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26th Anniversary Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster – Fukushima Leaking Massive Amounts Radiation Poisoning Pacific Ocean Basin

April 26 2012 marks the 26th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It has been estimated by Dr. Alexei Yablokov et. al., that, so far, about one million people have died premature deaths due to the steam explosion and ten day graphite fire that occurred at nuclear reactor Number Four in Ukraine, when that nation used to be part of the USSR back in 1986. These deaths have occurred, and many more will follow, not from just the explosion itself (‘only 31 died’ many media forums continue to say), but from the long-lived radioactive contamination of the soil, air and water that will continue killing and mutating life forms for centuries.

Podcast of Dr. Miller Interview Nuclear Obama Vs. Wind

Dr. Conrad Miller appeared on worldwide internet radio on April 1, 2010 at 6:35 PM Eastern Time; 3:35 PM Pacific Time, with the Puffman, Jerry Puffer on KSEN-AM 1150 Radio in Shelby, Montana.  The show was hearable at http://www.ksenam.com/onair_page.php?id=5 but is not stored, regrettably.  However:

You CAN hear the following podcast anytime you wish from the ‘Dresser After Dark’ Interview of March 22, 2010  Click here to listen: Conrad Miller3-22-2010

Both the Puffman and the Dresser interviews were  listenable via the miracle of the internet anywhere on Earth with internet access. Generation of electricity and the promising non-toxic alternatives esp wind and solar were discussed, vs the dangerous nuclear push being engineered by President Obama.

Although the current President is now telling the world that nuclear power is ‘safe and clean,’ there are stirrings in America, and many facts showing
adverse health effects from nuclear power plants to contradict such a claim.

Americans should know that our country has been called ‘The Persian Gulf Of Wind.’   In fact, by installing 10,000 new megawatts of windpower in 2009 [an average nuclear plant generates about 1000 megawatts], we are ahead of former #1 wind power nation Germany, that country installing about 1500 new megawatts of wind power annually. China has quickly become number 3, with 25,104 total megawatts of wind installed.

But who is publicizing this?? Plus the overwhelming relative safety of wind
vs. nuclear?

A new nuclear plant may take 6-8 years to come online, at an estimated real cost of $10-$12 billion. Then there is the unsolveable problem of where to store the most toxic waste on Earth, radioactive waste. Just think, in say seven years, even if we stayed at the current rate of installation, we should have `70,000 new megawatts of safe wind power – installing 10,000 megawatts per year.
With 33% calculated average ‘capacity’ for wind, that would equal the output of 24 nuclear plants before any one nuclear plant would even come online.

Dr. Miller. 6:35 EST April 1, 2010 on the Shelby, Montana station KSEN-AM 1150, for about 25 minutes discussed nuclear power vs alternative safe power at a time when studies are coming out showing increased cancer rates surrounding nuclear plants. Americans should also know that 30 of our 104 nuclear plants have leaked. A few weeks ago, the Vermont Senate voted 26-4 to close the Vermont Yankee reactor when its license expires in 2012. Why? Because Entergy, the corporation that owns the plant had been lying about a most recent tritium water leak occurring, and also lying about the existence of any possible pipes where the leaks could have originated from.

However, when the truth unavoidably emerged, Entergy did admit there were indeed pipes and they were leaking, which enraged Vermont citizens. In addition, another leak that evaded publicity, was denied ever occurring, also was revealed to have occurred starting back in 2005.

Same type of story in the town of Godley, Illinois. There for nine years the Braidwood nuclear reactor, it was finally revealed, had leaked 6 MILLION gallons of tritium tainted water radioactively polluting the town’s salty wells. After finally admitting that they had lied, Exelon, now the biggest nuclear power corporation in America with 17 reactors in our country, started delivering bottled water to local residents. Here is a brief statement about tritium so you can get the picture:

Tritium is an ‘activation product’ resulting from fissioning of uranium in
what was supposed to be Godley’s “cream of the crop”[i] nuclear reactor.
Tritium can pass through our skin while we are showering or even washing our dishes. According to the Grandfather of Health Physics, the late Karl Z. Morgan, tritium “is the only radionuclide for which we assume as much is taken into the body via skin penetration as by inhalation. It is the MOST invasive of all radionuclides and distributes itself rather uniformly to all organs and all body tissues on a microCurie per gram basis. It presents a somatic, genetic and teratogenic [cancerous] risk. It cannot be separated from liquid waste by evaporation, a process used to concentrate most radionuclides [especially in nuclear reactors].”[ii]

——————————————————————————–

[i] Joe Cosgrove, Director, Parks Department, for Godley, Illinois;
telephone conversation June 19, 2006.

