Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Nuclear Power Madness
Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more disconnected from reality than ever.
Political elites are still clinging to the oxymoron of “safe nuclear power.” It’s up to us -- people around the world -- to peacefully and insistently shut those plants down.
There is no more techno-advanced country in the world than Japan. Nuclear power is not safe there, and it is not safe anywhere.
As the New York Times reported on Monday, “most of the nuclear plants in the United States share some or all of the risk factors that played a role at Fukushima Daiichi: locations on tsunami-prone coastlines or near earthquake faults, aging plants and backup electrical systems that rely on diesel generators and batteries that could fail in extreme circumstances.”
Nuclear power -- from uranium mining to fuel fabrication to reactor operations to nuclear waste that will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years -- is, in fact, a moral crime against future generations.
But syrupy rhetoric has always marinated the nuclear age. From the outset -- even as radioactive ashes were still hot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- top officials in Washington touted atomic energy as redemptive. The split atom, we were to believe, could be an elevating marvel.
President Dwight Eisenhower pledged “to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma” by showing that “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”
Even after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 -- and now this catastrophe in Japan -- the corporate theologians of nuclear faith have continued to bless their own divine projects.
Thirty years ago, when I coordinated the National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims on the edge of Capitol Hill, we heard grim testimony from nuclear scientists, workers, downwinders and many others whose lives had been forever ravaged by the split atom. Routine in the process was tag-team deception from government agencies and nuclear-invested companies.
By 1980, generations had already suffered a vast array of terrible consequences -- including cancer, leukemia and genetic injuries -- from a nuclear fuel cycle shared by the “peaceful” and military atom. Today, we know a lot more about the abrupt and slow-moving horrors of the nuclear industry.
And we keep learning, by the minute, as nuclear catastrophe goes exponential in Japan. But government leaders don’t seem to be learning much of anything.
On Sunday, even while nuclear-power reactors were melting down, the White House issued this statement: “The president believes that meeting our energy needs means relying on a diverse set of energy sources that includes renewables like wind and solar, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power. Information is still coming in about the events unfolding in Japan, but the administration is committed to learning from them and ensuring that nuclear energy is produced safely and responsibly here in the U.S.”
Yet another reflexive nuclear salute.
When this year’s State of the Union address proclaimed a goal of “clean energy sources” for 80 percent of U.S. electricity by 2035, Obama added: “Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all -- and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.”
Bipartisan for nuclear power? You betcha. On Sunday morning TV shows, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell voiced support for nuclear power, while Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer offered this convoluted ode to atomic flackery: “We are going to have to see what happens here -- obviously still things are happening -- but the bottom line is we do have to free ourselves of independence from foreign oil in the other half of the globe. Libya showed that. Prices are up, our economy is being hurt by it, or could be hurt by it. So I'm still willing to look at nuclear. As I’ve always said it has to be done safely and carefully.”
Such behavior might just seem absurd or pathetic -- if the consequences weren’t so grave.
Nuclear power madness is so entrenched that mainline pundits and top elected officials rarely murmur dissent. Acquiescence is equated with prudent sagacity.
In early 2010, President Obama announced federal loan guarantees -- totaling more than $8 billion -- to revive the construction of nuclear power plants in this country, where 110 nuclear-power reactors are already in operation.
“Investing in nuclear energy remains a necessary step,” he said. “What I hope is that, with this announcement, we’re underscoring both our seriousness in meeting the energy challenge and our willingness to look at this challenge, not as a partisan issue, but as a matter that’s far more important than politics because the choices we make will affect not just the next generation but many generations to come.”
Promising to push for bigger loan guarantees to build more nuclear power plants, the president said: “This is only the beginning.”
107 Comments so far
Show AllWe already have relatively safe nuclear power: from that great fusion reactor in the sky, responsibly located 93 million miles from Earth. (Of course, if we were to rely on it, and the winds it generates, for our energy needs, the Koch brothers' profits might suffer. So, by all means, fry the planet.)
You are right. And because of corporate complicity in government foot dragging to get real about alternative energy, THIS is what we face:
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp03142011.html
Here's a snippet from the article:
In the 1990 film Yume (“Dreams”) by Kurosawa Akira, based upon the great film director’s own dreams, there is a short piece called “Mt. Fuji in Red.” In the nightmare, people are fleeing from an earthquake along a bridge. Several---a woman and her two small children, a man in a suit, and a man dressed casually---pause to stare up at Mt. Fuji, realizing in horror that it is erupting. (This is entirely conceivable. It last erupted in 1707 and has erupted about 75 times in the last 2200 years.) A huge radioactive red cloud appears on the horizon as huge columns of flame envelop the mountain. The uniformed man notes that the mountain is ringed by six atomic plants. They flee, although he declares that because Japan is small there’s no escape.
