Environment
Audio file
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman with Tom Over live on Conscious Voices 2-19-10. They discuss the problems with nuclear power and the role activism plays with this and other issues.
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman with Tom Over live on Conscious Voices 2-19-10. They discuss the problems with nuclear power and the role activism plays with this and other issues.
As Vermont seethes with radioactive contamination and the Democratic Party crumbles, Barack Obama has plunged into the atomic abyss.
In the face of fierce green opposition and withering scorn from both liberal and conservative budget hawks, Obama has done what George W. Bush could not---pledge billions of taxpayer dollars for a relapse of the 20th Century’s most expensive technological failure.
Obama has announced some $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for two new reactors planned for Georgia. Their Westinghouse AP-1000 designs have been rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as being unable to withstand natural cataclysms like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.
The Vogtle site was to originally host four reactors at a total cost of $600 million; it wound up with two at $9 billion.
In the face of fierce green opposition and withering scorn from both liberal and conservative budget hawks, Obama has done what George W. Bush could not---pledge billions of taxpayer dollars for a relapse of the 20th Century’s most expensive technological failure.
Obama has announced some $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for two new reactors planned for Georgia. Their Westinghouse AP-1000 designs have been rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as being unable to withstand natural cataclysms like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.
The Vogtle site was to originally host four reactors at a total cost of $600 million; it wound up with two at $9 billion.
Last summer, a man spinning the wheels of a pick-up truck , shouting f--- you ! and shaking a one finger salute as a blue cloud of burned rubber hovered near Goldman Environmental Prize winner Judy Bonds and other protesters against mountain top removal mining showed a sad but not surprising irony : working-class people in this Appalachian community are in conflict with each other, while those at a safe distance from this drama have been getting rich by damaging other people's air, land, and water.
Bonds and other activists know this, but their efforts to find common ground with the miners has become very difficult as this controversy has led to tensions in this generally poor rural community. Even though Bonds has been threatened with violence on many occasions, she recognizes the workers engaged in strip mining are also being exploited.
Like a decayed flotilla of rickety steamers, at least 27 of America's 104 aging atomic reactors are known to be leaking radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer if inhaled or ingested through the throat or skin.
The fallout has been fiercest at Vermont Yankee, where a flood of cover-ups has infuriated and terrified near neighbors who say the reactor was never meant to operate more than 30 years, and must now shut.
In 2007 one of Yankee's 22 cooling towers simply collapsed due to rot.
Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has confirmed tritium levels in a monitoring well at Vernon to be 3.5 times the federal safety standard. The leaks apparently came from underground pipes whose very existence was recently denied by VY officials in under-oath testimony at a public hearing. Vermont's pro-nuclear Republican Governor Jim Douglas has termed the event "a breach of trust that cannot be tolerated."
The fallout has been fiercest at Vermont Yankee, where a flood of cover-ups has infuriated and terrified near neighbors who say the reactor was never meant to operate more than 30 years, and must now shut.
In 2007 one of Yankee's 22 cooling towers simply collapsed due to rot.
Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has confirmed tritium levels in a monitoring well at Vernon to be 3.5 times the federal safety standard. The leaks apparently came from underground pipes whose very existence was recently denied by VY officials in under-oath testimony at a public hearing. Vermont's pro-nuclear Republican Governor Jim Douglas has termed the event "a breach of trust that cannot be tolerated."
Amber Nitchman,19, spent 9 days in a tree and did jail time as a part of Climate Ground Zero's most recent campaign of non-violent civil disobedience to stop mountain top removal mining.
As advice for anyone wanting to stop mountain top removal mining but not sure about whether to be a part of a tree-sit Nitchman said, “ Not everyone has to come down here (West Virginia) and be an activist that sits in a tree. But everyone can contribute in some way, whether it's through supporting our group itself, or doing some other mountain top removal resistance work.”
Nitchman said local campaigns are needed in which people in, for example, Central Ohio, can pressure their local utility companies to find ways to generate power without using coal mined by mountaintop removal. At ILoveMountains.org, we can find out about how our electricity connects to this issue simply by entering our zip codes.
As advice for anyone wanting to stop mountain top removal mining but not sure about whether to be a part of a tree-sit Nitchman said, “ Not everyone has to come down here (West Virginia) and be an activist that sits in a tree. But everyone can contribute in some way, whether it's through supporting our group itself, or doing some other mountain top removal resistance work.”
Nitchman said local campaigns are needed in which people in, for example, Central Ohio, can pressure their local utility companies to find ways to generate power without using coal mined by mountaintop removal. At ILoveMountains.org, we can find out about how our electricity connects to this issue simply by entering our zip codes.
“The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest on record, new surface temperature figures released Thursday by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration show…. 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, when modern temperature measurement began. The warmest year was 2005. The other hottest recorded years have all occurred since 1998, NASA said.”
Global temperatures varied because of changes in ocean heating and cooling cycles. “When we average temperature over 5 or 10 years to minimize that variability,” said Dr. James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, one of the world's leading climatologists, ‘we find global warming is continuing unabated.’"
