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Big Nuke’s Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Signs of Desperation?

Big Nuke’s Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio counterpunch 20 June 09 By HARVEY WASSERMANJob-starved southern Ohioans are being promised a shiny new nuclear plant. But the announcement has come with a cruel reminder, and the scent of a desperate hoax.Using the gargantuan corpse of the shuttered Portsmouth-Piketon uranium enrichment plant as his backdrop, U.S. Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) punctuated his enthusiastic endorsement the new nuke by proclaiming that, with his support, the US government has paid thousands of Ohio workers hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the health damage they suffered from being irradiated while working there…………………………….

Now the heaviest of nuclear hitters want to use this same site for a 1600-megawatt French-designed plant that would anchor a “Clean Energy Park.” In a region devastated by the enrichment plant’s shutdown, and by the decimation of the American industrial economy, it would be a flagship for the “nuclear power renaissance.”

It is a cruel hoax

……………………………….the most critical spot was occupied by Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of AREVA, the French government’s nuclear front group. She ended her brief speech with a heavily inflected “Go Buckeyes!”

Lauvergeon is a top A-List industry hitter, the flamboyant, hard-nosed chief of the world’s number one reactor pusher. But AREVA’s finances have been hard-hit by an outdated technology teetering at the brink of collapse, even as its supporters push ahead with high-profile—but hollow—events like this one…………………………Other bothersome details remain to be solved, most importantly: who will actually pay for all this?……………….Nor has the insurance industry come forward to provide liability coverage in case of a major accident.

Harvey Wasserman: Big Nuke’s Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

June 20, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | antinuclear, AREVA, nuclear, nuclear costs, radioactive