Wasserman writes: "Forty years ago this week, the Three Mile Island nuke began pouring lethal radiation into our air and water, lungs and livers."
The Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. (photo: AJ)
Three Mile Island's Murderous Legacy Still Threatens Us All
02 April 19
orty years ago this week, the Three Mile Island nuke began pouring lethal radiation into our air and water, lungs and livers.
Throughout central Pennsylvania and beyond, people, animals, plants, and the planet began to die en masse.
In 1980, a mile from the plant, I interviewed many of the immediate victims. It was the worst week of my life.
Today 98 US reactors could repeat the slaughter. Worldwide there are about 450. Many are falling apart. Each could deliver a lethal dose of apocalyptic proportions. All heat the planet, emit carbon, kill nearby newborns, suck up public money, hinder renewables, and threaten fresh catastrophes.
None are �zero emission� or �carbon free.� None can compete with the solar, wind, battery storage, and LED/efficiency technologies that can save us from a fried planet.
If we�re to live on this Earth, King CONG (Coal, Oil Nukes & Gas) must die.
Since TMI, Solartopian costs have become far cheaper than fully amortized reactors.
And nuke costs have soared. Last week Trump slipped in another $3.7 billion in federal loans for two reactors under construction at Vogtle, Georgia. They may ultimately cost $25 billion or more and still never open.
They�re bankrupting the state, having already helped gut Westinghouse and Toshiba. They�ll never come close to competing with wind, solar, batteries or LED/efficiency, which will create far more jobs.
A quarter-million Americans now work in solar energy alone, with another hundred thousand in wind. More Californians work in solar than dig coal nationwide.
Two nukes in South Carolina were recently canceled at a cost of billions. Two more being built in France and Finland are years behind schedule and billions over budget.
The current crop of nuke fanatics wants more. They�ll waste billions of public dollars. But proposed new reactors are so much more expensive than renewables that except for a few big boondoggles, they�ll never be built.
The real threat is the reactors that still operate � the Three Mile Islands in progress.
All heat the planet with massive steam and hot water emissions. Their cooling towers kill thousands of bats and birds. The heat, radiation, and chemicals spewed by their out-take pipes destroy entire marine ecosystems, including millions of fish. The radiation from Fukushima still pours into the Pacific.
Most reactors are losing huge amounts of money. In New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio (for starters) owners are demanding billions in bailouts.
Nuke operators in Ohio and California are bankrupt. Pacific Gas & Electric is under criminal parole for killing eight people in a 2010 San Bruno fire. It�s being sued for more than $10 billion by residents of northern California, where PG&E started fires that killed 80 people, incinerated 12,000 structures and destroyed one of Earth�s most precious ecosystems.
The predecessor to Ohio�s bankrupt FirstEnergy blacked out the entire northeast in 2003. But First Energy now runs the crumbling Davis-Besse and Perry reactors.
All nukes worldwide are embrittled to some degree. If cold water is poured in to stop an out-of-control chain reaction, their pressure vessels will shatter like glass, causing an apocalypse.
But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not want to inspect these reactors. With one exception, all US reactors are more than 20 years old. Some are more than forty.
Citizen activists have asked California Governor Gavin Newsom to inspect the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, which could send a radioactive cloud pouring over the ten million people in downwind Los Angeles. Nationwide, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is rubber-stamping new reactor licenses without inspecting to see if they�re embrittled, cracked, properly maintained, earthquake-vulnerable, handling their nuke wastes properly � or if the companies that own them are capable of actually running these giant, aging, insanely complex reactors.
Diablo Canyon is surrounded by active earthquake faults. So is New York�s Indian Point, north of NYC. Ohio�s Perry and Virginia�s North Anna have already experienced seismic damage.
Forty years after TMI, the question is: How many more operating nukes will blow up like Fukushima and Chernobyl, or partially melt like Three Mile Island, pouring heat and radiation into the ecosphere?