The scene changes to a deserted debris-strew cliff overlooking the sea. The casually dressed man asks where all the people have gone, and the other man tells him they’ve all leaped into the sea. He then points to the sky and explains: “That red one is plutonium 239. One 100,000,000th of a gram causes cancer. The yellow one is strontium 90. It gets inside you and causes leukemia. The purple one is cesium 137. If affects reproduction and causes mutations. It makes monstrosities. Man’s stupidity is unbelievable. Radioactivity is invisible. But because of its danger they colored it. But that only lets you know what kind kills you. Death’s calling card.”
He bows politely, says “Osaki ni” (a phrase literally meaning, “in advance of you”), and turns to the cliff, preparing to leap into the sea. The other man tries to restrain him, noting that radiation doesn’t kill immediately, but is told that “waiting to die isn’t living.”
The woman hugging her children cries out, “They told us that nuclear energy was safe. Human accident is the danger, not the nuclear plant itself. No accidents, no danger. That’s what they told us. What liars! If they’re not hanged for this, I’ll kill them myself!” The man about to leap into the sea tells her that the radiation will kill them for her. He again bows low, and confesses he’s one that deserves to die. He throws himself over the cliff as the radioactive winds surround the living.
Full article here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp03142011.html
Japan, with all of it's state -of the art technology, has a nuclear disaster, and yet we, with our falling- apart infrastructure and cutting -corners budgets, are supposed to be immune from accidents like this? When we will we learn?
We will learn when something big and awful happens here in the continental U.S. Even then not everyone will learn.
Good point about not learning. Have the levees protecting New Orleans been rebuilt to withstand another Katrina?
The USA has an out. They can blame any such "accident" on Islamofascist terrorists. All they will need to do is torture a few brown skinned folk who would be sure to confess after say 97 water boardings?
That is the horrifying truth, GwNorth.
that's right. many of us learn only if and when tragedy strikes us directly. i call it "james brady syndrome." here was a man for whom it took actually getting shot in his own head to realize that guns, in the wrong hands, could be dangerous; he went from being a rabid NRA supporter to being a rabid gun-control advocate. had he had gun-control advocates make their arguments to him before he got shot? sure. had he seen people on the TV news who'd been shot in the head? sure. but he hadn't actually been shot in the head. but let's give credit where credit is due: when he finally was shot in the head, apparently a light bulb went off!. you go, james!
nancy reagan, same deal. absolutely no stem cell research using embryonic tissue! it's a crime against god! a crime against humanity! it's murder! oh, wait a minute, ronnie has alzheimers??? quick, somebody get me a fetus!
as my wife says, the greatest affliction of the regressive mind is a failure of imagination which results in a failure of empathy. they can only "imagine" something if it actually happens to them...
"because the choices we make will affect not just the next generation but many generations to come.”
Oh yes, if we continue building these death machines future generations of all life on Earth with be greatly affected, because this energy is mutagenic. It messes with the DNA and that alone should be enough for any species with half a brain to steer away from.
We must reduce our energy consumption and learn to live with less waste. At 5% of the global population, we use over 25% of the available energy. What kind of energy hogs are we anyway?
The unfolding saga of the nuclear emergency in Japan may finally focus popular attention on the Obama administration's push for a massive expansion of nuclear power.
"We are aggressively pursuing nuclear energy," said Energy Secretary Steven Chu when he rolled out the department's 2011 budget proposal. Several days earlier, Chu had unveiled a blue-ribbon panel to assess nuclear waste disposal, seen as one of the most significant barriers to a nuclear revival. And in his State of the Union address last year Obama argued that creating new clean energy jobs "means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country."
Obama Says Safe Nuclear Power Plants are a Necessary Investment President Obama recently announced he has designated $36 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power-plant construction in his newly proposed budget for 2012, almost tripling loan guarantees for new nuclear construction.
What's behind the sell out?
