Spintested: 05/19/10

Deepwater Horizon Inspections: MMS Skipped Monthly Inspections On Doomed Rig

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

I'll bet you didn't know about this:

The recent (2005) heat-related disaster in France, the most heavily nuclear dependent nation on earth, illustrates a serious flaw in expecting nuclear reactors to either "help" reverse global warming, or even more immediately, be available when most needed during heat-related emergencies (when demand for electricity is greatest).

During the French heat wave, 5,000 died from heat-related causes. The problem was so severe, and France so desperate for electricity to continue its economy and any modicum of cooling that the government allowed reactors to operate past known temperature safety limits, and discharge water into rivers in excess of allowable temperatures.

In other words they risked nuclear accident and the thermal death of their rivers to keep electricity on. The reason for the problem was not only the recent record setting temperatures, but also the fact that the accompanying drought had drastically reduced river water volumes and flow-rates. The hot discharge water was not able to dilute either heat or "allowable levels" of radionuclides, as per operating regulations.
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How are the Japanese doing nuclear?

Like everybody else, the Japanese are doing nuclear badly.

They have a reprocessing plant that's been closed down because of fire and explosion, have had nuclear power plant accidents (the Japanese people aren't very happy about nuclear), and I understand that France and Great Britain reprocess or recover plutonium from Japan's nuclear waste.

Japan is building another reprocessing plant, planning "deep geological burial", but that could mean they'll continue to dump it in the ocean (everybody's doing it) or hopes on some crevice or Yucca. Treaties like NAFTA allow for other nations to dump in the US, and given how we're being driven into bankruptcy, it won't be long before we're a third world nation and the 'Bikini Island' for our creditors.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/japan/nuke/

http://www.greenaction-japan.org/modules/english0/index.php?id=8

http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0413.shtml

Reprocessed nuclear waste shipment to pass by Philippine waters:

http://japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/5396/index.php
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Then there's India.

Holding India out as some paragon for nuclear is amusing (India's nuclear power plants generally leak three times the norm) considering that India currently has one nuclear plant literally built on eroding sands at the ocean (Madras Atomic Power Station located at Kalpakkam).

Since we're talking about fires, here, thorium oftens ignites spontaneously in air. It also decays very slowly compared to many other radioactive materials. Exposure can lead to increased risk of cancers of the lung, pancreas and blood, as lungs and other internal organs, as well as increased risk of liver diseases.

I'm old enough to remember this same sort of enthusiastic sales pitch the first time around, based on nothing but hope and a desire to have taxpayers pay for a technology that was unproved as safe (but that didn't stop anyone from touting it as such).

The same is true for thorium. With thorium reactors come a whole new set of (as yet) insolvable problems (for instance, the fuel needs special containers that are extremely durable and can stand up to corrosive salts, but such a system has yet to be proven over decades). But that hasn't stopped people like you from a gung-ho support based on nothing but youthful exuberance.
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/talk/nci.html
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Why Is the Nuclear Power Industry in Trouble?

Frontline: Irrational public fears have strangled a clean

source of limitless electricity.

Response: Nuclear power has been done in by its inability to compete economically with other sources of electricity---a situation that will become even more apparent in the United States as the electricity market is deregulated. Plutonium fuels are even less competitive---MOX fuel costs about four to eight times more than standard, low-enriched uranium fuel. Reprocessing, far from solving the waste problem, creates much more waste than that contained in spent fuel (including the reprocessing plant itself and all waste it produces), and puts nuclear waste into a less manageable form than spent fuel.

The producers of "Nuclear Reaction" ignored or distorted the most significant problems of nuclear power and plutonium recycle--- safety hazards, proliferation risks, and an inability to compete economically despite billions of dollars in federal subsidies. These problems disprove their main thesis that irrational fear is what threatens nuclear power in the United States. Public fear and rejection of nuclear power are not only rational but sensible.
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Frontline: The Carter Administration took the United States off the plutonium recycle path in the 1970s based on irrational "concerns that plutonium would end up in the wrong hands."

