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Remember the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
People around the world are commemorating the 20th anniversary of the worst nuclear power accident in history at the Chernobyl reactor in the then-Soviet Union. The accident released many times as much radioactivity into the air as the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, produced immediate casualties from intense radiation exposure, and will continue causing elevated cancer rates for decades to come. There are several usual links at the bottom of this post.
I've been thinking a lot about nuclear power lately because of two events: reports that the Bush administration is considering using nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear laboratories; and the huge push the nuclear power industry has launched worldwide to resurrect the industry by claiming that nuclear energy is the solution to global warming. Since I started fighting nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the mid-1970s with New England's Clamshell Alliance, I've always thought that the single gravest danger of spreading nuclear power plants around the globe was that we were simultaneously spreading the knowledge and materials for building nuclear weapons. Iran and North Korea are only the latest examples of this terrible folly.
Here's a piece that links the nuclear industry's "build nukes--stop global warming" campaign to the dangers of the proliferation of countries with nuclear weapons.
Thoughts on Chernobyl:
Nuclear Power as the Worst Solution to Global Warming
By Brent Blackwelder, President, Friends of the Earth
(April 25, 2006 Washington DC) The 20th anniversary of the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl is a stark reminder that nuclear power is the last technology in the world we should be pursuing to lessen global warming.
On this day we mourn all those who lost their lives, those who were forced to leave their homes, those who have already suffered radiation-induced cancers, and those who live in fear of cancer. Seven million people are suffering as a result of the accident. There is a dead zone the size of Rhode Island where humans are banned.
Last year PR flacks for the nuclear power industry began touting a vast world-wide expansion in nuclear plants. This go-round, they’re peddling nuclear power as the solution to global warming in a multi-million dollar ad campaign that portrays nuclear power as clean and carbon-free. But the nuclear industry has yet to solve some critical problems that have killed new reactor orders since the 1970s. Two of the worst are the failure to create a repository for nuclear waste, and the intimate and unbreakable connection to the proliferation of nuclear weapons to more and more unstable countries.
Let’s start with disposing of high-level nuclear wastes, which must be isolated from all living things for thousands of years. There is no repository for these wastes, and it will be many years before the first one opens (if one ever does). As spent fuel rods accumulate on the grounds of every commercial reactor, those sites have become de-facto high level nuclear waste dumps, housing in buildings that are flimsy compared to the nuclear reactor containment buildings beside them. These spent-fuel buildings are one of the most vulnerable points of the nuclear power fuel cycle. A small group of terrorists with hand-carried weapons could blow one open, with the possibility of producing a highly-radioactive cloud of debris that would bring Chernobyl -like devastation or worse as it passed over.
Now we go to proliferation. In a post-9/11 world, I now believe that nuclear power’s greatest liability is accelerating the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the greater and greater likelihood that a failed state or a terrorist group will use one or more of these nuclear weapons.
By building so many more reactors, we vastly expand the number of scientists and engineers with knowledge about working with nuclear materials. And as we have seen, in country after country, civilian nuclear power programs have been used as a cover for developing nuclear weapons. The current stand-off over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program turns exactly on this point, with the Iranians claiming they are doing civilian research. But atoms are atoms, and uranium and plutonium will fission and give off energy wherever you choose to put them, whether in a power plant or the core of an atomic bomb.
In the light of Chernobyl, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, nuclear power plants are one of the worst possible technologies we could spread across the world. We already know that investing in end-use energy efficiency would get seven times as much reduction in demand per dollar spent compared to producing the same amount of electricity in a nuclear plant. And the efficiency route would also produce real savings quickly, compared with nuclear plants that have taken five or more years to build.
The genie may already be out of the bottle for existing nuclear weapons states, but we should be doing everything possible to keep that genie from expanding any further.
**********************
Chernobyl was a very graphic disaster. The aerial pictures of the shattered buildings shortly after the meltdown are harrowing. But so are the faces of the ordinary people who were exposed downwind, and who were forced to leave their homes with no possibility of returning for decades at a minimum.
Here are some good links:
Chernobyl.info -
Comprehensive site from the International Chernobyl Research and Information Network.
BBC News -
Personal stories and photo galleries.
The International Atomic Energy Agency - Revisiting Chernobyl: 20 Years Later
Extensive coverage with video, photos, news reports, and detailed scientific reports. The IAEA version is the "official" version.
The Chernobyl Catastrophe - Consequences on Human Health - Greenpeace takes on the findings of the IAEA, with a report arguing that the IAEA's had minimized its estimates of health care problems.
