Friends,
I attended St. Stanislaus grade school in Erie, PA before the above- ground nuclear testing ban was signed. At some time in those eight years, the girls were given goiter pills. For decades I wondered why?
Radioactivity from the nuclear test site traveled east and up Lake Erie to Rochester, New York where Kodak had its headquarters. While the story was classified for decades, test site radioactivity destroyed Kodak film.
Did someone in the Erie Catholic school system know about the radioactivity and made the decision to issue goiters pills? Was this distribution part of a stud?. I have been unable to find any information about those duck and cover days at St. Stan’s. Does anyone have a similar story? Please share if you know anything about the distribution of goiter pills. Kagiso, Max
Inflation
Reduction Act’s Subsidies May Prop Up Aging Nuclear Plants for Years
The Diablo Canyon Power Plant at the edge of the Pacific Ocean
in San Luis Obispo, California, as seen on March 31, 2015.MICHAEL MACOR / SAN
FRANCISCO CHRONICLE VIA GETTY IMAGES
The much-heralded Inflation Reduction Act (IRA),
while offering a vital lifeline to the renewable energy industry, also contains
massive subsidies to keep dangerously aging atomic power plants operating for
years to come.
Meanwhile, six decrepit atomic reactors are now
caught in a terrifying military crossfire in southeastern Ukraine, showing exactly
why it is so important to shut down nuclear plants instead of subsidizing them.
The Ukrainian reactors, located at Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power
plant in Europe, are now being used as a shield for Russian artillery arrays. A
single errant shell could send far more atomic radiation pouring over Europe
than did Chernobyl, with an unimaginable toll of downwind death and destruction
from which the continent might never recover.
At Chernobyl itself, Russian occupation left the
dangerously unstable site in serious danger of yet another explosion.
In France, half the nation’s 56 reactors are
offline for maintenance and corrosion-related repairs. The Tricastin,
Saint-Alban and Golfech nuclear power plants have curtailed production because
temperatures on the Rhône and Garonne rivers are too hot to safely cool them.
Long a high-profile exporter of atomic power, France now imports high-cost
fossil-fueled juice from Switzerland, Germany, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, 92 U.S. nuclear reactors with an
average age of 39 years old operate without coverage from a private insurance
industry unwilling to step forward and take the risk. And in a fiercely
competitive energy market increasingly dominated by low-cost renewables, atomic
reactors can’t operate without massive public subsidies.
The new Biden-Manchin IRA mega bill contains
atomic subsidies that could go as high as $30 billion or more over the next 10
years. Although the nuclear industry is increasingly unable to compete with
skyrocketing wind, solar, battery and LED/efficiency programs, the IRA handouts
could mean many of the country’s 92 atomic reactors will operate far longer
than if they were pitted against green power in the open market.
On the other hand, the IRA includes crucial help
for a renewable energy industry that’s been under brutal industry attack. By
extending major federal green power tax credits, the IRA has guaranteed
survival for a rooftop panel industry plagued by pricing instability and a
supply chain filled with problems ranging from manipulation by China to hostile
regulations imposed by fossil-nuclear competitors.
In California, a booming rooftop solar industry
is on the brink of being gutted by a package of legislation that includes
fossil fuel- and nuclear-sponsored taxes and regulations. Supported by “progressive”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, the anti-solar package would undercut a statewide industry
that now employs some 70,000 people — more workers in just California than now
dig coal in the whole U.S.
Ironically, Florida’s extreme right-wing Gov.
Ron DeSantis recently vetoed a similar package, a decision clearly motivated by
fierce opposition from more than 80 percent of the state’s citizenry.
The U.S.’s fossil fuel and nuclear industries
are terrified by the accelerating spread of renewables, especially as they are
deployed on individual homes. With solar panels on rooftops feeding
neighborhood micro grids, an empowered citizenry would no longer need to buy
its energy from centralized utilities. A massive green shift would spell the
end of the traditional investor-owned utility and mark the dawn of an era in
which independent communities can generate and manage their own power supplies.
Nowhere is this possibility more immediately
manifest than in California, where rooftop solar arrays now number well over a
million. Yet nowhere has industry resistance locked horns more bitterly with
popular opposition to atomic energy.
Since their planning stages in the 1960s, the
two reactors at Diablo Canyon, on the Pacific Ocean nine miles west of San Luis
Obispo, have incited fierce opposition. As they opened in the mid-1980s, more
protesters (including myself) were arrested there than at any other U.S.
nuclear site.
After three decades of unsteady operation, a
broad coalition signed a comprehensive landmark agreement to shut the two aging
reactors by 2024 and 2025, when their Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
licenses are set to expire. The plan was endorsed in 2018 by then-Gov. Jerry
Brown in concert with the Public Utilities Commission, the legislature and
local towns, unions and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and
Natural Resources Defense Council.
