Wasserman writes: "The horrifying collapse of a south Florida condo should alarm us all about the next reactor catastrophe."
A man prays Friday near where search and rescue operations are ongoing at the partially collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Fla. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Collapsed Florida Condo Sends a Giant Nuke Warning
28 June 21
he horrifying collapse of a south Florida condo should alarm us all about the next reactor catastrophe.
The owners of that 13-story condo were warned years ago that it could implode. They were apparently getting ready for repairs, but in the interim did nothing.
The owners of America�s 93 licensed reactors have been warned for decades that they could both implode and explode. They have also done nothing.
More than 150 people may have died in this avoidable Florida disaster. The death toll from the next avoidable reactor disaster could stretch into the millions, with property damage in the trillions, a blow from which our economy and ecosystems might never recover.
South Florida authorities have now ordered inspections of large buildings over forty years old. Nearly all US reactors � including four on the ocean in South Florida � are also now around forty years old.
They all must be immediately shut for rigorous inspection. To wait is to invite a radioactive version of what just happened to that condo.
The argument is not about nuclear power. It�s about basic sanity.
The industry is currently pushing �new� designs based on fusion, thorium, breeder technologies, molten salt, small modular, and more. None have been proven safe or effective in fighting climate chaos. Nor can they compete with renewables. None have a reasonable prospect of coming online before being completely left in the radioactive dust by accelerating advances in wind, solar, batteries, and LED efficiency.
All are certain to consume huge quantities of public money, pouring into private pockets (like those of Bill Gates) before failing utterly.
But they pale in importance alongside the 93 US reactors (there are some 430 worldwide) now plummeting toward certain catastrophe.
None of these reactors can get private liability insurance against an apocalyptic disaster. Most were designed in the pre-digital 1950s and �60s. Many were built with inferior materials and understanding.
Critical welds at California�s Diablo Canyon, for example, contain metal components long since banned. But Unit One continues to operate.
Critical concrete at New Hampshire�s Seabrook and Ohio�s Davis-Besse is crumbling. Fort Calhoun in Nebraska was flooded. Intake pipes at South Texas froze. Reactors in Ohio and Virginia have been damaged by earthquakes. Diablo is surrounded by earthquake faults set to deliver seismic shocks which a Nuclear Regulatory Commission resident inspector has said it can�t withstand. The owners of San Onofre want to bury their high-level wastes ONE HUNDRED FEET from the tide line. Meaningful evacuation planning is nonexistent at sites where nearby population centers have exploded since the original siting approval.
All these old reactors contribute to climate chaos with emissions of heat, radiation, and carbon. They suck up billions of gallons of precious water, then dump it or evaporate it with chemical, radioactive, and thermal pollution. In every case, our planet would benefit from their shutdown.
Virtually all US reactors are almost certainly embrittled, meaning emergency cooling water poured into the core to quell a meltdown would shatter critical components, resulting in apocalyptic hydrogen and possibly fission explosions, as at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
To put it most simply: no embrittled reactor has a workable set of brakes. Yet states like California, and the NRC itself, refuse to conduct relatively cheap and simple open inspections.
Thus embrittlement, pipe cracking, component degradation, technical obsolescence, an aging workforce, rampant incompetence, and worse define the reality of virtually every operating atomic reactor, here and around the planet.
So when we look in horror at that collapsed south Florida condo, with all those innocent souls buried in the rubble, we must remember that later today, parallel pictures could show a mega-hot runaway reactor spewing Chernobyl/Fukushima levels of radiation throughout the ecosphere.
Thankfully, the Solartopian realities of fast-accelerating wind, solar, battery, and efficiency technologies give us the leeway to shut them all NOW.
Let�s do it before it�s too late!!
Harvey Wasserman co-convenes the weekly Election Protection 2024 ZOOM. His People's Spiral of US History is at www.solartopia.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Yeah ..... this article was obviously professionally proofread to the most rigorous standards of a graduate of the Texas Educational System.
