Environment
The nuke power industry now wants $50 billion and more in loan guarantees to build new atomic reactors. As it strong-arms Congress, the warnings of the great Dr. John Gofman, who passed away last week at 88, loom ever larger.
One of history's most respected and revered medical and nuclear pioneers, Gofman's research showed as early as 1969 that "normal" radioactive reactor emissions could kill 32,000 Americans per year.
At the time, Gofman was the chief medical researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission. He told the AEC that reactor emissions must be radically reduced. The AEC demanded he change his findings, then forced him out when he refused.
Since then, reactor backers have ceaselessly and erroneously attacked Gofman and his findings. But they could hardly have picked a more brilliant, committed opponent. Gofman was both relentless and uncorrupted. His findings should have doomed from the start an industry he called "insane."
One of history's most respected and revered medical and nuclear pioneers, Gofman's research showed as early as 1969 that "normal" radioactive reactor emissions could kill 32,000 Americans per year.
At the time, Gofman was the chief medical researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission. He told the AEC that reactor emissions must be radically reduced. The AEC demanded he change his findings, then forced him out when he refused.
Since then, reactor backers have ceaselessly and erroneously attacked Gofman and his findings. But they could hardly have picked a more brilliant, committed opponent. Gofman was both relentless and uncorrupted. His findings should have doomed from the start an industry he called "insane."
USDA requires Aurora Organics to reduce dairy herd size
and remove organic label from some milk
CORNUCOPIA, WI: The USDA issued an urgent news release Wednesday evening announcing enforcement actions taken against the Aurora Organic Dairy, based in Boulder, CO, the nation’s largest organic factory-farm operation. USDA’s enforcement requirements for Aurora include "removing certain animals from the organic herd and ceasing to apply the organic label to certain milk."
The action is the result of an investigation triggered by formal legal complaints filed in 2005 and 2006 with the USDA by The Cornucopia Institute charging multiple violations of federal organic regulations. Cornucopia, a Wisconsin-based farm policy group, made on-site visits to the dairy giant’s factory-farm operations in Colorado and Texas, gathering evidence supporting its complaints.
CORNUCOPIA, WI: The USDA issued an urgent news release Wednesday evening announcing enforcement actions taken against the Aurora Organic Dairy, based in Boulder, CO, the nation’s largest organic factory-farm operation. USDA’s enforcement requirements for Aurora include "removing certain animals from the organic herd and ceasing to apply the organic label to certain milk."
The action is the result of an investigation triggered by formal legal complaints filed in 2005 and 2006 with the USDA by The Cornucopia Institute charging multiple violations of federal organic regulations. Cornucopia, a Wisconsin-based farm policy group, made on-site visits to the dairy giant’s factory-farm operations in Colorado and Texas, gathering evidence supporting its complaints.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2007 – The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has entered into a consent agreement with Aurora Organic Dairy (Aurora) in response to a Notice of Proposed Revocation issued earlier this year alleging violations of National Organic Program (NOP) regulations. Under the consent agreement, Aurora’s Platteville, Colo., facility must meet several conditions in order to continue to operate as a certified organic dairy operation. These conditions include removing certain animals from the organic herd and ceasing to apply the organic label to certain milk. Additionally, AMS will exercise increased scrutiny over Aurora’s operations during a one-year probationary review period. If Aurora does not abide by the agreement during that time, AMS may withdraw from the agreement and could revoke the organic certification for Aurora’s Platteville, Colo., plant.
A cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant has collapsed.
A broken 54" pipe there has spewed 350,000 gallons per minute of contaminated, overheated water into the Earth. "The river water piping and the series of screens and supports failed," said a company spokesman. They "fell to the ground."
The public and media were barred from viewing the wreckage for three days. But when a Congressional Energy Bill conference committee takes up Senate-approved loan guarantees for building new nukes this fall, what will reactor backers say about this latest pile of radioactive rubble?
This kind of event can make even hardened nuke opponents pinch themselves and read the descriptions twice. Who could make this up?
Vermont Yankee has been in operation---more or less---since the early 1970s. Its owner is Entergy, a multi-reactor "McNuke" operator that last year got approval to up VY's output by 20%.
A broken 54" pipe there has spewed 350,000 gallons per minute of contaminated, overheated water into the Earth. "The river water piping and the series of screens and supports failed," said a company spokesman. They "fell to the ground."
