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New Legislation Proposed For Nuclear Safety
mdsolar writes "Recent problems at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant have spurred Congresspeople from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire to introduce legislation that would allow State governors to request independent safety reviews of nuclear power plants. The reviews would exclude NRC employees who usually work on that plant and include non-NRC reviewers. This review model is based on one that found problems at Maine Yankee before it closed. Problems at Vermont Yankee have included a cooling tower collapse, a SCRAM caused by an un-greased valve, and failure of a safety system during the SCRAM. The plant is coming off of heightened review after shipping nuclear material with insufficient shielding. The plant's application for a 20 year license extension is also currently under review."
This is great news for the oil and coal companies!
Basicly, we live in an urban dwelling energy dependent society. Short of mass sterilization and/or extermination of billions of people, and a decline to third world economy (at best) for industrialized nations, humanity needs to consume energy. Right now, the only sources that provide that energy in amounts that can fulfill our needs are fossil fuels, and nuclear power.
Since people aren't going to go for extermination or poverty, the only acceptable solution to global warming is to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels. The only way to reduce fossil fuel use in a way that is significant enough to stop global warming (and won't amount to genocide) is nuclear power.
When we place restrictions on the safest large-scale energy production method known, we encourage the use of fossil fuels, and promote global warming.
There is not a safety issue, fossil fuels release tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere every year, more so than any worst case nuclear disaster. Fossil fuels kill more people than the Chernobyl disaster, every year... and the Chernobyl disaster was the worst-case exception, not the rule.
We are going to have a global warming catastrophy, because we are frightened of nuclear power. If we have a Chernobyl every 50 years (which is unlikely, given improvements in technology... including things like pebble bed reactors where meltdown is impossible), it would still kill far less people and cause far less ecological damage than even the modest estimates of global warming.
We need to understand that organizations like Greenpeace, who spend so much time and effort to sabatage nuclear power, do so because they are funded by the big oil companies. It is time we understand, that it doesn't matter if the so-called environmental organizations support big oil for the money, or they do it because they are too stupid to understand that they are puppets for big oil... Greenpeace is an organization whose fundamental purpose is to defend the mega-profits of the multinational oil corporations.