Are The Magnetic Poles Flipping?

Image via Wikipedia By Opeyemi Parham



Wow. "Waving Overwhelming Wonder". That is the skill that I am honing as I bear witness to a world in chaos.
What May Be Coming Next has many possibilities.
In El Mundo Bueno *, the Japanese continue to demonstrate awe-inspiring interpersonal connection, and political transparency in dealing with the disaster as it continues to unfold. In el Mundo Bueno we all move forward together with a clear and powerful warning, regarding the dangers of nuclear energy. The entire world begins to move away from such deadly technologies.
In El Mundo Malo, the problematic nuclear reactors have escalating issues. Perhaps more damage, as aftershocks of 5 and 6 (we call those earthquakes elsewhere) continue. Perhaps a meltdown. Perhaps (this being el MUCHO mundo malo) a meltdown, followed by another tsunami, and contamination of the ocean, with radiation.
I do not speak these possibilities as a fear monger, but as an oracle.
With Katrina, we were offered to possibility of looking at our emergency preparedness, our classism, and racism in this country. Did we learn our lessons?
With Haiti, we marveled at the resiliency of a people with the spirit to be dancing on the beaches the night of their catastrophe. Then we sent aid that introduced cholera and worsened their suffering.
With BP Oil, we felt panic as raw crude bled into the gulf waters. We are chafing at the bit to begin drilling again, as gasoline prices soar to $3.50 a gallon, and the corporate villains in that scandal plot new ways to avoid paying damages.
With Haiti, we marveled at the resiliency of a people with the spirit to be dancing on the beaches the night of their catastrophe. Then we sent aid that introduced a Southeast Asian cholera and worsened their suffering.
FACT: the magnetic poles are shifting, possibly preparing for a "flip":
"The last time the poles switched was 780,000 years ago, and it's happened about 400 times in 330 million years. Each reversal takes a thousand years or so to complete, and it takes longer for the shift to take effect at the equator than at the poles. The field has weakened about 10% in the last 150 years. Some scientists think this is a sign of a flip in progress"
from http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question782.htm
FACT: we have no idea what this might look like, feel like or how it will affect humans, other than the likelihood of a period of time when the earth loses it's protection from solar radiation for an unspecified period of time. Maybe minutes. Or hours. Or days.
Learning more about how to protect ourselves from radiation exposure seem EXACTLY RIGHT, right now.
BY THEIR DIETS AND LIFESTYLE, THE JAPANESE ARE WELL EQUIPPED TO DEAL WITH RADIATION EXPOSURE, relative to other parts of the world (like the Ukraine or Three Mile Island)) where radiation exposure has happened; I still trust that the biosphere/Gaia/Mother Earth is being as gentle as possible with us 7 billion humans...
She is saying "wake up, and STAY AWAKE"
My personal response to my own fears and anxieties is to remind myself to breathe, to inform and to share actual facts with as many as will listen. I  listen to that calm, still voice inside of me that is telling me what to do and how to refuel my heart with awe for the magic in my day to day world. I don't believe that the answers are on-line, or in the world of science. We must find them in co-created ways, for ourselves. We must use right and left brains, hearts, and souls to be with all of this change.
I will post the messages that I receive from Spirit, after I go and sweat my prayers for Japan and the World on Sunday, March 13.
                            In love and light-- OPEYEMI (eternally grateful)
* a phrase used by Starhawk in the novel "The Fifth Sacred Thing
--
                       Opeyemi  413-336-1291
                        P.O. Box 264

                        Hadley, MA. 01035  (www.ceremonyheals.com)
         buy Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World 

it will INSPIRE and encourage you!     http://www.hopebeneathourfeet.com   

                                                         

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Preventing Crimes Against Humanity