[ii] ‘Why EPA’s Tritium Standard For Drinking Water

[20,000 picocuries per liter] Is Undoubtedly Way Too Lax, & A Suggested

New Standard,” Jan 17, 2006 by Russell Ace Hoffman.

************************************************************************

The latest from Joe Cosgrove down in Will County, south of Chicago, from
President Obama’s home state is:

“In November of 2008, Exelon – Braidwood Nuclear Station
donated $11,500,000.00 dollars to the Godley Public Water
District to install a municipal water system for 225 households.
The donation was a gift, while they clearly stated that it had nothing
to do with the releases of radionuclides to the ground water, but
just wanted to be a “good neighbor”.

Bottled water is still be supplied to residents until such time
that the system goes on line.

In 2006, The Illinois Attorney General, Illinois EPA and the Will County
States Attorney filed a lawsuit for numerous violations by Exelon,
namely the discharge of contaminants to the groundwater, without permit.
This case has been on going and is now set for trial in May. So far,
besides the injunction to clean up the contamination, no Consent
decree has been entered.

We still look forward to updating the Federal study concerning
health statistics in proximity to nuclear plants. There is movement
by the NRC to do this and to have the same opened for peer review.”

Of course, there have been numerous studies in other countries showing
increased cancer rates surrounding nuclear plants.

Also, we should be aware that over 500 radionuclides are produced
by fissioning uranium to make heat and then steam to turn a turbine
and produce electricity, which can be done infinitely more safely
with a wind turbine or solar/photovoltaics. Each of these dangerous
radionuclides can emit radioactive rays or electrons that can
strike our DNA to cause mutations and cancer. Plus many are very
long-lived: Cesium has a half life of ~30 years and a hazardous life
during which we have to worry about it, lasting 300-600 years.

Plutonium-239 has a 24,000 year half life and thus a 240,000 – 480,000
year hazardous life.

Just a microgram of plutonium can cause lung cancer. That means,
if vaporized in an accident (e.g., like Chernboyl) just 20 pounds
of plutonium could be dispersed around the world and theoretically
possibly cause lung cancer in every human being on Earth (454 grams
in one pound; 454 MILLION micrograms in one pound). Remember,
not 31, but more than 300,000 people have died prematurely with
cancer from Chernobyl’s radioactive contamination, as stated by
biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, president of the Center for Russian
Environmental Policy in his 2007 book.

In addition, the Westinghouse AP-1000 new wonder nuclear plants that
President Obama is pushing to be built in Georgia have been
rejected as unsafe by the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] already!!
Meanwhile, the utilities in Georgia and Florida are sucking up
their ratepayers by increasing their rates NOW to ratchet up moneys
to pay for these new nuclear plants in advance. AND, the Congressional
Budget Office has stated that ~50% of the nuclear loan guarantees will go
into default, so the US taxpayer will end up picking up the bills on
the bad loans.

Also, concerning the $8.3 Billion nuclear loan guarantees, the
Department of Energy has not been able to spend its existing
loan guarantee authority, and since actual guarantees can’t be
granted until a reactor receives a license from the NRC, it will
be years more before any actual guarantee can be issued.

‘Every one of the proposed new reactors in the U.S. already has
experienced delays, and every one has a combination of design,
safety, economics and radioactive waste problems that make them
highly speculative at best’ >> according to the Nuclear Information
and Resource Service [NIRS] in Washington D.C..

The Clipper 2.5 megawatt wind turbine can supply 675 homes with
electricity. 112,000 of these can supply all of America’s homes
with electricity. This would create a vast amount of jobs,
and a vital future industry that will be sustainable to aid
a rapidly growing population on this Earth. And then there’s solar
power, which Dr. David Goodstein of CalTech states can power
all of America’s homes within a decade, utilizing an area equivalent
to 80 square miles in one of our southwestern deserts.

