Having admitted that we were addicted...
...we woke up.
Think you're not a desperate addict, daily gambling your life for another hit? Think your not up to your neck/soul in money problems? Think you would not act unethically when pressed?
I think it's time to tell the story of when I was at The Farm [thefarm.org] a community of at that time (1977?) about 1100 people in Summertown, Tennessee which - among other things like aiding rebuilding in earthquake hit areas of the world and taking in orphans and pioneering natural childbirth and midwifery and operating an organic farm and making nutritional yeast and tempeh and tofu and tvp and soy milk and and publishing books- was fighting in the U.S. Supreme Court to get all U.S. nuclear power plants closed (and no more built) on the grounds that none of them were safe...Well, they were trying to make me well-rounded by insisting I learn servicing laundry machines rather than what I wanted to continue to do (work with the horse-drawn compost cart which each day made rounds at each of the houses)...so I'm working in "The Mat" with adults and children who were dangerously near pure chlorine...anyway...just when I had a great big wrench at the back of a machine I hear helicopters and a kid comes running in saying "The Army's landing"...well, being the good hippie that I was, I thought to run into the woods...not paying attention to what I was doing my fear must have gone into turning the wrench too hard because I caused a flood...Then the military denied that they had purposely executed a mock-attack ("We thought they were abandoned farm buildings" - I don't think so; they came close enough to do a little structural damage to the school)...
Given the money and presssures involved, people in government and business can fall to such depths. Silkwood was killed on the way to bringing convincing testimony against Kerr-McGee.
This is important now because officials and business people in Pittsburgh are advocating a "nuclear power renaissance" and are happy that Westinghouse is making money being part of that. We are downwind of Cleveland's Fernald nuclear power plant, near which it was theorized that high pressure injection of waste (which has a history of causing earthqakes) was the cause of the earthquake that slightly shuddered Pittsburgh some years ago.
I think nuclear power was developed partly to show that the technology was capable of being constructive as well as destructive, and partly because - it being easier to make money when you already have money - large-scale financial concerns had unfair competitive advantage over small local decentralized distributed power sources such as micro-generation e.g. solar, wind, locally-grown biofuel, etc.
======
From:
Critical Hour: Three Mile Island, The Nuclear Legacy, And National Security
by Albert J. Fritsch, Arthur H. Purcell, and Mary Byrd Davis
Update 2004-May 2006
earthhealing.info/chupdate.html
earthhealing.info/links.html
Synopsis
Given the Bush administration’s intensifying attempts to revive the commercial nuclear industry and given the general lack of commitment on the part of the administration and of the American public to energy efficiency and mature renewable energy technologies, we felt it incumbent on us to update Critical Hour. The nuclear industry poses even more of a threat to the welfare of the United States and other nations than it did in 2003...Furthermore, the now-overwhelming evidence of climate change demands that we adopt currently available means of reducing fossil fuel consumption.
Commercial nuclear reactors are even more dangerous than they were in late 2003, because aging makes reactor components increasingly fragile and susceptible to breakdowns and because all US reactors are now older and many are being authorized to operate for sixty years. The impact of normally operating reactors on human health and the environment has not changed, but is now more obvious, as a committee of the National Research Council has confirmed that even low doses of ionizing radiation can cause cancer. The radioactive waste problem has become more acute as reactor waste continues to pile up...The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has still not done all it could to protect civilian reactors and their irradiated fuel storage pools from terrorists, although they remain tempting targets. Nevertheless, the Bush administration is using tax payers’ money to push the construction of new commercial reactors and to develop a dangerous, expensive, and unworkable program, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which would include the development within the United States of the reprocessing of irradiated fuel and the construction of fast neutron reactors. Nuclear power is not the answer to global warming, and development and large-scale implementation of new technologies for using fossil fuels, even if feasible, would demand time that is not available. Energy efficiency and use of mature renewable resources can turn the tide, but voluntary lifestyle changes are proving to be insufficient. We are therefore forced to modify our original proposal to include more governmental regulation and incentives...
...page 7...
...recommendation that narrowly missed being approved by the Carter-appointed TMI
Commission a quarter of a century ago, namely, the request to phase out the nuclear power industry in this country. Having lost a golden opportunity then, we still have precious time left to
reconsider the recommendation. Now at the beginning of the 21st century several European nations are planning and becoming committed to phasing out nuclear power plants. It is time for
our country to follow their example and take this necessary step for the sake of national security and the health and safety of our citizenry....
