Just In From The Fake Jim Steets Prayer Blog

Breaking News From Fake Jim Steets...seems he has his new Christmas Cards!

Dear God, Got My New Corporate X-Mas Cards

Dear God:

In keeping with the $pirit of the $eason, and to let the community know that we are good neighbors, I just got my Entergy Greeting Cards. I have to say, Entergy's PR folks have out done themselves this year.

The kids are really excited about the upcoming lighting of the reactor domes, and of course they always love doing their Christmas shopping in the Entergy gift catalog. The ten percent employee discount really helps save us money. I'm getting the wife that Entergy bed throw this year, and may splurge for a set of the Entergy coffee mugs.

By the way God, could you put in a word upstairs, and ask management to bring back the Christmas giveaways. The maintenance team really misses those canned hams.

Amen

Patrick Moore shills at Rockland Business Association's annual meeting

Nuclear power advocate calls for Indian Point relicensing
By LAURA INCALCATERRA AND GREG CLARY

THE JOURNAL NEWS
(November 9, 2007)

BLAUVELT - A Greenpeace founder who now advocates for nuclear energy addressed about 100 people yesterday during the Rockland Business Association's annual meeting.

Patrick Moore used the opportunity to call for the relicensing of the Indian Point nuclear power plants. He said an increasing number of countries were turning to nuclear energy and that the United States should as well.

Moore said nuclear power plants were safe and, unlike coal-burning plants, did not produce carbon dioxide and other forms of air pollution. He said politicians who advocated shutting down Indian Point used the issue to gain support and that many environmentalists used scare tactics in their efforts to close them.

He also asserted that the anti-nuclear movement was all but dead and that most opposition nowadays was seen in California and the Northeast.

"There is a very strong majority of support for nuclear in the future of the energy mix in the U.S.," Moore said.

Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns and operates Indian Point 2 and Indian Point 3, has applied for license extensions for both. If granted, the renewals would allow the plants to operate until 2033 and 2035, respectively.

The original 40-year license for Indian Point 2 will expire in 2013. Indian Point 3's will expire in 2015.

Some community activists have raised concerns, which led Rockland and Westchester counties to go to court to try to force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to change its relicensing criteria.

The NRC does not consider such factors as population density and the ability to conduct an effective emergency evacuation as part of its relicensing process.

Among those opposing the relicensing is Tarrytown-based Riverkeeper organization, whose policy director, Lisa Rainwater, criticized Moore's view of nuclear energy yesterday.

"It's difficult to call any form of energy clean when it produces waste that is deadly for hundreds of thousands of years," Rainwater said by telephone yesterday.

"Indian Point's 1,500 tons of waste are stored on the banks of the Hudson River in leaking, spent fuel pools that are poisoning the river and groundwater," she said. "If that's clean energy, Riverkeeper would like to know what constitutes dirty energy."

Moore is a consultant to the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, whose members include Entergy. The alliance is helping the company in its relicensing effort, spokesman Paul Steidler said after the meeting.

Moore spent 15 years as a leader of Greenpeace, but said he decided he wanted to work on building consensus among competing concerns rather than continue in the "politics of confrontation."

He said many people call for the shutdown of nuclear plants without offering an alternative. He said sites for hydroelectric plants have all been taken and that natural gas was too expensive to use as a fuel for power plants.

He said solar and wind power were not enough to ensure an adequate supply of energy and that coal was too polluting, leaving nuclear power plants as an alternative. He said such plants were also much cheaper to build than coal-burning units outfitted with the best-available pollution controls.

Reach Laura Incalcaterra at 845-578-2486 or lincalca@lohud.com.

What does it mean to be an environmentalist?

It's taken me this long to recover from Wednesday... The day left me reeling, in sadness, in pain, in simmering anger... at the rudeness, the intransigence, the impolite, almost cult-like demeanor the nuclear club Entergy and the NRC have suddenly brought to these public proceedings, as if it wouldn't be Christian or religious to oppose a pristine nuclear industry with nothing to reproach itself, above scrutiny.

For decades we've experienced the corporate culture surrounding the peaceful atom, seeping into our lives as a veiled pretext for uranium enrichment and weapons development, with complete abject disregard for the earth, the environment... fueled by a cold war race that didn't seem like it would ever end... but it did, miraculously perhaps, maybe because a younger generation of Russian kids just wanted to listen to heavy metal albums, and the only way they knew where to get them was over the wall in West Berlin.

Yet, this Russian rebellion didn't really stop there... the orchestrator of Glasnost, Gorbachev, is now the chairman of an environmental organization in America which is greatly influencing Hollywood... GlobalGreenUSA... which set the stage for the Green Car Red Carpet events at film premieres and award shows... promoting the use of electric vehicles in an industry which revels in technological innovation and liberal idealism.

This doesn't sit well with a lot of people, who fear environmentalism is like a watermelon, green on the outside, red on the inside. The poor and less fortunate often latch on to a dream of luxury and wealth, living vicariously through television and tabloid personalities like Paris Hilton... the sweet notion that suddenly sharing common goods might be possible, communal living in international communities, strikes them as a threat to the American dream... even if that dream is unattainable... lets a miracle like winning the lottery or inheriting great wealth from a forgotten distant relative.

