Written by Richard Raznikov   

In 1982, addressing the Joint Economic Committee in the 97th United States Congress, Admiral Hyman Rickover, often credited as the father of nuclear submarines and a much-decorated naval hero, said this:

"I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. I am not proud of the part I played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country.... Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it."

But nuclear radiation, to corporations which see enormous profit in it and to politicians who see enormous profit in doing what corporations tell them, is simply a public relations difficulty to be overcome by spreading misinformation, media whoring, and the purchase of pseudo-scientists comfortable with lying for cash.

The nuclear industry had a hard time of it for awhile. Despite a massive public brainwashing campaign which convinced many that this was a ‘clean’ energy, cheap, and the new age answer to expensive oil and dirty coal, nuclear power kept running into problems.

There was Three Mile Island, where the State of Pennsylvania almost got itself irradiated out of existence in 1979. The meltdown didn’t reach the core, but if it had a nuclear cloud would have covered much of the state and dropped over the eastern seaboard.

The government and industry were able to suppress much of the data in the aftermath, and incidence of birth defects and cancers, while clearly elevated, couldn’t be sufficiently quantified to destroy the industry.

Then there was Chernobyl in 1986, and the numbers were harder to dismiss. Wide swaths of the former Soviet Union were poisoned. Striking levels of disease and mutations. Much of Europe was hit.

In the U.S., the pro-nuclear lobby managed to win legal exemption from lawsuits and taxpayer protections from damage claims, but politically the industry did not easily bounce back. For some reason, many Americans resisted the idea that risking the survival of a large part of the human population for a shaky, dangerous, expensive source of energy might not be a good bargain, on top of which nobody could figure out what to do with the nuclear waste created thereby.

While the feds tried to find some state corrupt enough to let the government bury this shit on their land –– settling on the Rocky Mountain region –– various ‘safety’ proposals ranged from the ignorant (burying waste in vast lead cylinders) to the bonehead stupid (firing it into space).

So, for a long time, although the U.S. still housed 104 reactors, the industry was stuck. Politically, it had become too difficult because, even with a compliant Congress, many ordinary people had wised-up and would cause a real stink. Plus, of course, the money. Nukes were expensive as hell because even where approved the various safety requirements the crooked pols insisted on –– to cover their asses with nosy voters –– cost a bundle.

Meanwhile, in the United States, safety inspections were pretty much forgotten. The feds stopped worrying. It turns out that, in at least in several instances, there have been near catastrophes, close calls hushed up so as not to unduly alarm people.

In a feature article published May 11, 2011, in the New York Times, Matthew L. Wald, reported that “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week that in hindsight, a problem at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama last fall was quite serious. And its records indicate that there have been reports in recent days of engineers' flubbing a basic calculation of reactor operation at two other plants...

“The commission staff announced that a valve that got stuck last October at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant near Athens, Ala., posed a safety threat that fell into the "red" category, the most serious on its four-color scale.”

And there were others. “And last week, operators of the Oyster Creek nuclear plant near Toms River, NJ, and Nine Mile Point 1, near Syracuse, reported separately that General Electric, which supplies their reactors with fuel, had notified them that it had made some math errors that could have resulted in the reactor fuel's getting hotter than plant operators thought.”

The stuck safety valve at Browns Ferry was noticed only because operators intentionally shut the reactor down for refueling, a rare occurrence. It was the failure of an identical valve in the heat removal system which crashed Fukushima. The system’s design is also virtually identical to those in use at two other American reactors where near-disasters have taken place, Oyster Creek, in New Jersey, and Nine Mile Point 1, near Syracuse.

According to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission press release, "The public was never endangered because no actual event occurred. However, the system is counted on for core cooling during certain accident scenarios, and the valve failure left it inoperable, which could have led to core damage." Translated into english, had an emergency required the reactor to be shut down, there would have been a lot of dead people in Alabama.

Wald’s Times story invoked “the notorious case of the Davis-Besse reactor near Oak Harbor, Ohio, where an unnoticed leak allowed acid to flow onto the vessel head. Workers discovered in 2002 that it had corroded away all but a fraction of a thick stainless steel liner.”

The nuclear industry has been in retreat for a long time. Even during the Bush years, when the worst predators found seats at the table, the nuke gang was mostly silent. But on Obama’s election, the industry was back in business. The new President pushed nuclear power as a part of his ‘green energy’ future.

And then came Fukushima.

