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Nuclear Nightmare
The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States—many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.
Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power’s overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.
Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry’s promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area “the size of Pennsylvania” and cause massive casualties. You, the taxpayers, have heavily subsidized nuclear power research, development, and promotion from day one with tens of billions of dollars.
Because of many costs, perils, close calls at various reactors, and the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, there has not been a nuclear power plant built in the United States since 1974.
Now the industry is coming back “on your back” claiming it will help reduce global warming from fossil fuel emitted greenhouse gases.
Pushed aggressively by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu, who refuses to meet with longtime nuclear industry critics, here is what “on your back” means:
1. Wall Street will not finance new nuclear plants without a 100% taxpayer loan guarantee. Too risky. That’s a lot of guarantee given that new nukes cost $12 billion each, assuming no mishaps. Obama and the Congress are OK with that arrangement.
2. Nuclear power is uninsurable in the private insurance market—too risky. Under the Price-Anderson Act, taxpayers pay the greatest cost of a meltdown’s devastation.
3. Nuclear power plants and transports of radioactive wastes are a national security nightmare for the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine the target that thousands of vulnerable spent fuel rods present for sabotage.
4. Guess who pays for whatever final waste repositories are licensed? You the taxpayer and your descendants as far as your gene line persists. Huge decommissioning costs, at the end of a nuclear plant’s existence come from the ratepayers’ pockets.
5. Nuclear plant disasters present impossible evacuation burdens for those living anywhere near a plant, especially if time is short.
Imagine evacuating the long-troubled Indian Point plants 26 miles north of New York City. Workers in that region have a hard enough time evacuating their places of employment during 5 pm rush hour. That’s one reason Secretary of State Clinton (in her time as Senator of New York) and Governor Andrew Cuomo called for the shutdown of Indian Point.
6. Nuclear power is both uneconomical and unnecessary. It can’t compete against energy conservation, including cogeneration, windpower and ever more efficient, quicker, safer, renewable forms of providing electricity. Amory Lovins argues this point convincingly (see RMI.org). Physicist Lovins asserts that nuclear power “will reduce and retard climate protection.” His reasoning: shifting the tens of billions invested in nuclear power to efficiency and renewables reduce far more carbon per dollar (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf). The country should move deliberately to shutdown nuclear plants, starting with the aging and seismically threatened reactors. Peter Bradford, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) commissioner has also made a compelling case against nuclear power on economic and safety grounds (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf).
There is far more for ratepayers, taxpayers and families near nuclear plants to find out. Here’s how you can start:
1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table. Insist that the critics as well as the proponents testify and cross-examine each other in front of you and the media.
2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can’t buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can’t buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don’t stay in business.
3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn’t required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.
4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power.
The people in northern Japan may lose their land, homes, relatives, and friends as a result of a dangerous technology designed simply to boil water. There are better ways to generate steam.
Like the troubled Japanese nuclear plants, the Indian Point plants and the four plants at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon in southern California rest near earthquake faults. The seismologists concur that there is a 94% chance of a big earthquake in California within the next thirty years. Obama, Chu and the powerful nuke industry must not be allowed to force the American people to play Russian Roulette!
121 Comments so far
Show AllNuclear industry propagandists have convinced most Americans that 1) the lights will go out if we don't build new nuke plants, and 2) that nuke power is carbon-free.
If Obama redirects the billions of dollars he has earmarked for nukes into truly clean energy projects, the lights won't go out.
Mining, transporting, and processing uranium, building nuke plants and disposing of nuke waste uses boatloads of fossil fuel.
The easy to mine, high grade uranium has all been mined. It will take even more fossil fuel per kilowatt hour to mine, transport and process the lower grade uranium that will fuel future nukes.
Nicely stated. Thomas Berry once noted that, "The biosphere is not a collection of inert and determinate objects, but an ongoing communion of living subjects." Sadly, Obama has no clue as to what is at stake. More important to satisfy the narrow interests of his corporate, For Profit, handlers who stand to make a public windfall of cash off the deals...
