...or, "How to spend $6 billion, create 600 jobs, and prop up the most unproductive sector of the military industrial complex for another generation."
Despite President Obama's campaign rhetoric of a world without nuclear weapons, despite the recent catastrophe at Japan's Fukushima complex, and despite the new START nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia last February, it seems the desire among our leaders for nuclear power and nuclear weaponry remains as strong today as it was at the height of the Cold War. What's just as disturbing, though, is the disregard our government shows for any input from its citizenry -- pro or con.
In a recent Santa Fe Radio Café interview with Greg Mello, co-founder of the Los Alamos Study Group, an Albuquerque-based watchdog organization that monitors the goings-on at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Labs, this sober, fact-loving, almost phlegmatic "Joe Friday" of an activist outlined very clearly both the potential gains and losses (and for whom) of the National Nuclear Security Administration's plans for a new Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) facility at LANL, before going completely off character to point out the utter neglect that the Department of Energy (among many other government agencies) has for any due process.
Mello said that the main purpose of this $4-12 billion plutonium lab, which the NNSA claims "would provide vitally essential technical support capabilities to NNSA's national security mission," is basically "making weapons of mass destruction." Craftily-languaged in the NNSA proposal as "plutonium pits," Mello says that the CMRR building's main purpose is "to increase the nuclear capacity of LANL as a whole and to manufacture plutonium plants." The warhead cores of these "plants," says Mello, would be "the successors to the bombs used on Nagasaki. They'd each have a yield that's 50 times greater than the bomb used there in World War II."
Contrary, then, to the popular perception of Obama as anti-nuclear proliferation, his endorsement of this CMRR facility -- and the facility's true purpose -- puts him entirely in line with that of his predecessor, George W., who originally championed this project. It's part of a deal, said Mello, between Obama and the Republicans: you can have your nuclear-arms treaty and our 67 votes for it, but only if you follow through on a nuclear arms buildup. "We just signed a nuclear weapons treaty," said Mello, "but we're spending billions of dollars to make new ones. It doesn't improve the credibility of our nonproliferation diplomacy." Indeed.
Aside from the CMRR being a credibility issue, Mello, who co-founded the LASG in 1989, argues against it on other levels: economic ones -- the government has already spent $458 million on it, and even at its most conservative cost estimate, by the time of its projected completion in 10 years, its creation of 660 jobs tallies out to a cost of $1 million per job; environmental -- in terms of the generation and storage of nuclear waste; and safety, seeing as how the aging 60-year-old facility NNSA wants to replace sits on an earthquake fault line, and the new one would as well (there was an earthquake in nearby Nambé, only 20 miles away, just this past week). "There's never been a large-scale plutonium facility that's operated cleanly," declared Mello. "There are always issues of waste and accidents and contamination."
Unlike a solar or wind-energy project, which could potentially bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment and create thousands of jobs (as opposed to just 660), the CMRR, in Mello's opinion, benefits primarily the companies who already own LANL (Bechtel, the University of California, BMW), while hardly generating any long term value. "It doesn't train people to do anything in the economy," observed Mello. "It doesn't provide any infrastructure, in that it functions in the real economy (there are no goods or services provided, since no one buys or sells nuclear pits). And it attracts no private capital."
But beyond his and other groups' objections to the cost of the CMRR -- the safety of it, the fact that it's all about building weapons of mass destruction in an era when we claim to be doing away with them -- what Mello alluded to almost as an afterthought stood out just as disturbingly as his case against CMRR. "There's the fake citizen input but not the real citizen input," said Mello. "It's what Robert Higgs called "participatory fascism." We are allowed to participate in discussions which already have predetermined outcomes."
Which, when you think about it, is one of the primary catalysts behind Tea Partiers and Occupiers alike. Apathetic as we've been these past few decades, we've been listened, paradoxically, into a state of rage. People have finally wised-up to the publicity and marketing-induced, corporate-strategized ruse of pretending to take our concerns, our pleas, our objectives into consideration. As Mello stated, our government's pretense of soliciting input from its people amounts to little more than a giant suggestion box, inside of which lay a forever-churning paper shredder.
"People in Santa Fe go to these environmental impact statement hearings as if they're views were remotely interesting to people in Washington. I can assure you they are not," scoffed Mello. "The people who make decisions don't know about your views. They never get there and it's all a vast charade. And the Department of Energy is among the worst of all the agencies at this. It's just a hoop they have to go through, having these statement hearings."
Knowing this, having seen it and experienced it time and again, Mello and his compatriots have already started putting together their lawsuits, for failure to have an Environmental Impact Statement.
No participatory fascist, Mello added about the CMRR: "It's a Soviet-style project that is a totally state-controlled state investment in a very obsolete technology. It's weapons socialism."
