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NationofChange / Op-Ed
Published: Thursday 8 March 2012
“As long as our politicians dance to the tune of their donors, the threat of nuclear disaster will never be far off.”
The Bipartisan Nuclear Bailout
Super Tuesday demonstrated the rancor rife in Republican ranks, as the four remaining major candidates slug it out to see how far to the right of President Barack Obama they can go. While attacking him daily for the high cost of gasoline, both sides are traveling down the same perilous road in their support of nuclear power. This is mind-boggling, on the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with the chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission warning that lessons from Fukushima have not been implemented in this country. Nevertheless, Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: They’re going to force nuclear power on the public, despite the astronomically high risks, both financial and environmental.
One year ago, on March 11, 2011, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit the northeast coast of Japan, causing more than 15,000 deaths, with 3,000 more missing and thousands of injuries. Japan is still reeling from the devastation—environmentally, economically, socially and politically. Naoto Kan, Japan’s prime minister at the time, said last July, “We will aim to bring about a society that can exist without nuclear power.” He resigned in August after shutting down production at several power plants. He said that another catastrophe could force the mass evacuation of Tokyo, and even threaten “Japan’s very existence.” Only two of the 54 Japanese power plants that were online at the time of the Fukushima disaster are currently producing power. Kan’s successor, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, supports nuclear power, but faces growing public opposition to it.
This stands in stark contrast to the United States. Just about a year before Fukushima, President Obama announced $8 billion in loan guarantees to the Southern Company, the largest energy producer in the southeastern U.S., for the construction of two new nuclear power plants in Waynesboro, Ga., at the Vogtle power plant, on the South Carolina border. Since the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and then the catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986, there have been no new nuclear power plants built in the U.S. The 104 existing nuclear plants are all increasing in age, many nearing their originally slated life expectancy of 40 years.
While campaigning for president in 2008, Barack Obama promised that nuclear power would remain part of the U.S.’s “energy mix.” His chief adviser, David Axelrod, had consulted in the past for Illinois energy company ComEd, a subsidiary of Exelon, a major nuclear-energy producer. Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel played a key role in the formation of Exelon. In the past four years, Exelon employees have contributed more than $244,000 to the Obama campaign—and that is not counting any soft-money contributions to PACs, or direct, corporate contributions to the new super PACs. Lamented by many for breaking key campaign promises (like closing Guantanamo, or accepting super PAC money), President Obama is fulfilling his promise to push nuclear power.
That is why several groups sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month. The NRC granted approval to the Southern Company to build the new reactors at the Vogtle plant despite a no vote from the NRC chair, Gregory Jaczko. He objected to the licenses over the absence of guarantees to implement recommendations made following the Japanese disaster. Jaczko said, “I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened.”
Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, one of the plaintiffs in the suit against the NRC, explained how advocates for nuclear power “distort market forces,” since private investors simply don’t want to touch nuclear: “They’ve asked the federal government for loan guarantees to support the project, and they have not revealed the terms of that loan guarantee ... it’s socializing the risk and privatizing the profits.”
The Nuclear Information and Resource Service, noting the ongoing Republican attack on President Obama’s loan guarantee to the failed solar power company Solyndra, said, “The potential for taxpayer losses that would dwarf the Solyndra debacle is extraordinarily high ... this loan would be 15 times larger than the Solyndra loan, and is probably 50 times riskier.”
As long as our politicians dance to the tune of their donors, the threat of nuclear disaster will never be far off.
© 2011 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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ABOUT Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.
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By Tara Culp- Ressler
21 comments on "The Bipartisan Nuclear Bailout"
The nuclear industry is stuck in the 50s with Light Water Reactors (LWR) originally designed to power submarines. The man who developed the reactor design most commonly used around the world, Alvin Weinberg former director of Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL), believed that the design he patented was inherently unsafe. No fail safe systems can be added to such a design to make it inherently safe.
What we need is what Weinberg developed and promoted--Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) based on the thorium fuel cycle. MSRs are inherently safe and do not produce the uranium and plutonium isotopes used in nuclear weaponry. After burning 99% of the nuclear fuel fed them (as opposed to 1-2% in current LWRs), the relatively tiny amount of hazardous nuclear byproducts need only be isolated for 300 years (as opposed to thousands of years for LWR waste).
A proof of concept MSR ran for 5 years at ORNL in the late 60s, where many of the technical bugs were worked out. Though some development work needs to be done before MSRs can be used commercially, the main obstacles are social and political.
Learn more about MSRs, also called Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR), http://energyfromthorium.com/
http://thoriumremix.com/2011/
March 11, 2012 2:05am
Nuclear Power Plants: the dangers outweigh the benefits.