The case for a shutdown is deeply rooted in
economic, ecological and engineering realities. A 2008 NRC inspection showed
Diablo Canyon Unit One to be seriously embrittled, a dangerous internal fault
virtually guaranteeing a massive explosion in case of a meltdown. Michael Peck,
an NRC site inspector, later warned that the reactors could not withstand a
credible shock from the dozen seismic faults surrounding the plant — including
the San Andreas, just 45 miles away. Ensuing catastrophe would send radioactive
clouds into Los Angeles, the Central Valley or the Bay Area, wreaking
irrevocable apocalyptic human, ecological and economic harm.
Diablo’s steadily declining performance and
rising operational costs have jacked its power well above market rates, losing
some $3.5 million/day — more than $1 billion/year. The plant’s cooling system
violates state laws, which technically require towers to mitigate the
devastating hot water emissions imposed on local marine life. The site also
lacks sufficient room for radioactive waste generated beyond 2025, requiring
complex, dangerous manipulations of the plant’s aging spent radioactive fuel
pools.
Newsom’s support for extended operations at
Diablo stems from fear of power shortages that renewable advocates say could be
avoided with a stronger solar push. Accordingly, Newsom’s simultaneous support
for anti-solar regulations has sparked intense outrage throughout California’s
powerful environmental community. Such anger has spread nationwide, as none of
the U.S.’s reactors are insured against major catastrophes that many fear are
increasingly likely. All are subject to the dangers of old age, a declining
workforce and spotty regulation. Pacific Gas & Electric, Diablo’s
owner-operator, has been twice bankrupt in this century and twice convicted of
felony manslaughter involving more than 80 deaths.
Few reactors can now compete with current prices
from wind and solar facilities, now majorly augmented by battery and
LED/efficiency technologies. The 1,500 workers at Diablo are set to enjoy an
orderly shutdown. Some will stay on for the complex, demanding job of
decommissioning the reactors. Others will retire. And many — especially the
younger ones — will be retrained for work in wind, solar, and other green
technologies. They will join the roughly 770,000 Americans now working in wind,
solar, battery and efficiency industries whose ability to help mitigate
the global climate crisis without atomic
energy is irrefutable.
Worries over prolonged operations at Diablo are
matched at other old reactor sites like Ohio’s Davis-Besse Nuclear Power
Station, riddled with structural and operational problems while its
owner-operator faces multiple felony charges for a $61 million bribe to the
Ohio legislature.
Nearby Perry, also in Ohio, and Virginia’s North
Anna power plants have both been damaged by earthquakes. Nebraska’s Cooper and
Fort Calhoun plants have been threatened by floods. Florida’s Turkey Point
Nuclear Generating Station was hammered by Hurricane Andrew. Feed water pumps
in South Texas have frozen.
Waste from California’s shut San Onofre power
plant is being stored just 100 feet from the tide line. New York’s Nine Mile
Point is 52 years old.
Of this first generation of atomic reactors, 253
were ordered, about half were canceled and roughly another 30 now shut down.
Two that remain under construction at Vogtle, Georgia, have soared over $30
billion in cost, more than twice their original projected $14 billion price
tag. If they open — still not a certainty — the cost of their electricity will
be very far beyond that of electricity generated by wind and solar.
All atomic reactors spew massive quantities of
waste heat, radiation and carbon. Despite billions spent on decades of
research, there is still no viable solution for long-term management of spent
fuel rods and other high-level wastes.
Thus, the idea that more large nuclear reactors
might be built in the U.S. has become essentially moot. Bill Gates and others
are pushing Small Modular Reactors, but the first of these could not come on
line until 2028 or 2029, guaranteeing the price of their power will be far
greater than renewables. Large numbers of such nuclear plants deployed
throughout the U.S. would also be extremely vulnerable to terror attacks.
Indeed, while no U.S. or French reactors are
currently under military attack like those at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia, the fear
of a major catastrophe still rules the insurance industry. To spur nuclear
development in the first place, the U.S. Congress passed the 1957 Price-Anderson Act, exempting commercial
reactors from disaster liability. The act was to be in force for just 15 years
so the private insurance industry would gain confidence and step up.
But 65 years later, that still hasn’t happened.
After numerous renewals, Price-Anderson is set to again expire in 2025. Only a
small federal fund — less than $20 billion — is in place.
With the IRA’s subsidies set to prolong reactor
operations, nuclear backers will also have to persuade the private insurance
industry to finally step forward, or else once again get Congress to continue
protecting this ever-more dangerous industry with taxpayer money. The fight
over the Small Modular Reactors being proposed by Bill Gates and others will
become even more heated. These new machines would also have to secure private
disaster insurance or persuade Congress to put up the now-standard
Price-Anderson federal guarantees.
Hopefully, as the issue is being debated, the
earthquake faults at Diablo Canyon will stay silent, and no U.S. reactors will
come under siege, like Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia, or blow up like Chernobyl or
Fukushima.
And safe energy activists, armed with true green
technologies, will aim to thoroughly bury the atomic tyrannosaurus that no one
will again think of again unleashing it upon a planet — and a human species —
it could so easily destroy.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment