Do you people know anything about nuclear power and nuclear power plants? Have you ever lived near one? By the comments made here, I would think the answer to those two questions is NO! Power plants like these, help the economy grow by leaps and bounds. Many towns and communities have benifited from the building of nuclear power plants. Ask any of the residents of nearby towns of nuclear power plants and they will tell you that they are safe because they have educated themselves and know this to be true. I suggest you all take the time to do a little reserch before you spew out the negative comments.

Thank You.

I see Ian has no idea what it’s like to turn on the faucet everyday and not know if the water coming out is safe. Just ask anyone in anywhere in the United States that lives next door to a Nuclear Plant. Several of these small communities dot a contaminated landscape, a landscape that is polluted with radioactive tritium. The communities of Godley, Braidwood and Wilmington have been most directly affected by the six million gallon tritium spill that began to flow silently into the Kankakee River and groundwater nearly a decade ago. Yet until 2005, the communities had no idea that they were drinking from potentially contaminated wells and fishing in heavily polluted waters. They received no warnings from Exelon, the owner and operator of the two-unit Braidwood nuclear power facility, or from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency charged with “protecting public health and safety through regulation of nuclear power.”

Since the discovery of the radioactive contamination, this blue-collar community has been trying to force the corporation and federal government to face the issue head-on and to sort out the details of the problem.

Exelon, the country’s largest nuclear power corporation, owns the two Braidwood reactors capable of generating 2,400 megawatts of electricity. Braidwood is built on 4,000 acres of land and is separated from neighboring communties by a series of interconnected ditches that serve as troughs to collect effluent and plant runoff. Under the ground, miles of pipes – blowout lines – run in an interconnected maze toward the Kankakee River, carrying legal and illegal radioactive discharge to the 90-mile waterway.

It has been a whirlwind year for residents of this rural community. In December 2005, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission officially notified the Godley community that Exelon had released more than six million gallons of tritium from the Braidwood plant into the Kankakee River and into groundwater. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also notified the community that tritium had been found in one of the private wells used for drinking water. Exelon and federal officials had known about the illegal leak for nearly a decade, but only released information to the public after a community drinking water well tested positive for tritium. Godley was thrust into the national spotlight as the poster child community for what can go wrong at a nuclear power plant and with the government agencies that regulate it.

Tritium is a radioactive isotope that when inhaled, ingested or absorbed by the skin can cause cancer, birth defects, miscarriages and genetic damage. It is a by-product of nuclear power found in the water used to cool the reactor and water used to cool spent fuel rods.

So, Ian, don’t speak for us.

Exelon launched a public relations blitz last month with a slick corporate report, a full page ad in the NY Times (and who knows where else), and an announcement carried far and wide by a largely credulous business press. The story?

Exelon to Slash Greenhouse Gases by 2020.

That was the way Forbes.com ran the story off the AP wire, and the 50 some odd stories on Google news play the same refrain. You’d think Exelon had licked the climate crisis single-handedly.

In actual fact the company is making some modest emissions reductions far short of what science requires “in a bid to shape the debate on carbon dioxide rules and to get a jump on compliance,” as Matthew Wald of the NYTimes put it.

It’s hard to criticize a utility whose CEO, John Rowe, comes out and says:

The science is overwhelming - climate change is happening now and human activity is the primary cause.

But someone’s gotta do it, because from the standpoint of the global warming challenge, what’s in the much-touted plan is bupkis. (Bupkis= BS)

How dare I sneeze at 15 million tons of emissions reductions annually? The equivalent of taking 3 million cars off the road, as Exelon calculates? Because it’s a stalking horse for not ever doing enough, and for positioning the company in a mantle of virtue woven from an insufficient effort.

The company claims it will reduce its emissions about 10% from 2001 levels by 2020. About a quarter of that achievement was already in company plans. It is nothing new — upgrades to its nuclear plants. Another quarter of the gain is to come from reducing the energy demand of its customers through energy efficiency programs. And a third quarter is to come from reducing energy consumption in its own buildings. All those things make sense and help the company increase profits. That’s just good business practice.

Only a small fraction of proposed reductions - 2/15ths — would come from actually reducing existing fossil plant emissions. That’s the true climate challenge in the utility sector, and Exelon is not exactly stepping up to face it.

There’s also a big omission. Matthew Wald again:

But the plan is remarkable for what it does not emphasize. Despite a national focus on solar and wind power, discussions in Congress about renewed tax credits for investments in windmills and solar systems and debate over a federal requirement for a minimum level of “renewable” energy, Exelon calls for relatively little.

You’d think if this company were truly serious about the climate crisis, they’d have announced a plan to investors and analysts on an earnings call. The CFO would have provided hard, sober numbers and given a proper accounting of the meaning and significance of the initiative in relation to the science; and framed the climate issue in terms of financial risk exposure given pending carbon regulation and rising fuel prices.

Instead, we get a slick marketing piece that is missing essential information. Like, what is Exelon’s carbon footprint right now? All we are told is that reductions over the next twelve years will be greater than the company’s emissions in 2008. What does that mean? It’s not possible to evaluate. It’s a statement designed to elicit a thoughtless wow.

And as for taking 3 million cars off the road? They don’t say for how long the cars would be off the road, and for the life of me I couldn’t come to a calculation to justify their claim. It’s the problem with the corporate-speak brochure. It spins a good story at the expense of talking clearly about reductions in terms the science, policy and business community can understand.

The plan also stops at 2020. How come? To avoid difficult discussion of new nuclear plants? Exelon runs 17 of them now — 20% of US capacity — and so already enjoys a low carbon footprint as compared with peers in the utility sector that burn coal for power. Surely the company is thinking beyond 2020, but you wouldn’t know it.

The company claims credit for many climate actions. But those,in this new initiative it’s bragging about, have a very distinct self-serving flavor with no real answers.

Here’s a litmus test. If all US companies emulated the standard Exelon just set, where we would be in 2020?

In deep trouble.

Exelon like any other business is about profit. N.R.C. employees are paid to do a job. We thought they were there to protect us.

The licensee will negotiate pollution standards. Illinois will allow 20,000 pico curies per liter of tritium in our drinking water. Want to drink that, swim in it, shower in it? Do you want your kids to? Exposure to tritium provides an increased risk in cancer.

Exelon has achieved the goal of getting people to talk about the tritium leaks. It wasn’t just tritium, it was cobalt 60, strontium, cesium, iodine and other radioactive waste. Check out the effluent reports on the N.R.C. website.

Regulations are all in favor of the licensee. Find a way to make laws to protect your community.