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Nuclear Power Is Expensive and Bad for the Environment … It’s Being Pushed Because It Is Good For Making Bombs
Forbes points out:
Nuclear power is no longer an economically viable source of new energy in the United States, the freshly-retired CEO of Exelon, America’s largest producer of nuclear power [who also served on the president’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future], said in Chicago Thursday.
And it won’t become economically viable, he said, for the forseeable future.
***
“I’m the nuclear guy,” Rowe said. “And you won’t get better results with nuclear. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.”
U.S. News and World Report notes:
After the Fukushima power plant disaster in Japan last year, the rising costs of nuclear energy could deliver a knockout punch to its future use in the United States, according to a researcher at the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment.
“From my point of view, the fundamental nature of [nuclear] technology suggests that the future will be as clouded as the past,” says Mark Cooper, the author of the report. New safety regulations enacted or being considered by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission would push the cost of nuclear energy too high to be economically competitive.
The disaster insurance for nuclear power plants in the United States is currently underwritten by the federal government, Cooper says. Without that safeguard, “nuclear power is neither affordable nor worth the risk. If the owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full liability of a Fukushima-style nuclear accident or go head-to-head with alternatives in a truly competitive marketplace, unfettered by subsidies, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build one today, and anyone who owns a reactor would exit the nuclear business as quickly as possible.”
Alternet reports:
An authoritative study by the investment bank Lazard Ltd. found that wind beat nuclear and that nuclear essentially tied with solar. But wind and solar, being simple and safe, are coming on line faster. Another advantage wind and solar have is that capacity can be added bit by bit; a wind farm can have more or less turbines without scuttling the whole project. As economies of scale are created within the alternative energy supply chains and the construction process becomes more efficient, prices continue to drop. Meanwhile, the cost of stalled nukes moves upward.
AP noted last year:
Nuclear power is a viable source for cheap energy only if it goes uninsured.
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Governments that use nuclear energy are torn between the benefit of low-cost electricity and the risk of a nuclear catastrophe, which could total trillions of dollars and even bankrupt a country.
The bottom line is that it’s a gamble: Governments are hoping to dodge a one-off disaster while they accumulate small gains over the long-term.
The cost of a worst-case nuclear accident at a plant in Germany, for example, has been estimated to total as much as €7.6 trillion ($11 trillion), while the mandatory reactor insurance is only €2.5 billion.
“The €2.5 billion will be just enough to buy the stamps for the letters of condolence,” said Olav Hohmeyer, an economist at the University of Flensburg who is also a member of the German government’s environmental advisory body.
The situation in the U.S., Japan, China, France and other countries is similar.
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“Around the globe, nuclear risks — be it damages to power plants or the liability risks resulting from radiation accidents — are covered by the state. The private insurance industry is barely liable,” said Torsten Jeworrek, a board member at Munich Re, one of the world’s biggest reinsurance companies.
***
In financial terms, nuclear incidents can be so devastating that the cost of full insurance would be so high as to make nuclear energy more expensive than fossil fuels.
***
Ultimately, the decision to keep insurance on nuclear plants to a minimum is a way of supporting the industry.
“Capping the insurance was a clear decision to provide a non-negligible subsidy to the technology,” Klaus Toepfer, a former German environment minister and longtime head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said.
This is an ongoing battle, not ancient history. As Harvey Wasserman reports:
The only two US reactor projects now technically under construction are on the brink of death for financial reasons.
If they go under, there will almost certainly be no new reactors built here.
***
Georgia’s double-reactor Vogtle project has been sold on the basis of federal loan guarantees. Last year President Obama promised the Southern Company, parent to Georgia Power, $8.33 billion in financing from an $18.5 billion fund that had been established at the Department of Energy by George W. Bush. Until last week most industry observers had assumed the guarantees were a done deal. But the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group, has publicly complained that the Office of Management and Budget may be requiring terms that are unacceptable to the builders.