I think a good dose of LSD would give them all an improved perspective.
First is because I am from CA, which as a Blue "donor state" pays $60B/yr more in federal taxes than we get back in federal spending, we are subsidizing the very Red States who are dragging us all down. CA on its own would have the world's 8th largest GDP, and that $60B/yr could be spent here far better in fixing our roads, our schools, our energy and water systems, etc.
Second is that in an America that peacefully "Balkanizes" into more philosophically aligned nations wouldn't have a mostrous $1T/yr global military Empire anymore, we would get back to guarding our own shores without the foreign adventurism, again freeing up more money to help ALL of us, no matter which new "American Sub-nation" you reside in.
Third is Washington DC's complete dysfunction and actual outright corruption. Flush it down the toilet, and start over at the "Mini-State" level, at a minimum it should be more responsive to its people than the Federal Government is today.
If we aren't going to "Balkanize" like this, then at a minimum we need a new Constitutional Convention. But I would imagine these Red States would screw THAT up too just like they did the first Constitution by leaving open slavery, etc.
Be careful what you ask for. . . .
Plus, I think the best way for "change" to come to those States is for them to see the success of the alternatives. If a "Republic of California" became one of the strongest nations on the Earth just by implementation of some basic wise Progressive policies, those new countries would look at their hell-hole and decide to follow our example. But right now, they are PREVENTING wise policies for ALL of us through their control in Washington.
Agree. When I saw the headline, as a (rare)liberal native Texan and fan of Moyers & Co., I thought, I'll post this on FB, etc. But I'd be embarrassed to do so in its current uncorrected form. The absolutely valid message gets lost in annoyance at the repeated sentences out of context.
There are plenty of fine people living in Texas-just like any other state. In fact, when I used to live there, I never heard the kind of hate speech I see on this site today.
I said "TODAY".
"The LAST thing I want to hear from any Texan cretin or any histrionically anti-Fed from my or any other state is how uber-patriotic of an American they are."
Isn't that redundant?
I've read enough of Rand's work (teeth gritted all the way; she was a godawful writer who couldn't resist lecturing, indeed preaching, at the expense of actual storytelling) to know that ALL her writing seemed like a fever dream.
Isn't that a hoot ? And yet, quite darkly, a rejection of critical thinking is a totally logical - even predictable - outcome resulting from the assumption of a "platform" like anti-science to begin with.
Such willful and deliberate stupidity - such *aggressive* idolatry and pride in ignorance is not new to the World, but these collective boneheads certainly seem to take it to an incredible level.
This very "political platform" is nothing more than a thinly veiled and childish attempt to "legislate" the Texas secession from the Union that these people have, (perhaps sadly) never been able to effect in actuality.
Great reference to Texas "hero" Sam Houston above. It stops short of mentioning the fact that the *same day* that Sam Houston, President of the Republic of Texas *did* warn the Texas Legislature against the folly of "firin' up a war" with the Industrialized North, the legislature, in an apoplexy of the same wisdom and foresight that they seem somehow to *still* retain to this day, *DEPOSED* Sam Houston as President the same day he made those comments.
Sam Houston, after all, was one of the very few Texans who had actually *traveled* North to see for *himself* what was meant by the phrase: "Industrialized Military Force".
As ever, Texas fantasy prevailed. Out with Houston, in with ignorance and arrogance.
During the Civil War, the Union was defended by the Republicans and states' rights, nullification and slavery were defended by the Democrats. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the two parties switched sides. Now the Union is defended by the Democrats and states' rights, nullification and the former slave-states of the South are represented by the Republican Party.
The Republican Party at this time has embraced nullification. They are attempting to nullify the results of the 2008 and 2012 elections in which the voters elected and then re-elected President Obama. The doctrine of nullification was on the losing side in the Civil War. We must not let it be victorious now. The election in November, 2014, is all about nullification.
Be well.