Response: Plutonium proliferation and terrorism risks cannot be dismissed so quickly. Less than 15 pounds of plutonium-- -about the size of an orange---is enough to build a nuclear bomb that could destroy a city. A group of former U.S. nuclear weapons designers, in a study for the Nuclear Control Institute, concluded that terrorists would be capable of building such a bomb using reactor-grade plutonium of the sort separated out by commercial reprocessing plants. Further, it is technically impossible to safeguard plutonium bulk-handling facilities, such as spent-fuel reprocessing and MOX fuel-fabrication plants, that process plutonium by the ton. Unavoidable measurement uncertainty means that knowledgeable insiders could beat the accounting system and remove significant quantities from the plants, perhaps via the unsafeguarded low-level waste stream. [For detailed analysis of these proliferation risks, see studies by Paul Leventhal and Marvin Miller, and the plutonium section on our "What's New" page.]
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Frontline: Plutonium recycling would eliminate the need for a permanent geological repository for nuclear waste. Instead, scientists in a high-tech underground "nuclear waste laboratory" would use new technologies to transmute plutonium and other waste into less harmful substances.

Response: As noted above, recycling does not eliminate plutonium in spent fuel, or even the need for a permanent spent- fuel repository. Eventually, spent MOX fuel, like standard, spent low-enriched uranium fuel, will require permanent disposal in a >repository. "Transmutation" remains a pipe dream that looks less promising the more it is studied. Even if it is ever proven successful, transmutation would require thousands of years and hundreds of reactor cycles, and still would not eliminate all plutonium and other actinides.
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Frontline: Recycling plutonium eliminates its long-term hazards, whereas spent fuel perpetuates the risk for hundreds of thousands of years.

Response: Recycling plutonium does not "burn it up" or even reduce it significantly. Only about one-third of the plutonium in a MOX fuel element is fissioned when irradiated in a conventional nuclear reactor. And plutonium cannot be reprocessed and recycled indefinitely until eliminated: after three or four cycles (and perhaps only after one or two cycles), the plutonium is too degraded to be re-used. Eventually, even with large-scale plutonium recycling, large amounts of plutonium will remain in spent fuel, and that spent fuel will have to be placed in a repository. So, Frontline's suggestion that reprocessing and recycling eliminate the need for a waste repository is fallacious.
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Frontline: Unlike the United States, most nations that utilize nuclear power reprocess their spent fuel and recycle plutonium. Examples include France and Japan.

Response: To the contrary, most nuclear-industrial nations have abandoned plans for spent-fuel reprocessing, plutonium recycling, and breeder reactors. Even France and Japan, two of the few remaining plutonium stalwarts, have put their breeder reactor programs on hold, and are slowing down their reprocessing rograms. Britain, the other principal purveyor of plutonium, has cancelled its breeder and has no domestic plutonium program to speak of, because only one of its power-plants is suitable for using MOX fuel. The introduction of plutonium-uranium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel in conventional light-water reactors is proceeding very slowly.
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Plutonium Fuel

Frontline: Plutonium is not "the most toxic substance known to man." A piece of paper can stop its radiation, and ingesting small amounts poses little danger.

Response: Plutonium is highly carcinogenic, and debates about whether it is the most carcinogenic or toxic man-made substance miss the point. It is surely among the deadliest, on a par with the military nerve gas, sarin. The greatest health risk from plutonium is not external exposure, but inhalation. Deposited in the lungs, even a few micrograms (millionths of a gram) of plutonium are sufficient to cause cancer. The nuclear-power industry in Europe and Japan processes plutonium by the ton. How can a sheet of paper stop a microscopic plutonium particle from irradiating lung tissue? Ingesting plutonium is also dangerous because lethal quantities will migrate to bone marrow and cause cancer. To suggest otherwise is irresponsible. Perhaps that is why Professor Bernard Cohen did not offer on Frontline, as he has done in past public appearances, to drink plutonium to prove it is safe. Someone might actually take him up on his offer.
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However, even if the cancers prove "curable," it is highly offensive to suggest, as Rhodes does, that the suffering and expense involved in the treatment of thousands of children is a reasonable price to pay for the "benefits" of nuclear power. Similarly, Frontline dismisses the increased cancer incidence among survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki as insignificant. Yet, the 500 additional cancer fatalities among survivors of the atomic bombings still represent a six percent increase over what would normally be expected.
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Frontline: Nuclear-power opponents overstate the impact of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Only 31 people died. Some children got thyroid cancer, but it's curable. Even the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings resulted in only a slight increase in long- term cancer risk.