***
The climate for loan guarantees has changed since this one was promised. The $535 million collapse of Solyndra prompted a rash of angry Congressional hearings and cast a long shadow over the whole range of loan guarantees for energy projects. Though the Vogtle deal comes from a separate fund, skepticism over stalled negotiations is rising.
So is resistance among Georgia ratepayers. To fund the new Vogtle reactors, Southern is forcing “construction work in progress” rate hikes that require consumers to pay for the new nukes as they’re being built. Southern is free of liability, even if the reactors are not completed. Thus it behooves the company to build them essentially forever, collecting payment whether they open or not.
All that would collapse should the loan guarantee package fail.
Bad for the Environment
Alternet points out:
Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at the Vermont Law School … found that the states that invested heavily in nuclear power had worse track records on efficiency and developing renewables than those that did not have large nuclear programs. In other words, investing in nuclear technology crowded out developing clean energy.
Many experts also say that the “energy return on investment” from nuclear power is lower than many other forms of energy. In other words, non-nuclear energy sources produce more energy for a given input.
And decentralizing energy production and storage is the real solution for the environment … not building more centralized nuclear plants.
BBC notes:
Building the [nuclear] power station produces a lot of CO2 ….
Nuclear power … would do nothing directly to reduce CO2 from transport ….
Indeed, an International Forum on Globalization report – written by environmental luminaries Ernest Callenback, Gar Smith and Jerry Mander – have slammed nuclear power as catastrophic for the environment:
Nuclear energy is not the “clean” energy its backers proclaim. For more than 50 years, nuclear energy has been quietly polluting our air, land, water and bodies—while also contributing to Global Warming through the CO2 emissions from its construction, mining, and manufacturing operations. Every aspect of the nuclear fuel cycle—mining, milling, shipping, processing, power generation, waste disposal and storage—releases greenhouse gases, radioactive particles and toxic materials that poison the air, water and land. Nuclear power plants routinely expel low-level radionuclides into the air in
the course of daily operations.While exposure to high levels of radiation can kill within a matter of days or weeks, exposure to low levels on a prolonged basis can damage bones and tissue and result in genetic damage, crippling long-term injuries, disease and death.
David Swanson – discussing the report – writes:
The energy put into mining, processing, and shipping uranium, plant construction, operation, and decommissioning is roughly equal to the energy a nuclear plant can produce in its lifetime. In other words, nuclear energy does not add any net energy.
Not counted in that calculation is the energy needed to store nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years.
Also not counted is any mitigation of the relatively routine damage done to the environment, including human health, at each stage of the process.
***
Nuclear energy is not an alternative to energies that increase global warming, because nuclear increases global warming. When high-grade uranium runs out, nuclear will be worse for CO2 emissions than burning fossil fuels. And as global warming advances, nuclear becomes even less efficient as reactors must shut down to avoid overheating.
Good for Making Bombs
If nuclear energy is expensive and bad for the environment, why is it being pushed so heavily? And why did the Fukushima reactors use plutonium – instead of just uranium? We need a little background to understand the answers.
Virtually all of the nuclear reactors in the U.S. are of the same archaic design as those at Fukushima. This design was not chosen for safety reasons. Rather, it was chosen because it worked in Navy submarines, and produces plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
Indeed, safer designs – such as thorium reactors – were left on the shelf because they don’t produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for 50 years in order to protect the nuclear plant production of weapons-grade nuclear material. They have also suppressed the findings of their own top scientists about the health risks of radiation. Indeed, “nuclear regulators” are really just promoters for the nuclear cycle.
As veteran investigative reporter Joseph Trento – who has received six Pulitzer nominations, worked for CNN’s Special Assignment Unit, the Wilmington News Journal, and prominent journalist Jack Anderson – notes in a new report, the U.S. circumvented national and international laws to secretly give Japan nuclear weapons:
The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.
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[Japan] has used its electrical utility companies as a cover to allow the country to amass enough nuclear weapons materials to build a nuclear arsenal larger than China, India and Pakistan combined. This deliberate proliferation by the United States fuels arguments by countries like Iran that the original nuclear powers engage in proliferation despite treaty and internal legal obligations.