This is why Leo DiCaprio's film 11th Hour is failing at the box office... not that it's not a great testament to our wrecking the planet with wild abandon, but it's not a populist statement... perhaps had Leo allowed his then girlfriend Gisele the narration alongside him... more people would have bought a ticket... It's never been about the message... it's always been about the messenger... While one person may relate to us the truth... if their appearance, their aura, their persona falls short of what an audience expects in a leader... it will fall on deaf ears... or worse antagonize.

It's interesting that the public accepts Leo DiCaprio as an actor, yet has difficulty taking him seriously as an environmentalist... despite his best intentions, there's a dimension missing in his rhetoric and his speech that erects a wall between himself and the audience... for you see... to care and feel for the earth, you must be of the earth... you must be at one with it... and the audience subconsciously feels it... it rings like a bell in every fiber of your body... it shows in your approach to all things... this is the connection both Gaia and the Green Man demand of us to restore ecological balance in our environment.

Corporate cultures, religions or cults based on anything other than harmony with the elements... instead aspiring to an entity or an idol, fails in that respect... there's a disconnect... and it is felt... by an audience which seeks solace in the comfort that man can be of nature, from nature... and aspire to a higher order, not a new world nuclear order, but a higher spiritual order... greater awareness, sharper senses.

But such feelings are not common... man strives for worldly power, riches, stature, standing in the community, power... these things take you away from the feeling of oneness one can have that fulfills... replenishes... makes saints out of all of us perhaps, or at least humble, reasonable caring individuals... extreme kindness can easily be mistaken for weakness... weakness is an opportunity for aggression, for superiority... over nature, over other races, creed... so where am I going with this?

The fact that yesterday I was told that a conversation I was attempting to have with a gentleman would lead nowhere was extraordinarily insulting in the context of a forum designed for just such exchange. This, not just on one or two or three, but numerous occasions from members of this same SHARE coalition, whose objective is not to learn or to listen, grasp that perhaps the 35 years I have spend studying the biological systems of this earth amount to something... that perhaps I have something I can contribute to their community in terms of understanding... but this was not to be the case. In their eyes, I was but an old fool, out of step with the times.

Rather, as you walked in the door, you were immediately imposed by two giant laminated posters, which surely cost at least $1000 a piece each... depicting a white family on one, and a black family on the other... each were identical, but for the color of both families. These posters were so large, they obstructed the view of our table as you walked in the room. They were in the path of traffic... intentionally blocking vision and access to our table.

They came to filibuster! Pure and simple. To throw the race card into the proceedings... to claim being environmentalists, while peddling non-organic t-shirts which kill thousands of women in Asia from pesticide poisoning as young as 30 years old... as if our desire to see an aging, dangerous nuclear power plant be mothballed, be an overture for more coal fired plants... when in fact, if they only took the time to listen, they would learn that already hundreds of communities all over the country are switching to Light Emitting Diode lighting, which will in a matter of just a few years, as their cost dramatically plummets in mass production, reduce electrical consumption in this country, around the world, by as much as 60%! There won't be any need to build any new power plants, in fact we'll be able to progressively shut down many of the more polluting ones, also as solar and wind becomes more affordable with all the new nano-chemistries now in production.

I was reminded today of what it's really like to be a creature of this earth, by these simple words from Betcee May, the fashion model who lent her image to our first days developing this anti-nuclear campaign: "Living in the middle of Los Angeles, it is easy to lose track of our planet, our connection with the earth and ground and our human existence." This is what happens to us living with concrete under our feet for too long... we forget the air in our lungs comes from trees and oceans, the cars and the trucks, the power plants, coal and nuke alike, contribute to the destruction of our life's breath, and we must do something.

This something comes in the form of the balance green design and green technologies bring, new systems, not stepping backward to a technology that already has us leaving as legacy to future generations the responsibility of watching over the more dangerous poison known to man... a substance, if released to the atmosphere, without proper shielding, kills everything in its path for miles around, which doesn't discriminate.

If there is a singular issue that is more important than any other today in the green movement, it is nuclear power... radioactive isotopes are the most dangerous and lethal elements released to the environment... and right now, these isotopes are leaking below Indian Point, into the rock bed, into our ground water... reason enough to immediately shut down the plant and stop this insanity. And yet, the money that the plant makes, the millions in revenue it generates, allows this industry to lavish those in need with a mission they don't understand, other than the immediate relief a few checks, and new suits, can bring.

I spent the day looking to find how many environmental groups with people of color existed in America today... there are hundreds, and I guarantee you, that the majority do not support nuclear power as a solution to global warming... you can find them all on this page.

These NRC public meetings have become parodies, three ring circus, as I expected the first day I walked in one of them... organized and orchestrated by the industry to undermine and intimidate the people in the community who have already voted for their representatives... who in every county surrounding Indian Point have Congressmen and women, each asking themselves why democracy doesn't work in regards to the nuclear power industry. Why suddenly, environmentalists asking for an end to Entergy's autocracy are being labeled "terrorists," a "security threat" prohibited from taking a public tour of the plant like other tax paying citizens! Which makes the majority of Hudson Valley residents a threat to the plant's safety, doesn't it?