OTHER HOT NUCLEAR POWER NEWS:

A few weeks ago in West Virginia, a bill to repeal that state’s
ban on new nuclear construction was defeated in the state legislature.
See more at
http://www.wboy.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=75844 ]

In Arizona, a bill to classify nuclear power as renewable energy was
withdrawn [ http://bit.ly/93YHyf ] following heavy lobbying from the
solar power industry and environmental community.

So, although the bully pulpit is being occupied by Obama and his push
for nuclear power, the American people are having their say contrary
to his audacious advocacy.

One last vision of where this is all coming from: Karl Grossman in
his Nuclear Obama Counterpunch article available on the internet:

Steven Chu, Obama’s ‘Department of Energy secretary typifies the
religious-like zeal for nuclear power emanating for decades from
scientists in the U.S. government’s string of national nuclear
laboratories. Chu was director of one of these, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, before becoming head of DOE.

First established during World War II’s Manhattan Project to
build atomic weapons, the laboratories after the war began
promoting civilian nuclear technology—and have been pushing it
unceasingly ever since. It has been a way to perpetuate the
vested interest created during World War II. The number of
nuclear weapons that could be built was limited because atomic
bombs don’t lend themselves to commercial distribution, but
in pushing food irradiation, nuclear-powered airplanes and
rockets, atomic devices for excavation and, of course, nuclear
power, the budgets and staffs of the national nuclear laboratories
could be maintained, indeed increase.

That was the analysis of David Lilienthal, first chairman of the
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which preceded the Department of
Energy. Lilienthal in his 1963 book Change, Hope, and the Bomb
wrote: “The classic picture of the scientist as a creative
individual, a man obsessed, working alone through the night,
a man in a laboratory pushing an idea—this has changed.
Now scientists are ranked in platoons. They are organization men.
In many cases the independent and humble search for new truths about
nature has been confused with the bureaucratic impulse to justify
expenditure and see that next year’s budget is bigger than last’s.”

Lilienthal wrote about the “elaborate and even luxurious [national nuclear]
laboratories that have grown up at Oak Ridge, Argonne, Brookhaven”
and the push to use nuclear devices for “blowing out harbors, making
explosions underground to produce steam, and so on” which show “how
far scientists and administrators will go to try to establish a nonmilitary
use” for nuclear technology.

Chu, like so many of the national nuclear laboratory scientists and
administrators, minimizes the dangers of radioactivity. If they didn’t,
if they acknowledged how life-threatening the radiation produced by
nuclear technology is, their favorite technology would crumble.

A major theme of Chu, too, is a return to the notion promoted by
the national nuclear laboratories in the 1950s and 60s of “recycling”
and “reusing” nuclear waste. This way, they have hoped, it might not
be seen as waste at all. The concept was to use radioactive Cesium-137
(the main poison discharged in the Chernobyl disaster) to irradiate
food, to use depleted uranium to harden bullets and shells, and so on.

In recent weeks, with Obama carrying out his pledge not to allow Yucca
Mountain to become a nuclear waste dump, Chu set up a “blue-ribbon” panel
on radioactive waste—stacked with nuclear power advocates including Exelon’s
John Rowe—that is expected to stress the “recycling” theory.

“We are aggressively pursuing nuclear energy,” declared Chu in
January as he announced DOE’s budget plan—which included an increase
in the 2011 federal budget in monies for nuclear loan guarantees to
build new nuclear plants cited by Obama Tuesday. “We are, as we have
repeatedly said, working hard to restart the American nuclear power industry.”
The $8.3 billion in loan guarantees Obama announced Tuesday is to come
from $18.5 billion in guarantees proposed by the George W. Bush administration
and authorized by Congress in 2005. “My budget proposes tripling the loan
guarantees we provide to help finance safe, clean nuclear facilities,”
said Obama Tuesday, referring to the DOE plan which would add $36 billion
and bring the loan guarantee fund to $54.5. And this despite candidate
Obama warning about “enormous subsidies from the U.S. government” to the
nuclear industry.’