Obama’s Nuclear Lobby Connection
When Exelon subsidiary Commonwealth Edison wanted state lawmakers to back a hefty rate hike, it took a creative lobbying approach, concocting a new outfit that seemed devoted to the public interest: Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity, or CORE. CORE ran TV ads warning of a "California-style energy crisis" if the rate increase wasn't approved—but without disclosing the commercials were funded by Commonwealth Edison. The ad campaign provoked a brief uproar when its ties to the utility, which is owned by Exelon Corp., became known. "It's corporate money trying to hoodwink the public," the state's Democratic Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn said. What got scant notice then—but may soon get more scrutiny—is that CORE was the brainchild of ASK Public Strategies, a consulting firm whose senior partner is David Axelrod, long-time strategist for Barack Obama.
After the resignation of David Axelrod to set up for Obama's re-election campaign, David Plouffe was appointed Senior Advisor to the President. ...
Plouffe, who served as President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign manager, arrived at the White House last month after David Axelrod stepped down and returned to Chicago to begin planning Obama's 2012 reelection campaign.
According to the financial statements, Plouffe earned $1.5 million in 2010 from his management consulting firm, Plouffe Strategies. That figure included his work for Boeing and GE, and nearly $500,000 he received for speaking engagements. He earned $108,000 more from AKPD Message and Media, the Chicago-based firm he runs with Axelrod.
Former Obama chief-of-staff (now Chicago mayor) Rahm Emanuel, helped broker the merger of two utiltilies to form Exelon in 2000 when working as an investment banker at Wasserstein Perella & Co.
Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, consulted for an Exelon subsidiary periodically between 2002 until he started working on the Obama campaign.
Exelon officials Frank M. Clark and John W. Rogers Jr. have been among his biggest fundraisers, and Obama has also received donations from John Rowe, Exelon's chairman. Rowe also heads NEI, is a key player in a business-environmental coalition pushing for climate legislation, and has been selected to serve on the DOE's panel on nuclear waste.
Jeffrey Immelt, GE's chief executive, has been put in charge of President Obama's new presidential council on jobs and global competitiveness. Immelt has been in the forefront of supporting Barack Obama's "clean" energy initiatives
Immelt helps lead the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of companies and environmental groups that favor stalled cap and vtrade legislation 9 the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill) The bill--originally known as S.2191, or Americas Climate Security Act--does not mention the word nuclear once in its 200-plus pages. Yet an aide to Senator Joe Lieberman called the measure the most historic incentive for nuclear in the history of the United States.
Republicans have long championed nuclear power, but the nuclear lobby's most ambitious goals were often stymied by Democrats —until Obama was elected . . .
Obama's Nuclear Giveaway | Mother Jones
Politics: Obama’s Lobbyist Connection - Newsweek
Meet the Nuclear Power Lobby | Progressive, The | Find Articles at BNET
Commonwealth Edison - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Plouffe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Plouffe's ties to GE and Boeing
Just want to thank you for the post which I copied and pasted into an email that will help continue to alienate me from my many upper west side obama goose steppers who continue to drink the cool-aid like it's the elixir of life.
Thanks for running this again, run it again!
We can't even produce fossil fuels safely. What a freakin' joke. It's more than a little ominous that our government's pronouncements are so obviously disassociated from reality.
If government pronouncements spoke honestly and openly about "reality," in its current guise, the public would freak out completely. Most high ranking federal officials know this. They're keeping a lid on a boiling pot of anger and uncertainty, trying their feeble best to continue to present a world where 1) the energy crisis will soon be solved, 2) the financial crisis is over and soon everything will return to "normal" 3) solutions to the climate crisis are available and will soon be implemented
I think many if not most of them know what hooey this is but if any of them were to say so aloud they'd end up having to resign like that State Department official (P.J. Crowley) did over Bradley Manning and someone able to speak publicly without telling the American people the scary truth would step in to the "all is well or will be soon" role.
The solutions to the climate crisis are available --- they just need to be implemented (with abandon). If we were to make a global effort to use solar power with the same kind of urgency, focus and commitment we used to "split the atom" or "race-to-the-moon," we might have an outside chance of mitigating the many unforeseen ecological thresholds we may have already passed. Until then however, no, the energy crisis will not be solved, nor will the financial crisis return to "normal" (they are intimately linked and likewise, mutually solvable --- i.e. I find it small-minded for some to insist that getting off fossil fuels would have catastrophic economic consequences...quite the opposite, IMO).