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That secret effort was hidden in a nuclear power program that by March 11, 2011– the day the earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant – had amassed 70 metric tons of plutonium. Like its use of civilian nuclear power to hide a secret bomb program, Japan used peaceful space exploration as a cover for developing sophisticated nuclear weapons delivery systems.
Political leaders in Japan understood that the only way the Japanese people could be convinced to allow nuclear power into their lives was if a long line of governments and industry hid any military application. For that reason, a succession of Japanese governments colluded on a bomb program disguised as innocent energy and civil space programs.
***
Until the March 2011 tragedy, the Japanese nuclear industry had largely remained hidden from critical eyes. The less than thorough InternationA nuclear-armed Japan would relieve much of the drain on American military resources. The need to keep two divisions on the ground in Korea, as well as nuclear armed ships and aircraft in the Pacific as a hedge against China and the missile bases in the Soviet Far East detracted from the Pentagon’s chief mission – preparing for all-out war on the plains of Central Europe. The Reagan administration’s strategy was to push the Soviet war machine until it broke, taking the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes with it. The less than thorough International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s proliferation safeguard agency, also turned a blind eye.
In a rare glimpse of a Japanese industry that has remained top secret for so many decades, our investigation raises serious concerns about Japanese and Western nuclear policies and the officials who shaped those policies during and after the Cold War. International corporations and officials sacrificed the safety and security of the public to carry out the deception. Under the guise of a peaceful nuclear power program, they made huge profits.
***
Both the Monju fast-breeder reactor in 1995 and the Tokai reprocessing plant in April 1997 suffered serious, accidental radiation leaks; both accidents were the subjects of attempted cover-ups. Most egregious was the fire and leak of radioactive sodium at the Monju FBR. Japan’s Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC), the government corporation that operated Monju, lied repeatedly to the public about the accident. PNC attempted to suppress video footage that showed the cause of the accident: a ruptured pipe in a secondary cooling system that had spilled an estimated two to three tons of radioactive sodium – the largest such leak in the history of fast-breeder technology. One of the reasons PNC gave for releasing the misinformation was that Monju was too important to Japan’s energy program to jeopardize the reactor’s operation. In other words, the public’s safety was secondary to the breeder program.
Had it not been for a courageous act by a group of Fukui prefecture officials in the early morning of December 11, PNC’s attempted cover-up probably would have succeeded. Suspecting a cover-up, the officials entered the plant and secured the videotape. The action came as a direct result of a previous accident at Fukui’s Tsuruga Unit I reactor in the early 1980s. Fukui prefecture officials were not permitted to investigate that mishap. When the Monju accident took place, the officials were determined not to be turned away a second time. Following revelations that the agency itself had been involved in trying to withhold the video, a PNC executive committed suicide.
***
The Fukushima nuclear disaster was not Japan’s first close call with nuclear weapons grade plutonium. Japan came very close to contaminating the Chilean coast on March 20, 1995, when the Pacific Pintail, laden with enough waste plutonium to build hundreds of nuclear bombs, tried to head into the protection of Chilean waters during a storm [with] 40-foot waves crashing over her bow, the spray flying away horizontally in the storm. He was in the midst of an Antarctic gale off Cape Horn at the tip of South America – the deadliest ocean in the world….
BBC notes:
A veteran of the nuclear industry wrote this: “What the industry needs to regain the support of the British public is… something akin to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”
It needs to be admitted that governments and industry lied to the public about the links with the military programme” ….
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god bless george!!!! you hit another home run and remain perhaps the most important commentator on public affairs in the nation.
as a former diehard nuclear advocate i have to swallow a lot of crow in the aftermath of fukushima and am ashamed that it took a disaster to see the errors of my ways....
and thank you for pointing out the bomb considerations of which i had been formerly oblvious...
george, you are a national treasure....thank you again and again!