And now the news from Japan:
WIND FARMS DECLARED THE HEROES OF JAPAN FOR SURVIVING EARTHQUAKES AND GIANT TSUNAMI TO PROVIDE NEEDED ELECTRICITY DURING A NATIONAL EMERGENCY.
Thousands avoid freezing to death due to the reliable electric power from these well designed wind generators on the shore and actually in the ocean.
Massive building campaign initiated in Japan to provide 90% of power from wind, wave and geothermal by 2012.
The remaining 10% power will be provided by "natural gaseous verbal gas bag emanations" from the US nuclear lobby.
Further studies are being conducted to measure the methane output of the verbal effluent exiting a large cavity in the heads of pro-nuclear trolls as an alternative energy source.
Sadly, only the wind farm survival which is providing much needed power now is true.
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-18-japans-wind-farms-save-its-ass-while-nuclear-plants-flounder
Ralph Nader is right. Shut all the nukes down. Then make the rich pay for fuel rod maintenance with a used fuel rod tax!
If they don't like that, the fuel rods will be deposited on the 10 most high income zip codes in the nation as a gift to all those "brilliant" billionaires that claim to "work so hard" for all that money they "earned" because they are so "clever" and full of "wonderful new ideas".
I'm sure these "industrious" and "hard working" folks will get right to work on solving the "who pays for fuel rod cooling" problem.
Very interesting. I had not heard a peep of the wind farms on M$M. It is always interesting to see what doesn't make it trough the M$M informational iron curtain!
Especially with nuclear, since the nuclear industry players also own lots of media outfits.
Ray,
In the same vein, the nuclear plants that were not tripped off by the earthquake are not reported in the news.
Bill
And having studied the issue some more, it is also hard to simply say "all nuclear power generation is bad".
Which nuclear? Old Gen 1 GE BWR's like at Fukushima? I think everyone can agree that they have intolerable safety flaws at his point. CANDU or advanced CANDU (which run or plain un-enriched uranium, and abundanty available Thorium, so it saves a lot of energy and waste making the fuel)? The Gen III systems like the AP1000 that can contain and recover from a loss of coolant accident including a complete station blackout without any human intervention at all - except for filling a rooftop tank using fire engine pumps if necessary if the blackout lasts more than 3 days.
SaboCat,
Since there is no way to dissuade you of your belief in a nuclear renaissance, I guess this news will make you very happy and you will move to the gulf coast of Texas to be near those new billion dollar atomic babies.
TEPCO to Build Two Power Plants in Texas
Nobody would insure them or fund them but JP Morgan Chase agreed to insure them if congress approved the funds and covered all liability - IOW we the people supply the funds and the insurance, tepco gets the money and JP Morgan gets the fees. And the best part is that the congressional money for this deadly boondogle was an earmark on an off budget funding measure for the Afghanistan war.
Corruption and deceipt at it's highest by our good government.
That's right, the same company having three melt downs in Japan. Bad safety record: Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants: The No BS Info on Japan's Disastrous Nuclear Operators
http://cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit92/nit92articles/nit92coverup.html
For all the details about this poisonous grand larceny and fraud, go to the latest episode of Thomas Hartman's show "The Big Picture". All the corruption involved in earthquake reviews for nuclear power plants and how Axelrod is a super pro-nuclear lobbyist is all there.
http://rt.com/programs/big-picture/japan-threat-nuclear-plant/
"I guess this news will make you very happy and you will move to the gulf coast of Texas to be near those new billion dollar atomic babies."
Nah. I don't like flat land, hot weather dry counties and rednecks..
As far as TEPCO building the plants; it is the US NRC that assures their safety. They will be generation III plants, which are vastly different than the 1970's plants in terms of safety.
The nuclear plant wouldn't bother me a bit I already live about 20 miles from a nuclear plant. Western Pennsylvania is not going to get any M9.0 earthquakes or tsunamis. I worry much more about the shit belched out by all the coal-burning plants, the US Steel coke plant near my home and the sorrows that coal mining and now shale-gas drilling bring to my region- and the whole planet. Nuclear greatly reduces the demand for coal and natural gas.