Image via Wikipedia

Published on Saturday, October 9, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Upholding International Law in a Muddy Kansas City Soybean Field

by Felice Cohen-Joppa

The judge found me guilty.  Even after I'd testified under oath that I had committed no crime when standing in front of a bulldozer in a muddy soybean field being cleared for the new Kansas City Plant, arm in arm with 13 others.  On August 16, we had tried to stop preparation of the site for the first U.S. nuclear weapons plant to be built in 32 years.  That's what brought us to Judge LaBella's Kansas City courtroom on October 7.
Many people I've talked to in the past year are not aware that while President Obama talks about the importance of nuclear disarmament, he and his administration are planning to replace and rebuild the nation's entire industrial capacity for nuclear weapons production at 3 key sites, with the goal of producing up to 80 new warheads per year for another 50-100 years.  This summer I joined protests at each of these 3 sites.
On July 4th and 5th I protested at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where a new facility will be built for manufacturing highly enriched uranium secondaries.  On the 65th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, I joined a protest at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico, where a new plutonium pit factory will be built.  The following week, on August 16, I was in Kansas City, where the remaining 85% of unique and critical components of nuclear warheads will be produced at the new plant. And I knew what my response had to be to the first nuclear bomb plant to be built in my adult lifetime - I had a responsibility to try to stop it.
So I stood in front of the bulldozer on August 16 not with the intent to trespass, but rather to try to prevent a crime from being committed.  I did it as an act of conscience to try to save our planet from the nuclear threat.  I did it because I understand the importance of civil resistance to bring about nonviolent social change, thanks to the many powerful examples in our nation's history, and because I understand my responsibility under international law to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity.
As a Jewish woman who has family members who survived the Holocaust, and some who perished, I have always very seriously regarded the responsibility of each individual to act to prevent war crimes. I have wondered what more ordinary citizens could have done to prevent the deaths of millions in the gas chambers.   If a few courageous individuals, albeit at great risk to themselves, had dismantled a portion of the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz or other concentration camps, for instance, they could have saved lives even as they were breaking the law by destroying property.  Certainly there are times when it is necessary to break a law in order to prevent a greater crime.  And here we are, decades after the killing of so many innocent people in the Holocaust, decades after the killing of so many innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with enough nuclear weapons to destroy life as we know it - and still our country plans to spend billions of dollars to build more.
Planning and preparing for nuclear war, and producing components for nuclear weapons at the Kansas City Plant in Kansas City, Missouri is a clear violation of international humanitarian law.
So I pleaded not guilty to the charge of trespass because I did not break the law.  I acted in a reasonable and nonviolent manner, as is my right and responsibility under international law, to prevent a crime from taking place, and to uphold the law.  I did because I know that it is up to each of us, now, before it is too late, to stop a nuclear holocaust.

Felice Cohen-Joppa is co-editor of the Nuclear Resister newsletter.  She can be reached at nukeresister@igc.org, and more information about anti-nuclear and anti-war resistance can be found at the Nuclear Resister blog, www.nukeresister.org

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Costs of Nuclear Power Prohibitive

Published on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 by The Herald News (Mass.)

Nuclear Power: Too Expensive, Too Risky

by John LaForge

Lofty claims about the benefits of nuclear power are coming from the Nuclear Energy Institute and others.

Meanwhile, news, financial and energy journals make clear that boiling water with uranium is the costliest and dirtiest energy choice. Even Time magazine reported Dec. 31, 2008, “It turns out that new (reactors) would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive.”

Florida Power and Light’s recent estimate for a 2-reactor system is a shocking $12 to $18 billion. The Wall St. Journal reported on nuclear’s prospects May 12, 2008 finding, “[T]he projected cost is causing some sticker shock ... double to quadruple earlier rough estimates. These estimates never include the costs of moving and managing radioactive waste — a bill that keeps coming for centuries.

Radioactive tritium has poisoned groundwater near at least 14 U.S. reactors, including Kewaunee in Wisconsin. Water under Braidwood, Dresden, Brookhaven, Palo Verde, Indian Point, Diablo Canyon, San Onofre and Kewaunee is all contaminated at levels above EPA and NRC standards.

Nuclear power is so clean that Germany legislated a phase-out of its 17 reactors by 2025. Germany’s 1998 decision was based partly on government studies that found high rates of childhood leukemia in areas near its reactors. In July 2007, the European Journal of Cancer Care published a similar report by Dr. Peter Baker of the Medical Univ. of South Carolina that found elevated leukemia incidence in children near U.S. reactors.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., attacked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005, writing “The nuclear industry and the NRC have automatically dismissed all studies that link increased cancer risk to exposure to low levels of radiation. The NRC needs to study — not summarily dismiss — the connection between serious health risks and radiation released from nuclear reactors.”

