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The desperate nuclear power industry has dropped a $50 billion stealth bomb meant to irradiate the Obama stimulus package. Harvey Wasserman: The nuclear power industry has dropped a $50 billion bomb into the Senate version of Obama's stimulus package for projects Wall Street wouldn't finance when it was flush. It comes in the form of a mega-loan guarantee package that would build new reactors Wall Street wouldn't finance even when it had cash. It will take a healthy dose of citizen action to stop it, so start calling your senators now. The vaguely worded bailout-in-advance provision was snuck through the Senate Appropriations Committee in the deep night of January 27. It would provide $50 billion in loan guarantees for "eligible technologies" that would technically include renewable sources and electric transmission. But the handout is clearly directed at nukes and "clean coal."

"Amidst a grassroots uproar over funding for the military, the nuclear power industry has again forced $9 billion in loan guarantees onto an "emergency" war appropriations bill for Afghanistan and Iraq. Citizen opposition helped delay a similar vote scheduled last month. Now green energy advocates are again asked to call Congress immediately. The move comes as part of a larger push for federal funding for a "new generation" of reactors. Because independent investors won't fund them, the reactor industry has spent some $645 million in the last decade lobbying Congress and the White House for taxpayer money. "

The myth of a successful nuclear power industry in France has melted into financial chaos. With it dies the corporate-hyped poster child for a "nuclear renaissance" of new reactor construction that is drowning in red ink and radioactive waste. Areva, France's nationally-owned corporate atomic façade, has plunged into a deep financial crisis led by a devastating shortage of cash. Electricite de France, the French national utility, has been raided by European Union officials charging that its price-fixing may be undermining competition throughout the continent.

A coalition of environmental groups are calling on senators to remove a controversial provision from the $900 billion stimulus bill that could lead to the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants. We host a debate between independent journalist and longtime anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman and Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace co-founder and member of the pro-nuclear Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. [includes rush transcript]

Nuclear Pyschosis at the New York Times Tom Friedman's Idiocy Atomique France's atomic power industry is a failed radioactive flame. Its 58 reactors are unpopular, unsafe, uneconomical, dirty, direct agents of global warming, weapons proliferators and major generators of atomic waste for which there is no management solution. But self-proclaimed "green advocate" Thomas Friedman seems to think otherwise. In his just published New York Times op ed "Real Men Tax Gas" Friedman applies the term "wimp" to those who fail to fight global warming. But in true corporate style, he can't face the hard truths about France's industrie atomique. To wit:

Thirty years ago this Saturday, the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania malfunctioned, sparking a meltdown that resulted in the release of radioactivity. It was the worst nuclear accident in US history. The accident at Three Mile Island fueled the nuclear debate in this country that continues to rage to this day. We speak with anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman. [includes rush transcript]

"The mystery has been solved. Where is this "new reactor renaissance" coming from? There has been no deep, thoughtful re-making or re-evaluation of atomic technology. No solution to the nuke waste problem. No making reactors economically sound. No private insurance against radioactive disasters by terror or error. No grassroots citizens now desperate to live near fragile containment domes and outtake pipes spewing radioactive tritium at 27 US reactors. No, nothing about atomic energy has really changed. Except this: $645 million spent on lobbying and media manipulation."

A nuke power bailout must NOT be part of the hundreds of billions of federal dollars about to pour out of Washington to revive our Bush-whacked economy. If the huge Obama stimulus package we all know is coming includes money to build new reactors, the whole venture could turn to radioactive dust. This is the last gasp both for American prosperity and atomic energy. Nuke promoters are lobbying frantically to get some of that cash for a dying business in which Wall Street would not invest even before the last crash.

