The Genius Doctor who Diagnosed Nuke Power's Deadly Disease

By Harvey Wasserman

The nuke power industry now wants $50 billion and more in loan guarantees to build new atomic reactors. As it strong-arms Congress, the warnings of the great Dr. John Gofman, who passed away last week at 88, loom ever larger.

One of history's most respected and revered medical and nuclear pioneers, Gofman's research showed as early as 1969 that "normal" radioactive reactor emissions could kill 32,000 Americans per year. At the time, Gofman was the chief medical researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission. He told the AEC that reactor emissions must be radically reduced.

The AEC demanded he change his findings, then forced him out when he refused. Since then, reactor backers have ceaselessly and erroneously attacked Gofman and his findings. But they could hardly have picked a more brilliant, committed opponent. Gofman was both relentless and uncorrupted. His findings should have doomed from the start an industry he called "insane."

In addition to being a world-class nuclear chemist, Dr. John William Gofman was one of history's most important heart specialists. His pioneer research helped define our modern understanding about cholesterol, distinguishing "good" fatty acids from bad. Gofman's astonishing medical discoveries remain at the core of today's common wisdom about diet and heart disease. For that work alone, Gofman was a towering figure.

Throughout his life, he was friend and peer to Nobel Laureates such as Linus Pauling and George Wald. But Gofman was also a nuclear chemist. As part of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bombs, his pioneer work helped lead to the discoveries of plutonium and certain isotopes of uranium.

Yet his career suffered from an inconvenient truth: when he discovered that atomic power plants kill people in large numbers, he refused to shut up about it. As a full professor at the University of California, Gofman's combined medical and nuclear credentials made him an obvious choice to manage health research for the Atomic Energy Commission, which both regulated and promoted the young nuclear power industry. When public questions were raised about the health impacts of radioactive reactor emissions, Gofman was dispatched to prove the industry safe.

But his findings showed that reactors are serious killers. So even Gofman's towering resume could not protect him from the wrath of an industry determined to build all the power plants it could. He and co-researcher Arthur Tamplin were driven from their jobs. When their POISONED POWER detailed the killing potential of atomic energy, Gofman and Tamplin were attacked mercilessly by an industry with immense investments to protect.

The experience showed that no matter how impeccable their credentials, and no matter how thorough their research, any scientists whose findings might indicate problems with atomic power would be automatically "discredited" by industry flacks to who did no comparable research. Even at his passing, the tired attacks on Gofman's findings have resurfaced. But his research remains the gold standard on the health impacts of radiation.

And as a gentle but firm advocate, mentor and friend, his integrity was matched only by his willingness to step outside traditional boundaries for what he believed. One of Gofman's most powerful and influential moments came in 1974, when he agreed to defend a civil disobedient named Sam Lovejoy in the small town of Montague, Massachusetts.

A member of a communal organic farm, Lovejoy had manually knocked over a 500-foot weather tower erected as a precursor to the building of a large twin reactor complex. Gofman agreed to testify in Lovejoy's defense, arguing that building two nuke reactors constituted a lethal threat to the health and safety of the community. In a monumental moment for the rise of the anti-nuclear movement, Lovejoy was acquitted.

Gofman's pivotal pronouncements appear in the award-winning LOVEJOY'S NUCLEAR WAR (gmpfilms.com), which has been shown all over the world. As a pivotal struggle over a "bailout in advance" for new reactor construction rages in Congress, Gofman's words resonate with a renewed critical importance:

"The decision to build nuclear power plants," he said, "may very well be, for the first time, a decision that can result in the desecration of the Earth with respect for life for all future generations. "Why do we want to put every city and hamlet of the United States at risk by building a thousand of these plants? We can get the power from sunshine, very easily and economically.

"When we're talking about a mass of a hundred tons or so of material, melting 5,000 degrees Farenheit, with water around, with hydrogen being generated and burning explosively, melting through concrete into soil, when someone tells me that we're sure it isn't going to go far away, I say that I've heard various forms of insanity, but hardly this form.

"Even if this hazard of a meltdown were securely answered, it doesn't alter for one second my opposition to nuclear power, because I'm concerned about the fact that whether it melts down or doesn't melt down, you 've created an astronomical amount of radioactive garbage which you must contain and isolate better than 99.99 percent perfectly, in peace and war, with human error and human malice, guerilla activity, psychotics, malfunction of equipment…do you believe that there's anything you'd like to guarantee will be done 99.99 percent perfectly for a hundred thousand years?"

After fifty years of proven failure, the nuke power industry is demanding still more taxpayer handouts to create still more of this waste. The great and good Dr. John W. Gofman warned us all against this insanity. His words and spirit remain at the core of what must be done to save this planet.

Astonishing Tower Collapse Screams "No New Nukes!!"

By Harvey Wasserman

A cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant has collapsed.

A broken 54" pipe there has spewed 350,000 gallons per minute of contaminated, overheated water into the Earth. "The river water piping and the series of screens and supports failed," said a company spokesman. They "fell to the ground."

The public and media were barred from viewing the wreckage for three days.

But when a Congressional Energy Bill conference committee takes up Senate-approved loan guarantees for building new nukes this fall, what will reactor backers say about this latest pile of radioactive rubble? This kind of event can make even hardened nuke opponents pinch themselves and read the descriptions twice.

Who could make this up?

Vermont Yankee has been in operation---more or less---since the early 1970s. Its owner is Entergy, a multi-reactor "McNuke" operator that last year got approval to up VY's output by 20%.

Required inspections revealed worrisome cracks and other structural problems. Entergy dismissed all that, but was forced to issue a "ratepayer protection policy" against incidents caused by the power increase. The guarantee expired earlier this month, not long before the collapse.

The tower came down amidst angry negotiations between Entergy and plant workers. A strike was barely averted, but VY's labor troubles are by no means over.

The reactor's output has now been slashed 50%. A public battle is raging over whether it can dump water even hotter than usual into the Connecticut River. Reactors in Alabama, France and elsewhere have been forced shut because the rivers that cool them have exceeded 90 degrees.

Yankee's cooling system, vintage 1972, centers on 22 (now 21) wood, fiberglass and metal towers that stretch for 300 feet, and are 50 feet high and 40 feet wide. The company calls this giant rig a "rain forest." Operators admit to hearing "strange sounds" coming from its fans last week, but say Tuesday's collapse was unexpected.

Nuclear opponents who warned about such an event have been scorned by Entergy and its supporters. That something as apparently absurd as the spontaneous collapse of an entire cooling tower could actually occur underlines America's Keystone Kops reality of atomic operation and regulation. "We need to understand what happened," explains the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Diane Screnci.

So does Congress.

A definitive Conference Committee battle will be fought after Labor Day over an Energy Bill that includes taxpayer guarantees for $50 billion and more to build new nukes.

Meanwhile Vermonters will pay for this latest pile of radioactive reactor rubble. Maybe a "fall foliage" field trip to the Green Mountain State would do the Congress some good.

"Nuke Nuggets" glow for the Senate's Radioactive Rip-Off

By Harvey Wasserman

Gargantuan loan guarantees for a "new generation" of nuke reactors define the Senate's version of the Energy Bill that Congress will consider right after Labor Day.

Its backers say the $50 billion-plus in radioactive pork will give us "inherently safe" reactors…

...which is what they said about the last crop, including Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and hundreds of billions in cost overruns and abysmal failure.

Nuke reactors are no safer than those coal mines just littered with fresh corpses, than that collapsed Minnesota bridge, or than the levees that let Katrina swamp New Orleans, and are poised to do it again.

The first "new generation" nuke is already swamped with cost overruns and absurd miscalculations. Finnish regulators are screaming at Areva, the French-based nuke pushers, about corner-cutting and costly delays.

But these are merely the latest in the endless flow of "nuke nuggets" that have made the world's 430-plus reactors history's most lethal and expensive technological failure:

Faulty plumbing forced one US nuke operator to shut on-site toilet facilities while the cooling system was in use;

At another US reactor, a basketball wrapped in tape was used to stop up a critical reactor tube;

Consecutive global-warmed "hundred-year floods" threatened to swamp the two Prairie Island reactors (south of that collapsed Minnesota bridge) nearly irradiating the entire downstream Mississippi River;

Like coal miners, uranium miners die en masse from lung cancer and tunnel collapses;

Steam releases killed and maimed at least four workers at Virginia's North Anna complex;

"Too cheap to meter" was atomic energy's mantra until it delivered gargantuan cost overruns and ramshackle reactors in what Forbes Magazine has called "the largest managerial disaster in business history";

In the 2000-1 deregulation scam, the nuke industry portrayed its own reactors as being "uncompetitive," thus demanding $100 billion in "stranded cost" subsidies for their bad reactor investments;

The Yucca Mountain nuke waste repository, which may never open, has already absorbed $10 billion, but its minimum official cost is now estimated at around $60 billion, which is likely to soar to at least $100 billion;

In 1957 the industry promised independent insurance companies would insure reactors against catastrophic accidents, but that has never happened, either for old nukes or for the proposed new ones;

Before March 28, 1979, nuke owners said the melt-down that destroyed Three Mile Island Two was "impossible";

Before April 26, 1986, nuke owners said the explosion that destroyed Chernobyl Four was "impossible";
For nine years, TMI's owners said there was no significant fuel melt, until a robotic camera showed that nearly ALL the fuel had melted;

TMI's owners say "no one died" there, but stack monitors failed during the accident and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not know exactly how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it affected;

No official systematic monitoring of the health of the people around TMI was initiated when the plant opened, or when it melted, and none has been maintained;

Some 2400 central Pennsylvania families have tried to sue for damages since TMI's fall-out hit them, but have been denied a federal trial for nearly three decades;

