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 more than 50 years. They have devised the highest of high-tech solutions, 
 all of which have turned out to be dead ends. Fifty years of study and 
 experiment have yielded no useful solutions. Meanwhile, we keep making this 
 stuff with a hazardous lifetime that far exceeds the time that humans have 
 walked the earth. Perhaps it would be prudent to assume that this problem 
 cannot be solved, and that further deployment of nuclear power should be 
 delayed until solutions have been demonstrated. 
  
 New York Times: "More problematic is the administration's long-term solution 
 for waste disposal. It wants to recycle the spent fuel in a new generation 
 of advanced reactors that would use technologies that don't yet exist, 
 following a timetable that many experts think unrealistic. Its current 
 approach is apt to be costly and would leave dangerous plutonium more 
 accessible to terrorists." 
  
 PM: Our point exactly. The nation's best scientists have failed, and now 
 political appointees in the Cheney/Bush administration have elbowed the 
 scientists aside and decided to impose their own "solution." These are the 
 same people who have demonstrated failure in essentially every major 
 decision during the past six years. Now they want to "recycle" nuclear waste 
 into new, untried, and clearly risk- prone and terrorist-prone "solutions" 
 that this nation considered and rejected for compelling reasons 25 years 
 ago. 
  
 New York Times: "Nuclear power has a good safety record in this country, and 
 its costs, despite the high initial expense of building the plants, are 
 looking more reasonable now that fossil fuel prices are soaring. How much 
 impact it could really have in slowing carbon emissions has yet to be 
 spelled out, but there is no doubt that nuclear power could serve as a 
 useful bridge to even greener sources of energy." 
  
 PM: Huh? We're not sure how much nukes can reduce global warming, but we 
 should spend billions more taxpayer dollars to subsidize nukes? This is no 
 basis for national policy. Between 1948 and 1998, civilian nuclear power 
 received at least $77 billion dollars of federal subsidies (in constant 2005 
 dollars). The insurance industry still won't touch nuclear power with a 
 ten-foot pole so Congress has to limit the industry's liability by law -- a 
 huge subsidy to the nuclear power corporations. Wall Street won't touch it 
 either without huge additional federal guarantees and subsidies. This is a 
 technology that falls on its face unless Uncle Sam provides a permanent 
 crutch. 
  
 We should ask ourselves, Why aren't we willing to spend $77 billion to 
 subsidize energy-saving measures, and the development of existing 
 minimally-polluting technologies like wind turbines with hydrogen storage, 
 and hydrogen fuel cells to make electricity and power vehicles? Even Ford 
 and General Motors -- not the brightest bulbs on the corporate landscape -- 
 say they will offer us hydrogen fuel- cell vehicles in the next few years. 
 These technologies exist now. 
  
 Solar technologies such as wind power have an even better safety record than 
 nuclear and they too are looking more affordable as the cost of oil rises. 
  
 The time is now for all of us to get behind wind and solar power as 
 solutions to our energy challenges. Together they constitute a highly- 
 desirable and entirely-achievable precautionary energy program. Today the 
 environmental-health-and-justice movement is bogged down bickering over 
 individual projects like Cape Wind on Nantucket Sound. Every day we wait to 
 align solidly behind wind and solar improves the odds that the nuclear 
 cowboys will have their way with us. 
  
 A study published in Science magazine concluded that 
 hydrogen-fuel-cell-automobiles would be cheaper to run than today's 
 gasoline-powered vehicles. Conservation is the cheapest and least polluting 
 option of all, and it available in abundance right now. Conservation, wind, 
 photovoltaics, hydrogen storage (and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles), plus a 
 modicum of ethanol and methanol can provide a far safer and cleaner bridge 
 to even greener sources of energy. It's time to take a principled stand for 
 conservation, wind and other solar options. They are good for the planet, 
 good for people, and good for local control, good for "local living 
 economies," and good for self-determination. 
  
 These alternative sources of energy don't fit the divergent agendas of any 
 of the three pro-nuke campaigners. Of all these alternative energy options, 
 only nuclear power offers to create an endless series of international 
 crises (think Iran, think North Korea) requiring macho threats of military 
 showdown at the OK corral. Only nuclear power requires multi-billion-dollar 
 centralized machines that can be controlled by a tiny handful of investors 
 - -- thus empowering Wall Street elites instead of empowering farmers who 
 would be only too happy to put wind turbines in their corn fields. (A farmer 
 in Colorado is likely to receive $3000 to $5000 per year for hosting a 
 single wind turbine on a quarter-acre of land, instead of producing 40 
 bushels of corn worth $120 or beef worth perhaps $15 on that same land.) 
  
 Of all the available alternatives, only nuclear power relies on machines 
 that require armed guards, anti-terrorist exercises and simulations, 
 evacuation drills and other paramilitary apparatus. Only nukes with their 
 threat of rogue weapons can provide endless excuses to spy on other nations 
 and search through the phone records from every citizen. Only nuclear power 
 with its unbreakable link to A- bombs "requires" the President to declare 
 habeas corpus null and void, and to declare that he and Mr. Rumsfeld will 
 torture anyone they choose to torture any time it suits them, thus 
 commencing the Great Unraveling of the Universal Declaration of Human 
 Rights, which was imposed upon Real Americans by that class traitor Franklin 
 Delano Roosevelt and his commie-loving wife back in 1948. 
  
 In sum, none of the available alternative energy sources can match nuclear 
 power's ability to thwart the nation's inherent democratic tendencies and 
 stop the nation's slide toward local control, small- scale enterprise, 
 self-reliance, and a populist political reawakening. Without nuclear power 
 and petroleum to anchor their centralized authority and provide excuses for 
 their military adventures, the "powers that be" will soon seem very much 
 like the little man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. And that would 
 never do. It simply would never do. 
  
 And so I say to you, dust off your protest banners and buttons. That time 
 may be coming around again when we must hit the streets. No blood for oil! 
 Climate justice! No nukes! 
  
 [Peter Montague is editor of the indispensable Rachel's Health and 
 Democracy, 
 where this essay originally appeared. He can be reached at: peter@rachel. 
 org ] 
  
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