Why Bernie and Hillary Must Address America’s Dying Nuke Reactors

[virtualobserver]

As the first Democrat presidential debate finally approaches (on Oct. 13), America’s nuke power industry is in accelerated collapse.

The few remaining construction projects in the U.S. and Europe are engineering and economic disasters.

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders may address this in broad terms.

But as a nation we must now focus on the 99 dying U.S. reactors that threaten us all every day. In terms of our national survival, this is what Sanders and Clinton really must discuss.

http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/03/sanders-clinton-nuclear-power/

Worldwide reactor construction has sunk into economic chaos. Russia, China, India and several smaller countries are still talking about building new reactors. This is an issue of grave concern for all of us.

But the radioactive road signs bode badly for them all.

France’s Areva, once the industry flagship, is in shambles. Reactor projects in Finland and at Flamanville, France, are billions over budget and years behind schedule. So are the two each in South Carolina and Georgia, where the local economies stand to be devastated by gargantuan cost overruns. Detroit Edison wants to stick the people of Michigan with the enormous up-front costs of a proposed new construction fiasco at Fermi 3, which could bankrupt an already shaky state economy.

It will take years more of dedicated activism to make sure the lessons of these failed projects are understood everywhere.

But in the meantime, above all, we fear the 99 U.S. reactors that crumble as we speak:

[cantbeserious]

1. American Domestic Time Bombs

eom

[virtualobserver]

2. I had no idea until Fukushima

the spent fuel pools worry me the most

[Fairgo]

3. It has always been a policy conundrum

On the face of it, facts before even the most cursory of inspections, it is species madness. An energy source that produces radioactive waste that last thousands upon thousands of years. A process that produces x-amount of it on a daily basis. I have immediate questions. At what point have we produced so much that everything dies. How much does 300,000 years of stockpile monitoring and maintenance cost? Who will be here in 3015 to check under the mountain? If society collapses, whose going to safely dismantle all of the reactors? I am guessing that if the clever monkeys had answers, they would have shared them. They undoubtably know the questions. So I must assume this is the plan...kill your species off in exchange for a few generations of cheap energy turned primarily to the electrification of our selfish pleasures.

[MisterP]

4. it was very plushly fed from Washington and, above all, had the cachet of WWII science behind it

a solution would come around, it always had--and if not we can MAKE it happen


we were about to cure all diseases, fill all stomachs, toss in a few new states from the Moon and Mars: we were gonna storm Heaven, see the Creator on His throne surrounded by flaming seraphs, subtle archangelic commanders of the laws of nature that had broken the minds of the prophets they showed their true forms to, and say "thanks for warmin' the seat, padre"

a lot of things have emanated from the death-agonies of this technocratic fantasizing--little things like deforestation, 9-11, and the cartels, for starters