Building a new reactor brings more problems

Friday, Aug. 15, 2008

Calvert County is the smallest county in the state of Maryland.

It is a long narrow slice of land surrounded on three sides by water. It has one major highway that is used by the entire population of the county.

This same highway also carries significant commuter traffic to and from Washington, D.C. and from the north to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. The bridge connecting Calvert County to St. Mary’s County, south of the Calvert Cliffs power plant, will never support a reasonable evacuation in the event of a nuclear disaster.

And if people do get across the bridge, where will they go?

What is the threat?

First, the Calvert Cliffs nuclear reactor site is rapidly becoming a nuclear materials dump — the spent fuels to drive the reactor are stored on site — in Calvert County.

It doesn’t matter if they are in a ‘‘fuel rod storage pool” or in what is called at ‘‘dry cask storage” facility of some type.

These used materials are highly radioactive — in short they are very dangerous.

More than 30 years ago, the U.S. government decided that it would establish a waste repository site so radioactive materials would not have to be stored at each power plant.

The U.S. government efforts to do this have so far failed.

The Yucca Mountain repository is still a hope. The result is that Calvert County continues to have a growing nuclear dump that will get even larger, and a third reactor will increase the size of the ‘‘nuclear dump” in Calvert County.

The second threat is that the two existing reactors are getting old — in fact very old.

This does not mean that they will fail, but it does mean that the extended use of old reactors requires a vigilance that lacks engineering experience — hence, risk increases.

In 1996 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) fined Calvert Cliffs $50,000 for a safety defect that was not corrected for four years. This does not inspire confidence.

The third threat is that the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant is very close to a liquid natural gas port on the Chesapeake Bay.

This makes the area an especially attractive target for foreign attacks.

In addition, the Patuxent River Naval Air Station is fairly close to these two business operations.

Anyone planning a massive attack on the U.S. would find the Calvert Cliffs and the liquid natural gas operation attractive targets — and why not?

An attack on these two facilities could impair operations at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Lexington Park.

If fires and messy radiation are all over Southern Maryland, the air station would experience a severe impact. The U.S. Navy is not dumb.

It may be that in the best interest of national defense the Navy may decide to move some operations out of Southern Maryland.

So, who wants the third reactor? The answer is the state of Maryland government and Calvert County government.

Why?

There is only one reason — collection of increased tax revenue.

The $300 million tax break that will be passed to Constellation will ultimately be paid for by people who live in Calvert County and other parts of Maryland.

In the state of Maryland ‘‘economic growth” is defined as giving big businesses huge tax breaks to make their corporate books look good and to then tax workers at high rates.

The message is ‘‘bring your companies here and we’ll make you look good — and bring your workers, our tax slaves.”

Charles C. Philipp, Port Republic