Nov 22 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Rob Pavey The Augusta Chronicle, Ga.

Tonya Bonitatibus can't help but wonder how two new reactors at Plant Vogtle might affect the Savannah River.

"It's not necessarily nuclear energy we're opposed to," said Mrs. Bonitatibus, who heads the Savannah Riverkeeper environmental group. "The thing we take issue with is the mass consumption of water."

From her office in Augusta, she can watch the river and its perpetual flow of dark water moving downstream to the coast.

It's not as abundant as it seems, she said.

"The more you use or take out, the more you are taking risks," she said.

Vogtle's existing reactors withdraw an average of 64 million gallons per day, and two additional units will raise that total to 117.6 million gallons a day -- or about 1.5 percent of the river's average flow. It would be a higher percentage of the flow during drought, she said.

"Atlanta is needing more water, and the lakes upstream are wanting more water," she said. "It is an industrial river, so the more that comes out, the less is there for waste dilution. You're raising the risks of pollution."

From an environmentalist's standpoint, Mrs. Bonitatibus believes nuclear power is better than a coal-fired power plant, with its array of pollution and climate change issues. She also wonders, however, whether the billions to be invested in the Vogtle project could be better spent elsewhere.

"If you look at the vast investment going into this plant, it would be well worth looking at how much alternative energy you could get with that investment," she said. "Cost is still an issue. Maybe we should look at investing these into alternative energy."

When the last commercial nuclear plants opened more than two decades ago, climate change had not yet become a major public issue. Today, nuclear power proponents say such projects are among the best ways to avoid using more fossil fuels, such as coal and gas.

Such arguments, however, don't necessarily validate nuclear power, said Sara Barczak, the program director for the environmental group Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

"There is a huge difference between 20 or 30 years ago and today," she said. "But the nuclear industry is like its waste: it refuses to go away."

Despite advances in technology that have made nuclear power more attractive again, many people have forgotten the huge cost overruns at plants built in the 1970s and '80s.

"What most people remember is huge rate increases," she said. "And in between you had Three Mile Island and Chernobyl."

Anti-nuclear sentiment, she acknowledged, isn't as fervent as it once was, in part because of issues such as climate change and a battle some environmentalists have deemed more urgent: the elimination of coal-fired power plants.

"What I've seen in my interaction with the environmental community is that most people aren't attacking nuclear power because nothing's been going on for a long time," she said. "Most groups are working on climate change, and like our organization, obviously stopping any major new coal plant is a top priority."

Neill Herring, a veteran environmental lobbyist who also represents the Sierra Club, said the argument that nuclear power offsets the sins of coal misstates the situation.

"The pro-nuke folks are all giddy about the low carbon emissions at the plants, but the fact that similar carbon reductions can be had for a fraction of the cost of the nuke potential offsets, and in forms that are not merely potential, but real, gets no attention," he said. "Mere efficiency can whack carbon much harder than a new nuke fleet, and at a savings to power customers, instead of at additional cost. That is what needs to be pursued to exhaustion before plunging into any more base-load nuke investment."

Ed Lyman, a senior staff scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said there is still one major issue with nuclear power that cannot be overlooked.

"The major nuclear safety issue is still the risk of a serious nuclear accident," Dr. Lyman said. "When a number of things go wrong at once, it can lead into a Chernobyl-type accident, and you also have to ask what is the vulnerability of a terrorist act."

Although the likelihood of such a scenario remains low, the stakes will always be very high, he said.

"The potential consequences of those types of events are so severe that if we saw something like that on U.S. soil, most likely we'd see a massive public outcry that could dwarf the consequences of 9-11," Dr. Lyman said.

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