This truly is the Critical Hour, the time to go cold turkey on nuclear power generation and to decommission reactors, the time to end the myth of the peacetime atom, and the time to turn attention to safer and more secure renewable energy sources. Too much time has been
spent trying to license, make safe, and upgrade aging nuclear power reactors at over a hundred
powerplant sites in our country. We must make a difficult comprehensive national decision about
nuclear power...The hope is that citizen pressure from communities located near
nuclear power sites will start to arise and spread through other responsible public-spirited citizens across the land. We seek to focus informed and energetic activists once again after a two-decade hiatus on this important issue. There are several reasons why this goal should be urgently pursued at this time. Human error could again cause a partial or complete meltdown, a repetition of TMI or Chernobyl. Irradiated nuclear fuel continues to pile up at nuclear power plants, and no repository is ready to receive materials or has even been determined to be in a safe location. Furthermore, many of the current irradiated-fuel storage areas are soft targets for post-September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a threat never dreamed of by those early proponents who bragged that the energy from the atom would make electricity too cheap to meter. What a burden that is hanging over us!
Questions: As we grow in collective wisdom, we are able to ask more critical questions. Why hold entire metropolitan areas hostage to the whims of terrorists who would be unafraid to die
while damaging a nuclear facility? Why risk thousands of innocent lives and accompanying
property damage that could run into the billions of dollars all in order to continue a costly and unsafe manner of generating electricity? Why continue to ask national forbearance for the sake of an outdated nuclear power industry, when safer alternatives are so accessible and their potential is increasingly being realized? Why not turn to wind power, the world's fastest growing energy source, along with solar applications and energy efficiency, which collectively could match U.S. nuclear power plants several times over? Must we wait until a major calamity occurs before we act?
Solutions possible...things can be safer in a very short time, provided Americans begin to act now. History shows that the problems with nuclear power have grown with the years; they are the crisis-ridden problems of a people addicted to energy, no matter what the source, and many of these users are too distracted to make proper decisions. Acceptance of our present position is the beginning of a proper recovery...
======
greencross.ch/en
======
Foundation for Fermentation Fervor
http://www.wildfermentation.com/contact.php
======
Centre for Sustainable Design
cfsd.org.uk
======
pathwayswellnessprogram.com/farm_to_table_schedule.html
slowfoodpgh.com/archive_2007_farmtotable.html
Think you're not a desperate addict, daily gambling your life for another hit? Think your not up to your neck/soul in money problems? Think you would not act unethically when pressed?
I think it's time to tell the story of when I was at The Farm [thefarm.org] a community of at that time (1977?) about 1100 people in Summertown, Tennessee which - among other things like aiding rebuilding in earthquake hit areas of the world and taking in orphans and pioneering natural childbirth and midwifery and operating an organic farm and making nutritional yeast and tempeh and tofu and tvp and soy milk and and publishing books- was fighting in the U.S. Supreme Court to get all U.S. nuclear power plants closed (and no more built) on the grounds that none of them were safe...Well, they were trying to make me well-rounded by insisting I learn servicing laundry machines rather than what I wanted to continue to do (work with the horse-drawn compost cart which each day made rounds at each of the houses)...so I'm working in "The Mat" with adults and children who were dangerously near pure chlorine...anyway...just when I had a great big wrench at the back of a machine I hear helicopters and a kid comes running in saying "The Army's landing"...well, being the good hippie that I was, I thought to run into the woods...not paying attention to what I was doing my fear must have gone into turning the wrench too hard because I caused a flood...Then the military denied that they had purposely executed a mock-attack ("We thought they were abandoned farm buildings" - I don't think so; they came close enough to do a little structural damage to the school)...
Given the money and presssures involved, people in government and business can fall to such depths. Silkwood was killed on the way to bringing convincing testimony against Kerr-McGee.
This is important now because officials and business people in Pittsburgh are advocating a "nuclear power renaissance" and are happy that Westinghouse is making money being part of that. We are downwind of Cleveland's Fernald nuclear power plant, near which it was theorized that high pressure injection of waste (which has a history of causing earthqakes) was the cause of the earthquake that slightly shuddered Pittsburgh some years ago.
I think nuclear power was developed partly to show that the technology was capable of being constructive as well as destructive, and partly because - it being easier to make money when you already have money - large-scale financial concerns had unfair competitive advantage over small local decentralized distributed power sources such as micro-generation e.g. solar, wind, locally-grown biofuel, etc.