See more at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/grossman02172010.html

Lots going on here. Lots of money at stake. While kids get cancer living
around nuclear plants. And John Rowe and Steven Chu attempt to further
nuclearize our world, when we have the means with truly safe wind and sun
to provide the electricity for all USA homes within a decade.

Listen in….6:35 PM Thursday April 1, 2010 East Coast Time

C March 31, 2010 Conrad Miller MD

Dr. Miller Available on Tikkun Telephone Conference Oct 26 2009

Dr. Conrad Miller M.D. will be available on October 26, 2009 for questions concerning his recent Tikkun magazine articles ‘Energy Generation in the Obama Years (No, Nuclear Power is Not ‘Safe and Clean’)’ and ‘Today’s Synthetic Foods: Shrinking Our Brains, Testicles and Livers?’  The latter was published in the Sept/Oct 2009 issue starting on page 27; the former was published in the July/August 2009 issue and can now be viewed online via http://www.tikkun.org or you may purchase or subscribe to the magazine.

For participation in this phonecall you may dial 888-346-3950 and then the code 11978#

It will begin at 9 PM EST or 6 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time) with an interview with Dr. Miller, and then questions will be entertained from call-in participants.

Recent news that President Obama has nominated two more pro-biotech anti-labelling men for important Dept of Agriculture positions will be discussed.  According to the Organic Consumers Association, President Obama originally had promised to ensure GMO food (Genetically Modified Organisms) and crops would indeed be labelled as these entities are for 40% of the world’s population.  Now the industry is being given the green light to go ahead with its grand plans to have the world’s wheat become GMO and patented.  Problems with the immune system, the gastrointestinal tract, incorporation into human DNA causing unknown changes in DNA function, are just some of the problems being discovered as our world is being changed not responsibly for the better by the process of imprecise gene-gunning of novel alien gene sequences into the DNA of corn and canola and cotton and soy, for beginners….

That’s October 26, 2009 at 6 PM on the West Coast of the USA and 9 PM on the East Coast.  Everyone is welcome.  Arranged by Tikkun Magazine.

Dr. Miller On Tikkun Magazine Call-In Oct 26 9PM EST

Dr. Conrad Miller M.D. will be available on October 26, 2009 for questions concerning his recent Tikkun magazine articles ‘Energy Generation in the Obama Years (No, Nuclear Power is Not ‘Safe and Clean’)’ and ‘Today’s Synthetic Foods: Shrinking Our Brains, Testicles and Livers?’  The latter was published in the Sept/Oct 2009 issue starting on page 27; the former was published in the July/August 2009 issue and can now be viewed online via http://www.tikkun.org or you may purchase or subscribe to the magazine.

For participation in this phonecall you may dial 888-346-3950 and then the code 11978#

It will begin at 9 PM EST or 6 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time) with an interview with Dr. Miller, and then questions will be entertained from call-in participants.  Jeffrey M. Smith, author of ‘Seeds of Deception,’ will be available during the call-in segment to add to the conversation with his knowledge of the latest occurrences concerning genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) and the stories about their usage from around the world.

Recent news that President Obama has nominated two more pro-biotech anti-labelling men for important Dept of Agriculture positions will be discussed.  According to the Organic Consumers Association, President Obama originally had promised to ensure GMO food  and crops would indeed be labelled, as these entities are for 40% of the world’s population today.  Now the industry is being given the green light to go ahead with its grand plans to have the world’s wheat become GMO and patented.  Problems with the immune system, the gastrointestinal tract, incorporation into human DNA causing unknown changes in DNA function, are just some of the problems being discovered as our world is being changed not responsibly for the better by the process of imprecise gene-gunning of novel alien gene sequences into the DNA of corn and canola and cotton and soy, for beginners….In addition, Monsanto and the Gene Giants are trying to get control of the planet’s seeds so people can not pass them on to other food raisers around the planet, as mankind has always done.  Contracts have to be signed; people have gone to jail for violating these contracts.  Even seed ‘cleaners,’ like the man depicted in the movie ‘Food, Inc.,’ have been taken to court, their livelihoods demolished, because of this corporatization of our food production system (‘Food, Inc.,’ a MUST-see movie), patenting seeds so free-loaders can’t use them or be given them.

