Plant Vogtle – Lawmakers debate penalizing utility over nuclear expenses
Martin said Chapman needed to better define what qualifies as a cost overrun. But time is getting short. The bill would have to be adopted by a committee and be approved by the entire House in six legislative days or else it fails for the year.
Associated Press Writer
Part of the containment vessel for a new nuclear reactor at the Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant is under construction in Augusta in 2012. Rep. Jeff Chapman (R-Brunswick) asked a House subcommittee Tuesday to support his proposal to cut into the profits of Georgia Power if the company’s cost of building Plant Vogtle exceeds a state-approved budget of roughly $6.1 billion.
The Associated Press
Rep. Jeff Chapman (R-Brunswick) asked a House subcommittee Tuesday to support his proposal to cut into the profits of Georgia Power if the company’s cost of building Plant Vogtle near Augusta exceeds a state-approved budget of roughly $6.1 billion. Georgia Power is a subsidiary of the Atlanta-based Southern Co.
As a regulated monopoly, the utility earns a profit of roughly 11 percent on every dollar it invests in the capital project. Chapman’s plan would force the utility to earn a much lower profit on any spending in excess of its budget.
“The way it’s set up today, it actually incentivizes cost overruns,” Chapman said. “Now I don’t believe Georgia Power would intend to do that. But they can legally now charge and profit from cost overruns.”
Georgia Power officials say the project is already monitored by the state’s Public Service Commission, which can prevent the utility from passing along costs to customers if it decides any project spending is egregious.
Continue reading
Vermont Yankee and nuclear optimism!
Perhaps a similar principle sometimes applies to blogs. If there’s a subject you have covered in a series of blog posts, you can put an eBook together, and the book will be something you can point to, refer to, or suggest that people buy. “Get the eBook” is far more understandable than telling people that if they go to a blog and search for the keyword “economics” (for example) they will find some interesting stuff.
By Meredith Angwin
Refueling optimism
The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant will refuel this spring, probably in March or April. Vermont Yankee’s statement announcing the refueling was optimistic about the plant’s future. Spokesman Rob Williams:
“We’re proceeding business-as-usual and making upgrades where necessary. As we plan this outage our assumption is we’re operating until 2032” (quoted by Terri Hallenbeck in the Burlington Free Press).
The Hallenbeck article also noted: There’s been much speculation that the 41-year-old plant’s closure might be impending…
This negative speculation about the plant was based on a UBS report that claimed that Vermont Yankee is uneconomical and might well be closed by Entergy. Andrew Stein at Vermont Digger reported on this analysis, and an earlier article by Stein provides a link directly to the UBS report.
I wasn’t negative. I thought Vermont Yankee would refuel. As a matter of fact, I posted a blog article titled: Vermont Yankee is Refueling and I Sort of Told You So.
The “I told you so” incident came about a week before Entergy announced that it was refueling. Pat Bradley ( WAMC Plattsburgh NY) interviewed three people, including me. She asked us all about the UBS report, and I was the only one who thought the plant would continue to operate. (A link to the interview is here—it’s about three minutes long).
My optimism
Japan tsunami and nuclear disaster movies seek to tell untold stories of forgotten victims
The movie started with 1,400 people in the school building, but that has dwindled lately to about 100. Funahashi is determined to keep filming until the last person leaves.
“The evacuated people are being forgotten,” said Funahashi. “And criminal responsibility is also being forgotten.”
Such scenes fill the flurry of independent films inspired by Japan’s March 2011 catastrophe that tell stories of regular people who became overnight victims _ stories the creators feel are being ignored by mainstream media and often silenced by the authorities.
Nearly two years after the quake and tsunami disaster, the films are an attempt by the creative minds of Japan’s movie industry not only to confront the horrors of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, but also as a legacy and to empower the victims by telling their story for international audiences.
The impact these films have on the global and Japanese audiences could perhaps even help change Japan, the directors say.