======
From:
Critical Hour: Three Mile Island, The Nuclear Legacy, And National Security
by Albert J. Fritsch, Arthur H. Purcell, and Mary Byrd Davis
Update 2004-May 2006
earthhealing.info/chupdate.html
earthhealing.info/links.html
Synopsis
Given the Bush administration’s intensifying attempts to revive the commercial nuclear industry and given the general lack of commitment on the part of the administration and of the American public to energy efficiency and mature renewable energy technologies, we felt it incumbent on us to update Critical Hour. The nuclear industry poses even more of a threat to the welfare of the United States and other nations than it did in 2003...Furthermore, the now-overwhelming evidence of climate change demands that we adopt currently available means of reducing fossil fuel consumption.
Commercial nuclear reactors are even more dangerous than they were in late 2003, because aging makes reactor components increasingly fragile and susceptible to breakdowns and because all US reactors are now older and many are being authorized to operate for sixty years. The impact of normally operating reactors on human health and the environment has not changed, but is now more obvious, as a committee of the National Research Council has confirmed that even low doses of ionizing radiation can cause cancer. The radioactive waste problem has become more acute as reactor waste continues to pile up...The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has still not done all it could to protect civilian reactors and their irradiated fuel storage pools from terrorists, although they remain tempting targets. Nevertheless, the Bush administration is using tax payers’ money to push the construction of new commercial reactors and to develop a dangerous, expensive, and unworkable program, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which would include the development within the United States of the reprocessing of irradiated fuel and the construction of fast neutron reactors. Nuclear power is not the answer to global warming, and development and large-scale implementation of new technologies for using fossil fuels, even if feasible, would demand time that is not available. Energy efficiency and use of mature renewable resources can turn the tide, but voluntary lifestyle changes are proving to be insufficient. We are therefore forced to modify our original proposal to include more governmental regulation and incentives...
...page 7...
...recommendation that narrowly missed being approved by the Carter-appointed TMI
Commission a quarter of a century ago, namely, the request to phase out the nuclear power industry in this country. Having lost a golden opportunity then, we still have precious time left to
reconsider the recommendation. Now at the beginning of the 21st century several European nations are planning and becoming committed to phasing out nuclear power plants. It is time for
our country to follow their example and take this necessary step for the sake of national security and the health and safety of our citizenry....
This truly is the Critical Hour, the time to go cold turkey on nuclear power generation and to decommission reactors, the time to end the myth of the peacetime atom, and the time to turn attention to safer and more secure renewable energy sources. Too much time has been
spent trying to license, make safe, and upgrade aging nuclear power reactors at over a hundred
powerplant sites in our country. We must make a difficult comprehensive national decision about
nuclear power...The hope is that citizen pressure from communities located near
nuclear power sites will start to arise and spread through other responsible public-spirited citizens across the land. We seek to focus informed and energetic activists once again after a two-decade hiatus on this important issue. There are several reasons why this goal should be urgently pursued at this time. Human error could again cause a partial or complete meltdown, a repetition of TMI or Chernobyl. Irradiated nuclear fuel continues to pile up at nuclear power plants, and no repository is ready to receive materials or has even been determined to be in a safe location. Furthermore, many of the current irradiated-fuel storage areas are soft targets for post-September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a threat never dreamed of by those early proponents who bragged that the energy from the atom would make electricity too cheap to meter. What a burden that is hanging over us!
Questions: As we grow in collective wisdom, we are able to ask more critical questions. Why hold entire metropolitan areas hostage to the whims of terrorists who would be unafraid to die
while damaging a nuclear facility? Why risk thousands of innocent lives and accompanying
property damage that could run into the billions of dollars all in order to continue a costly and unsafe manner of generating electricity? Why continue to ask national forbearance for the sake of an outdated nuclear power industry, when safer alternatives are so accessible and their potential is increasingly being realized? Why not turn to wind power, the world's fastest growing energy source, along with solar applications and energy efficiency, which collectively could match U.S. nuclear power plants several times over? Must we wait until a major calamity occurs before we act?
Solutions possible...things can be safer in a very short time, provided Americans begin to act now. History shows that the problems with nuclear power have grown with the years; they are the crisis-ridden problems of a people addicted to energy, no matter what the source, and many of these users are too distracted to make proper decisions. Acceptance of our present position is the beginning of a proper recovery...
======
greencross.ch/en
======
Foundation for Fermentation Fervor
http://www.wildfermentation.com/contact.php
======
Centre for Sustainable Design
cfsd.org.uk
======
pathwayswellnessprogram.com/farm_to_table_schedule.html
slowfoodpgh.com/archive_2007_farmtotable.html
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 7:32 AM
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