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.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
"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.
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.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
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.
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.
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