Our message isn't getting out at these meetings, because it falls on deaf ears and closed hearts, our own constituency has stopped attending... nobody wants to be subjected to this type of verbal and psychological abuse. Everywhere we go in the community, members of FUSE USA get nothing but pats on the back, and words of encouragement... but people have been so beaten down they also feel it's hopeless... that we're all crazy to waste our time doing this, that we should just let it be, let it go... stop making ourselves sick over it... there will be an accident one day, every one will say we told you so... man only learns from his mistakes, reacts to disaster, over and over and over.

Well, NO! I'm here to tell you, we're not going to let ourselves be manipulated and relegated to second class citizens because our sensivitivity tells us that something is wrong, dramatically wrong, and that if there is a guiding star, and if our species wants to restore balance on this earth... so beauty and kindness, will overcome selfishness and fear... this may be the place to make a stand. Save Manhattan! I might be naive, I might be washed away in my own idealism... but I want to beleive that we have a good team of people, who now represent a National coalition... we just need money and resources... media... support... because Entergy has millions to spend, while the older Shut Down Indian Point groups are just going through the motions.

We can stop them here. But it's suddenly been made so much harder by the millions Entergy gets to spend, money our electrical bills gives them... so they can wine and dine and bus hundreds of ringers into what should instead be a forum for local residents, and folks directly concerned by the fate of this plant, who live down wind and down water from it.

I want to ask again, why are none of the local representatives, who were all elected because of their firm stance on seeing Indian Point be decommissioned, not present at these hearings? What are they all afraid of? Why won't Robert Kennedy Jr. make an appearance? The night before, Robert was at yet another high paying speaking engagement at the fancy clothing store GANT in New York... while his organization was claiming credit for our work, allowing a tired Patrick Moore to grab the local television spotlight... spreading lies for his money... lies we all know, those of us who have lived through the history of nuclear electricity, we can't live with.

Entergy Brings Out BIG GUNS Early...Patrick Moore

Perhaps smarting from yesterday's smack down when the NRC granted FUSE USA and Sherwood Martinelli's request for a 60 day extension of time to file, Entergy came out of the gate swinging at today's Environmental Scoping meeting, though few of thier punches landed with any real passion of effect. First, the Benedict Arnold of the environmental movement was in attendance at the meeting, and came up to introduce himself to Sherwood...found his question, "Do you know who I am?" rather amusing. Yes Patrick, we know who you are, now ask us if we care...from this writer's perspective, old dried up has been comes to mind, but your own mileage as relates to how you view yourself may vary.

Early on in the afternoon session Entergy trotted out a wet behind the ears employee Ron Carpino who offered to give concerned citizens TOURS of Indian Point. After his presentation and offer, Remy went and met him, and got his agreement to have FUSE USA members taken on a tour of the facility. Trust me, was not long after that James F.X. Steets, Entergy's external communications manager, made a liar of this young man when he CANCELLED our trip before it ever got off the ground claiming SECURITY CONCERNS. Reactor tours for Paul Newman and any one else, as long as you are not associated with FUSE USA, IPSEC, Riverkeeper, Clearwater, or any other grassroots group with serious concerns about Indian Point. What's the matter there Steets old boy, afraid the TRUTH WILL GET OUT.

Not surprising, as they have USED THIS TRICK IN THE PAST, the meeting was barely up and running and Entergy was again playing the old BRING IN THE RINGERS TRICK. It's a simple trick...throw an organization money, then have them come in beating their drums and chests and demanding the site be renewed in the name of all that is holly. The only think missing was a motley looking dog and violins.

In the name of full disclosure, perhaps NY AREA and SHARE should divulge how much of their funding is coming from Entergy, and their assorted industry friends, including NEI. I don't pull my punches here, tell it just the way it is. No one likes this card, and no one likes a Judas selling their speeches and support for 30 pieces of silver. To see a corporation like Entergy trying to use it to gain and advantage in the License Renewal Process is, simply stated, despicable.

Here's is the long and short of it...bring in and outside community group representing a different population base, and have them state publicly for the record that the closing of Indian Point would instantly see coal plants opened and/or built in their community down river, thus seeing their people die of cancer. First, lets be real...there are SEVERAL other options. Secondly, why should our community have our people dying of cancer to supply another community with their electricity?

One speaker in favor of Entergy being relicensed first spoke about his grandmother of 80, and how he did not want to have to call her, tell her that coal plants were moving into their community...as far as I know, none of the Citizens Groups calling for closure of the plant have called for the siting of coal plants to replace Indian Point's volume or base load contributions. At the end of his presentation he pulled out his cell phone, and in his closing remarks delivered a somewhat veiled threat...close Indian Point, and his phone could reach out to 1000 fellow members of his organization. Lets do the math...21 million people living within 50 miles of Indian Point, and he is ONE OF THEM, and can reach out to 1,000 more. Unless my math is wrong, that phone call would reach significantly less than 1/10th of one percent of those that would be negatively effected if a significant nuclear event or terrorist attack occurred at Indian Point.