The New York Times reported five years ago that owners of nearly half the reactors in the U.S. “are not reserving enough money to decommission them on retirement, according to Congressional auditors, who also say the NRC is not tracking the money carefully.”

In its July 2007 study “Too Hot to Handle,” the Oxford Research Group calls the hope of quickly building new reactors a “pipe dream.” Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy & Environmental Research, says in his book, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, “Even the leaders of the nuclear industry have said that they will not build new plants without 100 percent federal loan guarantees.”

In his 2008 report “The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power,” Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, concludes, “While little private capital is going into nuclear power, investors are pouring tens of billions of dollars into wind farms each year.

And while the world’s nuclear generating capacity is estimated to expand by only 1,000 megawatts this year, wind generating capacity will likely grow by 30,000 megawatts.”

The Washington Post reported Nov. 24 that “leading environmental figures, including former Vice President Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear’s promise,” because of the high cost of building and the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. Indeed, but leading security and big business figures are skeptical for the same reasons.

The federal Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism has called for halting subsidies that promote nuclear power’s expansion.

In the commission’s Oct. 21 report “The Clock Is Ticking,” recommendation No. 3 is, “The U.S. should work internationally toward strengthening the non-proliferation regime ... discouraging, to the extent possible, the use of financial incentives in the promotion of civil nuclear power.”
And no less than Jeffrey Immelt, current CEO of General Electric — one of the world’s richest nuclear engineering firms — discourages new reactor construction because of financial liabilities.

In the Nov. 18, 2007 London Financial Times, he says, “If you were a utility CEO and looked at your world today, you would just do gas and wind. You would say (they are) easier to site, digestible today and I don’t have to bet my company on any of this stuff. You would never do nuclear. The economics are overwhelming.”

The plague of radiation-induced illness is overwhelming too. Let’s re-write the milk add: Got cancer?

Copyright © 2009 GateHouse Media, Inc.

John LaForge is on the Nukewatch staff and edits its quarterly.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service Request Action

Nuclear Information and Resource Service 

DON'T NUKE THE CLIMATE!

SEND A MESSAGE TO YOUR SENATORS NOW;

CALL THEM AND TAKE ACTION DECEMBER 11 & 12!

December 3, 2009

Dear Friends,

The Copenhagen climate negotiations begin next week, and the world's attention will be focused on the climate crisis.

Whether or not anything substantive comes out of Copenhagen, we who believe in a clean, safe, sustainable and affordable energy future have our work cut out for us.

Too many governments support their nuclear industries and seek to reverse our victory at COP 6 in 2000: they want to declare nuclear power as an acceptable means of addressing climate change.

In the U.S. too many in the administration (we're looking especially at you, Steven Chu!) the media, and in Congress--even some who should know better--are also supporting the nuclear industry.

We need to raise our voices louder than ever now. Take the first step and send a letter to your Senators and President Obama here.

And read on for more actions you can take, and more news from Washington.

It's as if there has been an ongoing collective case of amnesia. Some Senators in particular seem to have forgotten nuclear power's inherent dangers from accidents and everyday "routine" radiation releases, forgotten that there is no solution to the radioactive waste problem, forgotten that uranium mining devastates the environment and surrounding communities. They seem to forget, on a daily basis, the spiraling cost estimates for new reactor construction. How else can one explain recent media estimates of $4,000/kw for a new reactor when utilities' own cost estimates run as high as $9,000/kw?

They seem to suffer not only from amnesia, but wear blinders as well--not even noticing the cover story in the November 2009 Scientific American that lays out a concrete plan for the U.S. to be 100% renewable-powered by 2030!

The good news, however, is that Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman appear to be making little progress in selling the notion of adding billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts for the nuclear industry to the Senate climate bill. As we predicted, those Senators who most want to divert taxpayer money to nuclear power are the least likely to support any real climate bill. And those who most want a climate bill recognize that nuclear power is not a genuine climate solution.

That gives us all more time to raise our voices and more reason to keep up the pressure.