It's shocking that a leader who imagines himself as a religious man is even contemplating a first-strike use of nuclear weapons.
But perhaps, in his infinite wisdom, the President has divined that a little nuclear winter could be a remedy for global warming...
hmmm, good point, Cyrano. I suspect he does not think at all, however. Or contemplate.
I have had students who are almost as relentlessly anti-contemplation and reflection as this president is. They love to work out and look good and be charming. They rarely have a thought that is original; it's almost as if someone handed them a script years ago and they pull out a line for each circumstance.
They are incapable of projecting ahead or anticipating consequences, and so they walk into danger all the time. Sometimes they are rescued, but often, the downward slide can be visible to all around them.
I had a friend who lived in Kiev at the time and lost a child. Here is my old article about it:
Greta and Nora
At a previous job, I worked with two Russian women, Greta and Nora, both old enough to have lived most of their lives under Soviet rule.
Greta and her husband Alexander (Sasha), very educated, had been engineers in Russia. However, they were unable to keep employment because they were refuseniks, Soviet Jews who wanted to emigrate to the US for freedom to practice their religion, but were repeatedly denied. They eventually left when the USSR collapsed under its own corruption and mismanagement. Greta told me several stories of life in the USSR, having no control over your destiny, you school, your career, your family. They were at the constant mercy of some government decree, shortage or bureaucratic whim.
While I was working with Greta there was an incident with a nuclear submarine in Russia, the Kirsk. All 118 crewmen died despite the fact that 23 had survived the initial explosion. Those last 23 deaths were attributed to the government's refusal to accept foreign help to rescue the survivors, the Russian government insisting that the entire crew must have died in the blast. They didn't. The last 23 suffocated. We listened to the radio at work a lot and as the incident unfolded on our American news, Greta was fuming. She told me that it was just like when she lived there in the old Soviet Union. The government had no accountability to the people; the people, now supposedly free, did not even know how to make their government accountable, so officials could do whatever they felt most benefited their own power. The Russians did not want foreign sailors to see the inside of a Russian nuclear submarine, so they allowed those 23 men to slowly die of suffocation.
Nora was a friend of Greta. She was very sweet and friendly but still struggling to learn English which eventually cost her the job. She was married with a young daughter. She had had another daughter, but that daughter was never born. She was a victim of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster. Nora was married to her first husband and pregnant with their first child in Kiev in 1986. When the reactor blew at the nearby Chernobyl power plant, Nora and her husband felt lucky to have survived, but later Nora miscarried their daughter. It destroyed her first marriage.
These incidents in their Soviet homeland were par for the course to Greta and Nora because their government was completely unaccountable to the people. The people had no rights to complain and no recourse in the courts for damages. Consequently, their government could do anything to them, their officials providing a badly engineered and constructed infrastructure out of inferior materials and in their economy they had only inferior products and services, when they could get anything at all.
Since 9/11, Americans seem to be very willing to give up their rights and freedoms. I see web posts and LTEs from people arguing that Americans must give these up to gain government protection from the terrorists. There was an LTE in the Sun Times yesterday by a woman arguing in favor of the Patriot Act and spying on Americans. Another man had previously called the Bill of Rights a "suicide pact". These people generally argue that we have to give up our rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from arrest without knowing the charges, without a speedy trial with legal representation. That it is necessary for us to survive in this new world of terrorism. There are also other rights that we have given up under Bush/Kirk and Co. rule that are unrelated to protection from terrorism like the right to sue and get damages without an award cap. No explanation from the Bush administration or congressional republicans why taking the courts away from people who have been damaged by a corporation or HMO will save us from terrorists.
By giving up all these rights and freedoms, Americans are handing complete unaccountability over to our government and connected corporations. They will be able to do whatever suits their power or profit needs. Americans don't get what this means because they have lived so long with their rights and freedoms that they don't know what it is like to live without them. I predict that Americans will miss these rights and freedoms as their control over our lives and family diminishes, as the products we are sold deterioriate in quality, as the quality of our infrastructure, utilities and public services diminishes, and as we are told to keep quiet with our complaints and refused use the courts to redress our damages. It's like the schnitzel at the Berghoff. Most of us haven't gone over there to get it in years, but when it's gone, we'll all miss it.
Americans do not realize what they are so willingly giving up. Greta and Nora know.