What’s striking is that many of the works convey a prevailing message: The political, scientific and regulatory establishment isn’t telling the whole truth about the nuclear disaster. And much of the public had been in the past ignorant and uncaring about Fukushima.
And so the films were needed, the auteurs say. The people leading Japan were too evasive about the true consequences of the multiple meltdowns at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant _ minimizing people’s suffering, playing down health risks and shrugging off accountability for past go-go pro-nuclear government policies.
“Japan’s response is ambiguous and irresponsible. But, meanwhile, time is passing,” said Atsushi Funahashi, director of “Nuclear Nation,” which documented the story of the residents of Futaba, Fukushima, the town where the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is located.
The entire town became a no-go zone _ contaminated by radiation in the air, water and ground after the tsunami destroyed the plant’s cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors. Decommissioning the reactors is expected to take decades.
Of all Fukushima communities forced to evacuate, Futaba chose the farthest spot from the nuclear plant _ an abandoned high school in Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo. That choice Funahashi feels highlights a keen awareness of the dangers of radiation and distrust of officials as the town had been repeatedly told the plant was safe.
The outburst of post-disaster filmmaking includes Americans living in or visiting Japan, such as “Surviving Japan,” by Christopher Noland, “Pray for Japan,” by Stuart Levy and “In the Grey Zone” and “A2” by Ian Thomas Ash.
Fukushima Prefectural Officials Want Children to Come to Fukushima on School Trips, Promise “Charm and Safety” and “Heart-Throbbing Experience”
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
EXSKF
http://ex-skf.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/fukushima-prefectural-officials-want.html
Meanwhile in Fukushima Prefecture, the officials are ever more eager to persuade schools in other parts of Japan to send their pupils and students to Fukushima, for educational trips.
The officials hope that school educational trips will result in increase of tourism revenue for the prefecture.
From one of the Fukushima local newspaper Kahoku Shinpo (2/23/2013):
「教育旅行」福島に来れ！ 県、呼び戻しへ本腰
Come to Fukushima on “educational trips”! The prefecture to make serious effort to win them back
福島県は福島第１原発事故で減った修学旅行や遠足の呼び戻しに本腰を入れる。原発事故と東日本大震災に遭った経験を生かして旅行企画を開発し、教諭や保護者、児童生徒に魅力と安全性をアピールする。
Fukushima Prefecture will make serious effort to win back the school trips and excursions to Fukushima, which have declined in numbers after the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident. The prefecture will develop trip plans based on the experience of the nuclear accident and the March 11, 2011 disaster, and sell such trip plans to teachers, parents and children on Fukushima’s charm and safety.
津波被災地や原発事故の避難区域の住民が「語り部」となって被災体験を伝える。従来の観光スポットに加え、可能な範囲で被災地を見てもらう。複数の旅行会社に企画提案を募る。
Residents from the tsunami-affected areas and (former) evacuees in the nuclear accident evacuation zone will act as “storytellers” to relate their experience to the children. In addition to regular tourist spots, children will get to see the disaster-affected areas where possible. The prefecture will ask multiple travel agencies to propose trip plans.
原発事故で福島行きを取りやめた首都圏や九州の学校に出向いて誘致する活動も続ける。県は２０１３年度当初予算案に関連費約７５００万円を計上した。
The prefecture will continue to visit schools in the Tokyo Metropolitan areas and in Kyushu to persuade them to come to Fukushima again. These schools stopped school trips to Fukushima after the nuclear accident. The budget of about 75 million yen [US$814,000] has been included in the fiscal 2013 budget.
Pirate Bay abandons Sweden for Norway and Spain after legal threats
“Being in the moral and legal right is something completely different from winning in a courtroom,” he said. “In the trial against the Pirate Bay operators, you saw everything from a corrupt judge who was part of the same interest group as the plaintiffs to an investigating police officer who was flat-out hired by Warner Brothers while doing the investigation.”
“It was a travesty of everything justice is supposed to be,” Falkvinge added.