1. Send a letter to your Senators and President Obama now, here. This letter will remind them of the inherent dangers and problems of nuclear power and explain that a climate bill that includes nuclear power (and coal, and offshore oil!) is not a climate bill at all--it's a bailout for the energy lobby. We need a new vision for the future, and there is still time to achieve that!

2. Support anti-nuclear campaigners in Copenhagen. If you haven't done so yet, sign the Don't Nuke the Climate petition here. We're closing in on 50,000 signers, let's get there this week! Organizations: endorse the Don't Nuke the Climate campaign here.

3. Support Don't Nuke the Climate Action Days on December 11 and 12. Organize actions outside your Senators' district offices, at Federal Buildings, on campus, wherever is appropriate for you. List your action on the International Action Page here. Let us know about your action (nirsnet@nirs.org), and we'll alert people in your region.

Here in D.C., we'll be gathering outside the Department of Energy headquarters for street theater at 11 am on Friday Dec. 11. Join us if you're in the area!

4. Tie in your action with the National Don't Nuke the Climate Call-in Day December 11 or just call your Senators (202-224-3121) on Friday, Dec. 11. Ask your friends and colleagues, congregations and college roommates, everyone you know, to call on Dec. 11 too. Keep the Senate phones busy all day long! Bring cellphones to your action and ask everyone passing by to call their Senators. Bring cellphones to a coffeeshop, bar, food co-op, shopping mall, wherever you go: ask everyone to call….Even if there is no action in your region, call!

We don't have the money to compete with the nuclear industry (which may be the real source of all that amnesia….); so we need to compete with numbers--that means all of us and more. Post this on Facebook, myspace, etc. Tweet it. Send to your lists and your friends. Spread the word….

And if you can help us with financial support this Holiday season to continue building this campaign, we'll be eternally grateful. You can do so here. If you can't, we know how it is, but don't forget to call your Senators December 11: 202-224-3121.