I said it at the meeting, and will repeat it here...using dirty tricks as and ace in the hole in Entergy's attempts to relicense these aging facilities is wrong, and those associated with its play are in my book scum. It pits one community against another, creates divisions that are unnecessary and divisive in nature. Those that take exception to my blunt statements get over it. In the effort to find the truth, perhaps those groups standing up in support of Entergy need to come clean, and divulge just how much of their funding is coming directly from Entergy, and indirectly from the Nuclear Industry...only fair that one share their bias and/or prejudice now isn't it?

Other KEY NOTES...

Patrick Moore sure got what he deserved this evening when FUSE USA President Susan Shapiro called him on a lie during his public presentation. Richard Barkley got upset, but when Susan Shapiro stuck to her guns, he allowed her to make it clear to the audience just who this man REALLY WAS/IS. By the way Patrick, care to share with us here how much you were paid for today's appearance, and who paid for your travel and accommodations? Was it Entergy, or to cloud the truth, was the tab run through CASEnergy with the tab indirectly paid for by NEI? Speaking of NEI, they really should stop their false advertising on the local airwaves here in Westchester county.

What was disturbing about this event, is that Rani Franovich and another NRC employee immediately accosted Susan, escorted her out into the other room, and briefly tried to keep her from returning to the meeting. I would like to know from Dale Klein, is it normal for NRC employees to ASSAULT citizens in our attempts to exercise our rights to involvement in the process, or is this SPECIAL TREATMENT reserved only for board members of FUSE USA? Hopefully, Geri Shapiro, Hillary Clinton's Regional Director will look into this sordid and unfortunate event, and see to it that the NRC employees involved in this ruckus are properly disciplined. Not surprisingly, we have had past problems with the female NRC employee involved in this event...it is obvious that citizens had best start documenting these events, and further, start showing up at meetings with our DIGITAL CAMERA so that we can have such attacks out on YouTube in a matter of hours.

While Geri Shapiro is looking into this issue, perhaps she can also look into the FALSE statements of Entergy employees today. After all, she was there when and OPEN INVITATION TO TOUR INDIAN POINT was made to the audience. Yet, as soon as FUSE USA availed itself of this opportunity, Steets rescinded the offer less than ten minutes after the invitation had been extended...does make one wonder what Entergy has to hide at Indian Point if they are afraid to let a knowledgeable group of local stakeholders tour the facility.

As was predicted, the Carpenters Union folks were again out in full force, paid to be in attendance as Entergy used another ace in the hole in trying to stack the deck, and present FALSE SUPPORT for relicensing. What was/is VERY INTERESTING, is just how far away these union workers are being brought in from...more interesting, Entergy is now stooping to bringing in Union Workers that have never worked at Entergy, will never work at Entergy, and know nothing about Entergy.

Be interesting to know in closing who Richard Barkley brown nosed in the industry for the set up of informational tables at this meeting. How convenient for Entergy to surround the local groups on all sides with PRO ENTERGY or agency tables, instead of putting us each in our own separated areas of the entry hall as has been the format AT ALL OTHER NRC meetings at this facility. Seemed just a bit suspicious to me, and one has to wonder who is calling the shots, Entergy or the NRC? Since we all know that NRC reads this blog, lets reiterate one important request that was made today from the State of New York...going into the process, we want any statement or issue omitted from the EIS Scoping identified, and we want to know the reason why it was turned down for consideration. Further, we want this information UPFRONT, not at the tail end of the EIS Scoping process when it is took late to seek redress.

By the way readers, if you MISSED today's free for all, you can still submit written comments on what should be in the Environmental Scoping. The deadline for submission of comments is OCtober 12, 2007. Send them to the following NRC email addresses, and send them often:

indianpointeis@nrc.gov
rsb1@nrc.gov
fxc@nrc.gov
chairman@nrc.gov

ptk@nrc.gov

Do FUSE USA a favor, and send us your comments as well at uraniumhotspot@aol.com Also, don't forget, we are always willing to accept anonymous information or concerns about Indian Point, either at this email address, or sent to our mailing address found at http://www.fuseusa.org/ As the old saying goes, DROP A DIME ON ENTERGY!

While TEPCO Tries To Bury Their Reactor Scandal, America Had Its Own Nuclear Disaster Cover Up

The NEI, IAEA, and the nuclear industry have done a great deal of damage control, worked hard to get the TEPCO reactor accident out of the news to save the Nuclear Renaissance. While that was going on, there was another MAJOR nuclear spill right here in America at the Hanford site that required evacuation of employees two miles from the supposed minor spill. Much like TEPCO's refusal to be completely TRUTHFUL, we now have DOE claiming the malfunction of a pump which caused and unknown amount HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE materials to be spread over a large area as presenting no serious risk to health and or the environment...SURE DOE, we always evacuate people two miles away for absolutely NO REASON.