But, how are you gonna keep the waste which will be toxic and hot to explode for hundreds of thousands of years..... That is many times longer than Human beings have been recorded on the planet.... do ya think the cost will get too high even before you die?
Who is gonna fulfill a million year contract to make sure the rods that are used up now are cool and don't explode or after that that nothing leaks?
Why should you care? if you are more worried about coal than you don't care about what happens after your gone.
Western PA!?
Full of Brain-dead Rednecks!
Explains your attitude, I guess!
Any way you look at it, Buck Fuller was right when he said, 'Nuclear power is just a STUPID WAY TO BOIL WATER"
Dangerously Stupid!
"The nuclear plant wouldn't bother me a bit I already live about 20 miles from a nuclear plant."
Then you won't mind if they start a uranium mine there, or a long-term waste disposal area?
The stuff is safest when it's in the ground, but second best is when it's in a reactor. As the problems with the spent-fuel storage pools are showing, we need to be looking at the ENTIRE life-cycle.
Abert ---- There is a difference ---- I personally believe money would be better spent on efficiencies and renewables, but you seem quite dismissive of the concept that there is a far less dangerous nuclear technology available. The Candu generator methodology is in fact pretty much foolproof, using heavy water reactors. In case of a leak of coolant (deuterium ---- aka heavy water) fission simply stops. It is not mitigated, but enabled by the coolant. The fuel is not enriched uranium, but yellowcake ore, a stable material. dh
"...the fuel rods will be deposited on the 10 most high income zip codes in the nation as a gift..." LOL (literally) - brilliant!
I'm all in favor of wind farms and affordable solar for all here on Long Island, but solar is not affordable for the average family anymore than a Prius or a new Ford for a high-mileage vehicle. Wind farms here have so far gotten the NIMBY treatment. The only good thing that is most likely definite on Long Island is no more nukes. I say most likely because, you know, stranger things have happened. One would hope that the legacy of Shoreham is never forgotten. But we have to do something here. Sensible public transportation expansion has gotten the NIMBY treatment, freight is all but gone and, like I said, NIMBY is alive and well.
http://www.lioffshorewindenergy.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=24
Fuel rods stored in high end zip codes sound like a good start to overcome NIMBYism, Samalabear !
Uh, I like it. :)
Lol, ten highest income zip codes, huh? You will sterilize and/or kill off most of the Democrat/Socialist base.
Seriously.
The income density maps and red/blue political ideology maps correlate one-to-one in favor of Nuking the Lefties. Like it or not, the richest in the country (and the richest in congress, by publicly available asset disclosures) are all leftist/progressive types.
Wealthy douche-bags = White-Liberal-Guilt :-(
Wow.
Just yesterday, i replied to what i called possibly the stupidest post i'd ever read on Common Dreams.
And now this.
You're right there in the running, friend.
Is there a cadre of fresh stupid seeking out this site this week?
Excellent idea. I just wonder who would have the guts to transport these rods.
The bottom line is - countries like ours and Japan have great energy demands. The govt. should be using this horrible situation in Japan not only to halt new reactor building, but to guide our country towards DECREASING our energy use. Most Americans have no idea, aside from changing lightbulbs, of how to reduce our energy consumption. For that reason, the oil, gas, coal and electric companies are finding more and more costly, environmentally dangerous and deadly ways to provide energy. Just as more of us are seeing the pros of locally grown food, it behooves us to find more local solutions to our energy demands. A big part of my utility bill is the cost of transporting it to my home. I live in MI, and my electricity comes from a grid in PA! I would LOVE to have my own wind turbine, and because my home is on a corner where I get alot of wind, who knows how many of my neighbors' homes I could power. We have to start getting more involved in our basic needs, instead of only making demands. We will not find 21st Century solutions by making 20th Century demands. It's high time we start thinking "outside the box."
One difference between Russian roulette and nuclear power plants is that in Russian roulette, there is only a bullet in one chamber.