The public and media were barred from viewing the wreckage for three days. But when a Congressional Energy Bill conference committee takes up Senate-approved loan guarantees for building new nukes this fall, what will reactor backers say about this latest pile of radioactive rubble?
This kind of event can make even hardened nuke opponents pinch themselves and read the descriptions twice. Who could make this up?
Vermont Yankee has been in operation---more or less---since the early 1970s. Its owner is Entergy, a multi-reactor "McNuke" operator that last year got approval to up VY's output by 20%.
The best ideas emerge unexpectedly from the grassroots in seemingly unlikely places. One of those ideas is an organization called C.L.E.A.N. which stands Community, Labor, Environmental Action Network. The story behind the creation of this group is both enlightening and interesting. The concept is very sound. I hope C.L.E.A.N. chapters will eventually be in every state.
C.L.E.A.N. resulted from a Delaware UFCW Local 27 organizing drive. While organizing, the UFCW realized that workers were being exposed to dangerous chemicals in the work environment. As they explored the worker safety issue, they realized that adverse health effects impacted workers, their families and the surrounding community. As a result, the UFCW reached out to other unions, churches and community groups to build a coalition. C.L.E.A.N. was born. The growth has exploded in just 4 months.
C.L.E.A.N. resulted from a Delaware UFCW Local 27 organizing drive. While organizing, the UFCW realized that workers were being exposed to dangerous chemicals in the work environment. As they explored the worker safety issue, they realized that adverse health effects impacted workers, their families and the surrounding community. As a result, the UFCW reached out to other unions, churches and community groups to build a coalition. C.L.E.A.N. was born. The growth has exploded in just 4 months.
The Bush administration’s energy policies from 2001 to the present have supported fossil fuels above all other energy sources, emphasizing the need to find new sources of petroleum, support new technologies for liquefied natural gas, and move forward with “clean” coal technologies. Over the course of Bush’s presidency, there is some mixed, but clearly secondary, support for renewable forms of energy and conservation/efficiency.
In a speech on his energy proposals in January, 2007, President Bush seemed to break new ground. But his calls for reduced U.S. gasoline usage and raising fuel-economy standards are far less than is needed to reduce our growing dependence on oil or stem the rise in greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. One of his featured proposals calls for an increase in the production of corn-based ethanol, but his estimates of the impact seem unrealistic. Steven Mufson, Washington Post correspondent, notes that industry experts say that it would take more than all of last year’s U.S. corn harvest to make enough ethanol to meet Bush’s target of replacing 15 percent of the projected annual gasoline consumption in 2017 (1-24-07).
In a speech on his energy proposals in January, 2007, President Bush seemed to break new ground. But his calls for reduced U.S. gasoline usage and raising fuel-economy standards are far less than is needed to reduce our growing dependence on oil or stem the rise in greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. One of his featured proposals calls for an increase in the production of corn-based ethanol, but his estimates of the impact seem unrealistic. Steven Mufson, Washington Post correspondent, notes that industry experts say that it would take more than all of last year’s U.S. corn harvest to make enough ethanol to meet Bush’s target of replacing 15 percent of the projected annual gasoline consumption in 2017 (1-24-07).
“The moral duty of man consists of imitating the moral goodness and benificence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty.”
–Thomas Paine from The Age of Reason
Despite the trappings of a civilized culture and the incredibly persistent myth of our moral exceptionalism, we in the United States are collectively a group of mean-spirited, depraved barbarians. Sparing our psyches the pangs of conscience by ferociously devouring the corporate media’s seemingly endless supply of rationalizations, euphemisms, historical revisions, distractions, denials, distortions, and affirmations of our pathological self-absorption, we each carry a degree of responsibility in the infliction of immeasurable unnecessary pain and suffering upon the rest of the Earth’s sentient beings.
–Thomas Paine from The Age of Reason
Despite the trappings of a civilized culture and the incredibly persistent myth of our moral exceptionalism, we in the United States are collectively a group of mean-spirited, depraved barbarians. Sparing our psyches the pangs of conscience by ferociously devouring the corporate media’s seemingly endless supply of rationalizations, euphemisms, historical revisions, distractions, denials, distortions, and affirmations of our pathological self-absorption, we each carry a degree of responsibility in the infliction of immeasurable unnecessary pain and suffering upon the rest of the Earth’s sentient beings.