Hours after the cat was out of the bag, long after the wind carried unknown mounts of cancer causing radioactive carcinogens off the site and into peoples homes and lives, DOE took the time to close the barn door after the cows were already gone of spraying a concrete fixative over the top of the spill site. After all, what's a few more DEAD BABIES or BIRTH DEFECTS when we are talking about the Hanford site...they should rename the place the Hanford Death Camp with their horrid history of environmental and worker abuse.

Pump leaks 'hot' water at Hanford

A clogged pump caused an undetermined amount of highly radioactive waste to spill on the ground Thursday night and Friday morning during a transfer operation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/118561839279910.xml

PATRICK O'NEILL - The Oregonian

A clogged pump caused an undetermined amount of highly radioactive waste to spill on the ground Thursday night and Friday morning during a transfer operation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Kim Ballinger, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy at Hanford, said several workers were involved in the transfer but none was contaminated.

As a precaution, about 50 office workers - most of them between one to two miles from the spill site - were evacuated Friday afternoon. Environmental monitoring found the traces of radioactivity Friday morning, and about 11 a.m. the workers were told to stay inside their buildings. They were moved out of the area about 3:30 p.m.

Ballinger said a team of workers sprayed a cementlike fixative over the 8- to 15-foot-diameter spill area to keep radioactive material from being carried by the wind.

Steve Wiegman, a senior technical adviser with the Department of Energy at Hanford, said no one knows how much of the radioactive liquid spilled because it rapidly sank into the ground.

"The area is very permeable, so there's no pool of liquid," he said.

The liquid was being pumped from an old single-shell storage tank to a newer double-shelled tank as part of a tank farm cleanup by contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group Inc.

Wiegman said the situation did not meet the criteria for an emergency declaration. But the U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees Hanford, has established an event coordination team and will develop a plan to clean up the spill, he said.

©2007 The Oregonian

Why The Anti Nuke Movement Must Get NET SAVY

It has amazed me in a dissappointing fashion how unwilling the Anti Nuclear movement is to get with the program, and use the net (specifically blogs) in organizing the Anti-Nuclear movement, in getting our message out, in uniting ourselves. Speaking with various grassroots people and groups, I hear over and over again things like, "I don't know how" or "if you want to do that, go for it, but we are going to keep doing what we are doing". I can preach all day that we need to use blogs and link together, but people are not listening, and the few that do are not enough for us to effectively get our message out in a BIG WAY.

Rather than continue preaching, thought I would share a blog entry found on one of the enemies (Pro Nuclear)blogs...in short, they A) are aware of our shortcomings in this area, B) are using it to their best advantage in winning the hearts and souls of the young people, and C) laughing at us. If you wonder why 48 aging reactors have been relicensed, and we have stopped not one application so far, here is a big part of the answer...we are being out gunned on the net.

Saturday, June 02, 2007
Anti-Nuclear Net.Activism

Anti-nuclear activists have started circulating an email alert (rather, an alert in the footer of every email they send) asking people to get a (they suggest) WordPress or MySpace blog and start blogging as a way to stop nuclear power. I see some good signs here.

First, a WordPress blog in its externally-hosted form is a technical challenge for people who aren't familiar with servers, and in its free form is not powerful enough to be effective in an actual campaign. You can't even change the HTML code. MySpace, however, is a joke. There's no point trying to use it; once you get past being a joke of a movement, you have to disassemble everything you did and start over on a real platform.

We didn't make that mistake, at least not that badly. Blogger, for all its faults, is extensible. And most importantly, we made our mistakes a while ago and are starting to recover while they dig themselves a hole. They don't know that it's easier to have a tech-savvy organization set up a community that activists can join than to try to make everything work together after six or seven incompatible systems are entrenched. It seems also that anti-nuclear pages are either sophisticated ASP jobs or hacks, with nothing in between; an anti-nuclear activist who is trying to do a good job faces an almost square learning curve with almost no help from their colleagues. They are forced to cut corners and further decrease compatibility (and thus interoperability--which is the whole point).

Second, they honestly think that NEI pays everyone off, and that we're all NEI employees. Wrong. They simply, honestly, and truly do not understand that there is a difference between the industry and the supporters of the technology. That leads them to think we aren't distributed and can be beaten easily by five or six dedicated people.

Third, they concentrate on RSS. Go chase RSS, guys. Nobody uses it. It's useful only as an aggregation tool for people with nothing else to do and when it is converted to an email alert system.

Fourth, they acknowledge that the anti-nuclear movement doesn't do blogging. The first three dedicated, sustained pro-nuclear blogs (NEI, Atomic Insights, and NIOF) started in a short period in 2005. Others came along later; a second wave came along in 2006 (Freedom for Fission, We Support Lee, Energy from Thorium, and ARDT), and a third wave came along in late 2006 to early 2007 (Pebble Bed Reactor, Idaho Samizdat, Left Atomics, Nuclear Australia, NNadir). I like the fact that that number is going up with each wave (and diversifying), and NIOF is working on making it easier for people to get started--and get started in an organization.

I don't see the anti-nuclear activists, who are new to this and learn tech more slowly, getting there any faster than we did. Accordingly, I (conservatively) conclude that the anti-nuclear activists are two years behind us.