Response: The official Soviet figure of 31 deaths from Chernobyl, more propaganda than science, is universally rejected as far too low. It reflects only short-term deaths from acute radiation poisoning. More recent and realistic assessments suggest that long-term fatalities will number in the tens of thousands. Richard Rhodes should have taken Frontline's camera to Belarus to record the large number of radiation-induced illnesses that are in evidence there. What he would have found is that, as of April 1996, 680 cases of thyroid cancer have been confirmed in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia since the Chernobyl accident, and the number of new cases has risen annually. In some regions of Belarus, the incidence of thyroid cancer in children has increased by a factor of 200 since the accident. Experts on the scene have observed that the type of cancers being seen are "unusually aggressive, often with prominent local invasion and distant metasteses ... this has made the treatment of these children less successful than expected ..."
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Frontline: Nuclear power does not pose a radiation health threat to the public because it creates far less exposure than such natural "background" sources as cosmic rays and radon.

Response: The question is not how much background radiation exists, or how much higher it is than normal nuclear power plant emissions, but how dangerous is the additional man-made exposure above background. There is a scientific consensus, reflected in international radiation guidelines, that the danger from low-level radiation is linear: each additional exposure creates a proportionally increased risk of cancer, and small increases in risk to individuals can accumulate to large increases for the total population. Frontline's logical fallacy should be obvious: the fact that indoor radon and cosmic radiation can be dangerous does not mean that nuclear-power-related radiation is not. In fact, by causing exposures above those already caused by radon and other background sources, nuclear power does put the general population at greater risk.
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Nuclear Power Safety Risks

Frontline: Even in the worst case, a nuclear meltdown would not release any radiation outside the containment building.

Response: This is simply untrue. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recognizes the possibility of so-called "beyond-design-basis" ("Class 9") accidents in which steam or hydrogen explosions caused by molten fuel interacting with water could rupture the containment building and cause large radiation releases. Also, France's standardized nuclear plant design, praised by Frontline, is vulnerable to "common mode failures." A serious accident caused by a design defect in one plant could force a shutdown of all other plants of the same type and leave France with a greatly reduced capacity to generate three-quarters of its electricity. The French nuclear industry's recent large-scale distribution of potassium iodide tablets to populations around its nuclear plants---a means to reduce thyroid-cancer risk in the event of a large radiation release---went unreported by Frontline but indicates that France's confidence in its own "fail-safe" safety measures is somewhat less than total.
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Frontline: In France and Japan, citizens better understand the issues, and thus nuclear power has widespread public support.

Response: France and Japan provide their citizens far less access to a free flow of information about, and even less of a voice in, their nuclear power programs than in the United States. But even in these nuclear closed societies, support for nuclear power in general, and plutonium recycling in particular, has begun to slip in the wake of recurrent safety problems at the plutonium-fueled Superphenix fast breeder reactor in France, and serious accidents at the Monju breeder and Tokai reprocessing plant in Japan. Particularly in Japan, high officials of the government-run plutonium corporation are now being demoted and are facing criminal prosecution because of deliberate concealment and distortion of the evidence of accidents, such as filing of false reports and doctoring of videotapes. Public support based on distortions and lies is undeserved.
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Public Concerns About Nuclear Power

Frontline: Public fear of nuclear power is irrational "risk perception." Nuclear experts conduct methodical "risk analysis" and conclude that nuclear power is safe.

Response: This claim is arrogant and elitist. There is a substantial basis for the public's fears. Environmental devastation has been inflicted for the last 50 years upon dozens of the Department of Energy sites involved in the U.S. nuclear weapons program, posing potentially large threats to nearby communities. Over fifty million gallons of intensively radioactive, potentially explosive, high-level radioactive waste at the Hanford Reservation in Washington state provide stark evidence of what happens when these problems are left to the "experts." Plans to reprocess spent fuel to extract plutonium only compound the nuclear waste problem. Moreover, nuclear experts' "risk analyses" usually ignore the crucial difference between voluntary and involuntary risk. The public has virtually no say in nuclear power development and its hazards, and so is less willing to accept the involuntary risks associated with things nuclear than the voluntary risks that they choose to take in everyday life, like driving or flying.
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"Nuclear Reaction," which was aired April 22 on Public Broadcasting Service's (PBS) "Frontline," presented a grossly inaccurate picture of the safety, security and viability of the nuclear power industry. Producer Jon Palfreman and guest correspondent Richard Rhodes attempted to show that the demise of nuclear power in the United States is due to the public's irrational fears of radiation.