Published time: February 26, 2013 13:47
RT
The Swedish Pirate Party has handed over hosting of the Pirate Bay to sister parties in Norway and Spain after the country’s copyright lobby sent a letter threatening criminal charges for hosting the controversial file-sharing website.
The Swedish Rights Alliance gave the party until Tuesday to cut all ties with the Pirate Bay following threats of serious legal consequences. In a letter sent directly to the party’s board members earlier this month, the Swedish Pirate Party was accused of violating copyright law by acting as an Internet service provider for the popular bittorrent site.
The alliance also charged that the Supreme Court of Sweden had “legally settled that not only those who operate an illegal file-sharing service, but also those who provide internet access to such an illegal service are committing a criminal act.”
The Rights Alliance said that such violations of copyright law could entail stiff fines for noncompliance, payment of damages and even potential prison terms. “These rules apply to legal entities, including non-profit organizations such as The Pirate Party and Serious Tubes, their board members, and other representatives of the organizations,” the letter continued.
Proposal for Paducah laser enrichment plant – Wilmington in North Carolina
USEC made progress on a demonstration cascade of its indigenously developed American Centrifuge technology, although a commercial facility has struggled to obtain a loan guarantee necessary for the project to proceed. Should GLE decide to construct a laser enrichment plant at Paducah, it may be eligible for that loan guarantee.
26 February 2013
WNN
GE-Hitachi subsidiary Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) has formalised a proposal to set up a laser uranium enrichment plant using SILEX technology at the US Department of Energy (DoE)’s Paducah enrichment site in Kentucky.
 |
| Paducah (Image: US DoE) |
GLE submitted an expression of interest including a non-binding proposal for the plant to the DoE on 21 February, SILEX developer Silex Systems Ltd announced in its half-yearly update. GLE is developing and commercialising the SILEX (Separation of Isotopes by Laser Excitation) technology under an exclusive agreement signed with Australian company Silex Systems in 2006, and has been involved in preliminary discussions with DoE about a possible Paducah plant since November 2012.
GLE already has a licence to construct and operate a commercial uranium enrichment plant using SILEX technology at Wilmington in North Carolina: an initial licence decision issued by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September 2012 became final in January 2013. The Wilmington site is already home to GEH’s nuclear fuel manufacturing facility. However, Silex Systems claims that it could be significantly quicker and less costly to set up a commercial SILEX laser enrichment facility at Paducah, where existing facilities could be utilised.
The Paducah gaseous diffusion enrichment plant is the oldest operating uranium enrichment plant in the world, but is expected to close down in May 2013 after over 60 years of operations as new US centrifuge capacity comes online. The DoE has been evaluating possible future opportunities for the plant.
TV: US nuclear plants “very vulnerable” to cyberattack — They’ve been quite successful disrupting these reactors (VIDEO)
Published: February 26th, 2013 at 10:25 am ET
By ENENews
Title: ‘US nuclear power plants very vulnerable to cyber attacks’
Source: RT
Date: Feb 25, 2013
Former Pentagon official Michael Maloof: In the case of the United States it’s aimed at our grid system, as the president point out, and at our critical infrastructure, which is very vulnerable already and this has been known, including our nuclear reactors.
There have been recent tests on this and they’ve been quite successful in disrupting the ability of these nuclear reactors to respond.
So the threat of a cyber attack from unknown entities is very serious.
Watch the video here
Stuxnet origins: US targeted Iran’s nuclear research facility before its erection
Published time: February 26, 2013 21:38
RT
The first potentially explosive cyber-weapon used to attack Iran’s nuclear research infrastructure was developed before Iran even started enriching uranium at the Natanz facility, researchers at the security company Symantec have discovered.
The dormant computer virus that was behind an attack on Iran’s nuclear program as early as 2005 still threatens computers worldwide, mainly in Iran and the United States, Symantec’s new report suggests.
The anti-virus giant, on Tuesday, claimed that a team of specialists has discovered a version of the Stuxnet computer virus that was used against Tehran in November 2007, two years earlier than previously assumed.