Thanks for all you do,

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org

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Aging Nuke Plants Never Die

Image via Wikipedia

Published on Sunday, November 22, 2009 by The Nation

Zombie Nuke Plants

by Christian Parenti

Oyster Creek Generating Station, in suburban Lacey Township, New Jersey, opened the same month Richard Nixon took office vowing to bring "an honorable peace" to Vietnam. This nuke plant, the oldest in the country, was slated to close in 2009 when its original forty-year license was ending. It had seen four decades of service, using radioactively produced heat to boil water into high-pressure steam that ran continuously through hundreds of miles of increasingly brittle and stressed piping.
If constructed today, Oyster Creek would not be licensed, because it does not meet current safety standards. Yet on April 8 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)--the government agency overseeing the industry--relicensed Oyster Creek, extending its life span twenty years beyond what was originally intended.Seven days later workers at the plant found an ongoing radioactive leak of tritium-polluted water. Tritium is a form of hydrogen. In August workers found another tritium leak coming from a pipe buried in a concrete wall. Radiation makes metal brittle, so old pipes must be routinely switched out for new ones. The second leak was spilling about 7,200 gallons a day and contained 500 times the acceptable level of radiation for drinking water.
That leaking pipe had erroneously--or perhaps fraudulently--been listed in paperwork as replaced. How this error occurred remains unclear. What seems likely is that the plant's previous owner, GPU Nuclear, was deliberately skimping on maintenance as it approached the end of the plant's license. Then Oyster Creek was sold to Exelon and won relicensing. How many other mislabeled, brittle, old components remain in the plant's guts is impossible to determine without a massive audit and investigation. Unfortunately, stories like this are all too common: crumbling, leaky, accident-prone old nuclear plants, shrouded in secrecy and subject to lax maintenance, are getting relicensed all over the country.
In the face of climate change, many people who are desperate for alternatives to fossil fuels are considering the potential of nuclear power. The government has put up $18.5 billion in subsidies to build atomic plants. As a candidate for president, John McCain called for forty-five new nuke plants.
Environmentalists have rightly pointed out the dangers this would entail. But new nukes are not the issue. As laid out in these pages last year [see Parenti, "What Nuclear Renaissance?" May 12, 2008], new atomic plants are prohibitively expensive. If enough public subsidies are thrown at the industry, one or two gold-plated, state-of-the-art, extremely expensive nuclear power stations may eventually be built, at most.
The real issue is what happens to old nukes. The atomic power industry has a plan: it wants to make as much money as possible from the existing fleet of 104 old, often decrepit, reactors by getting the government to extend their licenses. The oldest plants, most of which opened in the early 1970s and were designed to operate for only forty years, should be dead by now. Yet, zombielike, they march on, thanks to the indulgence of the NRC.
More than half of America's nuclear plants have received new twenty-year operating licenses. In fact, the NRC has not rejected a single license-renewal application. Many of these plants have also received "power up-rates" that allow them to run at up to 120 percent of their originally intended capacity. That means their systems are subjected to unprecedented amounts of heat, pressure, corrosion, stress and embrittling radiation.
These undead nukes are highly dangerous. But constant, careful (and expensive) inspection and maintenance would mitigate the risks. Unfortunately, the NRC does not require anything like that. And the industry often operates in a cavalier profit-before-safety style.
At the heart of the matter is the culture of the NRC. During his campaign Obama called the NRC "a moribund agency...captive of the industry that it regulates." Unfortunately, since then Obama's position has softened considerably.
The NRC is run by a five-member commission. When Obama came to office he inherited one open seat; another opened soon after. Filling those seats with safety-conscious experts not in thrall to the industry would have done much to change the culture of the NRC.
The president's first move was a good one: he made commissioner Gregory Jaczko chair of the commission. Jaczko has openly questioned the safety culture of both the NRC and the industry and is respected among environmentalists as a serious and safety-oriented regulator.
But in October Obama nominated two people for the open seats. In classic fashion, he cut it down the middle. The relatively decent appointment, in the view of environmentalists, is George Apostolakis, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT. He sits on a safety oversight board within the NRC. His academic specialty is probabilistic risk assessment of complex technological systems, risk management and decision analysis.
"He is safety-minded," says Ed Lyman, senior staff scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists. "But I worry that his approach might be a little too theoretical, too academic. He might not be ready to really regulate the industry."
The other nominee, William Magwood, is described by environmentalists as a disaster. Magwood worked at the Department of Energy as the director of its nuclear energy program. In that capacity, he acted as a booster for the industry. He's made numerous public speeches promoting atomic energy. And most recently he worked as a consultant for the nuclear industry.
Because the NRC is an independent regulatory agency, the president's nominees must be confirmed by the Senate. A key player there--notorious climate-science denier Senator James Inhofe, ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee--greeted the appointments with a backhanded compliment to the president: "At the very least, the selection of these individuals indicates President Obama understands the importance of the NRC in rebuilding our nation's nuclear capabilities." Given the source, this was damning praise indeed.