We should go directly to fusion power. It is called the sun, you know, that small star we see most every day.
According to shows I've watched on PBS and the Science Channel, the technology to convert the fusion power of the sun to kinds of energy usable here on earth, in sufficient quantity to make a difference right now, isn't there yet.
I strongly suspect that when the fusion reactors that the physicists envision as happening in the very near future (assuming there actually is a very near future) will have as many problems as today's fission reactors.
There is, as of now, no clean and safe source of the energy in the amounts we earthpeople are using.
Actually, one of the exciting parts of fusion research is the radiation issue. The by product, helium, is stable, but the reactor shield receives heavy bombardment and becomes radioactive. One proposed solution is to build that out of concrete which can be fairly safely stored until the unstable atoms have decayed again ... at which point the shield can be reused.
I hope it can be made to work in time. I'm usually dubious about technofixes, but nuclear science is an exciting field where the possibilities of massive affordable energy and massive destruction are juggled.
Nuclear fusion is like the perpetual motion machine: wishcasting.
How much longer will Axelrod and his family be in the U.S.? How soon before he and the other rats have gone on "trade missions" to the southern hemisphere?
Will the helicopter pilots in Afghanistan be reassigned to bury the exposed rods of the Japanese reactors? Or is Obama too obsessed with killing 10 year olds gathering firewood in Afghanistan? Gorbachev redirected his helicopter pilots from Afghanistan to bury Chernobyl and thereby saved the West? Any bets on Obama?
When central planners make backroom deals to fund their favorite industries we used to call it communism. Now we call it corporatism but it's still the same backroom deal.
DC domestic policy, lies: DC foreign policy, lies. Gov. of and for the few and the rest? To screw. Tony
We have the technology right now to build safe cost effective thorium reactors. If we had spent even a fraction of the money we gave to a few rich bankers we could be totally independent of foreign oil. The problems with Thorium reactors?
To cost effective
To safe
To difficult to use for weapons production.
To localized -easy to build small scale plants giving autonomy to State and local governments
And contract their production out to people who can't spell "too".
If you find yourself in a thunderstorm, don't stand too close to President Obama.
No nuclear plant in America can withstand a 911 type terrorists attack. This type of attack is far more probable than an earthquake or flooding doing damage to a nuclear power plant.
This is one reason I'm glad I took part in a campagin against commercial nuclear power back in the 1970s in Oregon and help run the campaign in the county I was in, winning there while the rest of the state went by a huge margin for the other side.
At least Trojan is gone - so an earthquake on the juan difuca plate wouldn't melt Portland....
But hey what's the loss of a few large cities when corporate profits are at stake.
Nuclear power is reality.
.A bit of information critical to the discussion of Japan's nuclear disaster as well as for the safety of ALL nuclear plants is just why planning for backup generation for the pumps to cool the reactors was, on the face of it, inadequate. What should they have done and how can the world's other nuclear power plants be adequately protected?
The problem is that a nuclear power plant is one of the most complex things ever constructed. There are too many ways that things can fail for anyone to recognize and plan for all of them. A couple of decades ago someone wrote a book titled "Normal Accidents," in which he made that point.
And that is for a plant that is not in a seismically active zone. There is not enough money in the world to build a power plant on top of a subuction zone which will not undergo failure from an 8.9 earthquake only 17 miles below the surface.
"Nuclear power is reality"
Just as antifreeze is a"reality" of something sweet to drink that kills a poor dog that drinks it.
You just don't get it, do you?
Why is it that mankind is unable to say NO to something that produces huge profits for a few and death for the many?
Because of people like you who are so full of tech-pride that you can't admit that nuclear technology development was a massive mistake.
I agree completely! Nuclear plants are PERFECTLY SAFE, unless something bad happens:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nuclear-energy-advocates-insist-us-reactors-comple,19740/
Nuclear power is safe, nuclear power is safe, nuclear power is safe. The same lie over and over from the same government that told you: JFK, MLK and RFK were assassinated by loan nuts; the Gulf of Tonkin was a legitimate reason to murder 55,000 of our own soldiers and millions of Vietnamese; 911 was done by a bunch of evil Muslims because they hate our freedoms; there are WMD.s in Iraq, so now we will bomb the hell out of them with shock and awe.
"assassinated by loan nuts" Kinda figured the Banksters had a hand in it.
Rarely mentioned in the nuke power debate is peak U production. Sort of a crimp in its tail.
