During his successful campaign for governor last year, Ted Strickland raised the hopes of Ohioans by promoting renewable energy as a path to creating more sustainable jobs in Ohio. Unfortunately, as governor, Strickland is failing to provide the leadership needed to move our state in that direction. Although his energy proposal allows renewable sources to provide 12.5 percent of Ohio’s electricity by 2025, he is allowing an equal amount of so-called “advanced” forms of   nuclear power and coal—with the term “advanced” defined only in the vaguest way.

The quite serious unresolved problems with coal are described in the accompanying issue of The Ohio Sierran. The attempt to promote a resurgence of nuclear power is particularly stunning in the state which not long ago experienced the most dangerous incident at a U.S. plant in the 28 years since Three Mile Island. It is difficult to imagine how a situation could come any closer to catastrophe than what happened at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant 30 miles east of Toledo.

In 2002, First Energy resisted a request to close and inspect. It was discovered that leaking acid had corroded through six inches out of a six and a half inch thick steel liner surrounding the highly pressurized reactor core. From testimony presented at a recent trial: “Federal laboratory tests later showed the massive cap was within weeks of bursting.” (Toledo Blade, 10-20-07). One of the last defenses against massive radiation release is the emergency core cooling system. Another revelation: “During the two years since the incident, while the plant was idle, the NRC also learned that the plant’s emergency core coolant system—perhaps its most vital safety feature—might have failed due to a combination of design flaws and necessary fixes that had not been made.” (Toledo Blade 10-31-07).

The combination of the half inch shred of remaining steel giving way and a failure of the cooling system could have led to a disaster on the order of Chernobyl. David Geisen, Davis-Besse’s former design engineer, made this very comparison when he “mentioned the near rupture of Davis-Besse’s old reactor head in the same breath as the 1979 half core meltdown of Three Mile Island .... and the 1986 explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor near Kiev, Russia.” (Toledo Blade, 10-20-07). Such an incident would have threatened tens of thousands of lives and a toxic poisoning of all northern Ohio—including Cleveland.

Beyond the danger of meltdown, there is also the unresolved problem of intensely radioactive waste. For one generation’s electricity, these plants are creating the most deadly substance on the face of the earth—plutonium—and placing the burden of safeguarding this material onto the next thousand generations.

An advertising blitz to promote low carbon emissions of nuclear plants as a “solution to global warming” must be recognized as false and misleading. This claim focuses only on the carbon dioxide emissions of the reactor itself and ignores the large carbon impact of the rest of the process—the mining, transportation and enrichment of uranium; the construction and decommissioning of plants; the cleanup of accidents; and the storage of wastes for generations. The enrichment facility at Piketon, OH, was consuming as much fossil fuel as a major city. Each dollar invested in energy efficiency technology is 7 times more effective in reducing greenhouse gasses than a dollar invested in nuclear power.  Nuclear power is an inherently dangerous technology with no magical “technical fix.” As it is also strongly subsidized, it is a drain on the public treasury and would divert resources from supporting the necessary shift. Genuinely clean and renewable sources are inexhaustible and offer true hope for our future. The website www.ohiowind.org describes how commercial scale wind power is already cost competitive.

In more than 20 other states, legislation to promote renewable energy passed with bipartisan support. Only in Ohio has the issue become politicized by permitting nuclear and coal into the mix. The tragedy of Strickland’s proposal is that it gave in to the powerful lobbies representing these interests at the very start. If he did not favor nuclear and coal, it would have made political sense to start by leaving them out, and accept compromise only as a political necessity.

The political timeline:  At the end of Oct. the Ohio Senate passed Substitute SB 221, a Republican version of the Governor’s energy bill that made several weakening changes (see p. 1 of the accompanying issue of The Ohio Sierran).  Strickland said, “They took my bill and made it better.” 

What you can do:  The Ohio House will vote on this bill as early as the end of January.  Contact your state representative today and tell him/her to remove nuclear power and coal from the energy bill SB 221. To find your representative by zip code visit <www.house.state.oh.us> or phone 614-466-8842.  Copy any letters and send to: Public Utilities Committee Chair John Hagan ; Rep. Mike Foley ; and Gov. Strickland from his website.  You can write them all at 77 S. High St., Columbus, OH, 43266.