The Oklahoma Corporation Commission held a public meeting Jan. 7 in Oklahoma City to hear citizen opinions about whether Oklahoma should open its arms and allow development of nuclear power plants to generate electricity.
Numerous comments were filed by concerned residents. Opponents were from several parts of the state but predominantly from the northeastern sector.
Environmental groups included the L.E.A.D.
Agency, Oklahoma Environmental Coalition, Honor the Earth, and Green Country Watchdogs.
Reasons for their opposition included: nuclear waste and its hazards to the environment, including thousands of years of remediation; waste containment and environmental contamination; risks and dangers of a catastrophe; impacts on human health, such as defects; water usage and effects on lakes and streams; corporate lobbying and data center construction leading to higher bills for residential and commercial consumers, with nuclear adding to the burdens; and endangerment of future generations.
Another complaint was costs of construction being overly high compared to other forms of generation, making it not economically viable, and ultimately the costs are borne by Oklahomans.
Some Oklahomans still remember Public Service Company’s fiasco with the Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant, a proposed facility near Inola that would have had a pair of 1,150 megawatt General Electric boiling water reactors.
The utility company announced its plans in 1973, but cancelled them in 1982 after largescale public protests, safety concerns, and major cost overruns.
The initial estimated cost of $450 million ballooned to $3.4 billion.
In 2017, the land was rezoned for heavy industrial use, and in 2018, Sofidel America built a large paper manufacturing plant on part of the former nuclear site.
Public opposition to Black Fox intensified after the Three Mile Island accident.
That incident was a partial nuclear meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979. It is the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history, The most destructive nuclear disaster in history occurred April 26, 1986, when reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union exploded.
The accident resulted in dozens of direct deaths and a major release of radioactive material into the environment, causing widespread health effects and requiring establishment of an exclusion zone.
The response involved more than 500,000 personnel and remains the most expensive disaster in history, with an estimated cost of U.S. $700 billion.
Supporters of nuclear energy contend that technology has vastly improved in the 47 years since Three Mile Island and 40 years since Chernobyl, which occurred in a Soviet Union that was utterly lackadaisical about public health and safety.