Eugene weekly., March 17, 2011, Page 9, Image 9

UO Health Assessment Study
The Motor Control and Cognition Lab at the University of Oregon is
investigating the health outcomes of long-term practice of Tai Chi, sitting
meditation, or aerobic fitness (five or more years, three times per week for
30 minutes per session). We are testing citizens in the cities and outlying
areas of Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. If you have been generally
sedentary for five or more years we'd also like to test you. We can
pay $10 for four hours of testing done at your convenience. We will
provide you with a Health Status Report and any information gained from
the overall study. Email thawkes@uoregon.edu for further information.
school physics class. Hesla says, “They
should kick back and for once let the
scientists be at the audience’s mercy rather
than the other way around.”
— Shannon Finnell
NUKE POWER:
SUBSIDIZED,
DANGEROUS
There is no energy source more
controversial or heavily subsidized in this
country than nuclear power. What was
once viewed as the wave of the future has
devolved into a corrupt, bloated, dangerous
and expensive way of producing electricity,
according to panelists speaking March 5
on “Nuclear Power: An Ineffective,
Expensive, and Dangerous Response to
Climate Change” at the Public Interest in
Environmental Law Conference (PIELC).
The panel discussion preceded the
earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters
in Japan by less than a week.
In 1954, Lewis Strauss, chairman of the
United States Atomic Energy Commission,
described nuclear power as “electrical
energy too cheap to meter.” Today, the
most favorable statistics for nuclear power
put it at 15 cents per kilowatt-hour of
energy produced, almost twice that of wind
power. Added on to the higher price of the
energy produced is the staggering price of
maintaining and building nuclear power
plants, the panelists said. It costs up to $12
billion to construct a nuclear reactor, and,
as Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear
pointed out during the panel discussion,
the government has spent tens of billions
of dollars dismantling older reactors.
Absent the support of private investors, the
federal government and American
taxpayers have had to pick up the exorbitant
bill for this power, he said.
The U.S. nuclear program “collapsed
fundamentally when Wall Street soured on
it,” said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of
the Institute for Energy and Environmental
Research.
Nuclear power makes up over half of
the federal budget for research and
development. The Energy Policy Act of
2005 provided $20.5 billion in new nuclear
loan guarantees. The risk of loan default on
a nuclear loan is above 50 percent. And as
stipulated in the Price-Anderson Act, a
nuclear plant would only pay $10 billion in
the event of a “catastrophic event”;
taxpayers would pay for the rest of the
damages, he said.
“The ‘nuclear freight train’ gets its
engines going through federal subsidies,”
said Diane Curran, an environmental
lawyer.
Radioactive waste is another contentious
issue, the panelists said. The 24,000-year
half-life of plutonium renders the element
dangerously radioactive for a longer time-
span than humans have been on this earth.
There is still no permanent storage facility
for nuclear waste.
“You can’t just stop using nuclear
power,” Makhijani said. “It needs to be
phased out.” — John Locanthi
S OUTHERN AND N ORTHERN I NDIAN C UISINE
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EUGENE WEEKLY MARCH 17, 2011 9