That’s October 26, 2009 at 6 PM on the West Coast of the USA and 9 PM on the East Coast.  Everyone is welcome.  Arranged by Tikkun Magazine. 

Presidential Debate #3 Nuclear Power Option Unrebuked

During the third and last presidential debate on Oct 15th, John McCain said “We can eliminate our dependence on foreign oil by building 45
new nuclear plants, power plants, right away.” Barack Obama did not respond to this by saying the obvious:
“But, John, only TWO percent of our electricity is produced from oil!  And by the way, 80 percent of our uranium for our nuclear plants is imported.” 

Alas, he declined to do this.  This whole nuclear option is NO option.  Nuclear power is not ‘green’ nor is it ‘safe and clean.’  We still have the tons of nuclear waste that are radioactive for 500,000 years that we cannot safely store.  Radioactivity from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident has contaminated an area north of the exploded Ukrainian plant across a 750 mile diameter for 100,000 years, according to the late Dr. Vladimir Chernousenko, the nuclear physicist in charge
of cleaning up the worst industrial accident in mankind’s history.  When the next Chernobyl happens, that will be the end of nuclear
power, but it will come too late.  For our presidential candidates are both mouthing support for the nuclear power option when its health effects should eliminate the dirtiest most-toxic technology commonly employed by mankind from the energy roundtable.  When the media should be hosting a debate on nuclear power, allowing scientists to participate
who can discuss what radioactivity can do to the human body, and the cells of all living organisms. 

Dr. Alexey Yablokov, president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, informs us in his 2007 book that 300,000 people prematurely died so far as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion and fire.  Nuclear proponents continue to proclaim that only 31 people died at Chernobyl, as if there is no such thing as radioactivity, and over 500 radionuclides like plutonium-239 that are produced in our 104 nuclear plants every day as a result of the
fissioning or splitting of uranium to make heat to produce steam to turn a turbine to produce electricity.

Remember, all these radionuclides have dangerous ‘half-life’ periods during
which their radioactive beams can mutate your DNA and that of your fetus especially, to produce unsurvivability, death, genetic defects and cancer.  Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years.  After one half life, HALF the radioactivity of plutonium-239 or any radionuclide is still present.  The danger of this radioactivity to produce ill-effects continues thru 10-20 half-lives, which scientists call a radioactive element’s ‘hazardous life.’  For plutonium-239 that means 240,000 to 480,000 years.  And only one millionth of one gram is the lung cancer causing dose for plutonium.  That means that with 454 grams in one pound, twenty pounds of plutonium could cause lung cancer in every human being on Earth if the plutonium is dispersed and spread about the planet to possibly be inhaled by each of us 6.8 billion Earthlings.

I have decided to post my new nuclear power chapter (99% completed) from the latest edition of my book ‘The Most Important Issues Americans THINK They Know About – Edition III’ on my website so that everyone can read a broad informative discussion about nuclear power from a concerned physician’s perspective, written for the layman.  It will be available in a pdf format with images and photos to make it more enjoyable and to highlight certain important concepts.

The entire book, six chapters in all, with a four part Appendicies, and nearly 1000 references, will be available from my website on October 24th 2008.  It should be available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., by mid-November.

All books purchased from the website shall be autographed by the author, until further notice.

Contact me if you have any questions on nuclear power, the health effects of radioactivity, and what we can do with especially wind and solar power to provide ALL the electricity American homes need within a few years.  YES! we can do that starting NOW!  See
the website http://www.crestofthewave.com for more vital information…

darnoc@crestofthewave.com

$550 BILLION For Nuclear in Lieberman Senate Bill S.2191/3036

Nuclear power is not green, nor is it economical. The industry says it cannot build new nuclear plants without federal aid for their poor poor technology that was supposed to be too cheap to meter. Certainly by now. So, they get $20 billion, thanks to the Bush administration after the Energy Act of 2005 dole-outs. Then, Senator Joe Lieberman from Connecticut was trying to help them suck up another $50 billion of our taxpayer dollars. But why stop there? Now we almost had the Lieberman-Warner Bill S.2191 coming to the floor of the Senate on June 2, 2008. It was supposed to be the Climate Security Act to finally address global warming. But really, in whatever form it seems likely to morph into, it will be the nuclear welfare act, after Lieberman, or maybe Georgia’s Senator Isakson get through with it. $550 BILLION is the figure you should fix in your brain, that could be given to the nuclear industry via S.2191. (Though the latest is that the bill will now be S.3036, and Barbara Boxer is introducing an amendment that will give the nuclear industry $92 Billion, with Senator majority whip Harry Reid of Nevada’s blessing…Oh! Pain!!!!)