Some 800,000 drafted clean-up "liquidators" were forced into Chernobyl, thousands of whom are dying of cancer;

Seven atomic reactors in Japan were significantly damaged by an earthquake despite decades of official assurances that they were safe;

Japanese authorities now admit that the recent earthquake exceeded---by a factor of three---the design specifications of the seven reactors it damaged;

Far stronger earthquakes are expected soon at all or most of Japan's 55 reactors, where experts say at least some could be reduced to radioactive rubble;

Four reactors in California, one in Ohio and two in New York are among the many American nukes built very close to active earthquake faults;

The Perry nuke, east of Cleveland, whose owners denied it was in any danger from a nearby "geological anomaly," was significantly damaged by a January 31, 1986 earthquake;

Despite a lawsuit by Ohio's governor, Perry was allowed to open amidst damage to area roads and bridges that would have made evacuation impossible, and that could have meant disaster had it been operating at the time;

Near Toledo, dripping boric acid ate through the Davis-Besse pressure vessel, bringing it within a fraction of an inch of a catastrophe capable of irradiating Cleveland and all of Lake Erie;

Davis-Besse's owner blacked out the entire northeast, including much of Canada, partly due to uneven power surges from its nukes and the deterioration of its electric power grid;

On September 11, 2001, the terrorists who crashed into the World Trade Center flew directly over the two active reactors at Indian Point, but did not hit them, apparently believing that they were protected by surface-to-air missiles;

Not one of the 100-plus US reactors is protected by surface-to-air missiles;

Virtually every US reactor has failed simple tests of security systems meant to protect them from terror attacks;

Early official government studies warned that a single meltdown could make permanently uninhabitable "an area the size of Pennsylvania";

An attack on the Indian Point reactors on 9/11/2001 could have rendered the entire New York region---including the World Trade Centers---permanently uninhabitable, causing millions of long-term human casualties and trillions of dollars in damage, from which the US economy likely would never have recovered;

Huge heat emissions make atomic reactors major contributors to global warming, as do CO2 emissions from construction, decommissioning, the mining, milling and enrichment of uranium fuel, waste disposal, and more;

Despite being billed as a "solution to global warming," French reactors were recently shut because they overheated local rivers with their waste cooling water;

Despite being billed as a "solution to global warming," one reactor at Alabama's Browns Ferry was forced shut, and two cut back 25%, as summer river temperatures hit 90 degrees, the federal limit;

These shut-downs come precisely when power is most needed for air conditioning, and when the REAL solution to global warming, solar energy, is most abundant;

In 1975, a Browns Ferry reactor suffered a $100 million fire when a worker ignited its insulation with a candle;

Reactor regulators report a constant flow of "incidents" that endanger reactor operations and the public safety;

The former head of the Atomic Energy Commission's health research efforts has calculated that "normal" reactor emissions could kill some 32,000 Americans every year;

A dollar spent on energy conservation saves ten times the energy produced by a dollar spent on a nuke; This tragic, terrifying "nugget" list could extend on for another few hundred pages, as per THE NUGGET FILE, by a former industry insider, and FISSION STORIES by David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

With a crippled infrastructure and corner-cutting mentality, the corporate operatives building these reactors are no more competent or trustworthy than the ones in charge of coal mines, bridges, levees.

Homer Simpson will run the new nukes, just like the old nukes.

Wall Street knows it. Does Congress? Better tell them.

Radioactive "Bailout-in-Advance" Opens Fierce New War Over Nuke Reactors

by Harvey Wasserman

After fifty years of what Forbes Magazine long ago called “the largest managerial disaster in business history,” the nuke power industry is demanding untold billions in a federal “Bailout-in-Advance.” Congress will decide on these proposed loan guarantees for new nukes in its September conferences over the new Energy Bill.Both sides are gearing up for the new war over the irradiation of our energy future.

As usual, it’s vital to “follow the money.”

The industry once promised that atomic energy would be “too cheap to meter.” But after a half-century of proven failure, Wall Street won’t invest in new nukes without federal support. So buried in the Senate version of the new Energy Bill is a single sentence authorizing the Department of Energy to underwrite virtually unlimited loans for still more nukes. The sentence was slipped into the bill by industry backers without open debate.

Overall this staggeringly complex bill contains a hodge-podge of benefits for renewable energy and efficiency, along with a pile of contradictions and steps backward. The House version, for example, lacks strict fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. It also drew a veto threat from George W. Bush, who wants the restoration of huge tax breaks for his friends in the fossil fuel business.

But the single sentence that could ultimately have the biggest impact on human survival is the one that offers the prospect of an essentially unlimited amount of taxpayer money to guarantee investments in new atomic reactors.

The funding would come through the Department of Energy, which Congress has authorized to guarantee “new” technological advances that are considered “green.” Congress says that includes new reactors.

The Senate version of the bill would allow the DOE to sign off on loan guarantees for up to 80% of the cost of each new nuke it wants, with no yearly review from Congress. The industry has targeted $25 billion for next year alone, followed by another $25 billion in 2009, and admits to wanting at least 28 new reactors as soon as possible. The industry says the plants will cost $4-6 billion each, but history indicates the ultimate price tags will be far higher.

This does not include the federal insurance, under the Price-Anderson Act, that since 1957 has shielded nuke owners from liability in case of a major catastrophe.

Though it says they are “inherently safe,” the industry demands the same insurance for its new reactors. The policy would leave countless citizens uncompensated for the destruction of their health and property after a radioactive disaster.

Atomic power is also a major source of global warming. Reactors pump huge quantities of waste heat directly into the air and water. The mining, milling and enrichment of nuclear fuel also result in substantial CO2 emissions, as do the construction and decommissioning of the plants.

As for the long-term management of radioactive waste, the solution promised fifty years ago is nowhere in sight. Regulatory officials say the proposed Yucca Mountain waste repository, under construction at a cost so far of some $10 billion, cannot open until 2020, if ever. The projected cost if Yucca does open is now about $60 billion, but it’s likely to climb even higher.

In 2000-2001, as much as $100 billion in bad “stranded cost” nuke investments were foisted on the public by a technology that can no longer compete with wind, solar, increased efficiency or a wide array of truly green energy sources that offer real answers to the global warming crisis.

None of this bothers the reactor pushers and their well-funded supporters on Capitol Hill. Citizen groups such as Greenpeace, the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, Public Citizen, Beyond Nuclear, PIRG, Musicians United for Safe Energy, Nukewatch, Nuclear Energy Information Service, the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, and green industry supporters have banded together to wage an uphill battle aimed at striking that critical sentence from the Senate bill.

Come September, much of the public attention may be on the pro-green features of the bill, which requires more energy efficiency in buildings, appliances and the power grid, along with a demand that 15% of the nation’s electricity come from solar, wind and other renewables by 2020. The House passed its version—which also calls for a carbon neutral federal government—by a vote of 241 to 172 (the fossil fuel tax breaks demanded by Bush were rejected, 221 to 189).

But the real long-term impact on our energy future will turn on the tens of billions in taxpayer guarantees that may or may not pour into reactor construction that no private investors would otherwise fund.

As Forbes put it in 1985, atomic energy has been “a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible.”

The losses, said Forbes, exceeded the cost of the space program and the Vietnam War combined and left the US with “a power source that is not only high in cost and unreliable, but perhaps not even safe.”

To stop this tragedy from being repeated, the safe energy movement will desperately try to stop yet another “bail-out in advance” for the world’s most dangerous and expensive failed technology.

They need your help—in the short term for the Congressional conference on the Energy Bill, in the long term for turning back this latest nuclear assault on our energy future.

Our survival depends on their green-powered success.

Nuke PR Flacks do the Kashiwazaki Quake Dance

As you read this, swarms of extremely well-paid PR flacks are spinning the Kashiwazaki nuke quake into an argument for building more reactors. They will deploy utter absurdities and personal attacks, followed by the sound of media-complicit silence.

But the news coming from Japan---and not being covered here---makes it clear the realities of this latest reactor disaster are beyond catastrophic. Seven reactors were put at direct risk, with four forced into emergency shut-downs while suffering numerous fires and emitting unknown quantities of radiation. Most importantly, the quake exceeded the design capabilities of all Japan's 55 reactors, and worse seismic shocks are expected.

To counter these inconvenient realities, expect to soon see more of Patrick Moore, the alleged ex-Greenpeace founder. Moore has called the disaster at Three Mile Island a "success story."

Moore claims to be a scientist. He's obviously not an accountant. His face stays straight while calling the transformation of a $900 million asset into a $2 billion liability a "success story." It testifies to a mentality that never saw a polluter's check that couldn't be cashed.

On January 28, 1986, I debated a spokeswoman from Cleveland Electric Illuminating who termed the earthquake fault near the Perry Nuclear Plant a "geologic anomaly." As we spoke, the Challenger space shuttle blew up because NASA "scientists" said warnings from their own staff about O-rings in cold weather were not "compelling."

The shuttle was shot off to coincide with a planned presidential performance by Ronald Reagan. Seven astronauts died while the whole world watched in horror. Three days later, a non-anomalous earthquake cracked pipes and pumps at Perry, knocking out roads and bridges. Apparently, neither the O-rings nor the fault line had read the industry's spin.

Today the nuke flacks say Kashiwazaki was a "success story" because four reactors SCRAMmed into emergency shutdown and three more were damaged, but no apocalypse resulted (yet).

Since this is only the world's largest nuke complex, with only seven reactors on site, and only several hundred barrels of nuke waste tipped over, and far fewer had their lids fly off, and the gas emissions the utility lied about were only tritium, which is less deadly than plutonium, the fact that all of Japan was not engulfed in a catastrophic radiation release (yet) will be used to sell more reactors.