Listen to the podcast here. Many thanks to Devon Jackson.
www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T111102005437.htm
Also it is very hard to greenwash all the Kr-85 and I-129 gasses that the industry never got around to capturing like the EPA assumed they would do back in the 1970's.
www.inl.gov/technicalpublications/Documents/4781565.pdf
Peer reviewed science published in reputable journal shows an extremely low cancer rate in Ramsar, Iran where the population receives far higher annual background radiation doses than a person would have received standing at the front gate of the Fukushima reactor.- where corruption caused an accident in a ancient fifties design reactor impossible in a modern unit .
With a fossil to nuclear conversion over ten years well within our idle industrial capacity, rates of return of 40% per annum to the nation as a whole, and a fossil to renewable conversion utterly impossible financially, industrially, and politically, not so renewable advocates might start wondering if their uninformed Big Oil funded opposition to a fossil to nuke conversion is worth the pollution deaths of three million folks worldwide every year the conversion is delayed and the deaths of billions more when we hit the fast approaching climate precipice.
Scientist Marco Kaltofen Presents Data Confirming Hot Particles from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
Arnie's website is down currently but video can be watched HERE:
http://australiancannonball.com/2011/11/01/scientist-marco-kaltofen-presents-data-confirming-hot-particles/
Radiation Exposure to the Population in Japan After the Earthquake
Monday, October 31, 2011: 8:30 AM
Marco Kaltofen, PE , Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA
http://apha.confex.com/apha/139am/webprogram/Paper254015.html
Harvesting Power from the Ocean
A new technology could generate electricity from waves.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19295/
Thank you Mary for speaking out.
http://fukushima-diary.com/
Or Here:
http://enenews.com/
Or Here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/30/japan-earthquake-2011-gov_n_989682.html
Nothing more needs to be said IMO:
Asleep during the buildup.
Eyes Forced Wide Open on 3/11
Radioactive tellurium, silver detected near...
November 01, 2011
High concentrations of radioactive tellurium and silver have been found in soil around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, according to the science ministry's...
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ2011110116244
Just watch the news coming out of Japan. If that doesn't convince you Nuclear is DANGEROUS, nothing will. We are One Natural Disaster away from the same happening here in the States.
1 minute ago
That's enough for me!!
STOP THE INSANITY!!
Shut them down...before it's too late.
WE can and MUST DO BETTER!
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
End the use of nuclear energy in the United States.
http://wh.gov/4HA
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
End taxpayer subsidies for new nuclear reactors
http://tinyurl.com/3rxkknu
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Provide dollar for dollar investment into Green Energy R&D just like we spend on Nuclear Energy! Solar's time is NOW!
http://tinyurl.com/3nugx5z
Taxpayers should NOT take on the risk of building new nuclear plants
https://secure3.convio.net/gpeace/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=801&s_src=sidebar
M-C are you expecting a tsunami in New Mexico anytime soon??
It's only fair that NM gets one too.
“The problem of nuclear power is it’s not built on concrete, it’s built on lies.”
Greg Palast, author & investigator
"Twenty years after the end of the cold war, the United States still has about 2,500 nuclear weapons deployed and 2,600 more as backup. The Obama administration, in an attempt to mollify Congressional Republicans, has also committed to modernizing an already hugely expensive complex of nuclear labs and production facilities. Altogether, these and other nuclear-related programs could cost $600 billion or more over the next decade. The country does not need to maintain this large an arsenal. It should not be spending so much to do it, especially when Congress is considering deep cuts in vital domestic programs."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/the-bloated-nuclear-weapons-budget.html?_r=2&src=tp&smid=fb-share
There's a whole new groundswell of people waking up to the nuclear issue because of the Japan nuclear crisis!
What everyone can do:
1. Vote and give your money to candidates who are against nuclear power.
Against Nuclear Power = Dennis Kucinich; too bad about John Edwards because he was solidly against it; Sen. Bernie Sanders...
Pro-Nuclear Power = President Obama; Ron Paul; Mitt Romney; Michelle Bachmann; Marco Rubio; Herman Cain; Eric Cantor...
You can look up your representative and their position on nuclear here:
http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/find_representative.php
2. Support groups that peacefully work against nuclear power and proliferation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-nuclear_power_groups
3. Frequent websites that keep you informed, such as: www.radioactive.eu.com
4. Don't watch promoters of nuclear power like Fox News, CNN--- and stop reading periodicals that support it like the NYT and TIME magazine.
Jeff McMahon of Forbes has been exceptional on the nuclear issue.
5. Don't buy products made in countries heavily-laden with nuclear power plants. It's not easy but it can be done.
6. Support and buy from countries moving away from nuclear power: Germany, Italy, Bavaria, Belgium
You are a hero to me! Keep speaking OUT!! FF
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/30/japan-earthquake-2011-gov_n_989682.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technetium-99m