 

 

Will this be a fair or wise investment to foist onto the backs of our children? Remember that ‘Wall Street casts a skeptical eye on nuclear power plants and no company is ready to order one without federal loan guarantees.’**

 

 

You can do something about this happening tho, if you call your Senators at 202-224-3121 and tell them to vote against S.2191/3036 and all its amendments. More on that below.

 

 

Since our zero environmental score (with the League of Conservation Voters) presidential candidate John McCain wants to go 80% nuclear, like the French, Senator Lieberman will try to accomodate him somehow by fixing some nuclear power changes into S.2191/3036. Senator Isakson, according to a Friends of the Earth May 12, 2008 memo, drafted an amendment ‘that would have created new tax breaks for the construction, operation, and manufacturing of nuclear power facilities, provided federal support for the training of workers and engineers, weakened nuclear waste transport laws, among other things.’

 

 

What actually transpires, what amendments actually are offered and approved, will add drama to all the craziness that goes with forging all things nuclear that are possible onto the backs of the American taxpayer. Many young people may think this is great, as many older citizens may, who have forgotten that there is something called radioactivity that is very dangerous, produced in vast amounts, inside these plants that boil water with the fissioning of uranium to create steam to turn a turbine to create electricity.

News that Germany has realized that leukemia and other childhood cancer increases around nuclear plants are indeed caused by the radioactivity produced and released by these plants has been reported in the New Scientist on April 28, 2008. That at least 300,000 people have died so far thanks to the Chernobyl accident on April 26, 1986 has been tallied up by Dr. Alexey Yablokov. Dr. Yablokov was president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, and former environmental advisor to the late President Boris Yeltsin. He also noted in his new book that life expectancy in Russia, which had been the same as that of the United States before the Chernobyl accident, has dropped to 59 years for men, and 64 years for women, a fact that Dr. Yablokov attributes principally to Chernobyl: “You see longevity dropping precipitously right after 1986 and the accident.”

Recent calculations of cost and visions of reality make the nuclear power option seem a terrible choice, but one that is lobbied for very well via the subsidies we give the industry that end up ultimately in the pockets of our governmental representatives. Should we finally build a new nuclear plant after none have been ordered since the 1970’s will only lead us to have the first nuclear plant on line in 2015 at the earliest. By then solar power will likely much more safely be economical at 5-12 cents per kilowatt hour. Nuclear power on the other hand, if all costs are included from decommissioning to actual construction and mining and liabilities to the environment and human health will be somewhere between 14 and 19.75 cents per kilowatt hour*. Dr. David Goodstein, former vice-provost of CalTech and physicist, told me that as of now, if we martial our resources, will and money, a much better investment will be solar power, because in just ten years 100% of USA electricity could be supplied by solar power.

Besides that, our science-ignoring leaders want to further the nuclear option by importing nuclear wastes into America for disposal here, and reprocessing nuclear waste. 20,000 tons of Italy’s low and intermediate level waste could be arriving here all too soon if Americans never hear about it. Much of this waste will end up in dumps in Tennessee by being re-classified by corporations like EnergySolutions as not radioactive enough to worry about. There is a comment period ending on June 10, 2008 on this importation, that could set a precedent to make America the world’s dumping ground for nuclear waste. Italy loves it because they didn’t know how they were going to get rid of their nuclear waste. They had closed all their nuclear plants by 1990, after the Chernobyl accident caused them to wise up.