Expect phrases like these:

"The reactors withstood the worst nature could throw at them."

"The SCRAMs went off perfectly."

"The shut-downs will be temporary."

"American reactors are far stronger than Japanese ones."

"This was a once-in-a-century fluke, and no one was hurt."

"Even so, we must have nuke power to fight global warming."

"The media has distorted the utility's good-faith attempts to inform the public."

"Those rad-waste barrels were tipped over by eco-terrorists."

"Tritium is good for you."

"Nuke power is a 'zero emissions' technology, therefore the reported leaks could not have occurred."

"Those anti-nuke so-called scientists have been discredited."

But most importantly, expect a tightly enforced media blackout. It starts when all who question the industry are automatically "discredited."

Dr. John Gofman, universally acknowledged as one of the world's leading nuclear and medical researchers, was once in charge of health research for the old Atomic Energy Commission. When asked to determine how many people would be killed by radioactive emissions from "normal" reactor operations, he found it would be about 32,000 Americans per year.

The AEC demanded he revise his findings. Gofman refused. So he was forced out of the AEC and "discredited" despite credentials that continue to dwarf those who replaced him.

The list of physicists, engineers, medical researchers and others similarly purged for fact-based reporting is too tragic to reconstruct here. But it even includes a park ranger at the Pt. Reyes National Seashore who noticed in the spring of 1986 that the number of live bird births had plummeted compared with the previous ten springs. The only logical link was to radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, brought down by a California rainstorm ten days after the explosion.

The ranger soon found himself out of a job.

On the other hand, the industry still falsely asserts that no one died at Three Mile Island. It even produced a "doctor" who traveled through Europe asserting that the enormous radiation releases spewed by the explosion at Chernobyl would ultimately save lives.

Predictably, the Kashiwazaki catastrophe has disappeared from the American media. But in Japan, the news has transcended the truly horrifying. According to Leo Lewis in The Times, talk is rampant of a "Genpatsu-shinsai," defined by Japan's leading seismologist, Katsuhiko Shibashi, as "the combination of an earthquake and nuclear meltdown capable of destroying millions of lives and bringing a nation to its knees." Shibashi warns that the recent 6.8 magnitude shock exceeded the design capabilities of the Kashiwazaki nuke by a factor of three.

A Kobe University research team is reported as saying that if the quake had been 10km further to the southwest, a "terrible, terrible disaster" would have resulted. Prof. Mitsuhei Murata of Tokai Gakuen University is quoted as warning that a quake at the Hamaoka nuke could bring "24 million victims and the end for Japan."

Japan's earthquake experts assume the probability of an 8.0 quake within the next 30 years to be 87 percent.

As in the US, Tokyo Electric has long denied that its seven Kashiwazaki reactors were sited atop a fault line, only to have it turn out to be true. As at Three Mile Island, vital data has already disappeared from the Kashiwazaki disaster, and the exact quantities of radiation released are unknown. Radiation at both sites escaped well after the reactors were shut down.

As in the United States, Japanese earthquake experts have warned since the 1960s about the dangers of reactor construction, only to be ignored and "discredited." Undoubtedly the Japanese PR nuke spinsters will continue to attack and ignore them.

Here, 2400 central Pennsylvania families will still be denied a federal trial on the death, disease and mayhem spewed upon them by Three Mile Island nearly thirty years ago. And the seven dead Challenger astronauts are not available for comment on the "perfectly safe" O-rings that killed them just prior to the "non-credible" earthquake that struck the Perry nuke.

Any possible problems with a new generation of reactors are equally non-credible. Just ask a flack.

Harvey Wasserman is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and senior editor of http://www.freepress.org/, where this article first appeared.

The earthquake that screamed "NO NUKES!!!"

The Massive earthquake that shook Japan this week nearly killed millions in a nuclear apocalypse. It also produced one of the most terrifying sentences ever buried in a newspaper. As reported deep in the New York Times, the Tokyo Electric Company has admitted that "the force of the shaking caused by the earthquake had exceeded the design limits of the reactors, suggesting that the plant's builders had underestimated the strength of possible earthquakes in the region." There are 55 reactors in Japan. Virtually all of them are on or near major earthquake faults. Kashiwazaki alone hosts seven, four of which were forced into the dangerous SCRAM mode to narrowly avoid meltdowns. At least 50 separate serious problems have been so far identified, including fire and the spillage of barrels filled with radioactive wastes. There are four active reactors in California on or near major earthquake faults, as are the two at Indian Point north of New York City. On January 31, 1986, an earthquake struck the Perry reactor east of Cleveland, knocking out roads and bridges, as well as pipes within the plant, which (thankfully) was not operating at the time. The governor of Ohio, then Richard Celeste, sued to keep Perry shut, but lost in federal court. The fault that hit Perry is an off-shoot of the powerful New Madrid line that runs through the Mississippi River Valley, threatening numerous reactors. The Beyond Nuclear Project reports that in August, 2004, a quake hit the Dresden reactor in Illinois, resulting in a leak of radioactive tritium. Nevada's Yucca Mountain, slated as the nation's high-level radioactive waste dump, has a visible fault line running through it. More than 400 atomic reactors are on-line worldwide. How many are vulnerable to seismic shocks we can only shudder to guess. But one-eighth of them sit in one of the world's richest, most technologically advanced, most densely populated industrial nations, which has now admitted its reactor designs cannot match the power of an earthquake that has just happened. In whatever language it's said, that translates into the unmistakable warning that the world's atomic reactors constitute a multiple, ticking seismic time bomb. Talk of building more can only be classified as suicidal irresponsibility. Tokyo Electric's behavior since the quake defines the industry's credibility. For three consecutive days (with more undoubtedly to come) the utility has been forced to issue public apologies for erroneous statements about the severity of the damage done to the reactors, the size and lethality of radioactive spills into the air and water, the on-going danger to the public, and much more. Once again, the only thing reactor owners can be trusted to do is to lie. Prior to the March 28, 1979 disaster at Three Mile Island, the industry for years assured the public that the kind of accident that did happen was "impossible." Then the utility repeatedly assured the public there had been no melt-down of fuel and no danger of further catastrophe. Nine years later a robotic camera showed that nearly all the fuel had melted, and that avoiding a full-blown catastrophe was little short of a miracle. The industry continues to say no one was killed at TMI. But it does not know how much radiation was released, where it went or who it might have harmed. Since 1979 its allies in the courts have denied 2400 central Pennsylvania families the right to test their belief that they and their loved ones have been killed and maimed en masse. Prior to its April 26, 1986, explosion, Soviet Life Magazine ran a major feature extolling the virtually "accident-proof design" of Chernobyl Unit Four. Then the former Soviet Union of Mikhail Gorbachev kept secret the gargantuan radiation releases that have killed thousands and yielded a horrific plague of cancers, leukemia, birth defects and more throughout the region, and among the more than 800,000 drafted "jumpers" who were forced to run through the plant to clean it up. Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the industry has claimed its reactors can withstand the effects of a jet crash, and are immune to sabotage. The claims are as patently absurd as the lies about TMI and Chernobyl. So, too, the endless, dogged assurances from Japan that no earthquake could do to Kashiwazaki what has just happened. Yet today and into the future, expensive ads will flood the US and global airwaves, full of nonsense about the "need" for new nukes. There is only one thing we know for certain about this advertising: it is a lie. Atomic reactors contribute to global warming rather than abating it. In construction, in the mining, milling and enriching of the fuel, in on-going "normal" releases of heat and radioactivity, in dismantling and decommissioning, in managing radioactive wastes, in future terror attacks, in proliferation of nuke weapons, and much much more, atomic energy is an unmitigated eco-disaster. To this list we must now add additional tangible evidence that reactors allegedly built to withstand "worst case" earthquakes in fact cannot. And when they go down, the investment is lost, and power shortages arise (as is now happening in Japan) that are filled by the burning of fossil fuels. It costs up to ten times as much to produce energy from a nuke as to save it with efficiency. Advances in wind, solar and other green "Solartopian" technologies mean atomic energy simply cannot compete without massive subsidies, loan guarantees and government insurance to protect it from catastrophes to come. This latest "impossible" earthquake has not merely shattered the alleged safeguards of Japan's reactor fleet. It has blown apart---yet again---any possible argument for building more reactors anywhere on this beleaguered Earth. --Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at http://www.solartopia.org/. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and senior editor of http://www.freepress.org/, where this piece originally appeared. In 1975 he spoke near the Kashiwazaki complex, urging its shut down.