I heard on DemoracyNow that some guy named Gorbachov(?) said in his book that it wasn't Afghanistan that destroyed the SU, it was Chernobyl.
Well, at least the portion of U.S. debt owed to Japan will be cancelled.
I heard on DemoracyNow that some guy named Gorbachov(?) said in his book that it wasn't Afghanistan that destroyed the SU, it was Chernobyl.
While it was likely both, I doubt somehow Gorbachev (or Democracy Now, lol) can be deemed an unbiased source.
In reality, many things brought down the USSR, mainly corruption & central planning, which instigated many of the other things (currency crisis, Chernobyl, Afghanistan, etc.).
Can We Say Free Radicals boys and girls?
Can We say Mutant Viruses? boy and girls?
Can we say, "Mutant boys and girls?"
Yup.
Nuclear can be the future too. This site is becoming a doomsday prophet freakshow...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/feb/09/accelerator-nuclear-reactor
Apparently no-one took the effort to actually READ the article I linked to.
The article CLEARLY describes a way to have nuclear with minimal waste production, and no uncontrollable chain reaction possibility.
IT DOES NOT USE NUCLEAR FUEL
This is what this blog is becoming, a bunch of trolls.
you can always let your brain cells rot watching FOX! Besides, after Chernobyl and Fukishima, oh come on it's time for all of the little boys and girls to wake up for a REALITY check...
After Fulishima, with 25,000 drowned, you'd think the risk of living on an ocean near a major techtonic fault would outweigh the risk of building more nuclear power plants. I don't recall mass evacuations of California since either the 2011 or the 2004 tsunami disaster. Rather, Cali a lifeboat for evacuees from Mexico and Asia. The obsession with the Fukishima disaster that was, in human toll, trivial compared to the tsunami deaths in Japan and earlier in Indonesia entertains me to no end. People are willing to put up with certain background risks in life, and there's no such thing as perfectly safe. The question is what is the more risky in the long term, nuclear power development or remaining dependent on fossil fuels?
With about 40 years left, tops, it really doesn't matter. Build 'em like crazy, eliminate safety requirements, who cares? We're off the cliff now, might as well light up the disco.
People worry about SFP #4. Waaay too late for that to make any difference at all.
THANK YOU! There is apparently at least one other reasonable person here besides me, and that gives me hope.
I think the explanation here is that people tend to focus too much on very unlikely catastrophic risks, because it gives them a "doom-boner". And people like dressing up and playing with their "doom-boner".
QUOTE: Do we pay too much to avoid minuscule risks? Yes, according to a new study "Overreaction to Fearsome Risks," published recently in the journal Environmental and Resource Economics. The study finds that "in the face of a low-probability fearsome risk, people often exaggerate the benefits of preventive, risk-reducing or ameliorative measures." Consequently, the researchers find that "in both personal life and politics, the result is damaging overreactions to risks," says Ronald Bailey, Reason Magazine's science correspondent.
Risk implies one 'may or may not' suffer from something dangerous.
There is no risk from Fukushima. There is no 'may or may not'. We are all exposed to the radionuclides in our environment. The levels are lethal, and increasing daily.
There's no risk here. Now it's only the timetable of cancer, for every living thing on the planet.
"very unlikely catastrophic risks"
you're obviously not an actuary
Oh, here we go with the risk bullshit. Look, I've read chemical industry memos that state, point blank, that one of the useful techniques for altering debates over chemical safety is to use people's lack of understanding of risk assessment.
My experience with examining risk assessments is that immediate risks: things like skiing accidents, car accidents, and household accidents are fairly common events, but the costs are usually limited to small numbers and are acute, meaning, that the costs show up when the event happens: broken leg, whatever. But for nuclear accidents, the risk is unknown in time and space, and this very fact leads towards risk assessments that inadequately address costs over the long term. So you cannot make the claim that we pay too much to avoid low-probability events because the costs are completely externalized onto the population, liability is legally limited, and the effects are largely hidden as increased cancers and mortality. A more honest valuing of risk would recognize that many, if not all costs of nuclear plants over the long term are paid almost exclusively by the populations effected. Please don't try to tell me that actuarians are incapable of properly determining financial risk; those folks said: too risky. So who is the fool here? Who is mispricing the risk?
