Nuclear energy safer than previously thought

Nuclear energy safer than previously thought

DALLAS, March 31 /U.S. Newswire/

Nuclear energy is far safer than commonly thought, according to scholars for the E-Team project at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA).

"The benefits of nuclear energy are real," said NCPA E-Team Adjunct Scholar Larry Foulke, "while the risks are mostly hypothetical."

The benefits of nuclear energy have not dispelled the commonly held belief that it is unduly hazardous. Foulke, co-author of a brief analysis with NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett, found that critics have focused on three myths about nuclear power:

-- Fear that radiation will escape due to equipment failure or human error.

-- The risk to human health from spent nuclear fuel, which is often misleadingly referred to as waste.

-- The specter of terrorist assault in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The NCPA brief analysis concluded that the risk from each of these concerns is quite small. For example, even though the accident at Three Mile Island was serious, it also proved that multiple safety measures worked. In addition, Navy personnel have manned nuclear-powered submarines for more than 50 years with no deaths from radiation.

Spent nuclear fuel is not waste, and can be re-used. France generates 70 percent of its electricity from spent nuclear fuel. And a recent report by nuclear physicists Gerald Marsh and George Stanford, both formerly of the Argonne National Laboratory, found that the danger of a radiation leak resulting from a terrorist attack is small, and would be even smaller if the U.S would begin storing spent fuel in a secure facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Foulke and Burnett note that politics, not science, delays construction of that facility.

"When decisions are made concerning sources of electrical power in the U.S. facts, not fear, should be the basis for appraising the nuclear industry's place in the mix," Dr. Burnett added.

The brief analysis is available at http://releases.usnewswire.com/redir.asp?ReleaseID45072& ink

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/" >http://www.ncpa.org:80/pub/ba/ba508/">

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ a/b a508//a>.

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The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D.C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. They depend on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share their mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants.

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