Greed driving factor behind anti-alternative energy efforts
The long-term temporary solution of nuclear energy is assumed by many to be the answer for pending shortfalls in energy needs. I say "long-term temporary" because a nuclear power plant will only operate for maybe 40-50 years but in relation to our brief lives the radioactive waste will be here for the rest of forever.
No state wants the waste and after about 20 years and $90 billion there is no repository for the approximate 86,000 tons of radioactive waste. As a result, today each reactor is its own waste dump. So here we are in the Great Lakes basin, and DTE is storing high-level radioactive waste on the shore of Lake Erie! What a crime.
DTE has an active permit for construction of a Fermi 3, but they don’t talk about that. You can skate around on the internet and not find the cost charged by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for that build permit. Last I heard it was $275 million just for permission to build a colossal financial burden for the ratepayers and taxpayers.
Fees and fines charged to utilities is how the NRC generates its operating costs. Of the 18 or so building permits issued by the NRC in the recent past, only DTE's is active. It appears all the utilities who pulled their build permits had to forfeit the fees. That would be mutually agreed upon extortion passed on to the consumers. The NRC bureaucracy is itself a hidden fee as they have a billion-dollar annual budget.
DTE refuses to pay their full city tax bill on the coal burner and for Fermi 2 at the county level. There are an awful lot of people in Monroe city and county who will not see a pay raise for a long time to come because of DTE greed. Given the fact they are storing high-level radioactive waste here, their taxes should actually be much higher.
DTE likes to brag they’re a green-oriented company although they gladly charge you an extra $5 spot a month if you want your juice to come from alternative energy. They should admit they are overcharging all their customers to pay for the most expensive electricity money can buy, generated by Fermi 2. After all, part of your bill is also used to build a billion-dollar fund to decommission Fermi 2 when it is shut down permanently. The dry cask storage units on site can be moved, but the highly enriched reactor core will be here when all of us are gone.
DTE doesn’t want you to place solar panels on your house because they may have to buy juice from you to sell to your neighbor. It’s called monopoly capitalism. They control the electricity and they own Michigan Gas so they’re in total control. I hope this level of greed doesn’t rub off onto the local grocery stores who might object if I grew too many tomatoes and try to sell them to my neighbors.
Greed is the driving factor in the equation employed by the anti-alternative energy people. If everybody installs solar panels on their houses, Detroit Edison will have to downsize or go out of business.
There is no chemical runoff from solar or wind energy and no discharge of hot water to contribute to the algal bloom in Lake Erie. There are no evacuation routes around a solar field or wind farm. There is no noise, no glare, no stench from a solar field. Corn-based ethanol is nearing its demise. People are afraid of change but they will allow change to be imposed on them. A good, simple, first step toward change would be to throw all your incandescent bulbs in the trash and replace them with LED bulbs.
The movie by Michael Moore, “ Planet of the Humans,” has been mentioned within this current debate. The message of that movie was not that alternative energy does not work. The message was infinite economic growth on a finite planet is a dead-end street.
Mark Farris lives in Monroe. He can be reached at rpddog@sbcglobal.net.
This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Mark Farris: Greed drives anti-alternative energy efforts