As the existing reactors fry the planet, we have no excuses. We saw what happened at TMI forty years ago.
We can�t let it happen again, especially when the Solartopian alternatives are so cheap and ready to go.
And especially knowing the nightmares that will ensue after the next one explodes.
Harvey Wasserman�s Green Power & Wellness Show is podcast at prn.fm; California Solartopia is broadcast at KPFK-Pacifica, 90.7 fm, Los Angeles. His Life & Death Spiral of US History: From Deganawidah to The Green New Deal to Solartopia will soon be at www.solartopia.org.
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I'm in the abandon the Dem. party camp. When you have the leader of the Dems. partying with the opposition and their funders, I don't see the possibility of reforming anytime in the near future, esp. by 2018.
What a disgrace that Dem. rep's. would support unconstitutiona l legislation. When this happens the whole system is in the sh!t can.
The closest you're ever gonna get to a left wing version of aspirant government here is a sort of faux libertarian breakaway led by Gawd knows who, as permitted by those who REALY run the country -and that to simply give a totally false impression of democracy to the allied nations.
Bernie Sanders is a lonely democratic voice crying in the wilderness where there is a moaning and a gnashing of teeth
Almost all the politicians are rightist, support the oligarchs types, but the public leans left on issues if you ask them in a non-prejudicial way (living wage, Medicare for All, corporations and uber wealthy paying their fair share of taxes etc). Problem is the politicians aren't listening. And unless the Dems get a clue, AND attack Crosscheck and other vote suppression measures HARD, they will continue to lose.
Hillary choosing a VP to her right.
Not once visiting MI.
Her email server.
Hillary's 'deplorable' remark.
Bill meeting Loretta Lynch on the tarmac.
Hillary spending more on internet trolls than Latino outreach.
Her daily call for war with Russia.
Steinem saying female Sanders supporters were 'following the boys'.
Hillary cackling at Qaddafi's torture-murder.
Saying we should drone kill Assange.
Albright: women would go to hell if they didn't support Hillary.
Hillary's Wall Street speeches, insulting BLM.
Therefore it's OUR fault?
We didn't abandon Hillary when the chips were down. The DP, especially the neoliberals, abandoned US long ago. Quit blaming the voters for rotten candidates.
Since when do we OWE them our vote? Clinton might be the first presidential candidate not to bother campaigning. She never asked for MY vote. She, like Bill, arrogantly believed voters had 'nowhere else to go'
Your problem is not third party voters. WE at least cared enough to vote. 50% stayed home. 9% flipped to Trump. Millions were disenfranchised.
How about you blame the DP, DNC, DWS, Brazile or the superdelegates? The polling showed for over a year that Clinton had a good chance of losing, and more -- that she was so reviled she'd mobilize the GOP and hurt down ticket races -- and she did.
The fact we're still dwelling on this instead of gaining ground is, in large measure, ON YOU.
If Clinton were in the WH she and the GOP would be having a grand old time waging war, dropping corporate taxes and throwing us incremental,imp rovements, so don't pretend the alternative was some progressive heaven. I don't know if your naivete regarding Clinton and the neoliberals is genuine or contrived -- and I don't much care -- but get used to it. Progressives are not going back in the box. We're no longer voting LOTE. We're not voting for war or fracking or bank deregulation anymore. YOU may be asleep but progressives are awake and organizing.
We want single payer healthcare, clean water, honest elections, economic justice and a green economy -- and we're not going to vote for anyone who isn't willing to fight for those things.
Would you be okay if the DP stole enough votes to win? How many more countries can we bomb before you become squeamish? How far down the road of corruption are you willing to follow so you can pretend you won something?
Scapegoats are satisfying in the short term but not conducive to building a mature, thoughtful startegy going forward. Grow up.
DraftBernie.org
We didn't abandon HRC. She abandoned us. Decades ago.