Reprocessing is the dirtiest stage of the nuclear cycle. Only France and the UK are still doing it, and the UK will be phasing it out within a few years, according to Arjun Makhijani. New waste streams are created by this terrible split-end of nuclear technology that will poison the areas where the reprocessing plants are stationed. Here is a quote from Mr. Makhijani’s ‘France’s Nuclear Fix?’ published in Science For Democratic Action Volume 15, No. 2, January 2008:

‘The La Hague [reprocessing plant in northern France] uses a pipeline to discharge hundreds of millions of liters of liquid radioactive waste into the English Channel each year, polluting the oceans all the way to the Arctic. This egregious pollution continues on the basis of a disingenuous renaming of the liquid waste as “discharges.” If the same waste were put in 55-gallon drums and dumped overboard from a ship, it would be illegal under the 1970 London Dumping Convention. But somehow the “discharges” are permitted.’

Yes, Candidate McCain and Senator Lieberman, and your avid compadres, let us be like the French. Or should we be? In that same article, Makhijani tells us that the ‘French are having second thoughts’ about nuclear power. ‘Less than 31 percent of the French public favor nuclear energy as a response to today’s energy crisis. 54% are now opposed to investing 3 billion euros in the construction of a new reactor, while 84% favor the development of renewable energy.’ Did you know that the European Union is planning to produce 20% of its electricity from renewable technologies (which does NOT include nuclear power) by 2020? Or that Spain has set a 30% renewables-produced electricity timetable for 2010?? Or that Denmark, TODAY, produces 20% of its electricity by windpower? Or that Germany is phasing out nuclear power? Why? How? Because Germany leads the world in windpower megawattage at 22,200. 1000 megawatts is the average output of a nuclear plant. So, Germany has the equivalent of 22 nuclear plants-worth of windpower. And they are adding more than 1000 megawatts of windpower each year at an increasing rate. Their 24 nuclear plants must seem like an ill-advised liability, but soon they will be shuttered. Besides all this, Germany is gobbling up as much of the world’s solar power technology as possible.

And here we are with Bush and McCain heading us into a dark radioactive dead end alley, bored by greed merchants and scientific techies who have forgotten about biology and the fragility of the cell and life, besides the profit and loss ledgers of the future.

* ‘Nuclear Power Plant Electricity: A Simple Costing Model’ by Philip D. Lusk – see this at http://www.nirs.org> **’Nuclear Power Costs,’ by Arjun Makhijani, Science For Democratic Action, Volume 15, No. 2, January 2008, page 2.

Here is the May 19 alert now, from NIRS and http://www.nirs.org to help you participate in our democracy and stop this nuclear travesty before it goes too far….

ALERT!
May 19, 2008
For more info, contact:
Michael Mariotte, NIRS 301-270-6477 12
Ken Bossong, Sustainable Energy Network 301-588-4741
Sign-on Letter to Senate: Stop Nuclear Subsidies in Climate Legislation. Climate Focus Should be Energy Efficiency and Renewables.Dear Friends:Below is a letter written by our friends at the Sustainable Energy Network, addressing the principles the Senate should be considering as it takes up the Lieberman-Warner climate crisis legislation (S. 2191) the week of June 2.Both organizations and individuals may sign this letter. See instructions below. But please sign by 5pm Eastern time, Tuesday May 27.And please, do not sign this in lieu of calling your Senators and demanding no nuclear subsidies in climate legislation! Your calls—and those of your friends and colleagues—are absolutely vital to winning this effort. But we do encourage you to sign in addition to making your calls to your Senators (Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121).

If you wish to sign on as an ORGANIZATION, please provide:

Your Name + Title
Organization/Business Name
City, State

If you wish to sign on as an INDIVIDUAL: Please clearly state that you are signing on ONLY as an individual and provide:

Your name
City, State

If you wish to also provide your organizational affiliation “for identification purposes only”, it will be listed with this clarification.

Please send your sign-on information to sustainable-energy-network@hotmail.com

Thanks for all you do!

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org

AS YOU CONSIDER CLIMATE LEGISLATION, FOCUS ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY STRATEGIES, OPPOSE NUCLEAR POWER AND FOSSIL FUEL INCENTIVES; APPROACH CAP-AND-TRADE CAREFULLY

May 28, 2008

Members
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

Attn: Environmental/Climate/Energy Legislative Assistants

Dear Senator:

We, the xx undersigned business, environmental, consumer, energy-policy, faith-based, and other organizations and xx individuals are writing to urge you to give great care and thought to pending climate change legislation which may come to the Senate floor next week.

