The Rag: Articles
by Bill Meacham
The Rag, November 12, 1973, Volume 8, Number 12
This Saturday Austin voters will decide whether to authorize the issuance of some $397 million in bonds to finance future electric power generation for the city - $236 million for conventional (gas/oil and coal-fired) power plants and $161 million for 16% participation in the South Texas Nuclear Project. A little over a year ago Austinites rejected a bond issue for nuclear power, and this year’s nuclear issue has generated intense debate and disagreement. But the debate has been as interesting for what has not been said as for what has.
The arguments for authorizing bonds for nuclear power are simple: Austin’s growth, say the proponents, is increasing so rapidly that the demand for electricity will be three times as great in 1981 as it is now. Although conventional power plants can meet the demand through 1980, participation in the nuclear project is the most feasible way of meeting needs in the early “80s, Nuclear power, they say, is cheaper, more reliable, safer and cleaner than any other source of power. The city’s Public Information Office will be glad to give you summaries of these arguments.
The arguments against, so far, have done little more than try to refute the arguments for. Nuclear power, say the opponents, is dangerous and dirty. The Emergency Core Cooling Systems, designed to prevent a “melt-down” that would release massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment, have never been tested thoroughly and probably won’t work. Routine radioactive emissions from the plant, described by the city as “slight” (1), will get concentrated in food chains to dangerous levels by the time humans eat meat and milk products from animals that have fed on plants exposed to the radioactivity. Cost overruns and curtailments in nuclear plants are notorious – currently only one commercial plant in the U.S. is running at full capacity – and the South Texas Project will probably turn out to be at least twice as expensive as projected. Besides, there will probably be a shortage of uranium fuel; and breeder reactors, designed to create more fuel than they use, have not been perfected. The demand for electricity, say the opponents, will not grow as fast as it has in the past, so the additional power won’t be needed. And finally, the problems of storing radioactive wastes, which will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years, are insurmountable. An excellent summary of these arguments can be obtained from Save Austin’s Valuable Environment (SAVE) at SAVE’s table on the West Mall or at the Instead Coop, 22nd & Robbins Place.
But there are two crucial questions regarding the nuclear project that have not, so far, been addressed by any of the contestants: Who will profit from the project? Who will pay the costs?
The South Texas Nuclear Project is being financed and built by three power companies (four if Austin participates): Houston Power & Light, Central Power & Light (Corpus Christi) – both governmentally-regulated private utilities – and the city of San Antonio. The private utilities hold controlling shares in the project. Any nuclear project is a high-investment, low-operating-expense venture. The high initial capital expense guarantees the private utilities high profits, because their rates are set by municipal authorities and are calculated to return a profit based on the amount of capital invested. It’s just like the phone company here in Austin. Rates to be charged for services are set by calculating the revenue needed to amortize the capital investment and then adding on the amount needed to generate a “reasonable” profit. Obviously, the higher the capital investment, the higher the rates – which is why nuclear power is so attractive to private utilities. The situation is analogous for the municipal-owned utilities, whose rates are set directly by local city councils. Proponents of nuclear power say it’s a good thing that city-owned utilities show a profit, because these profits reduce taxes; but that’s a misleading argument, as we’ll see shortly. The first answer to the question, Who profits? is: The utilities.
But one suspects that there’s more to it than just this. Is it purely out of civic concern for lower taxes that city officials, the Chamber of Commerce and other business interests are waging a vigorous pro-nuclear campaign? No – because there are great amounts of spin-off profits to be garnered from an abundance of electricity. An abundance of supply will create the demand to meet it; new industries and businesses will move to Austin to make use of the excess power, and they will bring a tremendous increase to population with them. The obvious beneficiaries will be the construction industries, which will be called on to build new plants and homes, the banks, which will finance the new construction, the real-estate developers, who will sell the land and the homes, and the producers of goods and services, who will have an expanded market to exploit. We can expect a continued campaign to “live better electrically,” i.e. to purchase and use more electric gadgets, because high use of electricity will be needed to pay off the capital investments in new power plants. In short, the city’s ruling business elite sees a fantastic opportunity for more profits in the population and economic growth that will follow an over-abundance of electric power. This is why Electric Utility Director R. L. Hancock refers questioners to J. Neils Thompson, a UT physicist who just stepped down from the presidency of the Chamber of Commerce, and why Mayor Butler and Councilman Lebermann, the two wealthiest members of the council, have been most vocally in favor of nuclear power and why the council has had the city administration wage a massive pro-nuclear campaign. Who profits from nuclear power? The wealthy business interests who already run our city!
