let's say that again: Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout
http://counterpunch.com/wasserman09232008.htmlPrice-Anderson's Blank Check
As you read this, nuclear power liabilities embraced by the federal government could be making small radioactive potatoes of the mere hundreds of billions George W. Bush wants to hand the pirates of Wall Street.
In fact, they could make all the money spent in Iraq, on the defense budget, on social security and on this bailout seem like nickels and dimes.
Why? Because as of this moment the taxpayers of the United States are on the hook for potential catastrophic melt-downs at 104 licensed atomic reactors. Every one of them can kill hundreds of thousands of American citizens. Every one of them can inflict more financial damage than can be reasonably calculated.
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In 1966, a melt-down at Fermi I in Monroe, Michigan, destroyed a $100 million reactor and threatened to force the evacuation of all southeastern Michigan, including Detroit. The Great Lakes would have been permanently irradiated.
In 1979 the melt-down at Three Mile Island turned a $900 million asset into a $2 billion liability. It’s still unknown how much radiation escaped and how many people were harmed by it.
The explosion at Chernobyl Unit 4 on April 26, 1986, has thus far inflicted about a half-trillion dollars in damage. The death toll is bitterly disputed. Cancer and birth defects still proliferate throughout the poisoned, impoverished region.
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Because in 1957 the utility industry told the government it would not build atomic reactors without liability insurance. No private companies stepped forward. So Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act, forcing taxpayers to assume virtually all the risk for a major melt-down.
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just a matter of time