Lax safety culture at the NRC is at least in part a result of the revolving door between the atomic power business and the commission, including both middle- and upper-level staff. The most prominent example of this involved commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield, who championed accelerated licensing and other major policy initiatives that directly benefited the Shaw Group, the self-described "largest provider of commercial nuclear power plant maintenance and modifications services in the United States." Twelve days after Merrifield left the NRC, in 2007, he became a top executive at--yes--the Shaw Group. Then, in late October of this year, after pressure from public interest groups, the NRC's Office of the Inspector General found that Merrifield had violated government ethics rules by courting industry while still at the NRC.
This corrupt symbiosis between the industry and NRC is even found at the level of language. Critics say the staff habitually defers to the industry, rarely double-checking corporate assertions about safety. During relicensing, the NRC has used industry language verbatim in its reports. A recent random sampling of NRC relicensing reports conducted by its Office of the Inspector General found that almost half the language in the documents had been lifted verbatim or nearly so from industry applications. In other words, not only is the NRC failing to conduct its own research; it can't even rewrite the nuke industry's boilerplate self-justifications when issuing new licenses.
"Politically, the nuclear industry is very effective," says Richard Webster, legal director of the Eastern Environmental Law Center, which represents five citizens' groups fighting Oyster Creek. "If only they ran nuclear plants as well as they lobby."
This cozy relationship is helped by the fact that the nuclear power industry's drive for profit coincides with the NRC's bureaucratic will to survive. If all the old plants were mothballed, the raison d'être of the NRC (and maybe much of the bureaucracy itself) would disappear.
Environmentalists describe the relicensing and up-rate process as highly opaque, rigged in the industry's favor, designed to exclude public participation and marginalize opposition. They say safety is closely linked to transparency--which is in short supply.
Over the past two decades the NRC has also promulgated rules that effectively exclude from consideration many of the grounds on which the public could intervene to oppose relicensing. For example, the public cannot raise the issue of terrorism. Nor can it question maintenance plans, or waste storage plans, or even evacuation procedures.
The NRC's Office of the Inspector General found that its own agency had "established an unreasonably high burden of requiring absolute proof of a safety problem, versus lack of reasonable assurance of maintaining public health and safety, before it will act to shut down a power plant."
The parameters for relicensing are sometimes shockingly permissive. For example, Oyster Creek, only fifty miles from Philadelphia, lacks a reactor containment shell strong enough to withstand a jet crash. And the geography around the plant isn't possible to evacuate: originally built in a rural area, the plant is now surrounded by sprawl. But the NRC takes none of that into account.
Even more amazing, Oyster Creek's relicensing process did not require testing metals in the plant's core for embrittlement. The containment shell, such as it is, was found to have been corroded down to half its intended thickness. Citizens' groups had to file a lawsuit just to get the NRC to hold a public hearing that would yield a ruling. And that was the first one the NRC had held during more than forty-five relicensing processes.
Indian Point, forty miles north of Times Square, is also applying for a new license. It too leaks radioactive water like a sieve: tens of thousands of gallons of radioactive, tritium- and strontium 90-laced water from one of its spent fuel pools have polluted groundwater and the Hudson River. The first of several leaks was discovered in 2005, but the plant's owner, Entergy, failed to report the problem for almost a month.
Vermont Yankee, also owned by Entergy, has one of the worst operating records in the country, runs at 120 percent capacity because of a 2006 power up-rate, and is well on its way to being relicensed. As detailed in these pages last year, Vermont Yankee has recently suffered a number of almost comical problems: a fire set off emergency mobilizations in three states; a cooling tower collapsed; a crane dropped a cask of atomic waste; parts of a fuel rod even went missing. To save money Entergy has been caught skipping routine maintenance and not hiring needed staff. This year the plant has been battling what seem to be unending leaks: in February the water cleanup system leaked, in May a condenser tube leak was identified but not repaired, in June there was a leak in a service water pipe. Then a recirculation pump unexpectedly reduced power and locked up, preventing the operators from changing its speed. And in August Entergy announced that it was not doing all of the required monthly radiological monitoring of its spent fuel.
FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ohio also wants a new twenty-year license. In 2002 that plant came very close to calamity. Largely by chance, staff discovered a six-inch-deep hole in the reactor vessel head; only three-eighths of an inch of metal remained. This barrier protects against a reactor breach and a possible chain of events that could have led to a reactor meltdown. The hole could have been found and fixed earlier, but the plant's owner, FirstEnergy, requested that the NRC allow it to delay a mandated inspection. In October 2008 Davis-Besse workers also discovered a tritium leak.
This fleet of poorly regulated zombie plants is the real story of nuclear power. Building hundreds of new nukes to save us from climate change is a pipe dream--the time and expense necessary for that would be impossible to overcome in the decade or two remaining. And so the debate about the future of atomic power in the age of climate change functions mostly as a smoke screen behind which these old, leaky, crumbling plants are being pushed to the limit of their endurance. Half the fleet has already been relicensed and many up-rated to run at more than 100 percent of their designed capacity. To avoid dangerous accidents over the next two decades, the industry must be subject to real oversight. For that to happen, the NRC must be reformed.
There will likely be one more opening on the commission. If the risk of a real nuclear disaster is to be diminished, Obama must nominate a robust safety- and transparency-minded commissioner who will stand up to the powerful companies that own the zombie nuke fleet.