Fossil Fuel Corporations: the plan (game) is to drill as much oil as possible and make as much money as possible before even considering transitioning to clean, renewable energies.
"Socializing the risk and privatizing the profits:"
This is another example of the pseudo free enterprise economic system. A genuine free enterprise system would mean that giant corporations would rise and fall on their own merit and not be subsidized/socialized by the government. It would mean free (fair) competition and free (fair) markets, not a fixed, controlled and monopolistic system as it is today. Since the giant energy corporations are playing this socialized/privatized game with the government, Congress should write legislation that forces these corporations to transition to SAFE, clean, renewable energies (solar, wind, geothermal) within 10-15 years. If they don't comply, no more tax breaks and subsidies, and the government will seize some of their land and capital. That could force a change of attitude.
March 10, 2012 11:57am
With solar energy now being able to be produced cost effectively in comparison with nuclear power what is going on now are the death throes of a very dangerous dinosaur. This is because solar power is only going to get cheaper to produce. There is no rosy future for nuclear power, only further catastrophic lessons that it was a mistake to use it in the first place.
March 09, 2012 7:24pm
Ah, the Nuclear Fool Cycle(NFC)! It manages to befuddle all but the cagey poker players in charge of the world.
The problem is not evil corruption, though plenty of that exists. The problem is not suppressed technology, though that has frequently enough happened. The problem is not corporate idiocy, despite the ubiquity of that particular 'flavor of the week.' Surely, except in fantasy-land, the problem is not an 'ignorant public' that recognizes the toxic, noisome mess that emanates from every single step of the NFC, with the possible paradoxical exception of power generation itself.
So what is the problem? Both more complex and much simpler than any of these takes on the situation, the difficulties that lead, ineluctably, to the irresistible allure of such a foolish NFC is possible to summarize like this: both for imperial purposes in relation to weapons and for deep-seated political economic reasons in relation to the whole shebang--both power and weapons--capital's rulers have little choice but to lionize something akin to the Nuclear Fool Cycle as humanity's salvation.
Logic will never defeat this proclivity; cleaning up corruption will not sweep it away; cogent argument, hundreds of millions or even billions of casualties will not override it. The only thing that has a chance to stop a truly 'foolish' fatality that might easily decimate our entire tribe of cousins is an activated, organized, and strategic movement to put together social democratic productive relations in the still living carcass of capitalism.
To understand the points made above, readers might want, at a minimum to consider the following texts and facts.
*"An Interpretation of Radium," by Frederick Soddy, circa 1904.
*"The World Set Free," by H.G. Wells, circa 1913.
*Much of the financing for the world's nuclear research from roughly WWI to WWII emanated from Rockefeller money, ostensibly for medical reasons.
*"Tuxedo Park: a Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War Two," by Jenny Conant(a Manhattan Project granddaughter), circa 2008.
*Alexander Sachs, one of FDR's chief economic advisers and another titanic financier, delivered Einstein's fateful 'build-the-bomb' letter and remained a behind-the-scenes presence throughout the course that led to the world's only--so far--nuclear war, which killed or otherwise sealed the fate of a quarter million to half-a-million humans in the course of a few minutes on two separate mornings, with weapons a fraction as powerful as thousands ready to launch today.
*"Science: the Endless Frontier," by Vannevar Bush(ultimate Manhattan Project overlord), circa 1945.
*Hiroshima: Historians Reassess," by Gar Alperovitz, circa 1995.
The facts and syllabus need updating, no doubt. Any of us could provided many more titles and clearly documented actualities. However, any interpretation of the present needs to see the flow of causality from the past in some significant degree of empirical detail and analytical acuity.
Those who dismiss history are charlatans or thugs, or perhaps both. When will "Nation of Change" manifest journalism that takes this into account? Inquiring minds would like to know.
March 09, 2012 6:18pm
The panic continues with each little burp and bubble from any nuclear device. Nuclear power is inherently safe and inherently controllable. There are real serious engineering flaws that need to be corrected and should have been corrected, bt because of the serious paranoia in the anti nuclear world, the industry does not dare alter the permitted sites.Chernobyl should have had a containment building, it did not and it blew. Three Mile Island did everything it had to do to remain safe. Fukujima was a flat out stupid design with the cooling system for the rods overhead. In France there is a large nuclear park and it has operated without problems, same for the UK, the US, Belgium, Canada and other places. So beat the drums loudly and stampede the cattle, turn off the lights and spread the word darkly. The cliches are coming and we must not look too closely at them!
March 09, 2012 4:08pm
. . . Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: They’re going to force nuclear power on the public, despite the astronomically high risks, both financial and environmental.