OT... but following up on the net neutrality effort...
from Digby at Hullabaloo:
I saw this comment over on Political Animal yesterday that I think illustrates the issue quite well:
What the telecoms are trying to get away with is like this: suppose you ran a business, and your product was delivered by FedEx, with your customers paying FedEx for it. Now suppose FedEx came to you one day and said, "You are making a nice profit off our delivery service. Besides what your customers pay, I also want you to pay us for it, or else your deliveries are going to be a lot slower, if they make it there at all."
(If only my ISP were as reliable as Fed-ex.)
Basically this is what they are trying to do. They want to shake down the content providers like Google for a piece of their action even though they are already being paid for their service by their customers.
read his entire post here...
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_digbysblog_archive.html#114608104869195240
Also see this post at dailykos for the results of today's committee voting and the outlook for the future...
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/26/173145/770
How sad, Ellen. I'm pretty much speechless by today's articles both Dick's and Ellen's. Thanks for sharing that letter, Ellen.
Dwahzon,
I think that's an excellent point. For those of us out on the progressive blogs, we get it. But now we really need to make sure we're out reminding people about this.
I know I filled up today. And I can sense the rage at the gas station. People making 6 bucks and hour just full of rage while they know that their own corporate owners are laughing while running to the bank with their overflowing profits.
I'm telling you, for the first time in a long time, I really sensed that rage.
I was in Milan, Italy when Chernoybl blew. We had no way of knowing which way the radioactive particles would blow. Folks were extremely afraid of being contaminated. They really felt for the folks who were nailed by wind-blown radioactive particles.
A year later I was in Helsinki, Finland. The cloud went thru northern Finland and contaminated the raindeer herds. There was a moratorium on eating reindeer meat (it is a staple of their diet) and the poplulation was hard pressed to come up with alternatives.
My diet was a lot of pickeled things from Russia. Pretty bad.
David Swanson has a diary up at kos that needs some love.
An excellent inside look at Congress and how various members view the Iraq war.
The War Looks Different from Inside Congress
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/26/184926/065
David Swanson and I will be liveblogging the following tomorrow morning:
U.S. Representatives Lynn Woolsey (D-California), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Maurice Hinchey (D-New York), and Maxine Waters will be co-chairing a second forum on ending U.S. military operations in Iraq and bringing U.S. troops home, while helping the Iraqis regain control over their country and their future.
What: Bipartisan Congressional Forum on How to Bring the Troops Home from Iraq
When: Thursday, April 27, 2006, 9:00 AM - 11:00 A.M.
Where: 2325 Rayburn House Office Building
Who: Hosted by U.S. Representatives Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Maurice Hinchey, and Maxine Waters, plus other Members of Congress
Witnesses to include:
• Paul Pillar, Former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000-2005 and long career in the CIA, faculty member of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, and author of Foreign Affairs feature article in March/April issue entitled “Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq”
• U.S. Congressional sponsors of pending legislation specifying plans and timelines for concluding U.S. military operations in Iraq and bringing home U.S. troops (U.S. Representatives Jim McGovern and Barbara Lee)
• Ms. Faiza al-Arji. She is a native Shia Iraqi, married to a Sunni Iraqi. They have three sons who currently live in Amman, Jordan. She will speak about her family’s experiences in Iraq before and during the war and subsequent occupation.
• Dr. Dahlia Wasfi. She was born to a Jewish mother and an Iraqi father. She recently put her medical career on hold to visit with family members in Iraq, and recently returned from a three-month stay in Basra and Baghdad. She will describe her experiences in Iraq and discuss the life of Iraqis under occupation.
• Charlie Anderson (Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class, U.S. Navy-Ret.) He served with the Marine Crops’ Second Tank Battalion during the invasion of Iraq. He is now the Southeast Regional Coordinator of Iraq Veterans Against the War and will discuss his experiences in the military during the war in Iraq.
###
Going to see Massive Attack tonight - here's an excerpt from their interview with Patrick McDonald, this guy even older than me who used to interview the Beatles. (Seattle Times)
Q: "Weather Underground" is the name of your upcoming album, due next year. The name is a reference to a radical '60s group here in America. Is the album political in nature?
A: There will be politics within every track, but the title is about being down in the trenches, what it's like to have your back against the wall, what it's like in the real world when you're not looking at TV, the environment we're in and how we live and communicate with people, know what I mean?
Obviously the reference to the '60s political student movements is slightly playful, but I think an interesting part of history that a lot of Europeans know nothing about. And it's topical because of the feeling of disillusionment with the war in Iraq, and the riots in Paris with the disenfranchised ethnic youth and the students. It's a circle.