We have a window, and we have to do something with it. This little smell of blood shouldn't lead us to believe that they're dead, but should inspire us to work even harder to kick their butts and make sure they don't get up again. We must do this by removing their base of support; using the internet's core competencies (as the UNIX-HATERS Handbook says of computers, "nitpickers with elephantine memories") as a tool (not a strategy) to accelerate the process of organizing college campuses. It is clear that to do that, we need a Nuclear Advocates' Declaration of Principles (or something else similar to the Port Huron Declaration; if nothing else, to put our opinions in writing to immunize us from allegations that we're being bought off), a web-based community platform, and an internal handbook that we can keep out of anti-nuclear activists' hands until they have their own equivalent (i.e., something we can keep close to our chest for two or three years). NIOF is actively working on the second part, after which we'll obviously do the third part, but pro-nuclear activists will need to call a conference to do the first part.

In short: they're a threat, but a foreseen threat. We know what timeline, roughly, they will be operating on. Our application of game theory to proliferation--and their disdain for doing so--helps us. We know exactly what to do to prevent this threat from materializing. We can do it, and I know we will. We must. Too much is at stake, environmentally and on a public health level, for us to not do anything about it, or to fail to do what we know we can do and operate at the high level we know we can operate at.

Get up and do something!

Passing Along Some GREAT Information Sources From NIRS

Just some fabulous links from our friends at NIRS that I thought I would post for people wanting to educate themselves, and stay abreast of important issues concerning the supposed Green Nuclear Renaissance.

Hot News and Actions

May 22, 2007: New Maps from Common Sense Campaign Reveal Another Cost of New Nuclear Power: Southbound Mobile Chernobyl. NIRS Press release.

May 15, 2007: Esquire magazine reports Palisades nuclear power plant security chief falsified his background, experience and security credentials. May 14, 2007

May 14, 2007: Major new report from NIRS finds that radioactive materials are being released from nuclear weapons facilities to regular landfills and into commercial recycling streams where they can be used to make everyday household items. Titled Out of Control—On Purpose: DOE’s Dispersal of Radioactive Waste into Landfills and Consumer Products, the report is available here. Read press release here.

May 10, 2007: New international report commissioned by Greens in the European Parliament examines nuclear reactor accidents and safety issues since Chernobyl. Says study coordinator Mycle Schneider, "In the course of the last twenty years, the world has lived with the illusion that it is possible to make nuclear reactors safe. In reality, every day, countless incidents occur in nuclear reactors, and, since Chernobyl, catastrophe has, on several occasions, only narrowly been avoided."

May 1, 2007: New Greenpeace report on the economics of nuclear power finds that that nuclear power is neither a practical nor economically viable solution to tackling climate change.

April 20, 2007: Take Action Chernobyl Day on IAEA/WHO: Requesting solidarity actions in US and around the world, Requesting all to sign petitions, Lasting presence in front of the WHO

March 7, 2007: Seven Myths of the Nuclear Renaissance. Presentation by utility economist Jim Harding on the continued failure of nuclear economics. Includes a Powerpoint presentation and accompanying speech in pdf format.

December 6, 2006: Think New Atomic Reactors Can be Built Cheaply and On-time? Think Again! Updated NIRS factsheet.

NRC's GREAT WHITE LIE-We Are Safe From A Nuclear Incident

Will this man from DOE save your life, or let you die?

Indian Point, Entergy, Patrick Moore (traitor to Greenpeace), Christine Todd Whitman, CASEnergy, the nuclear industry, their lobbying arm NEI and the NRC are spending millions in public relations dollars to convince us that a Nuclear Renaissance if the way to solve Global Warming, and as a part of that great lie, they routinely tell us that we are safe. No IMMEDIATE danger, the odds of a terrorist attack, and/or a significant nuclear incident at a nuclear reactor site are so low as to make it hardly worth the risk of consideration. It's a nice little WHITE LIE told by people living in nice little homes far away from said aging and brittling reactors as they try to do what is best for big business, rather than do what is necessary to protect human health and the environment...either for money, or stupidity, it seems that even the wind industry (AWEA, ACE NY) has bought into this lie, and is prepared to sell their soul for a few pieces of silver and some S&H Green Stamps. The problem is, it is a lie, and the NRC knows it.

If as the NEI and the NRC would have us believe, nuclear reactors are so safe from attack, why is our government spending billions in protecting against an attack, and preparing our emergency responders for the worst? I'd encourage all of your to spend some time browsing the DOE's Oak Ridge Institutes REAC/TS site. If you spend a bit of time there, you'll find some rather disturbing information that should make you think three or four times about the safety of reactor sites.

REAC/TS opening statement of purpose got my attention right away:

The REAC/TS mission for DOE is two-fold:

Provide 24/7 availability to deploy and provide emergency medical services at incidents involving radiation anywhere in the world.

Provide advice and consultation on radiation emergency medicine from its Oak Ridge, Tenn., headquarters or at the scene of an incident.

Additionally:

REAC/TS is identified in Section 501 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 as a response organization and member of DOE's Nuclear Incident Response Team.