One problem with the paper's claim as applied to the nuclear industry is that nuclear accidents aren't low-probability. We have 3 known meltdowns, and 2 extremely serious ones in only about 60 years of the industry, and by my reckoning, with all the nuclear plants sitting on the edge of oceans and located on or near fault zones, this means there are a good number of accidents just waiting to happen. You want to focus on the probability of the event, but it is the costs of the event that need to be taken into consideration. There are no technologies more dangerous than nuclear, hence the inability to properly insure the plants for the true cost of an accident. This fact, by itself, should have disqualified the entire nuclear industry, but here we see that what governments really wanted was nuclear weapons.
Additionally, we are spending more than a trillion dollars pa in the military, DHS, TSA, and all the other alphabet agencies that are supposedly required to protect ourselves from "terrorists," yet where is the freaking risk there? You are more likely to get hit by lightning than dying of a terrorist attack, so you tell me who is paying too much to avoid miniscule risks?
>>>The question is what is the more risky in the long term, nuclear power development or remaining dependent on fossil fuels?<<<
If SFP #4 comes down, we will likely find out in the short term just how dangerous nuclear power development is.
Yes, people are willing to put up with a number of "natural" as in "natural disaster" background risks....but, there is nothing "natural" about man-made nuclear power plants.
false two options
The discrepency of concern level is obvious when you consider that the Fukushima nuclear disaster happens slowly and is not over. Plus the future of nuclear power is controlled by human beings, but tsunamis are not.
I get it traditional nuclear power plants are bad.....but we need energy and lots of it, so why is no one proposing to build a thorium plant?
If they're safer, cheaper, and less waste WTF are we waiting for????
Obama claims to hate nuclear weapons and wants to get rid of them, the MF believes in man caused global warming, so why isn't the idiot-in-chief trying to build any of these things????
Lets get it done.....
Doing anything that would actually make the lives of the average American better is not consistent with his vision of the future. That may explain it.
Japan has a life expectancy of about 5-7 years.
We on the NA West Coast have about 10 years on the outside.
The whole human race has about 40 years, tops, before we run out of babies that can reproduce.
Now, what are the efficiencies and timelines of thorium NPP construction?
Gw is a shill for big coal
THORIUM fission reactions is the answer.
No nuclear waste remnants because half lives are so short.
AND, we have Thorium.
Uranium was used because the government was trying to kill two birds with one stone...create electricity AND create material for nuclear weapons.
Coal, nuclear, fracking and oil suck. Thorium and microgeneration are much better ....
local microgeneration of electricity is the only thing that makes sense. no transmission loss, ingenuity, capitalism, lower risk, adaption to the local energy source, sustainable....
Decentralized will undoibtedly include coal & natural gas, especially where those resources are plentiful. As long as costs aren't externalized, who cares?
Thorium can be found in coal and coal ash from the burning of coal.
Thorium can be REFINED from coal, and then the coal can be converted into LIQUID MOTOR FUEL!!!
Japan would be stupid not to be pursuing nuclear weapons. Same with Australia. As US power wanes, those countries are going to be alone in China's sphere of influence without their sugar daddy protection.
The question is, will countries devastated by nuclear radiation have any real reason to fight each other? Depleted armies, depleted resources, the weak fighting the weak, for what? More radiated land, more radiated food and water? The goals change when everyone is dying.
It'll be interesting.
Fluoride got added to water due to its use in Nuclear weapons.