-- John M. Broder NY Times Jan. 21
In the documentary “The Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore – remember him? – warned that greenhouse gasses and other sources of hydro carbons would increase, and threaten future planetary life. After issuing this filmic challenge, Gore advised citizens to recycle and buy gas-efficient cars.
Global temperatures varied because of changes in ocean heating and cooling cycles. “When we average temperature over 5 or 10 years to minimize that variability,” said Dr. James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, one of the world's leading climatologists, ‘we find global warming is continuing unabated.’"
-- John M. Broder NY Times Jan. 21
In the documentary “The Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore – remember him? – warned that greenhouse gasses and other sources of hydro carbons would increase, and threaten future planetary life. After issuing this filmic challenge, Gore advised citizens to recycle and buy gas-efficient cars.
Political satire and drama comes to the Columbus Performing Arts Center, Saturday, Feb 6, with the help of the Available Light Theatre company and the Phoenix Theatre for Children. The play, "Welcome to the Saudi Arabia of Coal," is about life in the coal fields of Appalachia where men and women chain themselves to heavy machinery to stop mountain top removal mining, and where others try to protect, sometimes violently, jobs the mining industry provides.send comments
"It's totally possible to conceive of an evening of theater that will be entertaining and moving but also have relevance to something very current,†said Matt Slaybaugh who writes and directs for the theater company and teaches at the Columbus College of Art and Design.
"It's totally possible to conceive of an evening of theater that will be entertaining and moving but also have relevance to something very current,†said Matt Slaybaugh who writes and directs for the theater company and teaches at the Columbus College of Art and Design.
Amidst utter chaos in the atomic reactor industry, Team Obama is poised to vastly expand a bitterly contested loan guarantee program that may cost far more than expected, both financially and politically. send comments
The long-stalled, much-hyped "Renaissance" in atomic power has failed to find private financing. New construction projects are opposed for financial reasons by fiscal conservatives such as the Heritage Foundation and National Taxpayers Union, and by a national grassroots safe energy campaign that has already beaten such loan guarantees three times.
New reactor designs are being challenged by regulators in both the US and Europe. Key projects, new and old, are engulfed in political/financial uproars in Florida, Texas, Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey and elsewhere.
The long-stalled, much-hyped "Renaissance" in atomic power has failed to find private financing. New construction projects are opposed for financial reasons by fiscal conservatives such as the Heritage Foundation and National Taxpayers Union, and by a national grassroots safe energy campaign that has already beaten such loan guarantees three times.
New reactor designs are being challenged by regulators in both the US and Europe. Key projects, new and old, are engulfed in political/financial uproars in Florida, Texas, Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey and elsewhere.
Two decades ago, the garbage barge, the Khian Sea, with no place in the U.S. willing to accept its garbage, left the territorial waters of the United States and began circling the oceans in search of a country willing to accept its cargo: 14,000 tons of toxic incinerator ash. First it went to the Bahamas, then to the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Bermuda, Guinea Bissau and the Netherlands Antilles. Wherever it went, people gathered to protest its arrival. No one wanted the millions of pounds of Philadelphia municipal incinerator ash dumped in their country.
Desperate to unload, the ship's crew lied about their cargo, hoping to catch a government unawares. Sometimes they identified the ash as "construction material"; other times they said it was "road fill," and still others "muddy waste." But environmental experts were generally one step ahead in notifying the recipients; no one would take it. That is, until it got to Haiti. There, U.S.-backed dictator Baby Doc Duvalier issued a permit for the garbage, which was by now being called "fertilizer," and four thousand tons of the ash was dumped onto the beach in the town of Gonaives.
Desperate to unload, the ship's crew lied about their cargo, hoping to catch a government unawares. Sometimes they identified the ash as "construction material"; other times they said it was "road fill," and still others "muddy waste." But environmental experts were generally one step ahead in notifying the recipients; no one would take it. That is, until it got to Haiti. There, U.S.-backed dictator Baby Doc Duvalier issued a permit for the garbage, which was by now being called "fertilizer," and four thousand tons of the ash was dumped onto the beach in the town of Gonaives.
The Columbus Free Press spoke with Kim Ellis of Climate Ground Zero as police arrested supporters on the ground who were there to assist the tree sitters high above them.
This is the most recent of a series of acts of non-violent civil disobedience aimed at stopping Massey Energy from blasting parts of Coal River Mountain. It comes on the day environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr. and Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship debate each other at the University of Charleston in West Virginia. The event will stream live starting at 6:30 pm, on Jan. 21.
Ellis said she hopes non-violent civil disobedience of this sort will speed up the process of finally getting a ban on mountain top removal mining.
“You have to pursue every avenue. We are talking with the DEP ( West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection). We are trying to deal with legislators to get this stopped. But in the meantime, they (Massey Energy) are blowing up mountains. We can’t just let that happen. So we are putting our bodies in the way of that.”
Ellis said she hopes non-violent civil disobedience of this sort will speed up the process of finally getting a ban on mountain top removal mining.
“You have to pursue every avenue. We are talking with the DEP ( West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection). We are trying to deal with legislators to get this stopped. But in the meantime, they (Massey Energy) are blowing up mountains. We can’t just let that happen. So we are putting our bodies in the way of that.”