REAC/TS is identified in DOE Order 5530 as the organization that provides medical assistance to DOE's Accident Response Group and the Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center (FRMAC).

This does not sound like a group who thinks the likelihood of an attack and/or nuclear incident is slim to none. Instead, it sounds like they think there is a very good chance of such and event. It describes its response teams as follows:

REAC/TS maintains specialized response teams to ensure our readiness to respond. Each team consists of a physician, nurse/paramedic, and a health physicist—all cross-trained in the details of managing a radiation emergency.

They finish off their introduction with a very alarming note that their teams were deployed immediately after 9/11 so they were ready to deal with further attacks that might involve nuclear materials. If as the NRC states,the likelihood of a terrorist attack is so small, then why did DOE immediately deploy these teams to New York, and other areas of the nation?

REAC/TS was also immediately deployed following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States as part of DOE's Consequence Management Response Team. The team stood ready to respond in the event that additional terrorist acts immediately following Sept. 11 involving nuclear materials.

Once you have read through this introduction, suggest you spend some time reading the Hospital Triage in the First 24 Hours After a Nuclear or Radiological Disaster pdf file. This document is NOT for the faint of heart. From the get go, REAC/TS dispels the nuclear industry claim that a nuclear event and/or incident is unlikely with this statement:

Sadly, today’s international environment is such that the real possibility exists that emergency department personnel might have to deal with not just one or two victims of a radiation accident, but overwhelming numbers injured in a malevolent act. Table 1 provides information about types of catastrophes involving radiological or nuclear materials.

...If radioactive atoms enter cells, they are said to be “incorporated.” As long as radioactive materials are on or in a person, the person is being irradiated. Contamination does not cause symptoms, unless the contaminants are corrosive, toxic, or thermally hot. However, note that fission product fallout (i.e., from a nuclear weapon or nuclear reactor core damage) should be brushed off the skin and clothing as soon as possible, since it can be highly radioactive. Caregivers should use strict isolation precautions (including wearing cap, mask, gown, shoe covers, and double gloves) when handling contaminated victims, and gloves should be changed frequently to avoid cross contamination.

Further, this document lays bare the NRC lie that the aftermath of such and event would be a nice neat and orderly evacuation plan. Instead, this document paints a picture of chaos,death, and some of us being left unattended medically, sentencing us to a slow agonizing death of cancer. Here are a few high lights:

1. Except for victims of serious trauma, decontamination can be
accomplished prior to admission to hospital emergency care. Uninjured individuals do
not require hospitalization unless they are vomiting, have diarrhea, or have conventional reasons for seeking emergency care.

2. During
the first 24 hours, those who are not injured (but are suspected of being internally
contaminated) should be advised to seek assistance from public health authorities. Public health authorities may recommend excreta collection and/or lung or whole body counts.

3. Request extra security for the emergency department. Be aware that a terrorist could be among the victims. Request police assistance for traffic and crowd control, assistance with gathering evidence, etc.

4. Patients who are incapacitated because of vomiting, diarrhea or shock might be
contaminated on arrival at the hospital. Removal of clothing and decontamination should be accomplished at the earliest opportunity.

5. If there is a history of loss of consciousness or evidence of cerebral edema or other CNS abnormality not due to physical trauma or stress, with a history of early vomiting (within minutes) and diarrhea, the victim’s dose is likely greater than 15 Gray. Long term survival is unlikely, since multiorgan failure will ensue.

6. Radiation does not cause immediate life-threatening problems. Serious injury
takes priority over concerns about contamination. (So what if being left untreated sentences you to a slow death from cancer.)

7. Trauma or burn victims in serious or critical condition after initial stabilization, who have also been determined to be significantly irradiated (based on accident history, history of early vomiting, diarrhea, early elevated temperature, erythema, elevated serum amylase in first 24 hours)should be given palliative/compassionate care. (In short, you are DEAD, and will not even get a chance to say goodbye to your family.)

8. However, with the real threat of nuclear/radiological terrorism, an emergency department staff may be overwhelmed by individuals requiring or seeking medical attention after a malevolent act.

Now, how vital,safe and secure do you really think Entergy's failing reactors are? How secure in Indian Point's evacuation plan are you now. Remember, the hardest hit in a nuclear reactor incident and/or terrorist attack will be A) the disabled,B) your CHILDREN, and C) the elderly (Grandma and Grandpa). Ask yourselves, "Do you really want to risk another 20 years of Indian Point?" If not, you have to plug in,have to join the growing number of activists that will do whatever it takes to shut this plant down.

Is NRC Agenda and Schedule More Important Than Fairness and Justice?

The Indian Point License Renewal Application was made available online yesterday. With all of it's various and assorted under laying documents, it is almost 3,000 pages in length, with hundreds if not thousands of sites and references, all of which have to be located and read if the document they support is to be fully and completely understood. I want to know that document, am unwilling to take some bureaucrats quickly constructed explanation of it delivered at a public meeting as gospel. The NRC, its licensees may want us to trust them, but them have not earned trust, but rather our distain.