Living down-wind from a TVA nuke AND the TVA Kingston ash spill I do fret a bit.
Conserve baby, conserve-----MD
You got it Misty! Yes I meant nuts on loan not lone nuts!
Nuclear power is marketed with impetus based in fear of insufficiency even more important than the profit motive. The fear element feeds the profit argument with a solipsistic constancy.
The people of the middle east and peoples impoverished world wide have NOT always lived in the conditions imposed by globalized commercialization of life.
The Death of Fear could not have been better named in Egypt. The globalized system of markets is by nature paranoid about "loss". Shareholders are by law the fiscal responsibility of corporations - not health, well being and sustainability.
Like low level military members, shareholders must recognize their responsibilities inherent in being denied information or choosing ignorance beyond the scope of 'contracts'. Otherwise these are de facto henchmen in destruction of a world that is not surviving the mandates they choose to buy into.
Nuclear power used for weapons or generating electricity is and cannot in any way be considered safe. Yet it seems that the vast majority of people are unwilling or unable to pull their heads out of the sand. They prefer to think that what they can't see, smell, taste, touch, and hear won't hurt them! I have tried for the past thirty years to tell them, but to no avail. I read Nuclear Madness by Helen Caldicott so many years ago. Do those who are powerful really believe that they can avoid the toxic fallout that circulates the earth with the movement of winds, tides and rain? Our mother earth may survive in the long run but humans are mutating as I write. My daughter was exposed to the fallout from Chernobyl. Even in tiny amounts these toxins change us as humans and there is no way to detoxify!
"In early 2010, President Obama announced federal loan guarantees -- totaling more than $8 billion -- to revive the construction of nuclear power plants in this country, where 110 nuclear-power reactors are already in operation."
I thought there were 104 nuke plants not 110?
Now, there have been a few comments here about the lousy infrastructure in the US and corporate greed cutting costs on safety. While both are true, these aren't inherent dangers with nuclear power.
In the article Mr. Solomon compares the current situation at Fukushima Daiichi to that of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, stating that despite these "the corporate theologians of nuclear faith have continued to bless their own divine projects."
Now, I'm going to have to protest in order to point out three things. Firstly, the design of the Fukushima plants differs to both the TMI plant and that of Chernobyl. They are safer and built so that hydrogen doesn't build up within the containment, causing an explosion that disperses core material. The worst case scenario is a full core meltdown where the molten mixture of uranium pellets and material from the first containment fall down into the tertiary containment where it spreads and cools down.
Secondly, it isn't just corporate theologians who support nuclear power. I have no vested interest in nuclear energy but think it's a viable, workable source of energy, provided that it's properly designed and operated. This isn't due to some faith, but from extensive reading on the subject on top of studies during my physics college degree. The theology seems to lie, I'm sorry to say, among those who claim without supporting arguments other than those to hysteria and fear that nuclear energy is inherently unsafe and as dangerous as the Chernobyl plant.
But for my third point I'm going to concede one point: Yes, nuclear power is inherently unsafe. There is always going to be a human element that can go wrong and risk of radioactive material slipping out of the containments, even if only in tiny amounts, not dangerous to anyone.
That, however, has to be compared to various other undertakings that are inherently unsafe but we have little qualms about accepting. Any type of fast transportation is inherently unsafe, but we don't hear anyone complaining about cars despite the tens of thousands of deaths from car accidents every year in your beloved US alone (ca. 43 000 in each of 2002, 2003 and 2005[1]).
So, yes; nuclear energy is inherently safe, but with a relatively decent track record. There is much that can be improved, but bashing about in opposition to this source of power in denial of the technological advancements reveals the true religious fundamentalism.
[1] http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/stats.html
I would like to take Big Nuke shills and make them eat radioactive waste.
So then you would have had no issues living near Fukushima.
No.
So, go.
MARTIN: You didn't, of course, discuss the fact that the U.S. nuclear energy plants are aging, and that there's been little effort to upgrade them. Meanwhile they are getting renewals of their licenses. Second, that the PUBLIC is the true party that must insure these items; and that ultimately, were there to be a melt down, what could $ mean to alter the fate of those exposed?
The key problem with nuclear energy is what to do with the radioactive detritus... as you know, the people in Nevada have fought having the tonnage shipped out their way to be buried inside an old mountain. (Imagine if this approach passed... and that a truck carrying it was part of a major highway accident?)
