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/.