The threat, Stuxnet version 1.001, which the company helped to uncover in July 2010, “one of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever written” is now believed to have had an impact on the critical national infrastructure of nation states.
When the virus originally surfaced, it was alleged that Washington and Tel Aviv used it to attack an Iranian nuclear plant at Natanz.
But the latest analysis by the Symantec Security Response has revealed that an earlier version of 1.001, Stuxnet 0.5 was in operation between 2007 and 2009 with the possibility of even earlier variants going back to 2005.
Yet eight years ago Iran was in the process of building its uranium enrichment facility, said Symantec researcher Liam O’Murchu, as the plant became operational in 2007.
“It is really mind-blowing that they were thinking about creating a project like that in 2005,” O’Murchu told Reuters ahead of the report’s release at the RSA security conference in San Francisco.
All versions of Stuxnet have allegedly been used to change the speeds of around 1,000 gas-spinning centrifuges without being detected, thus sabotaging the research process of Iranian scientists. Such manipulation, say some experts, could potentially lead to an explosion.
Litvinenko family lawyer accuses UK of coverup
Litvinenko, who was once an officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and later a fierce critic of the Kremlin, died on November 23, 2006. He was poisoned on November 1, 2006 with polonium-210, a highly toxic radioactive isotope, at a hotel in central London.
On his deathbed in London, the 43-year-old accused Russian spies of ordering his assassination. The Kremlin denied the allegations and said Litvinenko, who had been granted British citizenship, was a British spy.
“It is crucial, absolutely crucial, that the outcome of this hearing is to scotch, once and for all, any possible suggestion that it is because (Prime Minister) David Cameron is interested in promoting trade with Russia that he is trying to close down the truth about this inquest,” Emmerson said.
However, lawyers for British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that the examination of some government documents in open court is not in the public interest.
They argued that confidential information held by the government about Litvinenko should be subject to a public interest immunity (PII) certificate.
“The disclosure of material would pose a real risk of serious harm to public interest,” said Neil Sheldon, who is one of Hague’s lawyers.
GJH/HGL –
Was the BBC’s reporting of the science of World Trade Centre 7 accurate? – Truthloader
truthloader
Published on Feb 26, 2013
Tony Rooke is an activist who refused to pay his TV License on the grounds that he believes the BBC have actively covered up information regarding the attacks of September 11th.
On 25th of February 2013 Tony was at Horsham court to make his case to the Judge. We met with him and ex-Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, Niels Harrit, and former intelligence analyst for South Yorkshire Police, Tony Farrell to hear their reasons for supporting Tony Rooke in this case. Stay tuned because tomorrow we’ll be putting up a longer film.
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Why did World Trade Center 7 collapse? LIVE with Dr. Niels Harrit & AlienScientist – http://bit.ly/128pfE6
The Nuclear Industry Is DEAD Despite Any “Nuclear Candy”
redbuttonstudio
Published on Feb 25, 2013
Uploaded on Jun 10, 2011
DemocracyNow.org – Talks to
Robert Alvarez, former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy
Originally published on Feb 25, 2013 by onthewaytoextinction (length 11min 48sec)
* Note from OTWTE: Watch full interview here:
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Obama Foolish About Nuclear Power Safety in America
Published on Feb 25, 2013
Obama said that everything is okay; but that has not been not proven to be true.
Original Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfrKZd…
Fukushima Plume
http://america20xy.com/blog6/?p=37913
Radiation Leak in America
http://www.reuters.com/video/2013/02/…
Some figures for milk contamination found on this blog – [Arclight2001]
http://mylogicoftruth.wordpress.com/tag/cesium-137/
“….CRIIRAD says its information note is not limited to the situation in France and is applicable to other European countries, as the level of air contamination is currently the same in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, for instance.
Data for the west coast of the United States, which received the Fukushima radioactive fallout 6-10 days before France, reveals that levels of radioactive iodine-131 concentration are 8-10 times higher there, the institute says….”