King CONG in California declares total "New Nukes" war against Solartopia

A major pro-nuke "surge" against the renewable solution to global warming is about to erupt in California. State assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) has moved for a statewide vote to allow new nuclear power plants to be built in the Golden State. He wants to repeal the 1976 law requiring a solution to the nuke waste problem before new reactors are built. A business cartel says it wants to build a new reactor near downtown near downtown Fresno. (For more information on the California situation, visit http://www.a4nr.org/) So the nation's biggest state may soon be at war over new nukes. In essence, it's King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas) versus Solartopia. The core issue is who will control our energy: corporations, or the public. The irony is that we stand at the brink of the greatest technological revolution in human history. But we're being dragged away from it by Big Money's push for a technology with fifty years of proven ecological disaster and financial failure. Green energy is poised to remake our world. Wind power is the cheapest form of new generation now available. There are sufficient wind resources between the Mississippi and the Rockies to generate, with available technology, 300% of the electricity we use. There's enough in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to do 100%. Solar technologies ranging from green architectural design to desert power towers to photovoltaic cells that go on every rooftop are booming toward a multi-billion-dollar mainstay of our electric supply. Bio-fuels based on sustainable, organic practices can transform our transportation sector. Tidal, wave, geothermal, ocean thermal and a wide range of other green production processes stand at the brink of epic profitability. Meanwhile, increased efficiency and revived mass transit are the cheapest, cleanest ways to salvage the energy we waste. In concert, these revolutionary green technologies are poised to bring us to Solartopia, a post-pollution planet powered totally by energy harvested in harmony with our Mother Earth. They promise an abundance of efficient supply with the power to boom our economies and save our ability to survive on this planet. But here's the hitch: renewable energy has the "flaw" of tending toward community control. In the long run, a true Solartopian revolution must involve re-shaping our corporate culture into one based on sustainability, accountability and grassroots democracy. Though some astute corporations are cashing in, in the long run green technologies are the door to decentralization…and economic democracy. A green-powered Solartopia will own its energy supply at the grassroots. Wind, solar, bio-fuels---they hold the keys to community control. Against all that, new nukes are the ultimate weapon of mass distraction. There have been numerous rationales put forth for building more reactors. Except to an entrenched corporate power elite, none of them make any sense. Some advocates claim new reactors can fight global warming. In fact, through their own "normal" emissions, in the construction process, in mining, milling and enriching fuel, in decommissioning, in managing radioactive waste, in accounting for inevitable catastrophic accidents and terror attacks, in weapons proliferation, and much much more, atomic reactors are a global warming nightmare. Some also claim nukes will generate cheap electricity. But fifty years of proven failure (the first commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957) says exactly the opposite. Overall, the nuke power experiment has been a trillion dollar disaster, with explosions, melt-downs, cost overruns, expensive failures, massive subsidies, undoable insurance, deregulatory bailouts and much more on the debit sheet. Overall, at its ultimate corporate root, the new nuke push is a coup d'etat, a rightist putsch to prevent the community ownership of our Solartopian energy supply. The irony in California could not be more obvious. The only way the industry can build new nukes is for the community to NOT require a solution to the radioactive waste problem. The world was told fifty years ago that such a solution was "just around the corner." It was also told atomic energy would be "too cheap to meter." These two biggest of all 20th Century industrial lies are about to be rationalized and atomized by a corporate King CONG desperate to hold power. But the vision of Solartopia burns bright and real. Humankind now possesses all the technology we need to solve global warming and bring us a world of post-pollution prosperity. The new nuke surge just declared in California is an early test in the larger war for a sustainable future. The question about to be asked in California, and worldwide, is: Do we have the will to win Solartopia for ourselves and our children? --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 senior editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

Mother Earth can't live without a Solartopian vision

At last our dying Mother Earth has taken center stage. Thanks to Al Gore's global concert, the major media are finally filling with coverage of the climate crisis. It all comes with a dire dual realization: our economy will collapse, and we could all die, if something drastic is not done. But what? There are many piecemeal formulas out there. But there's also a holistic vision of a post-pollution civilization that is clear, absolute and all-encompassing. It's a "Solartopia" built around a democratic, green-powered millennium. It is as simple as it is necessary: Technologically, the vision rests on four pillars: 1. Total renunciation of all fossil and nuclear fuels. In a sustainable, survivable future, they are a 20th Century pox, neither green nor clean. 2. All-out conversion to renewable energy, led by the "Solartopian Trinity" of wind, solar and bio-fuels. Mother Earth gives us the natural power we need. 3. Complete commitment to maximum efficiency, including revived and solarized mass transit and passenger rail systems. We may "remake" the automobile, but can't survive without transcending it. 4. Zero tolerance for production of anything that cannot be re-used or recycled, including chemical-based food. Solartopia is an organic, post-pollution world. Along with wind, solar and bio-fuels, Solartopian energy comes from the waves, currents, rivers and tides; from the geothermal heat beneath the earth's crust; from the interplay of solar-heated water at the oceans' surface and the frigid deep. Hydrogen and electricity are the chief power carriers, but they are always produced by clean Solartopian means. The conservation/efficiency revolution drives Solartopian energy consumption levels ever downward. Compact fluorescent bulbs are transcended by Light Emitting Diodes and more. An evolving armada of efficiency devices, many invented in backyards and garages, spreads at warp-speed through a hyper-linked global community. Advanced methods of organic food production get us past the "silent spring" of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and genetically modified crops. The ever-evolving internet fuels a geek-driven torrent of Solartopian innovation---and the raging e-network of green grassroots democracy ( http://solartopia.org/Links.php ). In our 21st Century global economy, renewable technologies are already on the whole more profitable than the obsolete "alternatives" of coal, oil, nukes and gas. But from bio-fuels to wind, from hyper-efficiency to organic farming, no green technology is without costs and limitations. All demand vigilance, limitation, regulation and innovation to stay clean, current and useful. When done right, the Solartopian revolution spawns the decentralized wealth, full employment, and community-based economic power of a prosperous, socially democratized society. Homes, buildings, communities and farms control their own energy. Power and prosperity are widespread, not concentrated in the hands of King CONG---the coal, oil, nukes and gas cartel---and its corporate minions. Indeed, Solartopia can't happen without transcending some primary barriers: 5. Corporations can no longer enjoy human rights without human responsibilities. Revised corporate charters must break the grip these giant economic organizations have held on our political, economic and ecological systems. 6. Population is the province of women, who in Solartopia are empowered, educated and equally paid. In synch with Mother Earth, they bring us the number of children She wishes to accommodate. 7. Where everyone has a right to the basic necessities of life, including free education, nobody starves. The Solartopian rich may be plentiful, but no civilization thrives unless all are guaranteed the necessities of life and dignity. 8. Big Money is barred from the campaign process. Free and fair elections and referenda power non-violent community-based evolution. The universal right to ballots on recycled paper mean accurate vote counts and recounts for all. Solartopia demands that business serve society and the planet, rather than vice versa. Capitalism may be one thing, but Enron cannibalism is quite another. Indeed, from the "isms" of the last century---capitalism, communism, socialism, environmentalism---must emerge an alchemical mix that actually works. Balancing competition and the profit motive with human and ecological need, the Solartopian vision demands accountability, efficiency, service and justice. The switch to renewables defunds global terrorism. Atomic reactors are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction. Shutting them ends the fear of apocalyptic disaster by both terror and error. Transcending coal and cars cures much of global warming. But everywhere we turn, the King CONG corporations build barriers. They use government subsidies and media disinformation to prolong their failed investments in obsolete technologies and the fossil/nuclear fuels that run them. Inseparable from those fuels are authoritarian power structures that produce wars for oil, financial imbalance and social chaos, leading to biological extinction. By contrast, Solartopia is the diverse, democratic, organic vision that gives us a framework from which we can survive and thrive. Now we see the spectacular take-off of a worldwide concern with what's happening to our atmosphere. Yet simultaneously, the King CONG corporations push to revive nuke power, the very worst technological and financial boondoggle of the past century. With it has come a raft of nonsense about "clean coal" and other obsolete technologies. To survive, we cannot be diverted, we must keep our eye on the prize. There is much to debate in myriad aspects of the Solartopian vision. But there is no doubting that if we could sweep the world clean of all its polluting facilities, energy and otherwise, we could replace everything with available technology that would easily supply all our needs while allowing a sustainable planet to survive and thrive. Solartopia's ultimate importance is as a holistic vision, a mind-organizing framework toward which we can carry humankind's greatest technological revolution, the birth of a clean, green, sustainable post-pollution engine of peace and prosperity In humble synch with Mother Earth and all her children, Solartopia is the 21st Century vision of our necessary future. Pete Seeger has written a song for this vision ( http://solartopia.org/Song.php ) . Next time we gather to sing for our green-powered future, let's open with his "Song for Solartopia." --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 senior editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

The patriotic service of Leonard Peltier versus the treason of Scooter Libby

In all the hand-wringing about George Bush's ghastly commutation for Scooter Libby, the name that should resonate most is that of Leonard Peltier. While the junta's henchmen walk free, this great Native American activist still sits in a federal penitentiary after thirty-one years. In 1977, Leonard was wrongly convicted in the killing of two FBI agents. The case is so laden with fraud and illegalities as to tear at the fabric of our entire criminal justice system. Any president since Jimmy Carter---including Bill Clinton---could at least have granted him a fair trial. Evidence weighed by Amnesty International and a very wide range of other powerful and prestigious global observers confirms that the FBI intimidated witnesses, withheld evidence, falsified affidavits and did every other dirty trick in the book to get Peltier convicted. Thirty-one years later, the FBI is still withholding over 140,000 pages of critical documents about this case, in violation of a wide range of federal laws. Peltier's sentence has been wrongfully extended. And his repeated requests for a retrial have been routinely denied. Peltier's persecution clearly stems from his effectiveness as a powerful activist for a series of just causes. From prison he's worked to bring critical resources to the desperately poor native society from which he came. Among other things, his efforts through the Native American Energy Group have helped bring 4,000 energy efficient homes to the Pine Ridge Reservation. For all this essential patriotism, he's been nominated for a Nobel Prize. In response, the prison system has denied Peltier his religious freedoms. He's been thrown into solitary confinement for no sane or just reason. His Constitutional right to communicate fully and fairly with the outside world has been restricted. His medical needs have been ignored. Yet he has survived thirty-one years in jail with determination and clarity. For all that, Leonard Peltier has become a critical pillar of what remains of our national conscience. By contrast, the Bush-Cheney-Libby axis has given new definition to the word treason. First and foremost, to protect the interests of their oil industry sponsors, they have committed the worst form of betrayal: lying to the American public to sell a war that has brought death, defeat, corruption, shame and bankruptcy to us all. It's no small accident that Libby did legal work for Mark Rich, who was pardoned by Bill Clinton in his final days. Clinton was briefed thoroughly, throughout his presidency, about the Peltier case. Rich had nothing to recommend him except his money. Clinton's choice of who to pardon remains unforgivable. Bush now says Libby's sentence for the lies he told in service of the Iraqi slaughter was "excessive." But as governor of Texas, Bush executed some 150 prisoners. Despite numerous cases involving incompetent counsel and other grounds for clemency, he issued not a single commutation. Bush did meet with Karla Faye Tucker, a death row prisoner who converted to fundamentalist Christianity. He responded by mocking her in public (http://www.ccadp.org/bushkills.htm) and having her killed, a punishment he deemed less "excessive" than Libby's jail time. So the aptly named Rich and his treasonous lawyer now walk free while Leonard Peltier remains behind bars, still having never received a fair trial, or access to the FBI's evidence, kept secret in the interest of "national security." Peltier now has great-grandchildren he's never met. We can only be grateful for his astonishing personal strength. If this obscene gift to Scooter Libby serves any function at all, it should remind us that we cannot save our national soul without winning justice for Leonard Peltier. --To learn more about Leonard Peltier, see http://www.leonardpeltier.net/. Harvey Wasserman is senior editor of http://www.freepress.org/, where this article first appeared. His HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at http://www.solartopia.org/.

