HARVEY WASSERMAN – Burying the “Peaceful Atom” and its fossil-fueled partners will be the task of our lifetimes, and when it comes to the myth of nuke power helping to fight global warming…there’s no there there.
Tag: Chernobyl
If You Love Nuclear Energy, Then You Love Nuclear Weapons
HARVEY WASSERMAN – There is no separation between nuclear power and nuclear war. The “Peaceful Atom” is a radioactive myth. The world’s fleet of atomic reactors is the happy-faced infrastructure for the global radioactive weapons industry.
What Do Plastics Pollution and Nuclear Power Have In Common?
LIBBY TRAUBMAN – The world is being choked by plastic waste from huge items to the smallest micro bits, each causing a slow death to our beautiful living system. As I revisited this non-regenerative life cycle of many pieces of plastic lodged in my brain and yours, it suddenly reminded me of something I learned about in the 1970s, the nuclear fuel cycle.
Ukrainians took to the streets to avert a nuclear disaster. Will Americans do the same?
PAUL GUNTER and LINDA PENTZ GUNTER – The near disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant shows why activists fought for decades to end these risks — and why mass action is needed once again.
Worried about Nuclear War? You can actually do Something to Prevent it
FRIDA BERRIGAN – If anything good can come out of the horrific war in Ukraine, it might be a renewed movement to abolish nuclear weapons once and for all.
Tokyo’s Games Are Harming the Nuclear Weapons Ban Movement
ALYN WARE – By paying lip service to the Fukushima disaster and the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, these games are downplaying the growing danger of nuclear catastrophe.
America’s “Hole-in-the-Head” Nuke Suicide Pact Gets Court Approval
HARVEY WASSERMAN – The Supreme Court has just now certified the deadliest and most economically destructive scam of the entire Trump catastrophe. Every downwind American is now threatened with deadly radiation while state after state bankrupts itself with soaring electric bills and ecological disaster, crippling the Solartopian green energy revolution. It is, in short, the “hole in the head†wave of massive state-based nuke bailouts.
Three Mile Island’s Murderous Legacy Still Threatens Us All
HARVEY WASSERMAN – Forty years ago this week, the Three Mile Island nuke began pouring lethal radiation into our air and water, lungs and livers. Throughout central Pennsylvania and beyond, people, animals, plants, and the planet began to die en masse. In 1980, a mile from the plant, I interviewed many of the immediate victims. It was the worst week of my life. Today 98 US reactors could repeat the slaughter
Nuclear Power Can’t Survive, Much Less Slow Climate Disruption
JOHN LAFORGE – “Here’s the issue: Nuclear power right now is six percent of energy of the world. There are only 400 nuclear power plants. These are old nuclear power plants. But our scientists tell us [that] to have a minimum impact on climate change — which is the whole rationale for bringing this technology back — nuclear would have to be 20 percent of the energy mix to have the minimum, minimum impact on climate change — not six percent of the mix. An impossible goal. For one thing, the issue of water.
Safety Eroding Further in the US Nuclear Weapons Complex
ROBERT ALVAREZ – Though the Cold War is long over, the Energy Department’s antiquated, contractor-dominated management system—in which safety goal posts are easily moved behind closed doors—continues to endure and, in some cases, thrive. Without the meaningful oversight of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the nuclear weapons complex will predictably march back to a time, in the not-so-distant past, when public and worker safety was an afterthought—with serious consequences.
Let’s Have ““A Decent Respect for the Opinions of Mankind†and Ban Nukes
WINSLOW MYERS – The distractions of the Trump presidency, even including Russian attempts to hack our democracy, have swamped events that may in the long run be of far greater historical significance. A primary example is the historic ongoing U.N. conference concerning the prohibition and eventual abolition of nuclear weapons— and our own nation’s unwise boycott of same.
Nuclear Power Makes ISIS an Apocalyptic Threat
HARVEY WASSERMAN – As you read this, a terror attack has put atomic reactors in Ukraine at the brink of another Chernobyl-scale apocalypse. Transmission lines have been blown up. Power to at least two major nuclear power stations has been “dangerously†cut. Without emergency backup, those nukes could lose coolant to their radioactive cores and spent fuel pools. They could then melt or explode, as at Fukushima. Yet amidst endless “all-fear-all-the-time†reporting on ISIS, the corporate media has remained shockingly silent on this potential catastrophe.
NRC Denies Nuclear Safety Petition
MICHAEL MARIOTTE – On April 9, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) formally denied a petition originally submitted by Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and 37 co-petitioners to make modest improvements in emergency planning for nuclear reactor accidents.
Solartopia: Winning the Green Energy Revolution
HARVEY WASSERMAN – High above the Bowling Green town dump, a green energy revolution is being won. It’s being helped along by the legalization of marijuana and its bioÂfueled cousin, industrial hemp. But it’s under extreme attack from the billionaire Koch Brothers, utilities like First Energy (FE), and a fossil/nuke industry that threatens our existence on this planet. Robber Baron resistance to renewable energy has never been more fierce.
Nuclear Power: Not a Green Option
KENT D. SHIFFERD – There are other ways to make electricity, namely solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro dams, and there is always conservation. Why would anyone in their right mind risk going nuclear as a way to deal with global warming?
‘Hundreds of problems’ at EU nuclear plants
BBC NEWS – Hundreds of problems have been found at European nuclear plants that would cost 25bn euros (£20bn) to fix, says a leaked draft report. The report, commissioned after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, aimed to see how Europe’s nuclear power stations would cope during extreme emergencies. The final report was to be published last Thursday. The draft says nearly all the EU’s 143 nuclear plants need improving.
It’s Us or the Nukes
DAVID SWANSON – Three years later a Soviet Lieutenant Colonel acted out the same scene, with the computer glitch on his side this time. Then in 1984 another U.S. computer glitch led to the quick decision to park an armored car on top of a missile silo to prevent the start of the apocalypse. And again in 1995, the Soviet Union almost responded to a U.S. nuclear attack that proved to be a real missile, but one with a weather satellite rather than a nuke. One Pentagon report documents 563 nuclear mistakes, malfunctions, and false alarms over the years — so far.
Nuclear Industry Wants to Relaunch with Public Guarantees
RALPH NADER: A generation of Americans has grown up without a single nuclear power plant being brought on line since before the near meltdown of the Three Mile Island structure in 1979. They have not been exposed to the enormous costs, risks and national security dangers associated with their operations and the large amount of radioactive wastes still without a safe, permanent storage place for tens of thousands of years.
Nuclear Power: Still a Bad Idea
RALPH NADER: A generation of Americans has grown up without a single nuclear power plant being brought on line since before the near meltdown of the Three Mile Island structure in 1979. They have not been exposed to the enormous costs, risks and national security dangers associated with their operations and the large amount of radioactive wastes still without a safe, permanent storage place for tens of thousands of years.