With nuclear plants, even if the large major accident is avoided and avoided not only in one's own generation but in all the future generations that must store the waste, one does not get off freely.
* The plants are cooled by water.
* The water is pumped by in metal pipes; it must be because the walls of the pipes have to withstand great pressure and transfer heat.
* No one can approach the pipes to repair them because, well, they are contaminated by radiation.
If no other problem happens, if all the designers and engineers all do their jobs properly, if all the executives make industry-standard decisions, the plant still leaks.
Then of course there are all the financial problems that shut the industry down in the US in the 1980's, despite massive federal subsidy.
Building a nuclear plant is like playing Russian roulette with bomb in one chamber and various little darts in all the others.
Nice analogy!
I know free energy proponents are considered loony, but two videos available on-line, “Star Wars in Iraq” and “The Panama Deception,” show evidence of directed energy damage—very strange, horrid stuff—a way of using energy which the public is not aware of. Although I’m hardly a techno-geek, I suspect there is knowledge of how to use such energy for good if the military could get off its penchant for using every bit of human knowledge to make weapons to kill people. Then there’s cold fusion, with reports popping up every year or two that it really can be replicated, then—nothing.
Certainly the US government has shown little interest in pushing forward even with solar and wind, which could at least significantly diminish energy needs from more harmful sources. That the US instead intends to pour taxpayer dollars into nuclear shows a very real malice toward the people, or maybe the money works out better for all concerned (except the people, who will pay for it and die from it along with the fauna and flora and land). Nothing personal, just business.
I’ve been dismayed to see that the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan is getting diminishing press in the MSM. Oh well, parties over. It was exciting, but “helping out” in Libya is now center stage. More war. Unless something really dramatic happens, the press will downplay untold numbers of Japanese people dying, quickly or slowly, of radiation poisoning. Given the dense population, many more will die than did at Chernobyl, but I doubt we’ll hear much about them. It would be bad press. We’re going nuclear!
Where is the will to nurture life rather than destroy it?
My blood is boiling.
"I’ve been dismayed to see that the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan is getting diminishing press in the MSM. "
Imagine someone setting off a nuclear event in an American city. The area will be sealed-off and before you know it, Katie, Lyin' Brian, and Diane will be chatting about Charlie Sheen and the latest fads.
The Wallpaperer's will take care of it.
"I know free energy proponents are considered loony..."
What the heck, let's run with that thought for a bit...
Garrett Hardin said, "Given an infinite source of energy, population growth still produces an inescapable problem. The problem of the acquisition of energy is replaced by the problem of its dissipation."
Steven Hawking noted that, if cheap energy continues to be available, by the year 2500, humans will cover the land area of the planet, shoulder-to-shoulder, and the Earth will glow a dull red from our dissipated heat.
Paul Erlich said, "Giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun."
Let's not fantasize about new sources of energy. Let's first learn to live within our current energy budget: the amount of sunlight falling on the surface of the planet.
It's going to be tough; we're sitting on top of an energy spike that gives each of us the energy equivalent of several hundred human slaves. Americans actually consume 50% more energy than the sunlight harvested by all the plants in North America! This cannot continue.
We've got to figure out how to have a good life on perhaps 1/8th the energy we now consume, rather than focus on yet another "techno fix."
See my comments regarding the Atmospheric Vortex Engine which can be built (much more cheaply) in lieu of coal or nuclear electricity plants, in response to the article published here (CD) on Friday by Christian Parenti.
May the (AVE) Force be with you!
Wasn't one of those actually built in Australia? I know there were plans to do so. In a rough sense it looks like an upside down funnel.
The Enviromission Project uses the same principle, but can't work efficiently because no tower can be built tall enough to take advantage of the natural temperature difference between the warm surface and the cold, mid-to-upper troposphere. Without angular momentum (swirling) the exit stream immediately advects (sucks-in) surrounding air by turbulence which kills the buoyancy. If they would put a mechanism (vanes) at the top of the tower which induced *spin*, the efficiency could be increased a lot since cold, dry air would be prevented from mixing in with the warm, rising plume.