So where are the plans to deal with nuclear waste -STOCK-PILE FURTHER ???
.MORE LIES . . we don't torture - the financial diasater isn't a take-over of the world's banks ??
. . .
Structured investment vehicles, credit default swaps, futures exchanges, hedge funds, complex securitization and derivative pools, the tranching of mortgages—these were shown to have “little or no long-term value,”. The purpose was to “merely shift money around” without designing, building, or selling “a single tangible thing.”
.CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE VALUE OF WALL STREET ?? PRODUCES NOTHING - SHOVELING WASTE MATTER FROM PLACE TO PLACE AND CHARGING GREAT DEALS OF MONEY ?.? OUR POLITICIANS WILL TELL YOU HOW THEY MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER AS THEY RAID PENSIONS - EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS -HEALTHCARE..... but Hitler gased people???
the average wall street bonus this year $121,000.00 - supported by billionaire N.Y. mayor Bloomberg's offering of tax free bonds - GO CALL YOUR BROKER
March 09, 2012 2:43pm
Thank you, Mrs. Goodman, for covering this topic.
I simply can't fathom the sound of near media-wide silence as we approach the one-year mark of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which the Japanese authorities have now admitted is indeed on par with Chernobyl.
The mainstream media apparently believes Americans don't give a hoot what happens to anyone else as long as it doesn't happen in our own backyard. We have a nuclear power plant sitting on the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, CA that could, in the wake of a tsunami or the "big one" --- it's rated for a magnitude ~7.5 when an 8+ earthquake could be possible --- make the situation near impossible for first responders. A Fukushima-size earthquake risk also exists along the northern Pacific states and British Columbia. How hard headed do we need to be before we own up and wise up? Fukushima left the French and the Germans seriously rethinking the merits of nuclear energy but here in the US our apparent talent is denial. It's one thing to suffer a large-scale oil spill, as tragic as that undoubtedly is, and another thing to potentially leave lands uninhabitable for generations! It's one thing to support a technology that the market and its investors want, another thing to subsidize a technology that is too costly and risky to turn a profit!
A nuclear holocaust of our own making is not out of the question whether it occurs here or in Iran, yet another catastrophic earthquake zone where they, too, are building a nuclear power plant. However it may occur, it's not a question of "if" but "when". It's time to retire these technologies and move on to true alternatives. There is an endless supply of solar power in space and an endless supply of turbine power in the sea. There is an endless supply of human waste and animal byproducts that can be harnessed for energy. The energy grid of the future will be a patchwork quilt of solutions that fit the local populace/market. It is my opinion, however, that nuclear power should not be among them. We need to outgrow 1960s-era thinking about the merits of nuclear power. It's the 21st Century, after all. We can do better.
March 08, 2012 11:38pm
Like domesticating a wild animal, when does it turn on you? And as it ages, the crankier it gets. Develope battery and solar technology in conjunction with the other great forces of our Mother...
March 08, 2012 10:14pm
I respect Amy for most of what she does, but not this. The perceived motives of the nuclear industry pale in comparison to the stark alternatives that face us. With nuclear we are faced with the very low probability of a Fukushima-like accident. W/O nuclear we are faced with the high probability of cooking people who live in the low and middle latitudes. The 3rd alternative, renewable energy needs miracles to be deployed in time to prevent the cooking. The Union of Concerned Scientists understands that nuclear is needed. That is why they press for nuclear safety, not nuclear plant shutdown.
March 08, 2012 8:16pm
I love this website for its truth and I've always respected Amy Goodman's views period. With that being said, today I must touch on my other thoughts regarding mankind's very possible future crisis. I can't help myself and must speak my concerns! "I care about mankind's future and what better place for me to vent my feelings then here at website called: "Nation Of Change" for Change is coming to us indeed!
If our Sun keeps spewing out major CME'S/EMP'S....the energy issues and politics of today will become moot. Mankind will be living like a pioneer if just ONE major CME hits our country dead on! Indeed the hand writing is on the wall! Our Earth and Sun are changing big time and if you can't see the signs all around us then you truly don't want to see them!
I stick with the old adage, "Hope for the best and prepare for the worst." The government will not save us from a scenario of: "Life as we know it is forever changed." Only we can stock up and prepare for any crisis coming our way. Its not "If" its going to happen but "When!" If the cost of gas sky rockets to $15-20 per gal....so will the food and everything else etc. Get ready for it to happen....esp if another war breaks out!
