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Fukushima: A Lasting Tragedy

H. Patricia Hynes Portside
The United States, the largest owner of nuclear power plants, promotes nuclear power as “safe and clean energy,” a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The South Pays Dearly for Nuclear Industry's Failed 'Renaissance'

Sue Sturgis Facing South
The estimated cost for the project below doubled and now stands at $27 billion, which Georgia Power customers are already paying for thanks to a state law — since overturned — that allowed utilities to collect payment before a project is completed.

Watts Bar Unit 2, Last Old Reactor of the 20th Century: A Cautionary Tale

Don Safer and Sara Barczak Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
More than four decades after construction began in 1973, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is finally getting close to starting up the Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear reactor. While the TVA and the nuclear industry describe Watts Bar 2 as “the first new nuclear generation of the 21st Century,” in fact the TVA resuscitated a demonstrably unsafe 1960s-era ice condenser design that was abandoned decades ago by the rest of the nuclear industry.

According to the Nuclear Industry “Radiation is Good For You”

Karl Grossman CounterPunch
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has a set a November 19 deadline for people to comment on its proposed relaxation in standards for nuclear power plants, an alarming change in U.S. federal policy that is based on a theory that low doses of radioactivity are good for people. The NRC is supporting changes being pushed by the nuclear industry and “a group of pro-nuclear fanatics,” according to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

Washington State to Sue U.S. Government Over Nuclear Cleanup

Victoria Cavaliere Reuters
Washington state's Attorney General Bob Ferguson intends to sue the U.S. government for not protecting workers involved in the decades-long cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a decommissioned nuclear site. Dozens of workers, including 44 in the last 12 months, have been sickened by toxic vapors while trying to clean up the site. "Hanford workers face a very real and immediate health risk," Ferguson said in announcing his intent to file the lawsuit.

Tidbits - September 4, 2014

Portside
Reader Comments - Fast Food Workers; Ralph Fasanella; US-Africa Leaders Summit; School's Back and Growing Inequality; Twin Plagues of ISIS and Ebola; Diablo Canyon Nuke Plant; Brazil's Elections; Argentina; Victory for Market Basket Workers and Consumers; Fed-Ex Workers Can Organize; New Culture on the Left; Call for papers on Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital; Today in History - Paul Robeson Returns to Peekskill; Jewish Woman Among the Interned Japanese

Thorium: The Wonder Fuel That Wasn't

Robert Alvarez Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The United States has tried to develop thorium as an energy source for some 50 years and is still struggling to deal with the legacy of those attempts. In addition to the billions of dollars spent, mostly fruitlessly, the government will have to spend billions more to deal with the wastes produced by those efforts. America’s energy-from-thorium quest now faces an ignominious conclusion: the Energy Department appears to have lost track of 96 kilograms of uranium 233.
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