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returntothepit >> discuss >> radioactive waste! yay! by HailTheLeaf on May 2,2006 12:30pm
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toggletoggle post by HailTheLeaf  at May 2,2006 12:30pm edited May 2,2006 12:31pm
From http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/35530/

George W. Bush has a vision for a strong, independent nuclear America. He wants nuclear weapons for everyday use -- deterrence is for Democrats -- and he wants to build dozens of new nuclear energy plants across the United States.

He'll also ship thousands of tons of nuclear waste across the country, first to a huge storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev. But that will only contain a little more than what we already have sitting around. We'll need nine more Yuccas by the end of the century if Bush's plans go through.

Filling the one we already have means shipping highly radioactive waste through 44 states -- coming within a half mile of 50 million Americans. The most toxic, deadly substances known to humanity would pass through Boston, Baltimore, Newark and Miami.

A 1982 study by Sandia Labs -- the country's premiere nuclear research facility -- found that a containment breech in one plant in Pennsylvania would kill 74,000 people within a year and another 34,000 later from cancer. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster spewed more radiation across Europe than was released in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, took out 486 villages in Belarus and left a region that had been inhabited by 100,000 people a glow-in-the-dark no-man's land.

But don't worry. According to the administration and the deep-pocketed nuclear lobby, it's all perfectly safe. Sure, there's no human invention that's foolproof and, yes, we're talking about making dozens of ripe new targets for terrorists to attack, but hasn't the administration and its corporate partners earned our trust?

The administration has offered up a series of initiatives that will reshape decades of nuclear policy, both civilian and military. Bush scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and undermined the Test Ban Treaty. And it's not just plans for new bombs and new reactors; he's shifted U.S. policy towards countries like India and Pakistan that developed nukes outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And Bush plans to use Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a repository for the world's nuclear waste, not just our own. It's the linchpin of what the administration hopes will become a new economic order -- superseding OPEC with a nuclear cartel that reads "Made in the USA."

At the heart of Bush's atomic dreams is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) announced in February. Under the plan, we'll dramatically expand nuclear energy production at home, encourage new nuclear generation abroad and import other countries' spent fuel for reprocessing in the United States.


awesome, let's make sure eveyone in the world has nukes, great idea! When did we become such a waste of a species?



toggletoggle post by HailTheLeaf  at May 2,2006 12:34pm
On the military side, Bush wants to shrug off decades of constraints and develop a new generation of nukes. Fred Kaplan, writing in Slate, noted some of the overlooked provisions in Bush's 2004 defense budget, including the repeal of a 1992 ban on the research and development of "low-yield" nuclear weapons. Our cash outlay for new nukes, given the United States' military supremacy, is stunning:


[T]he Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons and President Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years. … Measured in "real dollars" (that is, adjusting for inflation), this year's spending on nuclear activities exceeds by over 50 percent the average annual sum ($4.2 billion) that the United States spent -- again, in real dollars -- throughout the four and a half decades of the Cold War.

yeah, because that money couldn't be better spent on something like say, renewable energy development?, healthcare? food, shelter, clothing and education for the poor of the world?



toggletoggle post by Yeti at May 2,2006 12:39pm
i can agree that the money could be spent on something more useful. i dislike how we tell someone they cant have something, but we can. but i do understand the fear of a crazy ass country in possession of nuclear arms.



toggletoggle post by CTborderpatrol at May 3,2006 1:01am
on the other hand a lot of excellent thrash songs might come out of it



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