Earth changes happen. Radiation lasts a very long time. Can we read all the hieroglyphics left by previous civiizations? What if ours "goes under," and suppose only a fraction of humanity--not those who speak English--survive. What of THEIR contact with this "gift" that keeps on giving? What symbol would warn their children of such heinous contact?
The average corporation can't see (no less think or plan) beyond quarterly profits. The average American has been programmed into a short attention span theater in part due to TV and its pace. Few consider the long-term impact of all the radiation being created. Some of the metal rods have been "recycled," which is to say smelt down and combined with cleaner metals... then the "finished" product becomes household appliances. The really "dirty" stuff goes into some military weapons.
Due to 3 factors: 1. Human hubris 2. The law of unintended consequences and 3. Rapid, unprecedented (in scale and frequency) earth changes... guarantees on this sort of "fire of the gods" cannot be given, lest one is lying or only thinking of the immediate now. With a substance like that, such a stance is both morally repugnant as well as insufficient. Science, be damned.. for it's doing a good job of damning the rest of us to genetic hell.
'Nuclear energy is inherently safe'
No.
Like all energy, nuclear is dangerous.
'There is much that can be improved, but bashing about in opposition to this source of power (energy) in denial of the technological advancements reveals the true religious fundamentalism.'
Yes.
In the total reality it is possible to build safe nuclear plants and safe energy plants of any type.
Not only sharp business practices in the nuclear industry but but also imposed price constraints limit the development and construction of safe nuclear plants.
Historically, price has been established in accordance with the fossil industry but the fossil industry has never paid the full cost of production. Mother Earth is telling us that in many ways now. It is conceivably true that fossil-fuel-made Climate Change has an effect on the earth's crust, causing it to move and readjust and so is a primary cause of the present mess.
It is definitely correct to say that the fossil fuel industry is the primary cause of the multiple catastrophes we are experiencing now. This long list of catastrophes includes the present insane wars and the related insane behaviour of the richest nation of earth. It is not only US'ns. We are all complicit because we refuse to pay more but want everybody else to pay instead.
We are in a word, absurd.
We are the root cause and the effect of it all.
We cannot and must not just get off energy. It is life.
We must get off dishonesty and climb onto responsibility.
We can make safe energy, nuclear or otherwise.
It is up to us.
Our future is our own.
Have you no shame? At long last sir, have you no shame?
"Any type of fast transportation is inherently unsafe..."
There are at least two huge differences between the safety of a car and the safety of a nuclear plant.
First: no one is forcing me to drive a car. I don't even have to go near a road and be subjected to the cars of others. But I don't have a choice about breathing plutonium or ingesting caesium or iodine.
Second: the damage done by cars is distributed, rather than point-source. I'm not saying that's better, but it sure is simpler to control point-source hazards, by doing away with them, if necessary.
We don't need all this energy. We're being set up for a huge crash. The "technological advancements" you are so in love with come at a cost, and it is already too late to pay the bill. HT Odum, CS Holling, et. al. teach us that complexity (of which, technology is simply one form) is a direct function of energy.
As we come down off our fossil sunlight high, we will be unable to maintain the technology we have today, let alone produce new technology. I think nuke plants are going to be going off like popcorn in the next 50 years, as the petroleum that their operation absolutely depends on is reduced by a factor of perhaps eight or so (at the 7% decline predicted by many petroleum industry scientists).
What to do?
#1: get used to doing with less energy. It's not really that hard. We probably need to reduce our consumption by 80% or more.
#2: seek out "appropriate technology." If we had it 50 years ago, we may still have it in 50 years.
#3: employ small, distributed solutions. I don't think we're going to see any home nuclear power plant kits soon, so let's focus on what we can do locally.
Nuclear energy in America is not clean nor safe. To read a list of U.S. "events" from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, click http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2011/index.html To learn about the new earthquake fault found within 1/2 mile of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California, click http://a4nr.org/?p=376
Simply another example of Privatized Profits and Socialized Losses (and liability)
don't forget that the largest Nuke Power plant operator in the country is Exelon Corp - with deep ties to David Axelrod and Rahm the devils spawn.... hence firmly in charge of the Obama admin's approach to Nuclear Power Industry.
Simply another example of the lack of a Free Market - when ALL the liabilities are passed off on We the People.....
an inherent characteristic of fascism.....
8 bil for nukes and how much for solar?