Needlenose

It seems like only yesterday people were screaming “Fission, Baby Fission!”  The Media gushed over a few environmental leaders who had converted to the cause of nuclear power in the face of (or with a face full of) fossil fuel emissions warming the biosphere.   During the BP Oil Spill (anybody still remember that??) I pulled out the old crystal ball and reminded y’all about Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and mused if it would take a similar incident to remind folks of why nuclear power sucks so badly…and sadly, here we are - a couple of explosions at Japanese nuclear reactors following the ‘quake, some venting of radioactive gas, and a strong chance remaining of partial reactor core meltdown.

As a Californian in particular, I can’t help but be concerned as we have 2 similar reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon, situated not far from active fault lines.

It’s bad enough that industry and their Capitol Hill whores have been clamoring for new nukes here since the dark years of Bush’s Reign of Error, even stuffing lots of glowing pork in the awful Energy Bill ’03, but what’s worse is that they only plan to create more of the inherently dangerous ‘light water reactors,’ not the somewhat safer reactor models in which other countries are investing.  As we had already learned at Three Mile Island, the light water reactors rely on active safety systems in order to keep from melting down.  If something goes wrong, like say an earthquake forcing the plant to go offline and destroying the diesel backup generators in the process…the reactor core overheats, risking a meltdown.

I’m against nuclear power for a variety of reasons, but if we must have it shoved up our asses, at least let’s go with safer reactors as well as use heavy-metal/fast neutron reactors to burn up a larger % of the fuel and the long-lasting transuranic elements.

 

Nuclear powered car? Well not exactly, but if the Repugs get there way next year and ram their pork-laden energy bill up our orifices we may well be driving cars indirectly powered by nuclear. Many moons ago I predicted that King George the Witless’ so-called ‘hydrogen economy’ was really just a smokescreen for the “nuculer” (sic) industry. In one of those “I hate it when I’m right” moments, apparently the energy bill does exactly that – it “includes $1.1 billion to construct an atomic reactor in Idaho to produce hydrogen.” And didn’t President Pathological Liar claim that the so-called hydrogen car would be nonpolluting?”

“A public that yearns for, and has now been promised, “pollution-free” energy will be given instead something that produces plutonium, strontium, cesium and dozens of other highly toxic radioactive waste products. One can only imagine the chuckles inside the White House about the “gotcha” built into the hydrogen initiative. You environmentalists want clean hydrogen instead of oil? We’ll give you plutonium. “

Swopa laughed at me when I termed the energy bill ‘pure evil,’ but check out this next wonderful provision:

“The energy bill would also reauthorize the Price-Anderson Act, the most extraordinary piece of corporate socialist legislation in U.S. history. Price- Anderson immunizes the nuclear industry from as much as 99 percent of the liability it might face in case of a serious release of radioactivity in a major accident. This subsidy has always been difficult for nuclear advocates to explain. On the one hand, they tell the public that the technology is safe and people living near reactors have nothing to worry about — in fact, we should be building more of them. On the other hand, they tell Congress correctly that the technology is so dangerous that no insurer will accept the risks, and that unless Congress limits the public’s right to compensation for damages, the free market will bring nuclear power to a halt.”

Clean Cars? Clean Coal? Safe Nukes? Dickhead Cheney must keep 1984 on his nightstand for inspirational reading!