Nuke lovers you have friends at CASE!
In one of the most unusual couplings for huge profits to be made off the dumb public, you have the former leader of Greenpeace and the former head of the EPA. Their group is called CASE which stands for Clean and Safe Energy. Curiously they have listed as one of their supporters: The Tampa Branch of the NAACP. Co-Founder/Mouth piece Christine Todd Whitman was busy hawking the group in Miami on Monday. She left former Greenpeace head, Patrick Moore at home. Greenpeace doesn't say much about Moore on their website but they had plenty to say about Nukes:
"The nuclear corporations have found a new villain to exploit. They have replaced the Middle Eastern dictators with the threat of climate change. Besides the expense and unresolved waste problems -- and the fact that terrorists could use reactors and spent fuel pools as pre-positioned weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear power will fail to address climate change for the very same reason it has failed to stem the flow of foreign oil. Nuclear power generates electricity and electricity does not power our automobiles.
While nuclear power undergoes yet another facelift, energy efficiency and renewable technologies will continue to provide the best opportunity to slow climate change. Rather than another extreme makeover, its time to pull the plug on nuclear power, it will never address the threat of climate change and in the process we’ll all get burned. "
And they believe Nukes are an economic disaster:
"If the nuclear industry and Wall Street financiers are unwilling to assume the economic risk of constructing new nuclear power plants, why should the American taxpayer?
Perhaps the Senate is betting that these new reactors will be better than the one hundred and three reactors that already exist? But consider the economic and safety meltdown experienced by the nuclear industry over the past thirty years. The Department of Energy (DOE) compared nuclear construction cost estimates to the actual final costs for 75 reactors. The original cost estimate was $45 billion. The actual cost was $145 billion! Forbes magazine recognized that this "failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster of monumental scale." According to Forbes, "only the blind, or the biased, can now think the money has been well spent." Despite the $100 billion cost overrun, Senator Pete Domenici wants to again give the nuclear industry billions in taxpayer dollars and guaranteed loans.
However, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the prospects for a second generation of nuclear reactors are equally abysmal. According to the CBO, the Department of Energy could provide loan guarantees for up to 50% of the construction costs for seven new nuclear power plants. However, the CBO considers the risk of default on these loans to be very high - well above 50 percent. It is little wonder that the three nuclear corporations that are attempting to site new nuclear reactors, Dominion Resources, Entergy and Exelon have stated that the numbers for new nuclear construction just don't add up."
The Most Dangerous Means to Boil Water
"But bad economics is only part of the problem. The government's nuclear advisers have determined that these new nuclear designs constitute "a major safety trade-off" because they lack containment domes, the last line of defense protecting the public from a catastrophic release of radiation.
Nuclear power already is the most dangerous and expensive means yet devised to boil water. But when you add to this danger the threat of a terrorist attack, the continued support of nuclear power becomes unconscionable."
3 comments:
no one gives a damn so why should I...i hope if there is a problem you all remember me. I am not writing on this anymore. Nobody cares "0" Comments for shame!!!
Columbia Journalism Review
July 2006 / August 2006
EDITORIAL
FALSE FRONTS
Why to look behind the label
This year, with the little matter of global warming finally getting its moment in the sun,
the nuclear energy industry saw an opening. No U.S. nuclear power plant has been built
for three decades now, and the industry would like to pick up a shovel. Nuke plants may
be costly to construct, melt down on rare occasions, and present us with a spent-fuel
problem, but they don't pollute the air. So how to green up the image?
To that end the Nuclear Energy Institute, with the help of Hill & Knowlton, formed
something called the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. To co-chair it the institute hired a
pair of environmental consultants, a duet to sing pro-nuclear songs. Christine Todd
Whitman, of Whitman Strategy Group (which "can help businesses to successfully
interact with government to further their goals," according to its Web site), and Patrick
Moore, of Greenspirit Strategies, were hired for their resumes: Whitman, a former New
Jersey governor, is known as the outdoorsy and moderate Republican who ran the
Environmental Protection Agency for two years under George W. Bush; Moore was a
cofounder of Greenpeace in the 1970s. Part of the thinking, surely, was that the press
would peg them as dedicated environmentalists who have turned into pro-nuke
cheerleaders, rather than as paid spokespeople.
And the press came through. The Washington Post quite properly noted in the bio box of
an op-ed by Moore on April 16 -- GOING NUCLEAR; A GREEN MAKES THE CASE
-- that he and Whitman co-chair a nuclear-industry-funded effort. But in a May 25 article
the Post simply referred to Moore as an "environmentalist" and a cofounder of
Greenpeace -- without mentioning any industry ties. The Boston Globe ran a
Whitman/Moore op-ed on May 15, identifying them as "co-chairs of the Clean and Safe
Industry Coalition" without giving readers a clue to what that coalition is. And in some
stories, columns, and editorials, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Herald, the
Baltimore Sun, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Rocky Mountain News, The New
York Times, and CBS News all referred to Moore as either a Greenpeace founder or an
environmentalist, without mentioning that he is also a paid spokesman for the nuclear
industry.
One can be both, certainly. But the records here are complicated. Moore's firm, Green-
spirit Strategies, has labored for such causes as pesticides, flame retardants, and mining
companies accused of fouling villages with cyanide. He notes in a 1994 essay posted on
Green-spirit's Web site that Bob Hunter, a fellow Greenpeace founder, refers to him as
an "eco-Judas," and that his name has appeared in The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-
Environmental Organizations. (The essay is about the rise of "eco-extremism," which
Moore sees as antihuman, antitechnology, anti-free enterprise, etc.)
Whitman's environmental record in New Jersey, according to the Bergen County Record,
was decidedly mixed. While she put aside funding to acquire a million acres of land for
open space and took a hard line against the coal-burning plants of the Midwest that
pollute East Coast air, the paper said in an editorial, "Mrs. Whitman made heavy staff and
budget cutbacks at the Department of Environmental Protection. She ended what had
been a war on polluters in one of the most heavily polluted states in the nation. She bent
over backward to accommodate industry." Her EPA record, too, was mixed.
Life is complicated. So are front people for industry causes -- or any cause, in a world of
increasingly sophisticated p.r. We have no position on nuclear power. We just find it
maddening that Hill & Knowlton, which has an $ 8 million account with the nuclear
industry, should have such an easy time working the press.
Senate Bill 1544 - Florida Senate energy bill will have its second reading on Senate floor tomorrow April 16th
Has many good clauses, and then this:
(3346-3381) Summary: Electric utility is exempted from obtaining certification before constructing facilities for a power plant using nuclear fuel; exemption is retroactive.
Specific language: An electric utility may obtain separate licenses, permits, and approvals for the construction of facilities necessary to construct an electrical power plant without first obtaining certification under this act [ Florida Electrical Power Plant Siting Act ] if the utility intends to locate, license, and construct a proposed or expanded electrical power plant that uses nuclear materials as fuel.
Post a Comment