TOTALLY Boom/Doom Solartopian Green by 2030 or Else

WE are all now desperate runners in the epic race between doom and boom. It's a global- warmed dead heat between apocalyptic ecological collapse, versus a Solartopian green-powered prosperity. Defeat is defined by a death spiral that decimates our planet. Victory means the wealth, jobs and organic well-being that can come with renewables, efficiency and a post-pollution planet. A middle ground is likely along the way, but would almost certainly happen by dividing humankind even further between rich and poor. That polarization is ultimately unsustainable, and will demand correction, one way or the other. The "tipping point" where climate chaos becomes self-accelerating and irreversible may be as close as ten years away. Some believe we're already over the edge. The global economy runs parallel. Any system addicted to huge inputs of irreplaceable, monopolized resources whose prices are soaring must soon collapse. The cure is clear---a technological, economic and social revolution built around the transition to green power. Despite the nay-sayers, such a Solartopian transformation is physically and financially do-able. But can we do it by 2030? The answer: Ecologically, and economically, we have no choice. A new report from the United Nations points to huge increases in renewable investing in the past 18 months---in excess of $100 billion. It predicts almost a quarter of the world's electricity could be green by 2030. But Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has pointed out that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, has published on the internet (and then withdrawn) findings that say ALL electricity consumed in the United States---the world's largest consumer---could be produced by renewable means by the year 2020. Like Russia, China and India, the US has enough harvestable wind to do the total job. NREL says there is enough wind capacity in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to electrify the entire US, using currently available technology. There's enough wind resource in the states between the Mississippi and the Rockies---what we might now call Windiana---to do the US three times over. There are transmission constraints and occasional permitting issues. But there's no reason to build any generator west of the Mississippi that's not fueled by the wind or solar energy. There is also plenty of wind east of the Mississippi, especially in the Great Lakes and Atlantic. Worldwide wind power is proven, profitable and booming at rates in excess of 25% per year. Solar, bio-fuels, wave, ocean thermal, geothermal, tidal, current and other forms of renewables are all close behind. Anyone doubting the explosion in Solartopian energy might check out the financial pages and investment reports popping up throughout the global media. The trade association web sites (awea.org, ases.org, nrel.gov, etc.) over-brim with numbers that scream of a classic techno-economic takeoff. The situation parallels the rise of the personal computer and dot.com industries. Imagine yourself describing 25 years ago---in 1982---what was about to happen in the information age. Technologically, the Solartopian revolution is much further along. But it has one problem the information revolution did not---an institutional enemy. There is a barrier separating a future defined by climate chaos and economic collapse from a boom to Solartopia. It is the coal, oil, nukes and gas industries---King CONG. Few stood to lose from the spread of the PC and internet. But green power threatens the fossil/nuke multinationals with ultimate (and well-deserved) oblivion. A likely scenario: for the next five to ten years, led by wind, renewables will grow at 25-35% per year. Despite King CONG, investment capital is fast becoming a green tsunami. Production facilities for wind turbines, photovoltaic roofing shingles, wave-generating "sea-worms" and the like, are booming. As capacity expands, production costs and prices drop. Demand will accelerate even further. Solartopian industry will accumulate serious wealth and employee mass. The host communities will add their social and political commitment. Today's green lobby has tremendous popular support. But too many solar companies are owned by major corporations with fossil/nuke investments. Above all, they fear the decentralized nature of green power. But sooner or later, the public demand for an independent green industry will combine with accelerating wealth to create aggressive institutional power. When finally it attacks its competition---coal, oil, nukes and gas---in open political warfare, King CONG will head toward the compost heap. The green power industry is certain to expand rapidly for the next decade. Economically and politically mature by 2015, its technological breakthroughs will multiply on themselves. Self-sustaining profitability and growth should match the PC/internet saturation of the global economy within another quarter century---by 2030---maybe earlier. The take-off will bring a revolution in efficiency. Bloviating "experts" continually refer to an "inevitable" exponential growth in energy demand. But soaring energy prices will force exponential breakthroughs on the demand side. The biggest barrier to Solartopia may be reviving a mass transit system that was systematically murdered by General Motors, Standard Oil and the glass and rubber companies. Without good inter-city rail travel and advanced public transit within the cities, the US has no economic future. The hybrid car-especially the plug-in model---marks a step forward. But the automobile still kills in the range of 40,000 Americans per year, many on a freeway system that is overburdened and obsolete. The auto must be transcended. The rhythm of this techno-financial revolution will push us toward Solartopia by 2030. But so will our eco-systems. Time is short to solve our climate crisis. We must stop emitting carbon dioxide and reverse the damage done. The eco-imperative extends to habitat destruction, air and water pollution, decimation of the forests, the spread of toxics, and much more. Mother Earth is telling us we can't coast for another quarter-century. The clock to "Thermageddon," as Greenpeace founder Robert Hunter called it, ticks as fast as the one on economic collapse. Extinction peers over our shoulder just as green power approaches critical mass. So set the date for 2030, bid King CONG goodbye, and let's win this race to Solartopia.

The honor of being called a "jerk" by pro-nuker Patrick Moore

June 12, 2007

Patrick Moore has called me a "jerk." He may not be Queen Elizabeth, but it feels like being made Knight of the Realm.

Moore is a supporter of nuclear power. He is also an advocate for clear-cutting forests, genetically modified foods and a wide range of other corporate eco-assaults. The companies behind them fund Moore's "consulting" agency, which appears to specialize in greenwashing.

Moore's mission also seems to include tagging the Greenpeace name onto things Greenpeace opposes. As a voting member of Greenpeace USA, my e-mail box is often filled with contemptuous messages about Moore's latest outrage, and anger about his claim to be a Greenpeace founder. Many advocate ignoring him.

I'm not of that faith. Based on his appearances, too many people ask me why Greenpeace now "supports nuclear power." It doesn't. Its opposition to atomic reactors is as strong and clear as it was when Moore made his brief appearance on the organization's staff list, decades ago.

Moore is quoted calling me a "jerk" in a long piece on the greenwashing of nukes that has graced the cover of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, for which I've written occasionally over the years.

The piece correctly quotes me as advocating "Solartopia," a world gone totally to renewables and efficiency by the year 2030. It is a world in which King CONG---the coal, oil, nukes and gas industry---has been vanquished, and the way cleared for green technologies that are cleaner, cheaper, safer, more reliable and more job-creating. Those would include wind, solar, bio-fuels, geothermal, ocean thermal, wave, current, tidal, trash gas and other forms of renewable generation, along with massively increased efficiency and a revival of mass transit.

My choice of the year 2030 for Solartopia works in tandem with a theory of "Thermageddon" put forth by the late Bob Hunter, who really was a founder of Greenpeace. Hunter called Moore an "eco-Judas." Moore says Bob recanted.

But King CONG is now Patrick Moore's employer. He advocates a "renaissance" for atomic power, a technology inseparable from the murderous melt-downs at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, with fifty years of proven economic failure.

In the half-century since the first commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957, there has been no solution to the storage of high level radioactive waste. Since the terror attacks of 9/11/2001, it is more obvious than ever that commercial reactors are pre-deployed weapons of nuclear mass destruction. The private insurance industry appears to agree, as none will independently underwrite the risk of a major reactor catastrophe, either by terror or error.

Overall, the nuke power industry simply would not exist without gargantuan federal subsidies. The latest now involve huge proposed loan subsidies to drag Wall Street into a technology it would not otherwise touch.

None of this seems to bother Mr. Moore, whom I've never met. But I'd like to. Patrick, when you read this (and I'm sure you will), please accept my invitation to debate anywhere, anytime, with any format you choose, on any medium willing to host us.

Think of it as a form of renewable energy generation. Or as a "renaissance" of democracy.

But above all, think of it as a trip to Solartopia, where nukes are banned along with fossil fuels and all other forms of waste, and there is a green-powered confluence of pollution-free prosperity.

The only greenwashing in such a world, Mr. Moore, will be with mint and aloe vera. I'll bring you some of both.

--
Harvey Wasserman has been senior advisor to Greenpeace USA since 1990, and is senior editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. His SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 is at www.solartopia.org.

How Solartopian Non-Violence Beat a King CONG Nuke and Birthed the Global Green Power Movement

By Harvey Wasserman

Thirty years ago this fortnight, in the small seacoast town of Seabrook, New Hampshire, a force of mass non-violent green advocacy collided with the nuclear establishment.

