-thick layers of steel and concrete; future
plants would boast thicker protection still. All the numbers, and the strong consensus in the
technical community, reinforce the projections made two decades ago: it is extremely unlikely
that there will ever be a serious release of nuclear materials from a U.S. reactor.
TERRORIST WON’T TARGET PLANTS- EVEN IF THEY DID THEY WOULDN’T BE

ABLE TO PENETRATE THE DOME
Johnston 08 (Rob Johnston, Jan. 9, 2008, Ten myths about nuclear power, http://www.spiked-
online.com/index.php?/site/article/4259/)
Since 11 September 2001, several studies have examined the possibility of attacks by a large
aircraft on reactor containment buildings. The US Department of Energy sponsored an
independent computer-modelling study of the effects of a fully fuelled Boeing 767-400 hitting
the reactor containment vessel. Under none of the possible scenarios was containment breached
(21). Only the highly specialised US ‘bunker busting’ ordnance would be capable – after
several direct strikes – of penetrating the amount of reinforced concrete that surrounds
reactors. And besides, terrorists have already demonstrated that they prefer large, high
visibility, soft targets with maximum human casualties (as in the attacks on New York,
London, Madrid and Mumbai) rather than well-guarded, isolated, low-population targets.
33
A2: WASTE
WASTE IS NOT A REAL ISSUE- ITS ALL POLITICAL
Holt 07 (Mark Holt is head of the Energy and Minerals Section of the Congressional Research Service’s
Resources, Science, and Industry Division since 1997, “Council on Foreign Relations Symposium: American
Nuclear Energy in a Globalized Economy, Session II: What Is the Investment Climate for Nuclear Energy?” Council
on Foreign Relations, June 15, 2007,
http://www.cfr.org/publication/13717/council_on_foreign_relations_symposium.html)
I think the Keystone report they do make the point that most experts do not see it as a major physical
problem dealing with the physical waste -- at least in the short term. So if there's no Yucca Mountain, if
Yucca Mountain is delayed for decades even, that's a relatively short period of time as far
as interim storage goes. It's not really a technical and safety issue, but the concern about
surface storage being permanent, meaning -- we talked also last night about the millions of
years. Once you get into that time frame, obviously, surface storage is not nearly as secure
as a repository. So that would be a concern there. But as far as the near-term policymaking issue, it often is
more of a legal and regulatory problem than perhaps a real physical safety problem.
NEW PLANTS DON’T CREATE WASTE- ITS ALL RECYCLED

Freeman 07 (Marsha, Debunking the Myths About Nuclear Energy, Feb. 2, 2007,
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3405_nuclear_myths.html)
A: There is no such thing as nuclear "waste." This is a term used in popular parlance by anti-nuclear
ideologues to frighten the public, and its elected representatives. More than 95% of the fission products
created in commercial power plants can be reprocessed and recycled. The spent fuel from a
typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant, which has operated over 40 years, can produce energy equal to 130 million
barrels of oil, or 37 million tons of coal. In reprocessing, fissionable uranium-235 and plutonium are separated from
the high-level fission products. The plutonium can be used to make mixed-oxide fuel, which is
currently used to produce electrical power in 35 European nuclear reactors. The fissionable
uranium in the spent fuel can also be reused. From the remaining 3% of high-level radioactive products, valuable
medical and other isotopes can be extracted.
34
A2: PROLIFERATION
NUCLEAR POWER PREVENTS PROLIFERATION
Johnston 08 (Rob Johnston, Jan. 9, 2008, Ten myths about nuclear power, http://www.spiked-
online.com/index.php?/site/article/4259/)
More nuclear plants (in Britain and elsewhere) would actually reduce weapons proliferation.
Atomic warheads make excellent reactor fuel; decommissioned warheads (containing greatly
enriched uranium or plutonium) currently provide about 15 per cent of world nuclear fuel
(19). Increased demand for reactor fuel would divert such warheads away from potential
terrorists. Nuclear build is closely monitored by the IAEA, which polices anti-proliferation
treaties.
NUCLEAR POWER DOES NOT CAUSE PROLIFERATION

Freeman 07 (Marsha, Debunking the Myths About Nuclear Energy, Feb. 2, 2007,
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3405_nuclear_myths.html)
Q: But if the United States goes ahead now with reprocessing, doesn't making this technology available increase the
risk that other nations will develop nuclear weapons? A: No nation has ever developed a nuclear
weapon from a civilian nuclear power plant. If a nation has the intention to develop nuclear
weapons, it must obtain the specific technology to do so. Israel is an example of a nation that has no
civilian nuclear power plants, but has developed nuclear weapons. The nonproliferation argument—that
controlling technology will reduce the risk of weapons proliferation—is an historically
demonstrable false one. Nations make decisions based on their security and military
requirements, not on which technologies are available.
35

Neg Nukes Good Bad

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UMKC SDI 2008 NUCLEAR POWER

NUCLEAR POWER GOOD/BAD INDEX

NUKE POWER BAD

2. PLAN DOESN’T ENSURE PLANTS WILL BE BUILT

3. SHORTAGES IN URANIUM PREVENT SOLVENCY

4. EMPIRICALLY LOAN GUARANTEES FAIL- PLANTS ARE NEVER BUILT

5. NOT ENOUGH SITES FOR MORE NUCLEAR PLANTS

NUKE POWER INEVITABLE

THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY DOESN’T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO

PLAN DOESN’T CHANGE DOE REQUIREMENTS TO RECEIVE GUARANTEES

Over 50% of nuclear projects will default

PROBABILITY OF DEFAULTS ARE OVER 50%- IT’LL COST TAXPAYERS

TERRORISM LEADS TO EXTINCTION

Nuclear Power = Terrorism

Ext- Nuclear Power - Accidents

Prolif leads to extinction

NUKE POWER EXPENSIVE

Loan guarantees will cost billions

HIGH CONSTRUCTION COSTS WILL TRANSLATE INTO HIGH ELECTRICITY

A2: WARMING ADV

Uranium shortages will cause more emissions

A2: WARMING ADV

A2: WARMING ADV

NUCLEAR POWER EMITS JUST AS MUCH C02 AS ANY TRADITIONAL ENERGY

POLITICS- NUKE POWER IS PARTSIAN

LOAN GUARANTEES FOR NUCLEAR POWER ARE CONTENTIOUS IN CONGRESS

Politics Links- BIPART

LOAN GUARANTEES POPULAR IN CONGRESS

POLTICS- PUBLICLY POPULAR

POLITICS- PUBLICALLY UNPOPULAR

NUKE POWER GOOD

Nuclear Power Solves Warming

Nuclear Power Solves Warming

NUCLEAR SOLVES THE ECONOMY AND WARMING

NUCLEAR POWER CAN SOLVING WARMING EVEN WITH VAST INCREASES IN

NUCLEAR POWER SOLVE OIL DEPENDENCE

THE LIKELIHOOD OF AN ACCIDENT IN THE US IS NIL

NEW SAFETY MEASURES HAVE BEEN IMPLEMENTED

THE INDUSTRY HAS LEARNED FROM PAST MISTAKES- NO NEW ACCIDENTS

TERRORIST WON’T TARGET PLANTS- EVEN IF THEY DID THEY WOULDN’T BE

NEW PLANTS DON’T CREATE WASTE- ITS ALL RECYCLED

NUCLEAR POWER DOES NOT CAUSE PROLIFERATION

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