Copyright © 2009 The Nation

Christian Parenti, a Nation contributing editor and visiting scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center, is the author of The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq (New Press), and is at work on a book about climate change and war.

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Columnist Dr. Karen Scott

There are less than 150 days before the next session of the VT
legislature convenes, at which time the future of the aging nuclear
reactor to our north will again be discussed. The reactor continues
to make headlines on a regular basis, with mishaps, structural
collapses, and increasing radioactive emissions. Despite all this,
Entergy and the NRC continue to insist that Everything is Fine!

In January 2006, as you may recall, Entergy applied to extend the
operating license of Vermont Yankee for 20 years beyond its initial 40
year license, which is due to expire in 2012. The NRC has yet to
refuse a license extension to a nuclear plant in this country. Later
that spring they requested and received approval for an "uprate" of
their power generation by 20%, meaning the reactor operates with 20%
more heat and pressure than it was designed to withstand, and earns
more profits for its Louisiana based corporate owner, Entergy. It is
the oldest reactor in the country to be approved for such an uprate.
Many citizens and legislators in Vermont and Massachusetts have voiced
concern about the safety of the reactor, and it has been under intense
public scrutiny. You would think that at such a time, they would be on
their best behavior.

So what happened? Shortly after the uprate was complete, one of the
cooling towers collapsed. Surely you saw the photos, thousands of
gallons of water spewing over a pile of rubble. Within 10 days of
this photogenic disaster, the plant experienced a sudden emergency
shutdown, or SCRAM. Shortly thereafter, a crane lifting 100 tons of
spent fuel malfunctioned, dropping its load to the floor. Had the
cask fallen more than 4 inches, perhaps back into the spent fuel pool,
it could have caused a major disaster. In May, we were informed there
had been a "security breach" earlier in the year, with absolutely no
details given. The list of incidents such as these extends back
throughout the plant's history, and continues to lengthen. Even
Vermont's pro-nuke governor, Jim Douglas, has said it seems as if
"Homer Simpson is running the place."

Is it safe from a terrorist attack? An NRC document, "Report on Spent
Fuel Pool Accident Risk," concludes that the containment structures of
aging plants such as VY "present no substantial obstacle to aircraft
penetration." Nevertheless, the NRC refuses to address issues of
vulnerability to terrorist attacks or viability of evacuation plans
when considering license renewals. This is considered a "local
problem," not a reason to deny relicensure. Do you have a personal
plan for keeping your family safe in the event of catastrophic nuclear
accident? Put it on your to-do list!

Even if this decrepit reactor could be maintained and operated with
perfection, it still would be far from safe. Nuclear power is
inherently unsafe. Vermont Yankee, like all nuclear power plants,
releases radiation as a known and accepted side effect of its
operation. It now releases 30% more radiation than it did in previous
years, as a result of the "uprate" in 2006.

The decision to store low-level radioactive waste on site, as well as
plans for on site high-level waste storage, will only increase the
radiation released. This gift that keeps on giving will be with us
for the rest of most of our lives, as Entergy has announced plans not
to decommission the plant for 60 years, regardless of license renewal.

Radiation causes cancer. There is no debate on this. There is also
no safe dose of radiation. Background radiation causes some cancers,
and additional exposure brings additional risk. Currently, the
lifetime risk of cancer of any type for Americans is about 40%. Do we
really need to increase that?

There is no viable long term strategy for safely storing radioactive
waste, which retains its deadly properties for 100,000 years. No
country has yet found a solution to this problem, because one does not
exist. To suggest that we can ensure the containment of massive
quantities of radioactive waste for longer than all of recorded human
history is sheer hubris.

Proponents of nuclear power look to it as an answer to global warming,
but this is a fallacy. An MIT study concluded that it would take 300
new nuclear power plants in the U.S., and 1500 worldwide, to have any
effect on climate change, and that effect would not be seen for a
decade. Never mind that building new plants entails massive carbon
emissions during construction, and there is likely not enough uranium
left in the ground to run all those plants even if they were built.

Nuclear power is a dead end, and the reactor to our north is a
striking example of this. Despite repeated mishaps, the NRC continues
to assure the public the reactor is "safe" even as it refuses to allow
local citizens and lawmakers the slightest say in if or how the plant
is run. However, the Vermont legislature recently passed a bill
granting itself the right to vote on whether to allow Vermont Yankee's
license renewal. This is an unprecedented opportunity to take back
our energy future! If you are sick of worrying about the next Vermont
Yankee headline, get involved with Citizens Awareness Network
(www.nukebusters.org) or the New England Coalition
(www.newenglandcoalition.org.) Do something!