In fact, nuclear power's demise is attributable to the industry's poor energy economics, its inability to solve the nuclear waste problem, its determination to use bomb-usable plutonium as fuel despite obvious proliferation and terrorism risks, and the public's legitimate safety concerns following the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. "Nuclear Reaction" ignores, glosses over, or inaccurately portrays each of these issues.
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The True Cost of Nuclear Energy -

http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-photography/nuclear_cost_3481.jsp
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Chernobyl still is affecting France 20 years later. Court battles continue over whether the incidence of cancer increased due to the event. In the days following April 26, 1986, a radioactive cloud drifted over central Europe, dumping contaminated rain.

Scientists today are investigating thyroid cancer levels in Corsica, a Mediterranean island that is half French, half Italian territory. For one week the radioactive cloud hovered over Corsica. Cesium 137 levels in goats' milk reached toxic levels, but the fact was kept quiet. The French health department did not issue warnings against eating fresh produce. Today, thyroid cancer rates on Corsica are much higher than on the mainland.

Even now, French nuclear officials deny that Chernobyl is the cause of the increase in cancer rates in France.

One of the four reactors at Chernobyl, Ukraine, exploded 20 years ago today. The nuclear fuel burned for four days, spewing radioactive smoke. The toxicity was equal to 200 Hiroshima bombs. 130,000 people were evacuated.

http://www.france24.com/en/20100207-health-chernobyl-cancer-radiation-nuclear-thyroid
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What are the death rates from cancer for those living/working in counties around nuclear power plants? What are they for children, and adolescents? For young/middle-aged adults? What are the rates of thyroid cancer? Leukemia?

Let's just talk about the kids right now - The adults' numbers could fill a a few web pages.

Children's risk of cancer goes up substantially the closer they live to a nuclear power plant - http://www.naturalnews.com/023678.html
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Dramatic increase of pollution-related cancers in Southern France -

http://www.env-health.org/a/2760
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NEIS documented a similar situation in Illinois during the summer of 1988, when over 90 reactor-days of power output at several Illinois reactors were either limited to no more than 30% capacity or entirely eliminated because Illinois’ reactors would have similarly thermally polluted our rivers. Then ComEd later had to install expensive cooling baffle systems at Dresden and elsewhere to meet EPA limits for thermal discharges. The choice in 1988 was either: cut power output, or kill the rivers with excess heat and higher radionuclide concentrations (a function of water volumes).

In a real global warming world, river volumes and flow rates may even be less than what they are today, or than what France experienced this year and in Illinois in 1988. To depend on nuclear power reactors which need copious amounts of water for BOTH intake and discharge will either kill the rivers and threaten public health and safety; or will add prohibitive costs to reactors.

Better solutions exist to meet legitimate energy needs.

http://neis.org/literature/Reports&Testimonies/vulnerabilities.htm

Hot Summer Likely To Shut Down Nuclear Reactors In France:

http://neis.org/Content/Global_Warming_Shuts_French_Nukes.htm

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/

http://www.nukefree.org/

http://www.neis.org/
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The Indian Point nuclear power plant is sitting on enough contaminated soil, by federal estimates, to fill Yankee Stadium with radioactive sludge a foot deep.

Years of radioactive leaks have saturated some 1.63 million cubic feet of soil at the Westchester County plant, according to a letter from a Nuclear Regulatory Commission official to plant owner Entergy.

The leaks are from the reactor's 40-foot deep spent fuel pools that store used radioactive fuel, said John Boska, Indian Point's project manager with the NRC.

"Some of the contaminated soil may also have PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls] that leaked from large electrical transformers, which are cooled by oil which often contained PCBs," said Boska.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/bronx/2009/08/27/2009-08-27_contamination_woe_runs_deep_at_indian_point.html
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Officials at the Indian Point nuclear power plant - which has been called responsible for killing more than a billion fish each year - will have to figure out another way to cool its giant heated steam turbines, a state court has ruled.

The plant sucks in and returns more than 2.5 billion gallons of Hudson River water daily - 2 million gallons per minute - in a system that pulls in and kills fish, eggs, larvae and plant life.

The hot water flushed back into the river is fatal to some 1.2 billion fish every year, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/03/2009-07-03_judge_rules_indian_point_fishkilling_cooling_process_must_stop.html
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Indian Point has a long history of safety and security problems:

http://bigthink.com/ideas/17443
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At Indian Point Nuclear Plant:

For two days starting Nov. 2, 2009, an estimated 600,000 gallons of boiling, radioactive water escaped through a valve that was stuck open in the Unit 2 reactor of the nuclear power plant in Westchester.

