As radiation poured from 3 Mile Island 31 years ago this weekend, utility executives rested easy.
They knew that no
matter how many people their errant nuke killed, and no matter how much
property it destroyed, they would not be held liable.
Today this same class of executives demands untold taxpayer billions to build still more TMIs. No
matter how many meltdowns they cause, and how much havoc they visit
down on the public, they still believe they're above the law.
Fueled with more
than $600 million public relations slush money, they demand a risk-free
"renaissance" financed by you and yours.
As if!
In 1980 I reported from central Pennsylvania on the dead and dying one year after.
Dozens
of interviews documented a horrifying range of radiation-related
diseases including cancer, leukemia, birth defects, still births,
malformations, sterility, heart attacks, strokes, emphysema, skin
lesions, hair loss, a metallic taste and much more. As reported by the Baltimore News-American among others, such ailments also ripped through the animal population.
To this day no one knows how much radiation was released at the 1979 TMI accident, where it went or whom it harmed. The official line that "no one was killed" is arguably the biggest lie ever told in US industrial history.
It parallels Soviet lies about the 1986 catastrophe at Chernobyl, whose health effects continue to skyrocket. A devastating summary report issued by the New York Academy of Sciences (Yablokov, Nesterenko & Nesterenko: Chernobyl:
Consequences of the Catastrophe for People & the Environment) says
at least 980,000 people are likely to die from the fallout.
That would be a
small fraction of the casualties had 9/11 terrorists dived into the two
reactors at New York's Indian Point instead of hitting the World Trade
Center.
In a time of deep
financial stress, it also counts that the TMI accident turned a $900
million asset into a $2 billion liability in a matter of minutes. Chernobyl has cost Belarus and Ukraine at least $500 billion and counting. And the price tag on a major meltdown anywhere in the US is virtually beyond calculation.
Thus those who think a flood of new nukes will flow unimpeded into the American pocketbook haven't been paying attention:
1) Four
northeastern nukes---in Vermont, New Jersey and the two at Indian
Point--- are under intense public pressure to shut within the next two
years. Numerous other elderly reactors are likely to go down long before any new nukes could come on line.
2) French President Sarkozy is demanding that world financial institutions buy a bevy of new French-built reactors. But
huge delays and cost-overruns at French projects in Finland and France
itself have made the investment community wary to say the least, thus
prompting his foot-stomping.
3) Documents leaked from inside France's national utility EDF indicate cost-cutting has made the new French reactor design exceedingly prone to explosion, further unsettling potential investors.
4) The future of new US reactor construction hinges on massive loan guarantees and handouts. The public number is $54 billion, but the Nuclear Information & Resource Service says the real bill could top a trillion.
5) In
the polarized, cost-conscious wake of the health care bill, and the
apparent demise of cap and trade as a centerpiece of climate legislation, the idea of such huge sums flowing to a deeply polarizing energy source has become increasingly problematic. Without
a clear trade-off for fossil/nuclear giveaways, and with stiffening
resistance from the rightist National Taxpayers Union, Cato Institute
and Heritage Foundation, the nuke bonanza is anything but certain.
6) An
attempt by Entergy to shift six reactors into an asset-free corporate
shell has been nixed by New York authorities, leaving liability for
Vermont Yankee, Indian Point and other northeastern nukes in limbo.
7) As
elderly nukes stumble toward oblivion, various funds allegedly set
aside for decommissioning may be significantly under-funded, deeply
exacerbating the financial battles that now the industry.
8) As
a lame duck, George W. Bush signed agreements apparently obligating the
feds to assume responsibility for enough radioactive waste to fill two
of the cancelled Yuccas. The complete lack of even one such facility means the potential taxpayer bill is beyond meaningful calculation.
9) Above
all the exemption from liability for a major accident fed the industry
by federal law in the case of terror or error remains the largest
potential cost to us all. Renewed in 2005, some believe the statute is clearly unconstitutional.
To
this day the families of those harmed by radiation at Three Mile Island
have been denied the right to make their case in federal court.
But now the shoe is on the other foot.
Desperate for cash, the nuclear industry wants us all to pay hundreds
of billions for the joy of living downwind from still more 3 Mile
Islands for which they intend to assume NO liability.
They want our money and our lives.
From central Pennsylvania after 31 years, the message is clear: Just Say NO!