I was up until after three in the AM reading that document, and trust me, it is slow going, and that fact is why I filed a request with the NRC yesterday for an extension of time to adequately understand and know the document. As luck would have it, Neil Sheehan, the NRC's angel of darkness if ever one existed, who had called on another matter, quickly doused any hope the request would go anywhere...he made it abundantly clear that we would get the exact same identical process that every other reactor license renewal application community had so far recieved, made it clear that the NRC was on a tight schedule.

I resisted the urge to quip back, " You mean rubber stamping?", which is what the process is in its current format.

As stakeholders, we are supposed to have a fair and equitable place at the table in this process. Where is that equity when we are expected to comment on a document we do not, and cannot understand without adequate time to digest same and the contents therein? The NRC may not like it, but their regulatory process is set up not to protect citizens of a host community, but to abuse us. The licenses for reactors 2 and 3 expire in 2012 and 2015, so where is the urgency to stick to a 22-30 month schedule, if giving a community more time, allowed us the opportunity to actually understand the documents in question. We are being asked to accept the continued operation of Indian Point for 20 more years...with what is at stake, don't we deserve the time necessary to gain the knowledge needed to make heads or tails out of Entergy's application? A rhetorical question.

I know these kinds of documents, know that dissecting them piece by piece, paragraph by paragraph, and sentence by sentence is the only way to locate the truth we need to justify rejection of the application. The NRC knows this, and does not want us finding the wedge needed to split open the log, thus exposing the ugly truth hidden in the black heart of Entergy's deliberately immense documents. If you are a citizen stakeholder wanting adequate time to digest Entergy's application, I encourage you to write the chairman's office at NRC to request the same 18 month extension of time I have requested before they schedule their first public meeting. The email address is chairman@nrc.gov . You might also want to CC Neil Sheehan at nas@nrc.gov .

J. Patrick Moore Debunked-World's Biggest Sell Out?

Corporate Whore? Nuclear Shill? You Decide.

Dr. J. Patrick Moore, supposed co-founder of Greenpeace in 1976 said,

“It should be remembered that there are employed in the nuclear industry some very high-powered public relations organizations. One can no more trust them to tell the truth about nuclear power than about which brand of toothpaste will result in this apparently insoluble problem.” And,

“Nuclear power plants are, next to nuclear warheads themselves, the most dangerous devices that man has ever created. Their construction and proliferation is the most irresponsible, in fact the most criminal, act ever to have taken place on the planet.”

Now he has changed his mind and is considered a supposed “expert”.

His new CASEnergy coalition is exactly one of those high-powered pubic relations organizations.

Even more shocking is that as he wrongly pedals nuclear power as the solution to global warming, he espouses ideas that potentially prevent us from investing in renewable and sustainable electrical generating means.

In a Washington Post Commentary (April 2006). Dr. Moore wrote,

“And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode...”

5 years earlier (10 days after 9-11) Edward Lyman Ph.D of the Nuclear Control Institute wrote,

“However, a straightforward calculation shows that a large passenger jet like a Boeing 767, colliding into the reinforced concrete containment structure of a typical U.S. nuclear reactor, would in fact have a high likelihood of penetrating the containment.

While certain U.S. reactor designs are more vulnerable than others, all are potentially at risk. Gross structural failure of the containment building is also a possibility, especially for older plants which have experienced age-related degradation of containment materials ( VY is one such older reactor: ed)

The shock of such an impact would probably cause substantial damage to plant systems inside the containment, and the effect of a subsequent jet fuel fire or explosion would cause further mechanical and thermal damage to the containment, metal reactor components and the reactor vessel itself. Following such an assault, the possibility of an unmitigated loss-of-coolant accident and significant release of radiation into the environment is a very real one.”

In a Brattleboro Reformer article 1/11/07,
“ Moore believes, ‘dry cask is a perfectly safe and secure way to store spent fuel.”’

Meanwhile the issue of what to do with the waste after the “temporary” solution that may be dry cask storage, still lingers. In determining a solution to the long-term storage of radioactive waste, scientists found …

“Minerals intended to entrap nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years may be susceptible to structural breakdown within 1,400 years, a team from the University of Cambridge and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory reported Jan. 11, 2007 in the journal Nature.

The new study used nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR, to show that the effects of radiation from plutonium incorporated into the mineral zircon rapidly degrades the mineral's crystal structure.

This could lead to swelling, loss of physical strength and possible cracking of the mineral as soon as 210 years, well before the radioactivity had decayed to safe levels, said lead author and Cambridge earth scientist Ian Farnan.”

Dr. Moore was wrong about the strength of the containment to withstand a modern airplane. Dr. Moore claims to know his science yet he apparently supports the current fad of temporary waste solutions. Still no one knows what to do with the waste long term. Scientists admitted to falsifying data to win pre-approval for Yucca Mountain. Because of this Yucca Mountain is likely not going to open. Now our VT legislators are hearing from an activist turned capitalist scientist and he is given the title of “expert”.

If he was an “expert” when he co-founded Greenpeace, and now as a turncoat he is considered an “expert” on the global warming issue, I just wonder what he will believe next week, month, decade and why we as laypeople or legislators should trust his supposed expertise.