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The nuclear power plant of Dampierre-en-Burly, France,   We El, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The next explosion at an atomic reactor will dwarf the latest school shooting 

There’s a clear GOP stamp on this week’s mass slaughter of our beautiful school children and their teachers—-AND on the next. 

Likewise the next nuke irradiation of countless downwind humans already has its horde of unrepentant enablers

To put it in the plainest possible terms:  those now advocating continued operation of our increasingly dangerous, decrepit atomic fleet are personally responsible for upcoming explosion(s) at the individual reactors they refuse to evaluate. 

And we can be sure that the blame dodging we’re now seeing in Texas will pale before the crocodile tears that will come with the next avoidable apocalypse. 

So let’s be clear:  

X  No private insurance company will fully insure any US atomic reactor. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html

X  Under federal law, your homeowner’s policy bars meaningful owner/operator liability for any melt-down’s fatal fallout.

X  The limited federal liability fund for an apocalyptic reactor disaster represents a minuscule fraction of the likely damage.

X  Just 45 miles from the San Andreas, California’s two Diablo reactors are surrounded by a dozen earthquake faults.

X  Dr. Michael Peck, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Diablo site inspector, demanded it shut for seismic dangers.

X  The NRC purged Dr. Peck and trashed his warnings.

X  Seismic shocks have already damaged Ohio’s Perry reactor and Virginia’s North Anna.

X  Critical concrete is crumbling at New Hampshire’s Seabrook and Ohio’s Davis-Besse.

X  Critical components at the South Texas Nuclear Plant recently froze.

X  Vital core metals at Diablo are dangerously embrittled, cracked and decayed.

X  Diablo’s owner-operator, PG&E, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges involving the avoidable deaths of nearly 100 people.

X  Perry and Davis-Besse’s owners are linked to a $61 million legislative bribe meant to buy a $1 billion bail-out.

Like laws allowing psychopaths to buy assault weapons, nuclear non-regulation makes major catastrophes virtually certain.

All reactors regularly emit radiation, carbon, heat.  

All can be replaced by renewables that are cheaper, cleaner, safer, more job-producing, quicker to deploy, free of radioactive wastes.  

Nearly 800,000 Americans now work in wind, solar, batteries and/or efficiency.  

Some 70,000 Californians now work in solar and wind, more than all Americans who mine coal.  Just 1500 work at Diablo.  

As with those who defend gun sales to mass murderers, reactor promoters can’t personally cover the unconscionable risks they so glibly demand we all take.  

Come the next melt-down, their Texas-style moments of “silence and prayer” will reek of predictable hypocrisy.

As assault weapons must be banned, so these reactors must be shut.

In both cases, the ultimate gamble is being imposed by irresponsible crapshooters who can never pick up the pieces, cry as they might when their snake eyes bite the rest of us.

Original at BuzzFlash

 

Harvey Wasserman’s THE PEOPLE’S SPIRAL OF US HISTORY narrates the atomic delusion (www.solartopia.org).  Most Mondays at 5pm ET he co-convenes the Green Grassroots Election Protection Zoom (www.electionprotection2024.org)