The superheated water instantly turned to steam and spread out over the lower Hudson Valley in a cloud containing tritium, a cancer-causing radioactive isotope.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/12/11/2009-12-11_nuke_steam_scare_officials_insignificant_amounts_released.html#ixzz0flMBlGWy

Anytime that anyone tells you that "safe levels" of radiation were released, that person is an id-jit. Just like "clean coal", there is no such thing as a "safe" level of exposure when it comes to radiation.
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Everybody plays hot potato with nuclear waste, sending it out of their countries, somewhere else, for "reprocessing". Germany sends it to France, France sends it to the US, etc.:

http://cleantech.com/news/2162/french-nuclear-waste-being-stored-in-the-u-s
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Store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, you say?

The people of Nevada do not want nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain.

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/state01.htm

And for good reason: There is no such thing as leak-proof anything, and long-term models are just really hunches.

Transporting nuclear waste there is a huge risk and puts all states and communities along the route in harm's way, not to mention the risk from terr0rists.

It's very close to a large population center (Las Vegas).

The people of the state of Utah don't want it nuclear waste stored there (so where are all of you states' rights people?) -- And Utah has no nuclear power plants.

Rainfall patterns are changing worldwide, but the most prevalent risk is earthquake and rock fracture and leakage of both water and nuclear materials.
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It feels like a sci-fi film' - accidents tarnish nuclear dream

French nuclear companies are hoping to play a central role in the government's plan to build a new generation of reactors. At home, however, the industry has been buffeted by a series of mishaps.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/25/nuclear.industry.france

http://www.mothballmillstone.org/

http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-homes/eco-friendly/nuclear-power-cancer-breast-milk-460608

http://www.remyc.com/rockthereactors/gameplan.html
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According to many studies, the cancer rates among children living near nuclear facilities in various nations are elevated. One study which examined the US rates near the nation's 103 operating reactors determined that cancer incidence for children under 10 years old who live within 30 miles of each of 14 nuclear plants in the eastern UnitedStates (49 counties with a population over 16.8 million) exceeds the national average.

The excess 12.4% risk suggests that 1 in 9 cancers among children who reside near nuclear reactors is linked to radioactive emissions.

If cancer incidence in 5 western states is used as a baseline, the ratio is closer to 1 in 5. Incidence is particularly elevated for leukemia.

Childhood cancer mortality exceeds the national average in 7 of the 14 study areas.

http://heldref-publications.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,2,8;journal,18,19;linkingpublicationresults,1:119954,1

http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0952-4746/28/1/M01/jrp8_1_m01.pdf?request-id=ed0ff3ba-49d0-40c0-b94d-ce5ca5e8a31a

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11105.htm

http://www.radiation.org/

http://www.mediguide.com/individuals/news/the-morning-call-031107.shtml
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What are the death rates from cancer for those living/working in counties around nuclear power plants? What are they for children & adolescents? For young/middle-aged adults? What are the rates of thyroid cancer? Leukemia?

Let's just talk about the kids right now, as adults' numbers could fill a a few web pages.

Children's risk of cancer goes up substantially the closer they live to a nuclear power plant - http://www.naturalnews.com/023678.html
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Where will the waste be stored?

They do not know what in the heII they will do with the waste we produce now. And just what states will be lucky enough to receive these new nuclear waste machines?

Americans are afraid of terrorists being put on trial in our country, what do they think about 100 more nuclear plants with the production of the worst type of terror attack which might happen??

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature1/index.html

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature1/index.html

http://www.whatisnuclear.com/articles/waste.html
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The True Cost of Nuclear Energy -

http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-photography/nuclear_cost_3481.jsp
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Everybody plays hot potato with nuclear waste, sending it out of their countries, somewhere else, for "reprocessing". Germany sends it to France, France sends it to the US, etc.:

http://cleantech.com/news/2162/french-nuclear-waste-being-stored-in-the-u-s
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A little more?

Nuclear electricity is fast becoming the most expensive method for producing energy, the most dangerous. New nuclear power plants are producing far more radioactive waste than ever before, with no means to dispose of it.