Are you ready to pay for the next Chernobyls---in advance? Are you willing to have nuclear power prevent a solution to the climate crisis? Twenty-two years ago today, an apocalyptic cloud rose up from Unit Four, in the heart of the Ukraine. For the next few hundred generations, you and your progeny will breathe its radioactive fallout, which was thousands of times worse than that released at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the prospective price of new reactors continues to soar, and as the first "new generation" construction projects sink in French and Finnish soil, Republicans are introducing a bill to Congress demanding 100 new nuclear reactors in the US within twenty years. It explicitly welcomes "alternatives" such as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and "clean coal." Though it endorses some renewables such as solar and wind power, it calls for no cap on carbon emissions. According to the New York Times, this is the defining GOP alternative to a Democratic energy plan headed for a House vote later this month. But niggling questions like who will pay for these reactors, who will insure them, where will the fuel come from, where will waste go and who will protect them from terrorists are not on the agenda. Given recent certain-to-prove-optimistic estimates of approximately $10 billion per reactor, the plan envisions a trillion-plus dollar commitment to a newly nuke-centered nation.

A catastrophe like Chernobyl could happen here. It's the radioactive core of the second biggest lie in US industrial history. The atomic pushers say such a disaster is "impossible" at a US reactor. But Chernobyl's explosion spewed radiation all over the world. And Sunday's tragic 23rd anniversary reminds us that any reactor on this planet can kill innumerable people anywhere, at any time, by terror, error and more. It further clarifies why yet another grab at billions of taxpayer dollars for new reactor construction must be stopped NOW! The BIGGEST lie in US industrial history is that "nobody died at Three Mile Island." Just before last month's thirtieth anniversary of the central Pennsylvania melt down, critical new evidence was completely ignored by the corporate media.

The nuke power industry is back at the public trough for the fourth time in two years demanding $50 billion in loan guarantees to build new reactors. Its rust-bucket poster child is now the ancient clunker at Oyster Creek, whose visible New Jersey rust and advanced radioactive decay are A-OK with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which just gave it a twenty-year license extension. The industry's savior may be France, whose taxpayer-funded EdF and Areva Corporations may be poised to build their own reactors on US soil using French and American taxpayer money. And President Obama's first big test on nuke power may be how he fills a vacancy---and the chair---at the NRC.

People died--and are still dying--at Three Mile Island. As the thirtieth anniversary of America's most infamous industrial accident approaches, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history. As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases. That quickly proved to be false. The public was then told the releases were controlled and done purposely to alleviate pressure on the core. Both those assertions were false.

The epic fight over carbon emissions is barely the tip of how we survive. Mother Earth demands that fossil/nukes be transcended. This green-powered leap defines our technological, economic and ecological survival. But climate chaos and financial ruin do not stand alone. Green gadgetry aside, we don't get to 2030 unless we confront: The power of the corporations; Social justice and ballot-based democracy; Ending waste and war; Growing food that's truly organic; Empowering women while harmonizing population growth.

The epic fight over carbon emissions is barely the tip of how we survive. Mother Earth demands that fossil/nukes be transcended. This green-powered leap defines our technological, economic and ecological survival. But climate chaos and financial ruin do not stand alone. Green gadgetry aside, we don't get to 2030 unless we confront: The power of the corporations; Social justice and ballot-based democracy; Ending waste and war; Growing food that's truly organic; Empowering women while harmonizing population growth.

"The nuclear power industry is sending a clear and forceful message to the citizens of Vermont: "Drop Dead." The greeting applies to Ohio, New York, California and a nation under assault from a "renaissance" so far hyped with more than $640 million in corporate cash. The Vermont attack includes: "

"As radiation poured from 3 Mile Island 31 years ago this weekend, utility executives rested easy. They knew that no matter how many people their errant nuke killed, and no matter how much property it destroyed, they would not be held liable. Today this same class of executives demands untold taxpayer billions to build still more TMIs. No matter how many meltdowns they cause, and how much havoc they visit down on the public, they still believe they're above the law. Fueled with more than $600 million public relations slush money, they demand a risk-free "renaissance" financed by you and yours. "