Radiation risks from Fukushima ‘no longer negligible’
The risks associated with iodine-131 contamination in Europe are no longer “negligible,” according to CRIIRAD, a French research body on radioactivity. The NGO is advising pregnant women and infants against “risky behaviour,” such as consuming fresh milk or vegetables with large leaves.
In response to thousands of inquiries from citizens concerned about fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Europe, CRIIRAD has compiled an information package on the risks of radioactive iodine-131 contamination in Europe.
The document, published on 7 April, advises against consuming rainwater and says vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant or breastfeeding women should avoid consuming vegetables with large leaves, fresh milk and creamy cheese.
The risks related to prolonged contamination among vulnerable groups of the population can no longer be considered “negligible” and it is now necessary to avoid “risky behaviour,” CRIIRAD claimed.
However, the institute underlines that there is absolutely no need to lock oneself indoors or take iodine tablets.
CRIIRAD says its information note is not limited to the situation in France and is applicable to other European countries, as the level of air contamination is currently the same in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, for instance.
Data for the west coast of the United States, which received the Fukushima radioactive fallout 6-10 days before France, reveals that levels of radioactive iodine-131 concentration are 8-10 times higher there, the institute says.
Rain water and tap water
According to CRIIRAD, a huge proportion of the inquiries it has received concern the risks associated with rainwater and drinking tap water.
The institute stresses that there is no risk whatsoever, even for children, of standing in the rain without protection. But consumption of rainwater as a primary source of drinking water should be avoided, particularly among children, it said.
As for tap water, underground catchments or large rivers should not present any problem. But the institute suggests that the situation of water from reservoirs that collect rainwater from one or more watersheds, such as hillside lakes, should be examined more closely.
As for watering one’s garden with collected rainwater, CRIIRAD advises watering only the earth and not the leaves of vegetables, as absorption is faster and more significant on leaf surfaces than through roots.
Food chain
Spinach, salads, cabbage and other vegetables with large surface areas are among those food products that are particularly sensitive to iodine-131 contamination, if they are cultivated outside and exposed to rainwater. Washing vegetables does not help, as iodine-131 is quickly metabolised by the plants, CRIIRAD notes.
Fresh milk and creamy cheeses, as well as meat from cattle that have been outside eating grass, are categorised as foods that may have been indirectly contaminated and must also be monitored. Contamination of milk and cheese from goats and sheep may be of a greater magnitude than that of produce from cows.
Level of a risky dose
Radioactive horse meat: Dark dealings of Europe’s cruellest trade
“….Soil in central Poland was contaminated by a wide spectrum of radionuclides (Table 8;12). In the north eastern part of the country Cs137 and Cs134 gound deposition levels, were up to 30 Bq/m2 and Iodone 131 and Iodine 132 depodition levels were up to 1 MBq/m2…” (Energy 2008) Source : Page 231 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g34tNlYOB3AC&pg=PA231&lpg=PA231&dq=polish+chernobyl++cesium+137&source=bl&ots=O1bUjV02h6&sig=IjEt4qPXZ1gJVwurcU0eTS-dmp8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=z58sUbHnL6mJ0AXfy4GYDg&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=polish%20chernobyl%20%20cesium%20137&f=false
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Faster track for country-of-origin labelling on meat (ie wheres the radioactive meat come from? [Arclight2011] )
26 February, 2013By Line Elise Svanevik, Carina PerkinsThe European Commission has agreed to speed up the publication of its paper on options for country-of-origin labelling of processed meat products in the wake of the horsemeat scandal.
Speaking after a meeting with EU commissioner for health and consumer policy Tonio Borg yesterday, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said the Commission had responded to his call on country-of-origin labelling.
He said the publication of the paper would “help all member states form their own position on what any regulations would look like”.
Paterson met with Borg ahead of yesterday’s EU Agriculture Council meeting in Brussels, where ministers from all 27 Member States discussed the horsemeat scandal.
“The Agriculture Council meeting was the first time that all European ministers have been able to gather round the table to discuss this cross-border criminal problem,” said Paterson. “We need coordinated action by every member state across Europe to rebuild consumer confidence in the products provided by food businesses, and to ensure perpetrators are prosecuted.”