Then, the tower could then be made shorter and more cheaply, maybe just 100 m tall.
See FAQs at http://vortexengine.ca
I really really hope nobody in his right mind will build a NPP today. I am quite happy that NPPs are mostly build in the 80s.
Come on everybody, who of you thinks that quality and safety got better since the 80s? Does anybody really think this is not true for Nuclear Energy Industry?
They will botch things up like everybody else is today.
In everybodies job I know profit rules. Nobody really produces quality if he can get away with producing sh_t. Apparantly everybody gets away with producing sh_t everywhere in the world. I am a german. we are nown for good quality. That is a joke.
If our quality is better than anybody elses then they must really really suck. With help of german engineering the largest NPP in the world is build right now in Finnland. They had 2500 severe quality issues till now. Its not sure it will ever be able to run.
Why? Because it must be as cheap as possible with workers paid scraps and bosses that brownnosed their way up, just like everywhere else.
I guarantee you, if the USA builds NPPs they will blow in your face.
That's the reality. And that was the reality that our next-door-neighbor, an engineer working on the Perry Nuclear plant, told us when I was a girl. Profit rules like everywhere else. Shoddy work, corners cut, decisions made by office politics.
Here's a nice tidbit in this morning's news: the Japanese delayed using seawater to cool the reactors because Tokyo Electric Power Co. wanted to save its assets--you know, the reactors. If that's not insane, I don't know what is. If that's how the Japanese make decisions, I can just imagine the scenario in Amerika.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-19/japan-s-response-to-reactor-crisis-delayed-by-concern-over-asset-damage.html
Having worked in design and construction of power generation plants for 30 years, let me assure you that not only do the owners cheap shoot the design and construction, a significant number of errors occur during construction that may or may not be correctable at a later date.
Let me also assure you that just as many errors are made in nuclear plant construction as there are on other construction projects...the only differences are that when the feces hit the fan on a nuclear project the consequences are much greater.
And did it get worse over those 30 years? I am sure it did everywhere else.
When General Electric built the Fukushima Plant in the 70's, there was plenty of critisim to go around. It was made as cheaply as possible, our standard for America even then.
Here is an excellent debate that took place on Riz Khan's program a few days ago which is carried on Free Speech TV between a pro-nuclear advocate and an environmentalist. Quite frankly, the pro-nuclear advocate, William Tucker, had his ass handed to him by his opponent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99EbhO3gPvk
It is too bad that Common Dreams does not see fit to highlight this video.
Nuclear Power Plants: March 10, 2011 R.I.P.
Would that be true..........not likely. Our problem is one of the loss of our democracy. We, the people, know that nuclear energy is dangerous and we must shut down all the plants--------but-----------so what?
Our government is in control of people who think the purpose of all life on earth is to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. We no longer, as the people, have any say so in any actions of 'our' government. We are well on our way to a neo fuedal society where the wealth few rule absolutely. We need a regime change to gain any control of our government.
How we can make this change in our government I don't know---but I do know it is not a matter of voting for either of the two corporate political parties. Our Congress is full to overflowing with corporate lackeys---paid for and working for the very wealthy.
We must get out on the streets and frighten the wealthy and give ourselves the power to get together with other people to change the government. Turn off that damn propaganda machine in your home and get out and talk to other working people. Maybe we can get some ideas on how to take control of our government and protect life on earth and share the bounties of nature. I am off to protest the anniversary of the war in Iraq and pray that I will be surrounded by others who share my concern. My concern is not just ending the wars: but in establishing real democracy in our nation.
Looking at a disaster timeline on-line, it says that the earthquake struck at 14:46 Japan Standard Time on March 11, not March 10. The tsunami hit Fukushima 15 minutes later, at 15:01 JST, 3/11/2011.
3-11. Three Eleven.
Everything changed on 3-11.
Either you are with us, or you are against us!