"The Manhattan Project needed fluoride to enrich uranium . That’s how they did it. The biggest industrial building in the world, for a time, was the fluoride gaseous diffusion plant in Tennessee the Manhattan Project and Dr. Hodge as the senior toxicologist for the Manhattan Project, were scared stiff less that workers would realize that the fluoride they were going to be breathing inside these plants was going to injury them and that the Manhattan Project, the key — the key of U.S. Strategic power in the Cold War Era, would be jeopardized because the Manhattan Project and the industrial contractors making the atomic bomb would be facing all these l lawsuits from workers, all these lawsuits from farmers living around these industrial plants and so Harold Hodge assures us that fluoride is safe and good for children."
Fluoridation of water started after World War 2 - safe for children it was claimed.
"While the benefits of fluoridation have been held to be unquestionable, accumulating evidence points to a frightening prospect: that fluoride may have serious adverse health effects, including infant mortality, congenital defects and IQ."
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/17/the_fluoride_deception_how_a_nuclear
what better way to ague that those exposed to the Fl at the Manhattan project were no more exposed to anyone who was exposed to fluorodated water or toothpaste. To hide in plain sight.
This is a common tactic used by industries to hide the negative health outcomes from their products/waste. Another example was the widespread prescriptions of diethylstilbestrol to millions of pregnant women, and at the same time adding the chemical to the feed of >70% of meat animals in the US from the '50s to the '70s. In doing this, they eliminated any control groups and therefore the tools of epidemiology were rendered completely ineffective.
Thanks for highlighting this tactic, because it's used by many industries to protect their profits by enabling them to externalize the costs.
"Santilli?s method consists in certain resonating means which stimulate the decay of nuclei which are naturally unstable. Once decayed in a radiation protective environment (such as the pools of current nuclear power plants), the resulting ?debris? are constituted by light, natural and stable elements, which, as such, do not constitute a threat to society. In this way, radioactive waste with meanlife of tens of thousands of years can be stimulated to decay into stable elements in short periods of time depending on the intensity of the resonating means, and can be of the order of minutes per pellet of radioactive waste. Santilli?s equipment is sufficiently small to be used by nuclear power plants, thus avoiding completely the transportation to a common dump. In particular, while the latter transportation would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to taxpayers, Santilli?s equipment is expected to be purchased by the nuclear power plants for future operations, thus avoiding a massive public expenditure.
Santilli?s recycling method has an unquestionable credibility, since the studies were initiated in 1978 at Harvard University under DOE financial support; the studies were then published in major refereed journals quoted in the references below; and the method has been confirmed by direct experiments also outlined below.
Despite that, according to documentation available to qualified observers, Santilli?s method for the recycling of radioactive nuclear waste via its stimulated decay has been STRONGLY OPPOSED by politicians and scientists alike. The strongest documented opposition has been that in the U.S.A. and the DGXII Division of the European Community in Bruxelles, which went to extreme of opposing first, and then disrupting an international conference in the field under organization by the Institute for Basic Research which was intended to be attended by the best minds in the field from all over the world, As of today, it has been impossible to organize such a conference, while thousands of other, comparatively irrelevant international conference are fully supported in the U.S.A. and Europe. Oppositions to Santilli?s method of waste recycling also exist in the politics of many other countries.
The reason for this incredible opposition by politicians is evident to all, and it is given by the loss of the immense political gains originating from the granting of the various contracts for hundreds of billions of dollars for the transportation and storage of the waste. All these huge political gains would be evident eliminated for Santilli?s recycling method since its equipment would be purchased by the nuclear power plants and the recycling would be done in the pools of current nuclear reactors...."
Wow, this is amazing information. Good work GW.
I am apalled.
Secrets and Lies = the State
The same reason (bomb making) is behind the Volt.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230444460457733770412087218... - GM worker injured in battery explosion
No insurance company on the planet is able to cover the liability involved with nuclear power. Nuclear power plants were first put up the USA for national security reasons connected to the cold war agenda. Clean cheap energy was just the cover story. This is why we use highly unstable enriched fuels or the alternatives, and it is also why governments sign off and take on the liability. Even with this liability not being figured into the cost for nuclear there are more efficient ways to get energy and have more bang for buck (hydro, geothermal, wind, ocean).