What emerged after two astonishing weeks was a definitive victory over corporate power, and the birth of one of the most powerful and effective social movements in world history---one that still writes the bottom line on atomic energy and global warming.

All today's battles over whether more nuke reactors will be built can be dated to May, 13, 1977, when 550 Clamshell Alliance protestors walked victoriously free after thirteen days of media-saturated imprisonment. Not a single US reactor ordered since that day has been completed.

It all started when---in the classic tradition of New England democracy---the tiny town of Seabrook voted four times against the construction of a mammoth twin reactor complex in the salt marshes along its seashore. The site is at the very southeast corner of New Hampshire, where the Granite State meets Massachusetts and the Atlantic. All other towns within a ten-mile radius of the proposed plant joined the opposition, including those in Massachusetts. .

The absurdly mis-named Public Service Company of New Hampshire offered the cash-strapped communities major economic bribes. But local stalwarts feared disruption of their lives, destruction of the local fishing industry, ecological desolation of the marshes and the dangers of radiation.

So a de facto coalition rose up that joined extremely conservative locals with the very peace activists they had bitterly denounced for marching against the Vietnam War, which was just ending. Many were new to the environmental cause, having moved to communal farms in rural areas where they became acquainted for the first time with trees, grass and gardens.

The coalition was joined by Quaker stalwarts from Boston who helped introduce many of the youthful demonstrators to the art and politics of creative non-violence. Forming the Clamshell Alliance, they began small-scale civil disobedience at the Seabrook site, which was just then being bulldozed.

On August 1, 1976, 18 New Hampshirites were arrested there. On August 22, 180 from around New England were dragged away.

In October, at a nearby seaside park, the Alliance staged an Alternative Energy Fair. They drew on the experiences of the Toward Tomorrow Fair, recently held at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The conference's godfather was William Heronemus, who pioneered a vision of huge windmill arrays off-shore and in the Great Plains, which he dubbed "the Saudi Arabia of Wind." Also speaking was a young Oxford don named Amory Lovins, who helped conceive an ultra-efficient world powered by renewable energy.

From these gatherings came a "Solartopian" vision of fossil/nuke-free economy, powered by green energy, that the Clamshell demonstrators carried with them onto the Seabrook site. They were battling not just nuclear power, but an obsolete "King CONG" paradigm centered on coal, oil, nukes and gas. Once the immense resources being wasted on nukes and unclean fossil fuels were shifted to renewables and efficiency, they said, a green-powered Earth would come.

On April 30, 1977, about 2,000 Clams poured onto the Seabrook site from numerous directions. Key to the months of prior planning was the requirement that all who came to occupy the site be trained in small "affinity groups." The sessions included discussions of the theory of non-violence, and active role playing in which demonstrators would take turns practicing the rituals of both arresting and being arrested. (These sessions are documented in the Green Mountain Post film "Training for Non-Violence" available via http://www.gmpfilms.com/).

Technically, the Clams' commitment was to shut construction altogether. The theoretical model came from Wyhl, West Germany, where a mass grassroots occupation stopped a proposed nuclear facility. The Wyhl campaign helped birth a social movement that's led to Germany's renunciation of nuke power, a multi-billion-dollar boom in green power and what may be the world's most efficient industrial economy.

New Hampshire's extreme right-wing Gov. Meldrim Thomson wanted none of it. He demanded that the state police bar the demonstrators from the site altogether.

But the patrol was worried about chaos on local highways, especially the nearby Interstate 95. They preferred to let the Clams march onto the bulldozed construction site, where they could be easily herded onto buses and hauled to local courts for arraignment.

The 1414 arrests proceeded deep into the night. No instances of violence were reported, and no one was seriously injured.

The Clams' expectation was to be booked and freed on personal recognizance, as in the previous actions. They had volunteered to be arrested. They had come to state their case that stopping nuke power served a higher good.

But early in the evening, a livid Gov. Thomson helicoptered into the seacoast. He demanded that the detainees from out of state pay bail.

Most refused. In solidarity, so did most of the New Hampshirites.

Next morning, the nation awoke to read that more than a thousand non-violent protestors were being held in five National Guard armories spread around the state of New Hampshire.

At the crucial moment, Thomson's attorney general (none other than David Souter, now a "liberal" associate of the U.S. Supreme Court) swooped into the seacoast and browbeat a local judge into requiring bail. The Clams stiffened. The epic confrontation was on.

The global media had a field day. The Guard in Manchester, the biggest of the armories, was forced to visit a local McDonalds to buy hundreds of hamburgers for their unexpected "guests" (many of whom were vegetarians and would eat only the buns). Gov. Thomson, who constantly railed at neighboring Massachusetts, advocated arming the New Hampshire National Guard with nuclear weapons.

But for the first time ever, world's print and electronic journalists gave serious focus to nuke power's fatal flaws. The question of whether to build more nukes got the kind of thoughtful, responsive coverage that left the American mainstream with the coming of Ronald Reagan.

Thomson refused to yield on bail. Beckoned by jobs and families, a steady flow did exit the armories.

But a hard core stayed. Charles Matthei refused to eat or drink at all. Edgy officers finally put him (gently, and unindicted) out on the street.

Staunch New Hampshire conservatives cringed in global embarrassment. The mass imprisonment cost the state's notoriously thrifty taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars per day.

Finally, on Friday, May 13, Thomson caved. Some 550 Clams walked free, pledging to return for their trials (which they did) with no bail posted.

The standoff sparked a global movement against atomic power and for green energy. Dozens of alliances sprouted up at US reactor sites. California's Abalone Alliance led thousands of arrests at Diablo Canyon, perched perilously close to a major earthquake fault. The Trojan Decommissioning Alliance eventually shut Oregon's only nuke. At Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, protestors demanded---unsuccessfully---that Unit Two not open.

TMI helped undo Jimmy Carter. Carter campaigned in New Hampshire in August, 1976, as the Clamshell staged its first protests. For a documentary crew from Green Mountain Post Films he outlined a series of requirements he pledged to enforce before any new reactor could open. Neither Seabrook nor TMI could meet them. But construction continued at Seabrook anyway. TMI went critical in December, 1978, then melted three months later.

Carter did fund pioneer green energy work at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Lab) in Golden, Colorado. But the battles at the reactor sites proved politically disastrous.

The ultimate blow came when TMI-2 melted in the wee hours of March 28, 1979. Had it not been for the demonstrations at Seabrook and elsewhere, the accident might have garnered a few paragraphs in the local papers.

But inspired in part by the protests, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas's China Syndrome, happened to open in theaters just as TMI went to the brink. The industry took the double body blow of a terrifying disaster and a Hollywood blockbuster.

Ironically, Carter's greatest triumph, the signing of the Camp David accords, was consummated at the White House on March 26, 1979. For thirty-six hours the president basked in an afterglow that might have helped him coast to re-election.

But then, suddenly, he was in the TMI control room, dressed in protective booties, desperately doing damage control. Had the public and Jimmy Carter's career been spared the openings of Seabrook and TMI, the world might be a very different place.

The grassroots alliances helped drive the nuke industry into dormancy. Seabrook Unit I was eventually finished. But Unit 2 is a rotting hulk, every bit as useless (but not quite as radioactive) as TMI-2.

Richard Nixon had pledged to build 1000 nukes in the US by the year 2000. But the industry peaked at less than 120. Today, just over a hundred are operating. No US reactor ordered since 1974 has been completed. The Seabrook demonstrations---which extended to civil disobedience actions on Wall Street---were key to avoiding the nearly 880 US reactors that might otherwise have been built.

In the 1970s, nuke backers thought they could solve the Arab oil embargo. But rising oil prices helped doom reactor construction. In construction and in fuel enrichment, nukes depend on fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases and are in increasingly short supply. Another round of rising oil prices could easily doom another round of proposed reactors, as could impending shortages of raw uranium.

As in the 1970s, today's nuke backers have cost calculations for new reactors that are fictional wish lists. Despite millions in PR hype, there is no core Wall Street funding or reliable private insurance for liability in case of a major accident. Whatever economic case there might have been for atomic energy thirty years ago has long since disappeared.

The global grassroots movement that emerged from those New Hampshire armories was savvy, well-organized and passionate. It defined the Solartopian paradigm of an energy-efficient, fossil/nuke-free world powered by renewables.

Tens of thousands of arrests have followed at hundreds of No Nukes demonstrations. But no non-violent reactor opponent or arresting officer has been seriously injured. It is an epic monument to the evolution of peaceful civil disobedience as an effective agent of social change.

It is also a given that any new reactor construction will be accompanied by mass arrests.

It will also require gargantuan taxpayer subsidies. Thirty years since construction began at Seabrook, the real cost of building new reactors has soared off the charts.

By contrast, the prices for renewables and efficiency have plummeted. While reactor construction has gone nowhere, wind, solar and bio-fuels have become multi-billion-dollar industries enjoying double-digit growth rates. The revolution in green power is poised to do for the economies of the Solartopian world of the next quarter-century what the computer revolution did for the last.

Those 550 Clamshell activists who held fast in Mel Thomson's armories thirty years ago opened the door for a brave renewable world. The astonishing victory they claimed on May 13, 1977, testified to the amazing power of mass non-violence---and to the coming reality of a green-powered planet.

--------------------------------------- Harvey Wasserman helped co-ordinate media for the Clamshell Alliance, 1976-8. He was arrested at Diablo Canyon in 1984 and at Seabrook in 1989, and is author of SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 (http://www.solartopia.org/).