There are two major factors influencing economic decisions in merka. Expansion and deception. The economic expansion has to be achieved at any cost, because Dr. Strangelove needs to dominate the planet, at any cost. And to facilitate that, deception comes into play to make economic activity appear to be the answer to every man's question. So we can't either reduce our consumption or use the most efficient means. Instead, we have to expand our consumption far beyond our needs and means. And forget efficiency, because that squelches growth of the "world's pre-eminent super-plunderer".
Nuclear may be the ultimate eternal growth industry...a marriage with Wall Street made in nuclear heaven.
During the 1990s my boss called me into his office and offered me a well paying job at the Hanford WA nuclear cleanup. He assured me I would have 5,000 years of job security (I not only turned down the offer but left the company shortly thereafter).
Where else can yuou find job security like that?
If there was ever a proof for the proposition that humans are dumber than yeast it is a nuclear power plant! We are doomed as a species because we are so F'n moronic!
It is like killing a fly with a 5000 pound bomb! ABSURD!
I think Obama should go to Japan and take the lead in attempting to clean up the mess. And he should take his family with him if he believes nuke power is the answer.
Ann Coulter is another one volunteered to help with the clean up.
If nuclear reactors are so safe, then we should build 10 or 20 of them in Washington, DC.
I'm not sure about the 1974 date in this article. The Callaway County plant in Missouri began operating in 1984. Does Ralph mean "approved since 1974" or did he get a digit wrong? Facts need to be right in order for essays like this to do the heavy lifting we hope they'll do.
nmeyer,
Under the older licensing procedure for a nuclear plant in the US, a construction license was approved. After completion, a separate operating license was granted to permit actual operation of the plant. Nader is correct, there have been no construction licenses granted under this older procedure since 1974. The most recent operating license under this procedure was in 1996 (Watts Bar unit 1).
This older approach has been largely replaced by a different method in which the operating license is granted at the same time as the construction license with a quality verification before operation. Although there are several applications being pursued, there have been no construction/operating licenses granted under this new procedure.
Bill
drolltroll,
I definitely and wholeheartedly agree that the methane output from your cranial orifice would make a great alternative energy source. You are the epitome of gasbaggery.
Why don't you tell us that there are approximately 200 radioactive isotopes released into the air in nuclear plant accidents? Would you tell us about I-129 with a half life of several million years? Of course not. YOU would tell us about I-125 which has a half life of 60 days and conveniently ignore the other one. You are a cherry picking propagandist. I hope you get to baby sit nuclear waste in your back yard for the rest of your glow-in-the-dark lying life.
http://rt.com/programs/big-picture/japan-threat-nuclear-plant/
ag,
I answered the man's question. Are you having a bad day?
Bill
You have answered NOTHING. Your robotic avoidance of real issues is only surpassed by your contrived attempts to appear honest and forthright.
Have a nice day.
Uhm, do you two have some history to deal with or something?
That was a pretty nasty response to what seemed to me to be a simple posting of fact.
Ralph Nader speaks truth to the insanity of nuclear power. Is he on the boob tube or radio? Of course not, the media are wall to wall with nuke apologists and corporate shills promoting nuclear power as the answer to global warming. In the meantime, there are a few sane countries like New Zealand, Austria, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Norway that don't have nuclear plants and have banned the building of same on their lands. It looks like Germany is back on track to wean itself off of fossil fuels and nuclear power in a few decades. The USA is full steam ahead for fossil fuels and nuclear Armageddon.
We used to have above ground nuclear testing and the folks who protested were mocked and scorned as un-American or commies. We were told that the nuclear tests were perfectly safe.
Indeed, the first time I learned about this lie was when I read the biography of Susan Hayward, and here's a good article from People that lists the large number of people that died horrible deaths as result of just one film, "The Conquerer."
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20077825,00.html
Reading the sicknesses that these entertainers contracted, the many cancers -- not just one -- is wrenching, and terribly, terribly familiar. It is the same kind of stuff you read with regard to Three Mile Island, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl. And you hear the same thing back then that you would hear today: Why didn't the government tell us?