Good luck Germany on getting completely off of nuclear power. Hopefully a few more of us will figure out how to do the same. Keep your nutrients stocked up, especially iodine, magnesium, potassium and calcium. The more deficient you are the more susceptible to radiation sickness and cancer you will be. The radiation attacks the thyroid glands, if you just got rained on and feel swollen under you ears you should purge. Biggest danger is breathing in the particles.
After NASA sent those five rockets up my Geiger spiked to over 600cpm during the first rain afterward (about 10 days ago in NYC). A typical reading is between 10 - 20 cpm. Start growing inside if you can, if not buy indoor grown.
"No insurance company on the planet is able to cover the liability involved with nuclear power."
Exactly. And that's why central planning is literally killing us now.
You make great sense but GW's article Japan is Poisoning Other Countries By Burning Highly-Radioactive Debris
has me even more concerned--will taking those supplements be able to overcome what is going on?
The original event was catastrophic on its own but the Japanese are EXACERBATING the problem to On the Beach proportions, see the film with Gregory Peck
Laddie it is a huge problem. Most scientist agree that no amount of radiation is safe. It is like playing Russian roulette with every particle that you may ingest. If your body is malnourished you are more susceptible to contaminates than if not. Either way you are going to piss most of it out of your system, its the part you don't piss out thats the worry.
Speaking of beaches. Bikini Island is a good case study. It is a tropical paradise and you could spend a lot of time scanning for radiation and find nothing. Still radioactive particles are in the vegetation on the island and fish in the area are mutated from nuclear testing 50 years ago.
http://www.bikiniatoll.com/facts.html
I don't know of a case study where nuclear contaminants got into the food and water supply and recovered. Japan maybe before this incident from WWII, I am not sure I would trust those numbers. Maybe from a ZH'r.
And the bomb testing was a rather short series of one-time events. Fuku has been puking radiation 24/7/365 at extinction levels since 3/11/2011.
This is an ELE in slow motion.
Exactly. We've been indoctrinated by Hollywood to imagine this sort of thing happening immediately. But even in a full-out nuclear war, everyone on the planet doesn't just drop dead. I'm not sure what ELE levels are (and I don't think anyone else knows), but it's definitely another few nails in the coffin.
Or read the book which is even sadder. The japanese shot themselves in the foot with nuclear power/weaponry. In a couple decades there might be no more Japan, and that's the "oshimai". I've spent 10 years learning a language that might end up erradicated from earth. I feel like someone loaded on debt paper after the deluge.
The Fedz have a financial system that lets the Nuke Industry walk away with guaranteed profits and no liability while students cannot escape their college loans even past the grave.
simple and true...I thought the Japanese had shunned nuclear weaponry. sadly that is not the case. once the reports on Fukushima exposed what was going on at their plants the implications were obvious.
this was posted here yesterday...
thanks again George.
I posted it here and sent the link to GW because I thought it needed more exposure than a post in the comment section of ZH.
I have to admit, I was surprised to learn about this secret program. Of course, now that I know some of the history, the facts (a constant string of lies and omissions) coming out of Fukushima make a lot more sense. People have argued for years that nuclear was supported primarily due to their ability to produce weapons material, but the nuclear shills drowned out that message in the MSM. This time they got caught with their pants down, and are now shown to be pathological liars and evidently megalomaniacal as well.
Narcissistic psychopaths. The worst there is.
another government hoodwinking the public. Fascist bastards are running the world.
Or maybe Gen4energy (formerly Hyperion Power Generation) SMR plug & play.
GW,
Fukushima. Please stop. Yes Fukushima is bad. But to point to it being the "knockout" punch is an assertion only an idiot in an ivory tower could assert.
The real reason.
Fracking.
All the rest of your cited "reasons" are utter BS that existed in the past and didn't "knockout" the nuke industry.
Seriously, you must be the token conspiracy-green wacko on ZH.