Oh, and guess where this New World Order lets other countries dump their nuclear waste? Right here in the good old USA.
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There is a nuclear event/emergency/accident/situation, a radiation event/emergency/accident/situation, some kind of "H0LY CHlT!"-problem almost daily at some facility involving nuclear somewhere in the world.

These 'events' rarely are reported in mainstream media (Thanks, Corporate Media!),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_radiation_accidents

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/index.html
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Here'a a link to some NYT articles,on nuclear power - all sides of it.I haven't time to search them all tonight, but in one, I read a few months ago - there were commenters who certainly seemed to know what they were talking about, some detailing why the new generation are safer.

============================

There were commenters who "seemed" to know what they were talking about? Anonymous people's comments on what is essentially a blog? That's what you base your support for nuclear on?

Did you know that lobbyists for energy companies like BP and Exxon write those comments? Lobbying, public relations firms, craft campaigns to shape public opinion, using carefully constructed phrases to manipulate you into believing what isn't true.
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Gulf Oil Spill: Louisiana Wetlands Blanketed With BP Crude (VIDEO)

The Shop Vac technique being used by BP is a joke.

====================================

The purpose of the Shop Vac technique isn't to keep the oil gushing into the ocean, but to harvest 'clean' oil (in the center of the gusher, pure oil uncontaminated or unmixed with sea water) to sell.

Really.
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Gulf Oil Spill: Louisiana Wetlands Blanketed With BP Crude (VIDEO)

If someone came into your home and was destroying it, would you allow them to continue the activity and be in charge of clean-up?

No.

You would call in your own people, your own specialists, and give those who had destroyed it the bill.

The argument that BP should control the effort stop the oil from gushing (and subsequent clean-up) because the oil industry's employees are the sole/best experts is abzurd.

It is long past the time when Obama should have pushed BP aside and put the Army Corps of Engineers on this. When the Army Corps of Engineers is allowed to do the job, there is nobody better.

BP has no desire or incentive to stop this disaster. As a matter of fact, by destroying the entire region ecologically, BP and all pro-drilling interested parties (politicians included) can and will argue that offshore drilling increase, "since it's all ruined anyway".
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Gulf Oil Spill: Louisiana Wetlands Blanketed With BP Crude (VIDEO)

Oil has been gushing for weeks, and Bobby Jindal is just now calling for building emergency sand barriers to protect Louisiana wetlands??
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There are accidents/leaks/almost meltdowns at nuclear power facilities on an almost daily basis somewhere in the world.

The words you use to tout nuclear technology are identical to those used to promote offshore drilling and push 'clean coal'. Chernobyl, by the way, is leaking.

There is no way to guarantee nuclear's safety, and the ramifications of accidents make it out of the question.

Besides, clean and renewable energy, all that we need, is possible.
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Connecticut Senate: 2010 Election BREAKING News

It wasn't ok for Bush, and it's not ok for Blumenthal.

Apparently Blumenthal has a casual relationship with the truth in general. This wasn't just one speech where he lied. “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008.

In 2003, he addressed a rally in Bridgeport, where about 100 military families gathered to express support for American troops overseas. “When we returned, we saw nothing like this,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “Let us do better by this generation of men and women.”

He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records. The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18blumenthal.html?hp

The real question that I have is, why is the Democratic Party asleep at the wheel on vetting candidates?
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How Blanche Lincoln Tempted Fate -- And Lost

These candidates positions on the issues are Obama's positions on the issues.

You do know that Obama supported all of these people who are being challenged, voted out in the primaries, don't you?
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How Blanche Lincoln Tempted Fate -- And Lost

Insurance is NOT medical treatment.

Having insurance does NOT mean being able to get affordable quality medical care.

What about this is so hard for 0bamabots to get?

Insurance companies have already found ways around what few regulations are in this law. Medical loss ratio, for example - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd6GTgUlNWs

Obama is a t00l of the corporations, did absolutely nothing to get either single payer universal healthcare or a public option through. He actively worked AGAINST it. He didn't pressure any of the Blue Dogs or Lieberman, and there is ample evidence that Lieberman was working on Obama's behalf to k!ll Medicare expansion. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/13/barack-obama-campaign-man_n_574665.html

If you really believe that what stood in the way of a real healthcare reform bill passing was not having a filibuster-proof majority, Obama would have struck while Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. That was the reason, after all, for letting Lieberman caucus with the Democrats, giving him a committee chairmanship, after all. If real healthcare reform was what Obama was after, he wouldn't have p!ssed away that majority by stalling for time with 2 dying Democratic senators (Kennedy & Byrd).

