GUESTWORK | Pam Solo and Grant Smith

The reactor disaster in Fukushima is so fresh in our memories that it may seem incomprehensible to think that the history of that tragic (and still unfolding) event in Japan could ever be rewritten and distorted. But history tells us that the nuclear power industry is very adept at revising the facts about every major reactor disaster.

Consider the Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor crisis in the United States. Thanks to years of industry propaganda, many Americans now assume that the panic that followed in the wake of this near-disaster situation derailed the nuclear power industry in the United States, halting its forward momentum in its prime.

Panic was not the issue after the Three Mile Island. In reality, the U.S. nuclear power industry was already dead in the water by the time of the TMI accident. What killed nuclear power more than a quarter of a century ago was cold, hard economics: Nuclear power was just too expensive to build.

Remember the promises made about nuclear power?

First it was “atoms for peace.” But we now know that our nuclear arsenal was the priority. Then it was “too cheap to meter.” But the truth is that nuclear power has been a financial fiasco, declared by Forbes in 1980 as the worst financial disaster in business history.

Little has changed since then, including the nuclear power industry’s enormous lobbying influence and public relations clout.

While Wall Street continues to take a pass on financing risky reactors, President Obama and bipartisan congressional supporters continue to cheerlead the so-called “nuclear renaissance.” The possibility of an accident, we were told, was next to impossible. But we’ve had three major incidents in 30 years and numerous near misses.

Now “clean” is the mantra in support of nuclear power for politicians and environmentalists alike who think only of reducing CO2. Is nuclear power a clean energy source? Not so much. The evidence paints quite a different story: routine, low-level, radioactive emissions, tritium leaks into water supplies, thousands of tons of fish each year annihilated at water intakes, thermal pollution of lakes and streams, tens of thousands of tons of extremely toxic high-level nuclear waste generated with thousands more to come.

The industry began trumpeting the “nuclear renaissance” in 2003. Yet, not one nuclear unit has been built in the United States. The average price for one reactor increased from an estimated $3 billion in 2002 to $10 billion in 2010 – not including the inevitable cost overruns that have plagued nuclear power construction since the begin ning. In Florida, Progress Energy announced in 2006 that a reactor would cost $6 billion in 2006. By 2010 it was estimated to be over $22 billion.

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