PD, we WANT the decline of American empire. We are part of a community of nations. The time for empires is gone.
Un poco contradiction in how you phrased it.
Big Money controls both Dems & Repubs, yes..
and [therefore] Citizens United BOLSTERS [not declines] the "American Empire".....
Si..?
Let us face the fact that a lot of American voters are also church-goers, and they have a powerful allegiance to Old Testament stories and their traditional moral and political lessons. They are not going to abandon a Hebrew state to support supposed infidels.
I am also getting tired of the failure of a Socialist party to take on the challenges of the 21st century. Don't try to sell me the wishywashy New Agey Greens and their clueless naive followers, I know too much about that party's deep flaws! I belong to the Democratic Socialists of America but am a bit disgusted at the DSA reluctance to become more than a "talk but no walk" group. If only I weren't 81 and somewhat ill! Young folk--the ball is in your possession now. RUN WITH IT! Both of the current political parties and their $$$ supporters must be discarded if this nation is to survive.
"Senate Democrats are open to Single Payer health insurance".
Give me a break!!! He's *no Bernie* and would never fight for this; he just says empty words and keeps on sucking in Wall Street money.
There are Democrats that are starting to stand out and up for their Principals and one is Adam Schiff another is young Kennedy, there are more. Basically you people sound like fair weather Democrats, only Democrats when things are going your way otherwise you turn on them. They are not alike except in your imaginations! So it's not okay for Democrats and Republicans to attend the same parties? Just because they are friends outside of congress doesn't mean they agree on issues inside congress. Can't they at least be civil! Doesn't mean they can't persuade a Republican to their side. What about ACA it's not going that well for the R's is it? Hopefully Trump will be gone soon as well. He's the 3rd Republican since 1980 that has disgraced this nation with a scandal.. You might try to remember that in your harsh criticism of the Democrats. What are you doing to help? Do you volunteer?
If we don't want fracking, which party do we vote for?
If we want single payer healthcare, which party do we vote for?
If we want to end corporate subsidies and kowtowing to Wall Street, which party represents us?
"Indeed, many of the most powerful Democratic politicians and donors seem to hate the sick and poor almost as much as Trump does. How else to explain why Chuck Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Representative Carolyn Maloney would party in the Hamptons with Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway and David Koch while the latter group was attempting to strip healthcare from tens of millions of people? "
The Clintons, Podestas, Perezs -- all need to go.
My suggestion has been for the democratic party membership to call a members convention this fall or winter. It should vote to remove the current leadership and name new leaders. Sanders would be great to lead this convention.
It is OK is Schumer acts as a fifth columnist on his own but it is not OK for him to do it as a party leader. The democratic party is led by a fifth column. They are paid to be that way. They need to be fired but they can be fired only if the party is taken over by its membership.
"You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You " is an old expression, attributed to James Carville, and Molly Ivins, among others.
It means that every political player is obliged to take the phone-calls from his/her campaign donors.
It is entirely ethical for candidates and donors to have a reciprocal relationship. Feedback from donors can and should be the basis for the agenda of an elected official.
Second, the very good news.
Bernie Sanders ran a campaign based on progressive economic issues; and his campaign raised $240m from millions of donors. This is an unprecedented achievement for a left-of-center presidential candidate. It is the most powerful lesson of the 2016 election.
Where can we go from here?
The progressive movement, including OurRevolution, now has the keys to success, if it can devise a feedback mechanism that is transparent and democratic. The movement cannot succeed if there are no feedback channels.
What is a feedback channel?
If one of the above RSN commentators donates $50 to a movement PAC or a candidate's PAC, then the PAC should reciprocate with an invitation to a quarterly PAC conference located near the donor's home. Example: a summer conference in Western Iowa and another in Eastern Iowa.
The mission of each conference should be to solicit the views and priorities of the conference attendees. I'm confident that such an event can be facilitated effectively.
~~~ Peace ~~~