There are a couple of levels of costs involved in the nuclear project. Most immediately, it will be the users of electricity who pay for it. The cost per kilowatt-hour of the South Texas Plant will be lower than that of conventional power plants – if costs don’t rise exorbitantly and if the plants operate at full capacity and if the cost of coal rises three-fold as predicted. All of these ifs are highly problematical: the cost to the user will probably be much higher than anticipated. But there are more costs involved than just the price of electricity.
If the nuclear project goes through, Austin’s growth will increase markedly. Indeed, new users will have to be brought here to generate the revenue needed to amortize the plant-construction investments. Various population-growth projections average out to predicting a 43% increase by 1980 over the 1970 figure (2). Such a surge in population will mean a large demand for city services – streets, utilities, police and fire protection, etc. It is very doubtful that the costs for these services can be offset by electric utility revenues. City taxes will almost certainly have to rise to meet the demand. Thus, Austin taxpayers will have to pay for the costs of growth – over and above what they’ll be paying for the electricity itself.
And besides the actual dollar amounts needed to pay for increased power and increased growth-related services, there are other, intangible, costs to be met by each one of us. The psychic costs of living in an overcrowded city are hard to measure in figures, but are real nonetheless. Increased population will bring increased traffic congestion to a city whose streets are already used (at rush hour) beyond their reasonable capacity. It will bring increased air pollution from autos unless a massive public transportation is installed – an unlikely possibility while a car dealer is still Mayor. It will bring increased noise pollution and pedestrian density, increased dirt and grime, increased pressure to “develop” areas of natural beauty, and increased crime. Anyone who has ever lived in or visited Houston or Dallas, New York, Chicago or L.A., or any other major city knows what a priceless gem we have here in Austin. That gem is in imminent danger of being trampled underfoot, paved over and lost forever if the pro-growthers have their way.
The wealthy, of course, have the means to insulate themselves from a deteriorating environment. Big houses, air-conditioned cars, extended vacations, country homes – all are available to those who can afford them. But the rest of us, stuck with rising costs and limited incomes, can only suffer. From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, it is obvious that Austin’s participation in the South Texas Nuclear Project will benefit only the rich and the rest of us will have to pay. That’s why we urge all citizens to vote this Saturday and to vote AGAINST Proposition 2, the nuclear issue.
For those who have a broader scope of concern than their own self-interest, there is one more reason to oppose nuclear power, one that is strong enough by itself to stand against all the proponents’ arguments – the problem of storage of radioactive wastes. Radioactive wastes cannot be disposed of except by shooting them into the sun, which would require more energy than the nuclear plants can produce! They must be stored in radiation-shielding containers until their radioactivity id dissipated. Plutonium, a by-product of the breeder reactors which will have to be constructed to make fuel for the nuclear power plants, has a half-life of 24,000 years – that is, in 24000 years a given amount of plutonium will emit half the radioactivity it does at present. Radioactive wastes, if human life and health are not be endangered, must be stored and monitored and guarded for tens of thousands of years before they are safe enough to be approached directly. The needed storage technology does not now exist - despite bland assurances to the contrary – and even it if did we would be saddling hundreds of generations of people on this planet with the task of maintaining the storage facilities, so that we might enjoy abundant electricity for ht estimated 30-year life of the nuclear plants. Surely, to anyone with even a speck of concern for their fellow human beings, this is an intolerable demand. Not just for the immediate welfare of our city, but for the welfare of the planet for centuries to come, we urge you to vote AGAINST Proposition 2.
First 12 issues of The Rag are available online.