Super Tuesday demonstrated the rancor rife in Republican ranks, as the four remaining major candidates slug it out to see how far to the right of President Barack Obama they can go. While attacking him daily for the high cost of gasoline, both sides are traveling down the same perilous road in their support of nuclear power.

This is mind-boggling, on the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with the chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission warning that lessons from Fukushima have not been implemented in this country. Nevertheless, Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: they’re going to force nuclear power on the public, despite the astronomically high risks, both financial and environmental.

One year ago, on 11 March 2011, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit the northeast coast of Japan, causing more than 15,000 deaths, with 3,000 more missing and thousands of injuries. Japan is still reeling from the devastation – environmentally, economically, socially and politically. Naoto Kan, Japan’s prime minister at the time, said last July;

“We will aim to bring about a society that can exist without nuclear power.”

He resigned in August after shutting down production at several power plants. He said that another catastrophe could force the mass evacuation of Tokyo, and even threaten “Japan’s very existence”. Only two of the 54 Japanese power plants that were online at the time of the Fukushima disaster are currently producing power. Kan’s successor, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, supports nuclear power, but faces growing public opposition to it.

This stands in stark contrast to the United States. Just about a year before Fukushima, President Obama announced $8bn in loan guarantees to the Southern Company, the largest energy producer in the southeastern US, for the construction of two new nuclear power plants in Waynesboro, Georgia, at the Vogtle power plant, on the South Carolina border.

Since the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and then the catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986, there have been no new nuclear power plants built in the US. The 104 existing nuclear plants are all increasing in age, many nearing their originally slated life expectancy of 40 years.

While campaigning for president in 2008, Barack Obama promised that nuclear power would remain part of the US’s “energy mix”. His chief adviser, David Axelrod, had consulted in the past for Illinois energy company ComEd, a subsidiary of Exelon, a major nuclear-energy producer. Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel played a key role in the formation of Exelon. In the past four years, Exelon employees have contributed more than $244,000 to the Obama campaign – and that is not counting any soft-money contributions to PACs, or direct, corporate contributions to the new Super Pacs. Lamented by many for breaking key campaign promises (like closing Guantánamo, or accepting Super Pac money), President Obama is fulfilling his promise to push nuclear power.

That is why several groups sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month. The NRC granted approval to the Southern Company to build the new reactors at the Vogtle plant despite a no vote from the NRC chair, Gregory Jaczko. He objected to the licenses over the absence of guarantees to implement recommendations made following the Japanese disaster. Jaczko said, “I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened.”

Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, one of the plaintiffs in the suit against the NRC, explained how advocates for nuclear power “distort market forces”, since private investors simply don’t want to touch nuclear:

“They’ve asked the federal government for loan guarantees to support the project, and they have not revealed the terms of that loan guarantee … it’s socializing the risk and privatizing the profits.”

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service, noting the ongoing Republican attack on President Obama’s loan guarantee to the failed solar power company Solyndra, said:

“The potential for taxpayer losses that would dwarf the Solyndra debacle is extraordinarily high … this loan would be 15 times larger than the Solyndra loan, and is probably 50 times riskier.”

As long as our politicians dance to the tune of their donors, the threat of nuclear disaster will never be far off.

• Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column

© 2012 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate

A new international accord on the management and safety of nuclear power plants should be a priority for governments, an influential global energy organisation has said.

A year after Japan’s Fukushima reactor was shut down, the World Energy Council – whose members include many of the biggest energy companies from around the world – said an agreement was possible and should be a matter of urgency. “Global nuclear power is one of the rare issues on which an international accord could be achieved with a reasonable level of efforts— the need to act is urgent, and the time is right,” its report found.

“Very little has changed in respect of improving global governance of the nuclear sector, highlighting the need for action. There is critical need to inform the public about issues relating to nuclear generation technologies, safety, costs, benefits and risks.”

The WEC also found that nuclear energy continues to be a popular choice when governments around the world are setting their future priorities, despite concerns over the safety of reactors following the Fukushima disaster last March.

Although many countries have paused their work on nuclear power developments, and some – including Germany, Italy and Switzerland – have withdrawn altogether, the WEC study concluded that the impetus for nuclear development in key parts of the developing world would continue.

Christoph Frei, the secretary general of WEC, said: “The nuclear renaissance is continuing. But there is a strong need for the public to be informed, and for more discussion around safety procedures. Safety should not be a competitive issue – it should be something where companies collaborate to ensure that everyone is using the best practice.”

The WEC study found that most countries had not materially reduced their plans for new nuclear reactors, and that 60 plants were still under construction. “Very little has changed, especially in non-OECD [developing] countries, in respect of the future utilisation of nuclear in the energy mix after Fukushima,” was the report’s verdict.

However, some nuclear experts disputed the claims, pointing out that proposed new reactors can take many years to come to fruition, and that while countries’ plans for new nuclear development may remain in favour of the technology on paper, this was far from a guarantee that the plans would be carried out in reality.

Steve Thomas, professor of energy studies at the University of Greenwich, said on Wednesday that while construction began on 38 new reactors between 2008 and 2010, construction only began on two between 2011 and 2012. He said estimates from the nuclear industry more than a decade ago that nuclear power would cost about $1,000/KW of capacity to construct had now been revised upwards to about $6,000.

Mycle Schneider, a nuclear energy consultant speaking at a conference held by the Greens/EFA party at the European parliament to discuss the impact of Fukushima on the nuclear industry a year on, said there had been a “dramatic decline” since the 1980s in the number of nuclear plants around the world. Keith Baverstock, of the University of Eastern Finland, added that the three major examples of nuclear accidents – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima – showed that nuclear power was “very dangerous and very accident-prone”.

Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s climate chief, warned that the costs of nuclear power had probably increased after the Fukushima incident. “I’m sure that nuclear power has not gone down in price, because of the extra security.”

But the WEC said it was essential for a public debate on nuclear to include the question of how safety and governance could be co-ordinated at an international level. Pierre Gadonneix, chairman of the World Energy Council, said: “It is clear from the report that nuclear energy will play a full part in the future energy mix, especially in developing countries, provided nuclear safety and transparency are continuously being reinforced. I believe there is a real opportunity for our world leaders to promote a consensual solution to this issue and thus demonstrate that real international governance, where emerging economies fully participate, can be successful.”