Chernobyl Reminds Us that Nukes are NOT Green

by Harvey Wasserman

Twenty-one years ago this week, lethal radiation poured into the breezes over Europe and into the jet stream above, carrying death and disease around the planet.
It could be happening again as you read this: either by error, as at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, or by terror, as could have happened on September 11, 2001.
Those who now advocate a “rebirth” of this failed technology forget what happened during these “impossible” catastrophes, or refuse to face their apocalyptic reality, both ecological and financial.
Radiation monitors in Sweden, hundreds of miles away, first detected the fallout from the blast at Chernobyl Unit 4. The reactor complex had just been extolled in the Soviet press as the ultimate triumph of a “new generation” in atomic technology.
The Gorbachev government hushed up the accident, then reaped a whirlwind of public fury that helped bring down the Soviet Union. The initial silence in fact killed people who might otherwise have taken protective measures. In downtown Kiev, just 80 kilometers away, a parade of uninformed citizens—many of them very young—celebrated May Day amidst a hard rain of lethal fallout. It should never have happened.
Ten days after the explosion, radiation monitors at Point Reyes Station, on the California coast, detected that fallout. A sixty percent drop in bird births soon followed. (The researcher who made that public was fired).
Before they happened, reactor pushers said accidents like those at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were “impossible.” But….
To this day, no one knows how much radiation escaped from TMI, where it went or who it harmed. But 2400 central Pennsylvanians who have sued to find out have been denied their day in court for nearly thirty years. The epithet “no one died at Three Mile Island” is baseless wishful thinking.
To this day also, no one knows how much radiation escaped from Chernobyl, where it went and who was harmed. Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the late President Boris Yeltsin, and president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, estimates the death toll at 300,000. The infant death and childhood cancer rates in the downwind areas have been horrific. Visual images of the innumerable deformed offspring make the most ghastly science fiction movies seem tame.
Industry apologists have stretched the limits of common decency to explain away these disasters. Patrick Moore, who falsely claims to be a founder of Greenpeace, has called TMI a “success story.” An industry doctor long ago argued that Chernobyl would somehow “lower the cancer rate.”
In human terms, such claims are beneath contempt. As one of the few reporters to venture into central Pennsylvania to study the health impacts of TMI, I can recall no worse experience in my lifetime than interviewing the scores of casualties.
The farmers made clear, with appalling documentation, that the animal death toll alone was horrendous. But the common human symptoms, ranging from a metallic taste the day of the accident to immediate hair loss, bleeding sores, asthma and so much more, came straight out of easily available literature from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There is no mystery about what happened downwind from TMI, only a conscious, well-funded corporate, media and judicial blackout.
At Chernobyl, the experience was repeated a thousand-fold. More than 800,000 (that’s NOT a typo) Soviet draftees were run through the radioactive ruins as “jumpers,” being exposed for 90 seconds or so to do menial clean-up work before hustling out. The ensuing cancer rate has been catastrophic (this huge cohort of very angry young men subsequently played a key role in bringing down the Soviet Union).
In both cases, “official” literature negating (at TMI) or minimizing (at Chernobyl) the death toll are utter nonsense. The multiple killing powers of radiation remain as much a medical mystery as how much fallout escaped in each case and where it went.
The economic impacts are not so murky. Moore’s assertion that TMI was a success story is literally insane. A $900 million asset became a $2 billion clean-up job in a matter of minutes. At Chernobyl, the cost of the accident in lost power, damaged earth, abandoned communities and medical nightmares has been conservatively estimated at a half-trillion dollars, and still climbing.
The price of a melt-down or terror attack at an American nuke is beyond calculation. In most cases, reactors built in areas once far from population centers have now been surrounded by development, some of it bumping right up to the plant perimeters. Had the jets that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 instead hit Indian Point Units Two and Three, 45 miles north, the human and financial costs would have been unimaginable. Imagine the entire metropolitan New York area being made permanently uninhabitable, and then calculate out what happens to the US economy.
There remains no way to protect any of the roughly 450 commercial reactors on this planet from either terror attack or an error on the part of plant operators.
Those advocating more nukes ignore the myriad good reasons why no private insurance company has stepped forward to insure them against catastrophe. Those who say future accidents are impossible forget that exactly the same was said of TMI and Chernobyl.
The commercial fuel cycle DOES emit global warming in the uranium enrichment process. Uranium mining kills miners. Milling leaves billions of tons of tailings that emit immeasurable quantities of radioactive radon. Regular reactor operations spew direct heat in to the air and water. They also pump fallout into the increasingly populated surroundings, with impacts on the infant death rate that have already been measured and proven. And, of course, there is no solution for the management of high-level waste, a problem the industry promised would be solved a half-century ago.
Economically, early forays into a “new generation” of reactors have already been plagued by huge cost overruns and construction delays. At best they would take ten to fifteen years to build, by which time renewable sources and efficiency—which are already cheaper than new nukes—will have totally outstripped this failed technology. Small wonder Wall Street wants no part of this radioactive hype, which is essentially just another corporate campaign for taxpayer handouts.
This past Earth Day an orgy of corporate greenwashing, aided by the always-compliant major media, tried to portray nukes as “green” energy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We will never get to Solartopia, a sustainable economy based on renewables and efficiency, as long as atomic power sucks up our resources and threatens us with extinction.
Twenty-one years ago this week, Chernobyl became something far worse than a mere warning beacon. The radiation it spewed still travels our jet stream, still lodges in our bodies, still harms our children.
Only by burying this failed, murderous beast can we get to a truly green future.
Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at http://www.solartopia.org/. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for http://www.freepress.org/, where this article first appeared.

Corporate Accountability is Earth Day's Inconvenient Truth

Corporate Accountability is this Earth Day's Inconvenient Truth

By Harvey Wasserman

April 23, 2007

The great green bandwagon that came of age this Earth Day has been a very long time coming. Its lag time has been no accident.

From Rachel Carson's 1963 Silent Spring and Earth Day 1970 and the first arrests at the Seabrook Nuke in 1976 and the decades of writing and marching and organizing and fundraising, the landmarks to a growing green consciousness are epic.

The past fifty years have seen the rise of the movements for civil, gay, and women's rights; for an end to nuclear bomb testing and atomic power plants; for peace in Vietnam, central America and Iraq; for the right to open access and accurate vote counts in elections that cannot again be stolen, and much much more.

These national and global campaigns have been accompanied by never-ending battles at the grassroots, against Jim Crow, for equal housing, against local polluters, for paper ballots, and for an ever-growing range of vital causes that demand human attention if we are to retain our rights and dignity.

This on-going grassroots fervor is the essence of democracy, the lifeblood of our ability to survive and grow.

Today, another specific cause---this time the environment---has finally become fashionable.

But this moment has been long delayed by big corporations that profit immensely from the destruction of the Earth, and that intend to continue.

After fighting us for so long, we are now witness to a classic hijack---the theft of imagery. It's now the height of corporate fashion to be painted the color they have so long opposed.

Many companies have indeed come around, and deserve their new badge of honor. But some paint themselves green no matter how much harm they do.

From Exxon to Ford, from Mobil to Monsanto, the world's worst polluters buy fuzzy, feel-good advertising with an environmental message. Columnists and politicians who've pushed catastrophic policies like utility deregulation and the war in Iraq now genuflect at the media's green altar. Without a hint of irony, some claim authorship of a movement they've scorned for decades.

The German-based Coalition Against Bayer Dangers ( http://www.cbgnetwork.de/4.html ) reports that the infamous chemical and pharmaceutical giant has been designated for an award at a "Rachel Carson Reception" in Pittsburgh. Among other things, Bayer makes pesticides such as Endosulfan and Parathion, along with Bisphenol A, an endocrine disruptor used in baby bottles, food cans, dental sealants, etc.

Bayer "has a long tradition in trying to `greenwash` their image," says the German group. "Rachel Carson turns in her grave."

To be sure, we can be thankful for progress on the part of many who are sincere, and who will make a genuine difference. But in too many cases, the green advertising costs more than what the companies spend to better the environment.

It is absolutely true that individual behavior is a core element of our eco-crisis. Each of us bears some guilt for our part in fouling our global nest.

We consume too much. We waste with impunity. So at its finale, Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" rightly lists individual steps we can take for saving the planet. We all must do our individual part.

But the world's biggest polluters have corporate names. While we individually do the right things by changing our light bulbs and riding our bikes, they will continue their eco-rampage as long as it's profitable to do so and they can legally get away with it.

As important researchers and historians like Thom Hartmann, Ted Nace and others have shown, under current American law, corporations enjoy a wide range of supra-human rights. Their charters require no social or ecological services. They have hijacked the 14th Amendment. The economic system imposes no real charges for destruction of the air, water, food or public health. The legal system makes it hard, if not impossible, to levy the full costs of eco-chaos, and thus to bring it to a halt.

It is the tragedy of the commons brought to the 21st century. It must change.

We can all feel good about being more individually green. It does make a difference.

But we'll never save this planet without also re-defining the nature of the polluting corporation.

Going green means no more business as usual. This Earth Day and beyond, the need for complete accountability, both individual and corporate, is the ultimate inconvenient truth.

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is available via http://www.solartopia.org/. HIs writings appear at http://www.freepress.org/ .