Q: In Europe, Massive Attack is huge. Are you still working on America?
A: We never came with that kind of agenda to crack America, as they call it. We're a hybrid, so we can't get easily boxed as dance or hip-hop or rock or electronica. We do have a really cool, solid, curious fan base in America. Why we never crossed-over into the mainstream, I don't know. We may never. But it's never been something we've been obsessed about.
OT but interesting I think......
Rove testifies again in CIA leak case
Bush political adviser appears before grand jury for 5th time
From John King
CNN Washington Bureau
Wednesday, April 26, 2006; Posted: 8:26 p.m. EDT (00:26 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, testified Wednesday for a fifth time before a grand jury in the CIA leak investigation, Rove's attorney said Wednesday.
Rove entered a Washington courthouse shortly after 1 p.m. ET and remained in the building for nearly 3 hours.
"Karl Rove appeared today before the Grand Jury investigating the disclosure of a CIA agent's identity. He testified voluntarily and unconditionally at the request of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to explore a matter raised since Mr. Rove's last appearance in October 2005," Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said in a written statement.
~more~
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/26/cia.leak/
***
And this, from Anne E. Kornblut, in the New York Times....
"This additional Rove visit clearly shows that the Plame investigation is far from over and that Patrick Fitzgerald is living up to his reputation as an impartial, dedicated prosecutor determined to turn over every stone," Senator Charles E. Schumer said in a statement.
http://tinyurl.com/zk6sa
Americans do not realize what they are so willingly giving up. Greta and Nora know.
Posted by: Ellen Beth at April 26, 2006 05:33 PM
Thank you for sharing, Ellen Beth.
As many here know, I lived in a fascist dictatorship in my childhood - definitely lived in one when Chernobyl happened. And I am seeing W use the same tactics my fascist government used on its people back then. The fascist dictatorship is no more today, but the thought of America going down the fascist path is far more scary.
BREAKING NEWS!!!
A SENATE COMMITEE DECIDED THAT FEMA IS SUCH A DISASTER IT NEEDS TO BE ELIMINATED.
CNN ANDERSON COOPER reported a few minutes ago.
Senate panel calls for abolishing FEMA
Bipartisan investigation finds disaster agency beyond repair
Wednesday, April 26, 2006; Posted: 10:27 p.m. EDT (02:27 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's disaster response agency should be abolished and rebuilt from scratch to avoid a repeat of government failures exposed by Hurricane Katrina, a Senate inquiry has concluded.
Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says in recommendations to be released Thursday.
Though short on specifics, such as funding levels, the 86 proposed reforms suggest the United States is still woefully unprepared for a disaster of Katrina's magnitude.
The recommendations, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, are the product of a seven-month investigation to be detailed in a Senate report to released next week.
http://tinyurl.com/oq3o5
The end of the article packs a bit different punch, Truth: stop making FEMA focus on terrorists and get it back to focusing on disaster preparedness. Reinventing a square wheel doesn't mean it will roll any better.
You did a heckuva job, Brownie!
Although I know Michael Brown has been making the circuit with tapes to prove he was not as inadequate as he was portrayed earlier, and that he doesn't intend to be the scapegoat, here is ~
A voice from the past.
CNN.com - 'Can I quit now?' FEMA chief wrote as Katrina raged ...
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/03/brown.fema.emails/
Veritas,
(By the way thank you for that correction on the spelling of genteel. If you go back and look at that thread, that was pretty funny! You guys provided me with some good chuckles. To set the record straight on that - John Kerry is a gentle gentleman, who is genteel, and a gentile. I laughed so hard over that!! I usually always try to check my spelling, but I had work deadlines that were just awful so I didn't that time!)
Anyway, Veritas,
Could you, or anyone else explain to me how this administration could have been lying to people about the state of their homeland security, and pulling votes out of them with pictures of our President yelling through a foghorn atop the rubble at ground zero, and have been SO COMPLETELY AND HORRIBLY INORGANIZED, UNDER TRAINED, UNDER STAFFED, UNDERFUNDED, AND DIDN'T EVEN HAVE STOCKPILES OF FOOD AND WATER ON A LARGE SCALE FOR IT'S CITIZENS WHILE IT HAD THEM SCARED TO DEATH ABOUT TERRORISTS BEING OUT TO GET THEM FROM ABROAD?
I just don't get it. Where DID ALL THE MONEY GO?
What were they doing in that agency? What that "supervisor" at Halliburton who was getting a salary of $80,000.00 a year and who was supposed to be supervising 8 staff members who were nonexistant?