Country-of-origin labelling was one of the items under discussion at the meeting. “Several delegations called for a labelling of the origin of meat entering in the composition of processed meat products,” said a statement from the Council.
“In addition, several member states pointed out that the report on the impact assessment of labelling the origin of meat in processed food, the publication of which was scheduled for December this year, should be published before or after summer.”
EU testing of meat products was also under discussion, with ministers discussing the option of extending the testing programme for a further two months beyond March. However, no final decision was taken at the meeting.
Horsemeat scandal ‘primarily a labelling issue’, says EFRA (But not for radiation? [Arclight2011] )
14 February, 2013By Nicholas Robinson
A report on the contamination of beef products compiled by the House of Commons’ Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has concluded that the incident was “primarily a food labelling issue”.
However, it also said that any suggestions of fraud on a “massive scale” suggested that measures needed to be put in place “now” to stop something like this happening again.
Image source : Pictures: Animals Inherit Mixed Legacy at Chernobyl http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/04/pictures/110426-chernobyl-25th-anniversary-wildlife/
The report added: “The strong indications that people have intentionally substituted horsemeat for beef leads us to conclude that British consumers have been cynically and systematically duped in pursuit of profit by elements within the food industry.”
Responsibility
The report said that since the introduction of the European Single Market in 1993, the UK has had no import controls on food from other countries in the EU. However, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food David Heath said it was the responsibility of the exporting country to ensure the correct checks and tests had been carried out on meat products due to be exported.
Meanwhile, Defra said checks could be carried out at the border “if there are grounds to suspect the consignment does not comply with EU conditions”.
Defra added: “Food imported into the UK must satisfy regulations under the Food Safety Act 1990, including regulations that aim to ensure that food has the satisfied and relevant hygiene requirements at all stages of production.”
The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) placed responsibility for product safety and authenticity with all parts of the food supply chain. It said: “Food manufacturers have extensive and well-established procedures to document their sources of raw material, the food manufacturing process and the compositional content of the food they produce. They have internal quality control procedures – for example, traceability documentation, raw material intake procedures, microbiological testing, testing of fat levels, temperature controls, control of foreign bodies, and cleaning down of machinery and equipment.”
The supply chain
Additionally, it has been the main priority of the government to determine the point at which the contamination entered the supply chain. And ABP Foods, which owns Silvercrest – the processor that supplied horse and pork contaminated beef burgers to Tesco – stated it had “never knowingly bought, handled or supplied equine meat products”.
Supermarkets also stated they had procedures in place to ensure the quality of the products they sold. In a statement to the Committee, Tesco said: “Once a supplier has been approved to supply us, we have an ongoing programme of site visits, audits and product surveillance to ensure our standards are being maintained. These processes are in addition to those carried out by the relevant food authority, and the suppliers themselves.”
Testing
Additional to the procedures already in place, Tesco group technical director Tim Smith said Tesco had decided to “make a significant investment, at our cost, in DNA sampling of those meats and meat products where this is a potential risk to consumers”.
Smith added that it would cost Tesco between £1m and £2m a year to DNA-test samples from every site that produces for it and the costs would come from his technical function, which is independent within Tesco. He said Tesco would “make a significant investment, at our cost, in DNA sampling of those meats and meat products where this is a potential risk to consumers”.
However, the Committee report highlighted the fact that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) did not carry out food tests, which are done by local authorities and trading standards officers. The FSA told the Committee: “The Agency provides funding to these authorities to undertake testing for specific ingredients or items it has identified on its risk register.”
Horse meat: Dark dealings of Europe’s cruellest trade
It is minus 6C and the tea is laced with vodka. Handfuls of notes are being carefully counted and Piotr is leaving with 7,000 zloty – about £1,400 – for his old mare.
He is not alone. Everywhere on the frozen, snow-covered field, groups of men are looking at horses and haggling over their price.
Welcome to Skaryszew: the place where horses arrive from Polish farms and leave in lorries for fattening and slaughter.