GREEN BEACON by Bob Koehler

GREEN BEACON
By Robert C. Koehler
Tribune Media Services
Harvey Wasserman’s newly published “Solartopia!” is a breath of fresh air, blowing — well, whipping, at Great Plains velocity —across the thinking person’s vision of the future. What a gift this book is: an informed, science-savvy vision of tomorrow that isn’t an eco-nightmare.
Rather, it’s an enthusiastically optimistic look at a rational, very green near future. (To order, go to solartopia.org.) The setting is 2030; the premise is a flight in a hydrogen-fueled airship from Hamburg to Honolulu, with Wasserman serving as tour guide and eco-historian as we watch the world unfold beneath us and gradually learn about the death of King CONG, the joyous global proliferation of rooftop gardens and how all those giant wind turbines wound up off the coast of Holland, among much else.
King CONG, an acronym of Wasserman’s coinage — Coal, Oil, Nukes, Gas — is the fossil-fuel addicted junkie-beast we think of today simply as reality, but to the relaxed narrator of “Solartopia!,” this beast, which in 2007 seemingly runs the world and holds it hostage to its appetites, is nothing more than a historical curiosity.
Listen up, boys and girls: We make it! We survive as a species. King CONG collapses of its own irrationality. Mind you, it ain’t pretty, but by 2030 its death throes, its meltdowns and final mad wars of resource acquisition (though not, of course, its radioactive waste and eco-dead zones) are behind us, and renewable-resource technology — wind, solar and biomass, along with extreme techno-efficiency — powers the human race to a sustainable, prosperous and democratic future, in which healing can begin.
This isn’t sci-fi. Wasserman, prolific author and long-time environmental activist, describes a world that has rethought and rebuilt itself on the basis of what we know right this moment. “All the technology that was ever needed for a post-pollution world was available in 2007,” he writes. He also makes the point that this technology, once the foot of King CONG is off its chest, is hugely profitable. That’s the clincher.
“Solartopia!” powers along, as we silently cross Europe in the hydro-jet, then glide across the Atlantic Ocean and the North American continent, with nonstop ironic wonder that the world below us was once run by self-destructive fools.
“Nuke weapons were once tested here,” our guide, for instance, informs us as we cross Nevada. “Then King CONG tried to stuff the place with radioactive waste. The dormant volcano at Yucca Mountain was once drilled with a $10 billion tunnel-and-train gizmo meant to accept huge quantities of spent reactor rods. Now it’s just another offbeat tourist attraction, with slot machines in the caverns and a spa in one of the would-have-been waste chambers.”
The pervading good sense that prevails in Wasserman’s 2030 is predicated on the existence of a human survival instinct that, while responsive to fear, is not centered in the reptilian (fight or flight) brain. Oh my, I hope he’s right.
When “people began keeling over dead from China’s brown, filthy air,” the guide notes, and “the wrath of climate chaos drowned millions and starved more,” what happened wasn’t the worst of human nature coming to the fore but — my God, finally — the emergence of our capacity to take the long view.
A sustainable world “became less an impossible dream than a fervent prayer for deliverance,” he writes. “And it demanded, first and foremost, that we ‘face the waste.’ To avoid extinction, ultra-efficiency became a vital necessity. . . . Nothing — NOTHING — on ‘Spaceship Earth’ is manufactured that cannot be . . . recycled or composted.”
Wasserman even cites a late-20th-century cultural reference point for inspiration: the 1995 Ron Howard/Tom Hanks movie “Apollo 13,” about the ill-fated 1969 moon expedition that, following a shipboard explosion on the return trip, “could only limp back to Earth by preserving every electron their damaged craft could muster.” This heroic flight becomes the metaphor for the plight of the whole planet.
In the twilight of the era of King CONG, Wasserman writes, “the West wasted fully half the juice it produced” and the emerging economies of Asia were even worse. Turning this around was not simply a matter of “super-compact fluorescents, ultra-light composites, mega-efficient manufacturing, totally tight solar building designs,” but also, ahem, the rational recycling of waste, human and otherwise.
“Sewage systems everywhere,” he writes, “double as energy-generating compost operations” and have morphed into “the trillion-dollar business of converting waste to power. Few today can comprehend it . . . but this country once actually dumped human waste onto the lands and into the oceans!”
The only downside to this book is that it ends, and we’re left treading the polluted water and grappling with the flaky politics of 2007. The book returns us to a world that believes far more in guns than recycling; and our survival — our willingness to make peace with the planet — is still very much in doubt. But with “Solartopia!” Wasserman has planted a beacon two decades into the future to guide us past the rough spots.
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Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.
© 2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Can Al Gore Get Us to Solartopia?

Al Gore has leapt to center stage with well-founded concerns about global warming. He has been gratefully successful in publicizing the fact that there is a virtual library of irrefutable evidence that carbon dioxide levels are rapidly rising in our atmosphere, that this is being caused by human beings, and that the potential impacts are catastrophic.

What's not being said is that the solution to the problem---the necessary transition to Solartopia, a world based on renewable energy---is also the key to the future of our economic well-being, and would be whether global warming was a problem or not.

In short: even without the dire disaster of climate change, a transitioning to green power is the only hope our global economy has for future prosperity.

Indeed, moving to an industrial system that runs on wind, solar, bio-fuels and other renewable sources, along with increased efficiency, including a revival of mass transit, can and will do for the global economy in the next 25 years what the computer/internet revolution has done for the last.

What's also clear is that there is absolutely no room in this future for fossil fuels or nuclear power. But King CONG (coal, oil, nukes and gas) is not going to give up without an epic fight.

First up is the insane idea of bulding new nuclear plants. A debate now rages about a possible "renaissance" for atomic energy. It's a non-starter. Nuclear power is nothing more than a half-century of proven failure.

It is 50 years since the first commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania. But no solution has been found for the long-term management of spent nuclear fuel.

Nor is the private insurance industry willing assume liability for a possible catastrophic accident.

We have had a taste of such disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. We agree with the insurers that risk of another one, by terror or error, is too great to sustain.

The scant experience with these new reactors has already been bad, with cost overruns and other problems plaguing the few projects that have been tried.

The economics for new nukes are catastrophic. Bush Administration partisans may be willing to pour billions of taxpayer dollers into them. But we see no rush from Wall Street to embrace more nukes, especially when Bush is threatening war with Iran to prevent them from doing the same.

Which leaves us with this obvious challenge: if we reject fossil fuels and nuclear power, how will we heat and light an increasingly crowded planet, whose people are rightly intent on material prosperity?

The answer is in green power: renewable energy and increased efficiency.

For decades it has been argued that a planet run entirely on natural energy---a "Solartopia"---is an unrealistic dream, that might, at best, come in fifty or a hundred years.

But our planetary eco-systems can not wait that long.

And the economic engines now driving the conversion to green power---the big investment dollars pouring into wind, solar, bio-fuels, etc---will not allow such a delay.

In fact, there is a "great green avalanche" of investment dollars now flooding the renewable markets. The global wind business is booming with 25-35% annual growth. Far more new wind capacity is being installed than nuclear. Major technological advances in commercial-scale turbines mean there is no cheaper form of new electric generation. New gearless machines promise even better performance.

Though siting issues often arise (as they certainly will with new nuclear plants), properly installed wind machines do virtually no environmental damage. Though there are exceptions, the bird-kill issue is mostly anti-wind hype. Wind turbines are in fact proven to the point that financial powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, Edison Capital, John Deare, and many more are lining up to invest in these projects. Wind power's principle problem today is a shortage of turbines.

Solar power is also plummeting in cost and soaring in demand. Solar water heating has long been economically competitive throughout the northern hemisphere. Photovoltaics (PV), which convert sunlight to electricity, are being incorporated into roofing shingles and window glass.

Solar power towers and parabolic trough collectors have proven themselves to be cost effective.

Passive solar architecture can be as simple as facing a building's biggest windows to the south, with resultant heat gain worth big money for decades to come.

Ethanol from corn and diesel from soy have become major cash crops. But in the long run, bio-fuel stocks that need annual planting will give way to perennials with high cellulose and vegetable oil content. These "incredible inedibles" will include switchgrass, miscanthus, hemp, canola and more.

Meanwhile, simple devices to harness the tides, the currents, and the thermal differentials between solar-heated water at the surface of the oceans and the colder waters deeper down, are already proving do-able. Geothermal power, built on the heat beneath the Earth's crust, has been with us for centuries.

All these sources are great job-creators. But can they add up to a totally green-powered planet?

That depends on our most crucial energy wild-card---increased efficiency. Despite all we've been through since the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, this nation---and much of the rest of the world---still wastes at least half the energy it burns.

Light Emitting Diodes (LED), superconducting, mag-lev, and a wide range of other high-performance technologies will redefine how we use---and abuse---energy. The projections for unsustainable rises in global energy consumption in the next decades are posited on energy inefficiencies that economic factors will force us to transcend.

In fact, we see a society that has no choice but to go totally green. The primary reason is that our survival on this planet depends on it.

Green energy and efficiency make perfect economic sense. They are our future, both economically and ecologically.

But none of that matters if we are still stymied by the hugely rich and powerful fossil/fuel industry. We won't get to Solartopia until King CONG (coal, oil, nukes and gas) is shoved out of the way.

And that's the hugest "if" of all. Those awaiting Al Gore to take on these industries may have a long wait. Even if he were an ideal leader, it will take nothing less than a gargantuan grassroots campaign to change our energy system to what it must be if we are to survive. For many of us, that will be the real work of the coming era.

A century ago, a great leader named Eugene V. Debs warned that he could not lead the American people into a worker's paradise, because if one leader could take them there, another could take them out.

In the long run, Al Gore is right, global warming is a dire threat. There are major investors now willing to invest big money in solar power. And it is certain that one leader after another will emerge to lead us toward a world based on green energy and efficiency.

But King CONG will not give up on its gargantuan investments without an epic struggle. We will not get to a green-powered world without dismantling the enormous infrastructure that is the fossil/nuke cartel, with all its power and money.

No single politician will ever do that. In the long run, the only route to Solartopia is through the grassroots.