Gargantuan loan guarantees for a "new generation" of nuke reactors define the Senate's version of the Energy Bill that Congress will consider right after Labor Day.
Its backers say the $50 billion-plus in radioactive pork will give us "inherently safe" reactors…
...which is what they said about the last crop, including Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and hundreds of billions in cost overruns and abysmal failure.
Nuke reactors are no safer than those coal mines just littered with fresh corpses, than that collapsed Minnesota bridge, or than the levees that let Katrina swamp New Orleans, and are poised to do it again.
The first "new generation" nuke is already swamped with cost overruns and absurd miscalculations. Finnish regulators are screaming at Areva, the French-based nuke pushers, about corner-cutting and costly delays.
Its backers say the $50 billion-plus in radioactive pork will give us "inherently safe" reactors…
...which is what they said about the last crop, including Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and hundreds of billions in cost overruns and abysmal failure.
Nuke reactors are no safer than those coal mines just littered with fresh corpses, than that collapsed Minnesota bridge, or than the levees that let Katrina swamp New Orleans, and are poised to do it again.
The first "new generation" nuke is already swamped with cost overruns and absurd miscalculations. Finnish regulators are screaming at Areva, the French-based nuke pushers, about corner-cutting and costly delays.
CORNUCOPIA, WI: The Cornucopia Institute has learned that the USDA appears about to revoke the organic certification of the nation's largest industrial dairy operator, Aurora Organic Dairy, with corporate headquarters in Boulder, Colorado.
Aurora operates several giant factory dairies milking thousands of cows each in semi-arid areas of Colorado and Texas. The company has been the subject of a series of formal legal complaints filed with the USDA by The Cornucopia Institute. The complaints from the Wisconsin-based farm policy group filed in 2005 and 2006, called for a USDA investigation into allegations of numerous organic livestock management improprieties on Aurora’s facilities.
“After personally inspecting some of Aurora’s dairies in Texas and Colorado, we found 98% of their cattle in feedlots instead of grazing on pasture as the law requires,” stated Mark Kastel, Cornucopia’s senior farm policy analyst. Cornucopia also found that Aurora was procuring cattle from a non-certified organic source in apparent violation of the law. “Our sources tell us that the USDA’s investigators found many other violations when conducting their probe of Aurora.”
Aurora operates several giant factory dairies milking thousands of cows each in semi-arid areas of Colorado and Texas. The company has been the subject of a series of formal legal complaints filed with the USDA by The Cornucopia Institute. The complaints from the Wisconsin-based farm policy group filed in 2005 and 2006, called for a USDA investigation into allegations of numerous organic livestock management improprieties on Aurora’s facilities.
“After personally inspecting some of Aurora’s dairies in Texas and Colorado, we found 98% of their cattle in feedlots instead of grazing on pasture as the law requires,” stated Mark Kastel, Cornucopia’s senior farm policy analyst. Cornucopia also found that Aurora was procuring cattle from a non-certified organic source in apparent violation of the law. “Our sources tell us that the USDA’s investigators found many other violations when conducting their probe of Aurora.”
After fifty years of what Forbes Magazine long ago called "the largest managerial disaster in business history," the nuke power industry is demanding untold billions in a federal "Bailout-in-Advance."
Congress will decide on these proposed loan guarantees for new nukes in its September conferences over the new Energy Bill.
Both sides are gearing up for the new war over the irradiation of our energy future.
As usual, it's vital to "follow the money."
The industry once promised that atomic energy would be "too cheap to meter." But after a half-century of proven failure, Wall Street won't invest in new nukes without federal support. So buried in the Senate version of the new Energy Bill is a single sentence authorizing the Department of Energy to underwrite virtually unlimited loans for still more nukes. The sentence was slipped into the bill by industry backers without open debate.
Both sides are gearing up for the new war over the irradiation of our energy future.
As usual, it's vital to "follow the money."
The industry once promised that atomic energy would be "too cheap to meter." But after a half-century of proven failure, Wall Street won't invest in new nukes without federal support. So buried in the Senate version of the new Energy Bill is a single sentence authorizing the Department of Energy to underwrite virtually unlimited loans for still more nukes. The sentence was slipped into the bill by industry backers without open debate.