Most people have, life, car, health, and house insurance policy. I have added a new take care of Me and mine insurance policy! Yup, I'm one of those folks who believe that something major is coming our way. = /
Many people say" Why worry...you can't stop it." I say " You are 100% correct...BUT I sure as heck can prepare for it!" I'm not going to suffer because I bought into the propaganda that nothing is wrong within our world today! (phifft) The threat of either an economic or natural crisis is at our doorstep.
On the outside chance that my family survives this crisis....I will NOT die of thirst or starvation. I will not even let my two wee Chihuahuas die of thirst or starvation! Besides...If it gets really bad...I may start to eyeball em both while I ponder what a Chihuahua pot-pie would taste like! (grin... J/K!)
Well...you get my point. I enjoy everyday with my family and sleep better at night knowing I'm prepared. Oh and btw....I did find a website that offers food with a shelf life of 25yrs that will ship to your doorstep for $12 bucks and that's even if you buy a semi-load full of food! How wonderful is that! Nice to know at least one company still holds mankind's best interest to heart and forgoes the greed aspect!
Lastly I would like to add that I keep an eye on 4 websites everyday. The first one is Nation of Change. The second one is Space Weather ...which is currently showing all the major X-Rays being released by our Sun right now! (just as the physicist Michio Kaku said it would.)
The third is a website is called: The Extinction Protocol:2012 and beyond and the last website is a new one I just found called: Viewzone. com. Anyway.... all 4 have heaps of information that you won't hear about via the mass media. Mustn't frighten the "sheeple!" The elite still needs us to continue working to give them our tax dollars so they can build their underground shelters. (phifft)
Btw-Viewzone is offering a story called: Remote Viewers predict catastrophic meteor impact before 2013. This story is about a $20 million dollar military research program sponsored by the U.S. Federal Government to determine if our world is headed for a major event in the very near future. The facts are most interesting and enlightening to me!
Okay...nuff said on that issue. The rest is up to each of you to decide what action you want to take if any. (shrug) I've given out my heads-up alert and feel better for it. I will close here and leave one of my favorite quotes below.
"If we have NO PEACE, it is because we HAVE FORGOTTEN that we BELONG TO EACH OTHER." ---Mother Teresa
March 08, 2012 7:49pm
Citizens of Tokyo are panicking due to high levels of radiation. According to Veterans Today (see website), more than 30 million citizens live in greater Tokyo, plus thousands of US troops stationed in Japan are in danger of this deadly radiation.
"Widely known Physicist Dr Paolo Scampa, the publisher of the EU AIPRI Blog and an eminent chemical physicist, announced today his latest calculations of deadly radioactivity in Tokyo itself. Both the nuclear regulatory and media responses have been missing in action."
The amount of radiation is more than 25 times the amount used to evacuate Fukushima. Here in Missouri, bought-off politicians, are telling us to pay for a site and permit to build the first nuclear US plant in thirty years. Not only are we set up to go through what Japan is going through, we're asked to pay for it.
Obama promised clean energy. Katnea's comments, above, were so right. People are killed, bought off, or threatened. I have personally talked to inventors who have described this. I know changes are coming. I hope David Wilcock is right.
Tesla's works were stolen by the US after his "death". Dr. Wilhelm Reich's books and research were burned in incinerators. Dr. Royal Rife's microscopes and research were stolen and sabotaged and he died a broken man. In the fifties, Reich died in prison 8 months post. incarceration. More recently many microbiologists were hastened along into the next life via "extreme sanction". Too much info regarding germ warfare. Related to that, Gates is backing vaccinations, genetic engineering, etc. We all are being hastened along. I guess the extraterrestrials are in control and want us all to die? We have been systematically poisoned in mind and body.
March 08, 2012 6:06pm
"Mind-boggling"? It's f**king criminal. Radiation kills, nuclear energy development will cost tens of billions of dollars for every new reactor, and nothing has been accomplished to address waste disposal -- other than dumping radioactive water into the ocean and killing the marine environment. Meanwhile, more people die of cancer every year, yet we're told that radiation and pollution have nothing to do with that! Radiation kills, and those who prescribe the release of increasing amounts of the lethal by-products of nuclear fission are murderers. Obama and the rest of his disgusting ilk should be the first to die in the next nuclear "accident" -- it's just a matter of time before the planet becomes a huge nuclear waste dump.
March 08, 2012 5:29pm
After watching a video called:Thrive and then reading a book called: The Source Field Investigations... I found proof yet 'AGAIN' of how free energy is suppressed. I read that at a Zurich conference, Dr. Brian O'Leary revealed a wealth of info suggesting "free energy" devices have been invented, again and again, but are invariable suppressed by corporate power brokers.
"According to Dr. O'Leary, some researchers are bought off and their discoveries put on a shelf. Others are threatened into submission ,while others die under strange circumstances. Dr. Stefan Marinov-head of "the European free energy movement" --allegedly jumped to his death from the 10th story of the library building at the University of Graz in Austria! Marinov flew out the window 'backward and left no suicide note!"
Dr. Eugene Mallove,was bludgeoned to death outside his parents home less then 24 hr. before he was due to go live on the air to demonstrate his free energy breakthrough device!
We all know that Dr. Nikola Tesla work was "shut-down" as well. (sigh)
David Wilcock wrote: "Man's answer to everything has been POWER--Power of money, power of position, Power of wealth, Power of this, and that or the other."
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely!"
I tell ya...I would hate to be in the shoes of anyone who has blocked free energy at the time of their death! These sub-humans who are full of pure greed.... WILL face their own personal Karma at the end. If reincarnation does exists then it wouldn't surprised me if they don't reincarnate back as a cockroach....or worse!
March 09, 2012 3:12pm
Despite reading every "Popular Science" my Dad received growing up --- and thinking as a kid that we would be jetting about in hovercraft like the Jetson's on TV long before now --- I remain dubious of "free energy" claims and related conspiracies. I do, however, have a theory about why alternative energy, decade after decade, carries the stigma that it isn't quite "market ready" and why old energy, no matter how costly or risky, dominates. For one, the power companies and oil producers have a monopoly. For another, limited resources command higher prices. Efficiency in energy implies that consumers will spend less on heating or cooling their homes, offices and to fuel their vehicles. What type of infrastructure will a private investment firm back after they do the math? Major changes would require major investment costs whereas Wall Street is increasingly oriented on quick returns.
If the source of an alternative energy becomes more plentiful or efficient the return on the initial outlay may be modest or even small. So when it comes to energy, the most profitable source is the most limited and/or inefficient variety. If that's true, old energy will continue to represent more profit --- the less the better (not for us but for them). (That's one reason why the "peak oil" issue is so scary. Even as we are truly running out of a precious resource we may find the powers that be unwilling to change course because a lot of money stands to be made from a dwindling supply.)
What people too often forget is that the major undertakings of America's past from the railroads and interstate highway system to the space race benefited in part or in whole from government backing. The government has the ability to subsidize large-scale improvements that private investors don't wish to back because they rarely see an immediate return on long-term infrastructure projects. I don't want to see government back nuclear power because the risk-to-reward ratio doesn't add up. On the other hand, the government could play a role not in picking "winners" but by providing incentives to improve market choice, to innovate and to improve infrastructure.
March 08, 2012 4:39pm
All of that taxpayer money destined for construction of 2 new nuclear power plants in Georgia could build a lot of wind turbines in the Great Plains and off the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, and Great Lakes coasts.
March 08, 2012 4:33pm
Why do solar and wind not work?
Because scammers were set in charge with Solyndra? We haven't actually given large-scale solar and wind a chance yet. Clearly solar (Solyndra) was set up to fail. This is total lunacy.
Everything this government does (either side) seems aimed at creating a dependency, where we, the people, need them, and where they then completely ignore our wishes and kow-tow to corporations. Somehow this magic formula costs us more in terms of our environment, health, finances, freedom and future. This is all about control and nothing more.
Yes...it most definitely is " socializing the risk and privatizing the profits"
March 08, 2012 3:30pm
There's nowhere on Earth to put these poisons.
What kind of mad souls will future generations consider us, who bequeath all generations to come with the radioactive wastes whereby we poison them, their lands, their waters, long after our fat, greedy, stupid bodies have decayed?
There's nowhere on Earth to put these poisons.
March 08, 2012 3:20pm
no to nuke, coal,nat gas,hydro,geo and solar and wind do not work ..... i guess freeze in dark
March 08, 2012 6:10pm
Mindless old hat: more sustainable alternatives will work when corporations and their handmaiden federal government don't subsidize the polluters and killers in the coal, oil, and nuclear industries, and allow the alternative industries to put millions of people to work. The only problem lies in the criminal corporate conspiracy to hoard resources for the profits of a handful of corporations. Politicians who do their bidding are guilty of treason and deserve life in prison, and ignoramuses who don't see that can join them!
March 10, 2012 2:34pm
dumb ducky hackney slogans do not work unfortunatly alternative tech is not yet avail hope some day
March 08, 2012 1:06pm
"...it’s socializing the risk and privatizing the profits.”
Kind of like guaranteed bank bailouts, except instead of gambling with our money, they are gambling with our lives.
Too deadly to fail?
Thank you Amy Goodman!
OCCUPY!