A real healthcare reform bill didn't need Lieberman, Stupak, Lincoln, Nelson -- Reconciliation was always the way to get it done.
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How Blanche Lincoln Tempted Fate -- And Lost

It was NOT healthcare reform. To call it that is the classic definition of 'lipstick on a pig'. It does NOT move us in the direction of affordable quality medical treatment for all. It actually lays the groundwork for the end of all public healthcare, and medical care only for those who can afford it.

Democrats could have passed a public option, could have included it when the bill had to return to the House at the end, but Obama nixed it. That said everything about the man and the deal that any American who wants and needs affordable medical care needs to know: There will be no public option, no affordable quality care as long as Obama is in office. That was the deal he made with PhRma, hospitals, the AMA and insurance.

These DLCers have to be tossed out along with Republicans before there is any reform that will benefit the People.
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Ron Wyden Calls Bob Bennett's Defeat 'A Loss For The Country"

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama&Democrats want public health care. The DLC-controlled Democratic party gives lip service to public health care & all populist issues.

If the Bush years taught us nothing else, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid & relentless in your sales pitch & tactics. It's not that Bush&R0ve were geniuses & knew something that nobody else knew; Bush&R0ve were just more ruthless (clumsy & careless many political graybeards would say) in doing what politicians & the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the nomination) & the oldest, most experienced politicians in our nation's history (including the Rove machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep the impeachment of Bush&Cheney off the table & have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches&pitchforks?

Obama&Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but that they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them in spite of their failure to deliver on any of our alleged shared objectives.
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Ron Wyden Calls Bob Bennett's Defeat 'A Loss For The Country"

What our elected representatives are NOT doing is getting Americans jobs, restoring the middle class, and getting Americans affordable quality health care (which will only happen with single payer universal health care, aka Medicare For All), getting us off oil and STOPPING THE GREATEST ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER EVER.

Incidentally, the loopholes reported about the healthcare bill right after its passage (one was all children were not going to be covered immediately as had been sold to get people like you on board with accepting the bill without a public option) have still not been closed. But we were told at the time that "Congress and Obama are going to get right on that!" -- It hasn't happened.
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Ron Wyden Calls Bob Bennett's Defeat 'A Loss For The Country"

Each party uses high-priced public relations firms, with spinmeisters crafting sophisticated propaganda campaigns to con voters into believing what isn't true. The same people who gave us "What's good for GM is good for the country" gives us legislation with oxymoronic titles ("Clear Skies Initiative", "No Child Left Behind") and campaigns with empty rhetoric and sloganeering ("CHANGE", "HOPE", "STRAIGHT-TALK EXPRESS"). All calculated to convince the left and the right within each party that their party's candidate shares their positions (Obama's most ardent supporters are still split on whether he's a centrist or a liberal).

At the top of Big Businesses' shopping lists to Democrats and Republicans is "Give us more money. And if you can't do that, if you can't fool the average American voter into going along with that, then let us be able to rake it in as we've been doing."

Obama, DLC-Democrats and Republicans have been gaming our government to deliver (and to receive, by way of contributions to their campaign war chests) more of the same. At a time when reregulating, nationalizing banks, businesses and industries (OIL) is obvious to everyone, politicians and corporate media are collaborating in Kabuki theater to drive it from the front pages and off of Americans' minds.
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Ron Wyden Calls Bob Bennett's Defeat 'A Loss For The Country"

And because you do not have the courage of your convictions, we didn't even get a public option.

Voters put candidates into office to achieve their objectives.

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama&Democrats were for affordable, quality universal healthcare (which ObamaCare is not), strong regulations on banks, Wall Street, investigations, prosecutions, restitution of what has been robbed from the middle class and poor for the past 30+ years, environmental clean-up, clean, sustainable renewable energy (& that isn't nuclear), putting an end to the wars and occupation of Iraq & Afghanistan, and more. The DLC-controlled Democratic party gives lip service to these & all populist issues, because like the Republican Party, the DLC works for the benefit of transnational corporations.

DLC Democrats who control the Democratic Party and Republicans are corporate t00Is. Like siblings competing for the attention and approval (campaign contributions) of a parent, Republicans and DLC-controlled Democrats try to outdo each other in delivering for their real constituent, Big Corporations. The trick for them has been to make it seem as if they were really working on behalf of We the People.
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