It’s not in the news much these days. In December, Japan announced that the number 2 reactor was finally in cold shutdown. Then in early February, another announcement: the temperature inside number 2 had risen to 82 celsius, which meant that it could no longer be considered stable. The utility in charge, Tokyo Electric Power Company, reported this news along with the assurance that “sustained nuclear reactions” were not occurring inside and the reactor had not “gone critical”, although the rising temperature was cause for concern, and any temperature above 80 C is considered dangerous.

Nobody knows for sure whether the temperature at the bottom of the reactor’s pressure vessel is at 8 C, because radiation levels, a year after the catastrophe, are still too high for plant workers to enter.

The truth about Fukushima is that the amount of radiation already loosed into the atmosphere is far more significant than the Japanese and American governments admitted, and that substantial amounts of plutonium, strontium, and cesium rapidly permeated the air, water, and food in the western United States.

As much as 20 million tons of radioactive debris was washed into the sea when the tsunami struck. Several environmental organizations have raised alarms, and scientists attached to Fairewinds Energy Education have described a toxic ‘island’ twice the size of Texas having already reached Hawaii. One, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, told French newspapers that “the first traces are appearing on the other side of Pacific Ocean, on US and Canadian shores. We are not prepared for this. Nobody is prepared for this. Nobody’s even thought through the dimensions...”

From the beginning, the Japanese government tried to minimize the extent of the accident, evacuating people to gradually greater distances from the reactors as the scope of the crisis widened. One year later, some researchers claim that the measurable exposures to radiation among schoolchildren is as much as ten times greater than that of the average nuclear power plant worker in the United States. One, Arnie Gunderson at Fairewinds, said, "the Japanese people are facing an ever unfolding and expanding tragedy of a magnitude the world has never experienced.”

This may not be an exaggeration. There is high resolution photographic evidence which shows that the core in reactor number 3 was entirely exposed; exposure of the core creates a nuclear explosion throwing great quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Japan denies it, and the government then declared that some commentary and disclosures leaked to the internet constituted “illegal” information.

One investigator was so alarmed at her analysis of aerial photos that she wrote to the Union of Concerned Scientists describing what she saw:

“High resolution photographic proof that the reactor core exploded at Fukushima unit 3

“I was looking at the high resolution photos taken of the Fukushima complex a few weeks ago, and looking at the shots of unit 3 in particular - because it was the one using the MOX fuel and was also the one most severely damaged by the hydrogen explosions. I'm sure UCS has already seen these shots.

“A few days later I came across an article that had a good cut away diagram of the reactor buildings: http://my.firedoglake.com/kirk... (copy and paste to google search if link does not work) click on diagram to enlarge.

“I was struck by the location of the spent fuel pool on the third floor. (The spent fuel pool in the diagram is in the upper right corner of the building to the right of the top of the reactor, below the yellow beam, which is below the large orange girders. Part of the pool is cut away in the diagram, it appears to extend most of the way across about half of the building on the third floor) I went back to the site with the aerial photos and confirmed that the third floor was pretty much entirely obliterated in the explosion. The spent fuel pool is gone... see for yourself.

“Today I had another look at the diagram, and noticed something else quite significant that I had missed before. I realized that the top of the primary containment vessel is flush with the floor level of the 4th floor, and that the top of the reactor itself was in the space between the 3rd and 4th floors, partially surrounded by the spent fuel pool.

“Look at those photos again. At the back wall of the building nearer the top of the photo you see the skeletal remnants of the wall of the 3rd and 4th floors- the only walls remaining from those floors. It is easy to see the floor level of the third floor - there are two massive steam pipes running behind and below the building...the lower edge of the lower pipe is almost perfectly aligned with the floor level of the 3rd floor. Follow the floor line of the third floor down from that back wall along the right side of the building, then across the front side of the building near the bottom of the photo. That shows you the floor level of the 3rd floor very clearly. There are no walls rising above the third floor, except for the back skeleton wall. The walls of the spent fuel pool are missing. There is nothing but air remaining above that level, except for a bit of roof debris which you can see through. The top of the primary containment vessel, as well as the top of the reactor itself, which went to the floor level of the 4th floor, is simply GONE.

“Even to a lay person, it is obvious that this means that the huge hydrogen explosion at unit 3 must have occurred in the reactor itself, and that the entire top of the reactor containment vessel was obliterated, ejecting the contents of the core - as well as the spent fuel pool- into the atmosphere.