So as to not highjack the thread, if you don't want to answer on the blog tonight, can you email me your answer? It really bothers me, and my blood pressure goes up. If you saved my email addy, that is. I'm not sure I saved yours, or that I can recognize it.
I'll send you a test email now, okay?
This is off topic, but this story is a really disgusting example of what Congress thinks about ethics or the public's view of ethics and I hope their arrogance comes back and bites them. Drier's message, what me worry, voters really don't care if we are crooks? Are we really this gullible?
snip
" The scandal surrounding disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been a Washington obsession for months, but Republican lawmakers who returned from a two-week recess this week said they felt free to pass a relatively tepid ethics bill because their constituents rarely mention the issue.
"The House is scheduled to vote today on ethics legislation (why bother?) to increase lobbyists' disclosures and require lawmakers to own up to the earmarks, or narrow projects, that they insert into appropriations bills. But the measure would not restrict the gifts or meals provided by lobbyists as House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) had proposed in January, nor would it expand the number of enforcers of lobbying rules and laws."
snip
"Lawmakers acknowledge that the bill is more limited in its scope and impact than the provisions promised by congressional leaders immediately after Abramoff's guilty plea to federal charges of bribery, conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud nearly four months ago. But they say they do not feel compelled to push more stringent measures partly because voters do not appear to be demanding them. "We're all being rushed into a bill," said Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio). "We panicked, and we let the media get us panicked."
Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.), a former ethics committee chairwoman, said passage of the bill will have no political consequences because "people are quite convinced that the rhetoric of reform is just political." (how cyncial)
Some Republican leaders assert that lawmakers are
"hearing little from constituents" (why?)
about the congressional corruption scandal, even though it has received considerable media attention. Jo Maney, spokeswoman for Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), a chief architect of the House ethics bill, said: "Many members have told him [Dreier] that they are not hearing about corruption and lobbying reform at home. They hear more about immigration, gas prices." Still, Dreier and Hastert "feel strongly" that the ethics bill "is the right thing to do" and that it will "improve the public's perception of the integrity of the House of Representatives," Maney added.
snip
"A Washington Post-ABC News poll this month showed that 63 percent of Americans called "corruption in Washington" important to their vote. Democrats are eager to use the lobbying controversy as part of their campaign to win back control of Congress this year, and they contend that the corruption issue can be a powerful Election Day weapon."
By a ratio of 45 percent to 28 percent, respondents said that Republicans are influenced more by lobbyists and special interests than are Democrats.
Democratic strategists say that the ethics issue does not carry a lot of weight by itself. They say that, to win over voters, they must link Republicans' alleged coziness with lobbyists to failures in Washington to address specific public needs, such as health-care coverage and economic security. "It is up to us to show the public what this means to them," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). For example, she said: "If [we] want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and therefore improve our national security situation, you can't do it if you are a Republican because you are too wedded to the oil companies."
snip
"Some lawmakers and political analysts believe that voters could punish incumbents during the November elections if Congress passes a minimalist ethics bill. The chances of such a backlash could rise, these critics say, if there are more indictments or guilty pleas later this year. Abramoff and two former aides to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) are cooperating with federal authorities in a wide-ranging investigation of political favors done in return for gifts, trips, payments and campaign contributions. DeLay, a once-powerful House majority leader, is fighting a criminal indictment in Texas on charges of political money laundering.
Some congressional historians assert that GOP leaders would be taking a risk in assuming that the lobbying bill is of such low voter priority that they could push through a modest plan without paying a political cost. "When you combine [the ethics issue] with the general dissatisfaction with the way in which we are governed," said L. Sandy Maisel, a professor of government at Colby College, "I think the breaking point might be near."
Today, the House plans to vote on a bill that would require lobbyists to file quarterly instead of semiannual disclosures (wow) and to include in those reports the donations they give to federal candidates and political action committees. Lobbyists would also have to make public the amount of any gift that they give to lawmakers or congressional aides. In addition, appropriations bills would have to list any earmarks that they contain, as well as the sponsors of those projects. Ethics training would become mandatory in the House under the legislation.
Government watchdog groups have complained that the legislation would not change much about how lawmakers and lobbyists interact. "It's a reform bill in name only, and they're hoping no one will notice," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington."
with gas prices so out of control and a war that no one wants, apparently ethics reform is truly taking a back seat. Is this what we heard when Jim Wright or Rostankowski were in trouble?