We believe that the grave threats posed by global climate change must be addressed now and action taken to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Moreover, the pending vote on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191), and any amendments that are offered, has the potential for setting the principles and parameters for any federal legislation that is ultimately enacted into law. Consequently, we believe it essential that any bill that emerges from the Senate meet several criteria.

First, federal legislation must — at the very least — set the United States on course to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by no less than 80 percent by 2050 — a target higher than the 70 percent goal proposed by S.2191. However, even a reduction of 80 percent may fall short of what is actually necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. A growing number of analyses now suggest that far greater reductions, accomplished within a much tighter time frame, may actually be needed. Therefore, we urge you to reject legislative proposals that would set merely symbolic or insufficiently aggressive goals.

Second, if a cap-and-trade system is to be part of the nation’s climate change policy, it should be designed thoughtfully and should be viewed as only one in an arsenal of strategies to shift the nation’s economy on to a path of sustainable energy development.

Carefully structured, a cap-and-trade system can play an important role in reducing GHG emissions. However, a poorly designed system could prove to be economically costly and administratively difficult-to-administer, do little to promote renewable energy technologies, and result in the transfer of pollution to low-income communities without actually achieving any significant reductions in GHGs.

If cap-and-trade is to be a part of the United States’ climate change strategy, it should provide for enforceable and rapidly declining ceilings on GHGs, a simple and transparent administrative structure, protections for low-income and other vulnerable communities, and full auction of all carbon credits with the funds targeted at sustainable energy investments.

Third, national climate change legislation must give emphasis to making a rapid transition from fossil fuel energy sources to renewable energy sources coupled with deep cuts in energy waste through energy efficiency improvements and other measures. A number of recent analyses have suggested that U.S. energy use can be reduced by 30 percent or more while renewable energy technologies — some of which have been experiencing 30-45% annual growth rates in recent years — could be brought on line far more quickly than other options to meet most of the country’s supply needs.

Tapping this potential, however, would necessitate substantially more aggressive energy efficiency standards for homes and other buildings, lighting and appliances, electrical generation and transmission, industrial machinery and processes, and agriculture. It would also require much more stringent fuel-efficiency and emission-reduction targets for cars, trucks, and other vehicles coupled with fundamental changes in national transportation policies.

To realize the full potential of the cross-section of renewable energy technologies, long-term (e.g., ten years) tax incentives, significantly increased federal RD&D funding, expanded procurement policies, national interconnection and net metering legislation, a national (banded) portfolio standard, and other steps must be acted upon.

In addition, changes in the federal tax code to encourage investments in energy efficient and renewable energy and to discourage continued use of carbon-based technologies, including phasing-out subsidies to fossil fuels and coal-fired electrical plants (unless they incorporate 100% carbon capture), need to be part of the mix.

Similarly, national climate change legislation should not divert federal resources into long-term, unproven, expensive, and potentially environmentally risky fossil fuel technologies such as so-called “clean coal” and carbon capture and sequestration. The financial burden for demonstrating the viability of these technologies should fall primarily on the shoulders of the fossil fuel industry and not federal taxpayers.

Finally, climate legislation should not include direct or indirect subsidies or mandates for nuclear power; in fact, such subsidies should be phased out. An expansion of nuclear power would merely exacerbate the still-unsolved problem of radioactive waste disposal while adding to concerns about plant safety, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation. In just three years, cost estimates for new nuclear power plants have already tripled or quadrupled and continue to rise. And when a full accounting of the full nuclear fuel cycle is considered, nuclear power is not the carbon-free technology its proponents suggest.

Consequently, investments in nuclear power would prove to be a costly mistake that would divert very limited public and private funds from sustainable energy solutions that can be brought on line far more quickly, at much lower cost, and with fewer safety and environmental risks.

In conclusion, we stress that we believe that early and aggressive action to address the threat of climate change is absolutely necessary. But we also believe that great care and attention be given to designing legislative strategies that emphasize rapid deployment of sustainable energy strategies and not divert resources to nuclear power or speculative fossil fuel technologies.

We appreciate your consideration of these views.

Sincerely,