They Want Us To Pay Them To Poison Us?

The nuclear power “renaissance” is a classic case of what has gone fatally wrong with America.

This is classic case of socialism for the rich, financed by the rest of us – to our own detriment. They want us to subsidize the construction of their nuclear power plants, pay them top dollar for power, and then deal with their nuclear waste (for them) for the next 100,000 years.

That's not capitalism. That's socialism for the irresponsible – or corporatism – which is what the American (military/industrial complex and banking/financial) subsidized economy has become.

It's become a damned free-for-all of corporate anarchy – with the goal of taking as much as they possibly can from customers, taxpayers, and future generations.

Scientific American has reported that “An analysis by economist Mark Cooper at the Vermont Law School claims that adding 100 new reactors to the U.S. power grid would cost taxpayers and customers between $1.9 and $4.1 trillion over the reactors' lifetimes compared with renewable power sources and conservation measures.”

Does the nuclear industry care? Of course they do. They're salivating over that kind of money. In fact, they'll tell us anything for that kind of money.

(I won't link to this next site because I don't want to promote their propaganda. You can search for the title Yucca Mountain is Dead – Just in Time for the U.S. Nuclear Revival.) In an online article in the Infrastructurist, it is argued that; “The cancellation of Yucca (Mountain) may not be nearly as bad for the budding nuclear renaissance as it might first seem. In fact, it may provide the opportunity to prove once and for all that, in reality, there is no such thing as nuclear waste.”

They want us to believe that there is no such thing as nuclear waste? WHAT?

They want us to believe that; “The whole concept of nuclear waste only emerged after President Jimmy Carter abandoned the reprocessing of spent fuel rods in 1977.” Oh... So they want us to believe that Jimmy Carter invented nuclear waste? Come on...

They want us to believe that all we have to do is restart our reprocessing programs, and everything will be just fine. However, the article didn't really delve into why President Jimmy Carter shut nuclear reprocessing down in the first place. Maybe because it wasn't working?

Rather than listening to this hack pundit, maybe we should consider what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say? In their article Nuclear Reprocessing: Dangerous, Dirty, and Expensive, the Union of Concerned Scientists claims that:

1. Reprocessing would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism

2. Reprocessing would increase the ease of nuclear proliferation

3. Reprocessing would hurt U.S. nuclear waste management efforts

4. Reprocessing would be very expensive

Let's just cover one of their points. “After reprocessing, the material will be in several different forms, and the total volume of nuclear waste will have been increased by a factor of twenty or more... And to make a significant reduction in the amount of high-level nuclear waste that would require disposal, the used fuel would need to be reprocessed and reused many times with an extremely high degree of efficiency – an extremely difficult endeavor that would likely take centuries to accomplish.”

...But somebody could make a lot of money doing it. It just may be that these guys are thinking long term after all.

Either way, America still has to figure out what to do with over 55,000 tons of nuclear waste – that increases by 2,000 tons every year. I don't know what to do with it – and neither does anybody else. Which makes the thought of building even more nuclear power plants sound totally outright insane!

In the real world; physical and economic systems that cannot function efficiently, safely, and sustainably die out – period.

In the real world; the consequences of our actions cannot, CAN NOT be ignored.

In the real world; the bottom line is just a number on somebody's spreadsheet.