Men have been selling horses here on the first Monday of Lent since 1432.
But now those horses could even end up in the British food chain, because Skaryszew, 75 miles from Warsaw, is the start of a long, and sometimes obscure chain that has been blamed for horse meat being found masquerading as beef in British shops and wholesalers.
(David Rose for the Telegraph)
From Skaryszew, the horses will travel as far afield as Italy to be slaughtered. Who profits from the trade, and what checks to ensure the horses are safe to eat are, at best, questionable.
For Piotr, however, it has been a good trip. The farmer has travelled two hours from his village, Cisów, to sell his mare, expecting to get 5,000 zloty for the animal – a large amount in a country where the average agricultural worker’s annual wage is just under £1,200 a year.
The nuclear reality: lives in limbo after Fukushima
Blogpost by Rianne Teule – February 19, 2013 at 12:10
Greenpeace
As a nuclear campaigner, I have seen the nuclear industry walk away from its mistakes many times, ignoring people’s suffering.
But it is the terrible effect on people of a nuclear disaster such as Fukushima that really brings home the flaws of the nuclear system.
Nearly two years after the disaster, the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Japan are still being disrupted. When the disaster hit, their lives were turned upside down. They were forced from their homes, they lost their jobs, families were split up and communities were abandoned due to the radioactive fallout.
People are not able to get fair compensation. Many are still unable to return home or rebuild their lives elsewhere. Imagine living in limbo like that, stuck between past and future.
How can this be happening?
Blame the unfair system that protects the nuclear industry from paying for its failures. This system is called nuclear liability. It is a joke.
Engineer Mitsuhiko Tanaka discusses the cover up of production flaws in the vessel
for Reactor 4 at Fukushima. While the flaws and cover up didn’t cause the explosion
at Reactor 4, they are examples of why the nuclear industry can’t be trusted.
Make the industry pay
A risky industry like the nuclear industry should have to pay for its damages, just the way big oil companies have to pay for spills. But the nuclear industry is protected. Governments did that to help the nuclear industry get started decades ago. They have never fixed the problems this protection created.
Greenpeace examines the flaws of the unfair system in a new report, Fukushima Fallout: Nuclear business makes people pay and suffer.
Corporate Blowback – Corporations attacking citizens with legal force!
Corporate Blowback
February 25, 2013
Companies like EDF, seeking to terrify protesters with lawsuits, are likely to become victims of their own aggression.
http://www.monbiot.com/2013/02/25/corporate-blowback/
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 26th February 2013
Without public protest, democracy is dead. Every successful challenge to excessive power begins outside the political chamber. When protest stops, politics sclerotises: it becomes a conversation between different factions of the elite.
But protest is of no democratic value unless it is effective. It must disturb and challenge those at whom it is aimed. It must arouse and motivate those who watch. The climate change campaigners trying to prevent a new dash for gas wrote to their MPs, emailed the power companies, marched and lobbied. They were ignored. So last year 17 of them climbed the chimney of the West Burton power station and occupied it for a week(1). Theirs was a demonstration in two senses of the word: they presented an issue to the public which should be at the front of our minds. Prompted to act by altruism and empathy, one day they will be remembered as we remember suffragettes and anti-slavery campaigners.
Last week the operator of the power station – EDF, which is largely owned by the French government – announced that it is suing these people, and four others, for £5m(2). It must know that, if it wins, they have no hope of paying. It must know that they would lose everything they own, now and for the rest of their lives. For these and other reasons, EDF’s action looks to me like a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation: a SLAPP around the ear of democracy.
1 This Month
10 March A LIVE WEBINAR THE REAL EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR POWER
What the Industry Isn’t Telling Us
1:00 PM Mountain, 2 pm Central, 3 pm Eastern. Live on the Keepers of the Water Facebook page
18 March Webinar @ 1 PM EST: An Assessment of SMR Projects: The Case of Canada
register for the zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o8BIIOUvQ2ONJR1nta65DQ#/registration
of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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