“This tells us that massive quantities of plutonium were released, and that the release of radiation from unit 3 alone must be many times higher than has been admitted for the entire complex - there were HUNDREDS OF TONS of fuel in the reactor core and spent fuel pool. Chernobyl pales in comparison.”

The Japanese and U.S. governments have been in collusion in downplaying the danger of what has happened and its long-term effects. Both TEPCO and U.S. corporations have an enormous financial stake in keeping people as ignorant as possible. That prominently includes General Electric, which owned NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC, and manufactured parts for Fukushima and of course most reactors in the United States.

Shortly after the meltdown, the Japanese government, according to a contemporaneous report, ‘charges that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresponsible rumors, and the government must take action for the sake of the public good. The project team has begun to send "letters of request" to such organizations as telephone companies, internet providers, cable television stations, and others, demanding that they "take adequate measures based on the guidelines in response to illegal information." The measures include erasing any information from internet sites that the authorities deem harmful to public order and morality."’

In the U.S., daily monitoring of radiation levels was quietly and unceremoniously cut back to once each month, an action which has never been explained. President Obama announced that funds would be allocated to develop the first new nuclear plants since Three Mile Island. This is one campaign promise he’s keeping.

Now, the money is being made available. Obama has asked for $54.5 billion in loan guarantees (about one third of this has already been authorized by Congress). That means that if a project is delayed or canceled for any reason, the taxpayers pay for it. Two such plants are on the drawing board, located in the State of Georgia. And the Georgia legislature, along with South Carolina and Florida, has already passed legislation which mandates something called “advanced cost recovery.” It means what you think it means: the utility building the reactor is authorized to charge rate payers for the cost of its construction before it’s built.

How corrupt are these people?

The amount of insurance the industry is required to carry is miniscule compared to the fiscal costs of a disaster. The industry-wide pool is currently at about $12 billion. The Fukushima meltdown will exceed $250 billion. Chernobyl ran to $600 billion. Should there be a calamity at Indian Point, 35 miles north of New York City, experts put the cost at $1.5 trillion. In other words, when one of these reactors blows, the financial cost will be yours, not the company’s, thanks to the U.S. government.

The simple fact is that, in addition to the poisoning of the planet certain to continue as one reactor after another has a ‘stuck safety valve’ and an earthquake or just an ordinary series of errors cause a meltdown, the nuclear power industry can’t actually survive without massive government subsidies.

Nuclear power is subsidized by taxpayers and rate payers at every part of the nuclear fuel chain, mining, milling, enrichment of the uranium fuel, construction, operations, shutting down and cleaning up, and waste disposal. Energy economist Doug Kaplow, cited on Alternet, says that because the value of the subsidies often exceeds the value of the energy actually produced, buying power on the open market and giving it away free would be less costly than the construction and operation of nuclear plants.

Don’t tell that to President Obama, however. Despite the Fukushima disaster, the revelations of near-disasters in a number of U.S. plants, Chernobyl, and the evident long-term genetic damage caused to residents of Pennsylvania in the years after Three Mile Island; despite the ridiculous costs, the need for subsidies, and the associated risks in trying to dispose of spent fuel, he is still pushing it.

On Democracy Now! Amy Goodman expressed shock at the near-unanimity of support for nuclear power among the candidates for President. Only Ron Paul, who stands zero chance of being nominated by the G.O.P., would abandon nuclear power, and in his case simply by getting rid of all subsidies.

Goodman says, “This is mind-boggling, on the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with the chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission warning that lessons from Fukushima have not been implemented in this country. Nevertheless, Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: They’re going to force nuclear power on the public, despite the astronomically high risks, both financial and environmental.”

In the wake of Fukushima, Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, said “We will aim to bring about a society that can exist without nuclear power.” But Kan has been replaced, and his successor, in the face of unsurprising public opposition, supports it.

As Goodman notes, Obama has surrounded himself with people who not only like nuclear power but profit from it. His chief adviser, David Axelrod, was a consultant for a subsidiary of Exelon, a major producer of nuclear energy, and his former chief of staff and close political associate, Rahm Emanuel, played “a key role” in the formation of Exelon. Over the past four years, Exelon employees have contributed $244,000.00 to Obama’s campaign, this, Goodman hastens to add, is apart from whatever may have been funneled into his new super PACs.

We’re looking now at new power plants at Waynesboro, Georgia, on the border with South Carolina. The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczo, voted against approving the licenses, saying, “I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened.”

Evidently, Barack Obama can.