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Tom Friedman's Idiocy Atomique

by Harvey Wasserman

France's atomic power industry is a failed radioactive flame. Its 58 reactors are unpopular, unsafe, uneconomical, dirty, direct agents of global warming, weapons proliferators and major generators of atomic waste for which there is no management solution.

But self-proclaimed "green advocate" Thomas Friedman seems to think otherwise. In his just published New York Times op ed "Real Men Tax Gas" Friedman applies the term "wimp" to those who fail to fight global warming. But in true corporate style, he can't face the hard truths about France's industrie atomique. To wit:

1) In denial verging on psychosis, Friedman says France has "managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panic." In fact, France's unsolved waste problem has thousands of ultra-hot fuel rods building up at reactor sites, just like here. Its hugely expensive attempts to reprocess spent fuel cause devastating radiation releases into the English Channel and elsewhere, prompting continual demands from around Europe that they stop.

2) Friedman says "France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants." But he ignores "wimpy" French public opinion that has turned decisively against building new reactors while strongly approving new wind production. The big "Non" to new nukes stems in part from massively inefficient, unreliable reactors, some of which have recently been forced shut because they are overheating the rivers meant to cool them. Is this Friedman's "macho" solution to global warming?

3) Friedman complains that the US has "not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors." Friedman misses those 2400 "wimpy" central Pennsylvania families who sued for widespread death and disease they suffered after TMI's radiation releases showered their homes and fields. The utility responsible quietly paid out more than $15 million in secret settlements.

Friedman has also missed important new findings by nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen and epidemiologist Stephen Wing indicating far more extensive TMI radiation releases and far more widespread health impacts than previously believed.

4) Friedman complains that "we're too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada's Yucca Mountain — totally safe — at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs." But Yucca's ability to store anything except rusting rail lines is as yet untested. The earthquake fault that runs through it is tangible and visible. So is perched water that threatens to rain down on any radioactive waste stored there. Yucca is surrounded by dormant volcanoes---and by 80% opposition from "wimpy" Nevadans angry for a wide variety of economic, health, safety and geological reasons. Nobody in France is planning on storing high level radioactive waste in their town squares and nobody else---here or there---wants it.

5) Friedman says "the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover." France's first shot at a "new generation" reactor---in Finland---is an engineering, economic and ecological catastrophe. French taxpayers are enraged about funding an Olkiluoto project that's years behind budget and billions of Euros over budget. Anne Lauvergeon, the chief of AREVA---France's nuclear front group---told me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v43ahQHvObI) she blames Finland's regulatory framework for her woes. But a parallel project at Flamanville, France, isn't faring much better. AREVA's fortunes have plummeted, throwing the government-controlled agency into deep financial crisis.

6) Friedman goes on to laud "Little Denmark" for imposing "a carbon tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax." He fails to credit its "wimpy" but fiercely effective No Nukes movement, which has kept Denmark totally free of atomic reactors, while moving it further into wind power percentage-wise than any other nation on Earth. Angry Danish opposition has helped force neighboring Sweden to shut its Barsebaeck reactors, upwind from Copenhagen.

Friedman's bizarre reactor advocacy reflects a corporate mindset too wimpy to embrace the true Solartopian solution to our energy crisis. Mycle Schneider, Paris-based author of WHAT FRANCE GOT WRONG (http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2053958) in NUCLEAR ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL, gets it right: "For least cost and greatest security, the energy future lies in affordable, distributed, superefficient technologies, smart grids and sustainable urbanism. France's centralised, autocratic nuclear policy symbolizes the opposite."

The true green technologies of a Solartopian Revolution are proven, ecologically sound and economically essential. They are also ready for rapid installation.

But they are decentralized and subject to community control rather than corporate domination. While Friedman and his moneyed elite continue to grasp at the failed, centralized straw of atomic energy, technology and history have passed them by.

"Real men"---and women---know we will never get to a green-powered Earth by trying to ride a dead radioactive horse---even if it's French.

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.