Action Alert...Stop The NEI's NEO NUCLEAR LIE

Stop the NEO NUCLEAR American Lie

Action Alert

Calling all Green Nuclear Activist...we need to jump on this Action Alert from FAIR and run with it. We know the truth about nuclear, and must get our voice heard.

CBS's Nuclear Revival
60 Minutes' critic-free boosterism

4/18/07

On April 8, the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes aired a segment about the "resounding success" of the French nuclear power program, suggesting that "emission-free" nuclear power might offer an easy solution to the problem of climate change. The report protected this dubious assertion from skeptical scrutiny by failing to quote a single bona fide critic of the nuclear industry.

The segment was titled "Vive Les Nukes," which gave a good indication of the slant it took. Describing it as "an efficient means of producing large amounts of carbon-free energy," correspondent Steve Kroft announced at the top of the segment that nuclear power is "a technology whose time seemed to come and go, and may now be coming again." The notion of a nuclear power renaissance was bolstered by CBS's choice of interview guests—the program spoke only to nuclear power supporters (in France and elsewhere), thereby allowing their rhetoric to go unchallenged.

Guests on the segment were French energy official Pierre Gadonniex, French nuclear industry executive Bertrande Durrande, White House deputy secretary of energy Clay Sell (Bush's "point man on nuclear power"), French nuclear executive Anne Lauvergeon, MIT nuclear researcher Andrew Kadak and David Jhirhad of the World Resources Institute, described as "an environmental think tank in Washington."

Jhirhad was the only potentially balancing source, but he is quoted only to make Kroft's point that "even some environmental groups are taking a second look at nuclear power." This is an emerging line in much of the corporate media (e.g., Washington Post, 4/16/06; New York Times, 2/27/07), though the actual number of green groups embracing nuclear power is quite small. The World Resources Institute receives contributions from several energy companies and other major polluters, information that would have been useful for CBS viewers in evaluating Jhirad's claim that the nuclear industry's "safety record has been pretty good."

The segment's one-sided sourcing was made all the more problematic when the White House's Sell claimed that "no serious person can look at the challenge of greenhouse gases and climate change and not come to the conclusion that nuclear power has to play a significant and growing role in meeting that challenge worldwide." Of course, "serious people" do question precisely that--and CBS should have interviewed them.

Excluding such sources meant excluding important information. While France's nuclear power is portrayed as widely popular, CBS failed to mention large protests held across the country on March 17 (Agence France Presse, 3/17/07) against construction of a new nuclear plant. Nor, in touting the massive nuclear reprocessing plant France has built in Normandy, did the show refer to the radiation it releases into the English Channel (NIRS Nuclear Monitor, 3-4/00) or the cluster of leukemia cases occurring around the plant (British Medical Journal, 1/11/97).

Kroft even adopts industry-friendly language in describing the push to revive U.S. nuclear power, discussing the "financial incentives" and "streamlined regulatory system" intended to encourage nuclear energy development. Such "incentives" might better be described as government subsides, which have long been criticized by nuclear industry critics as a waste of taxpayers' money. Unmentioned in the CBS report were similar subsidies in France; according to the U.S.-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (5/4/06), $1 billion a year in government subsidies go to plutonium production alone.

Excluding critical voices allowed grossly misleading information to go unchallenged, as when nuclear executive Lauvergeon claimed, in the segment's conclusion, that "wind and solar are, you know, temporary sources of energy. It works when you have wind, it works when you have sun. No sun, no wind, no energy. You don't want to watch TV only when you have wind." Of course, wind and solar energy are not "temporary" sources of energy; power generated by both can be stored. Airing this sort of misinformation eliminates any real consideration of viable alternatives to nuclear energy.

At one point, Kroft says that "the Bush administration is pushing a nuclear revival." The same could be said for CBS.

ACTION:
Contact 60 Minutes to ask why its report on nuclear energy excluded the views of the industry's numerous critics.

CONTACT:
CBS 60 Minutes
60m@cbsnews.com
(212) 975-3247

Did McCain Wash His Investments Before Claiming To Be Green?

McCain Wants The White House At All Costs...Kind of Like Bush Did.

Was over on the Greenpeace site reading their press releases when I came across their initial review of the McCain/Lieberman Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007...just the title is humorous in a sad kind of a way, considering that John Mc Cain is very PRO NUCLEAR, but then no surprise from a man who has had a penchant for owning GE stock. This little tidbit of information coupled with is trip to London compliments of the Blackstone Group got me to wondering, so I did a bit more digging into John McCain, SUPER GREEN environmentalist who wants to be the next president of the United States (doubtful with his support of Bush's SURGE)

Seems that John McCain was VERY BUSY in March of 2005 making his personal investment portfolio (estimated to be between $25-38 MILLION) earth friendly and GREEN. You see, he divested himself of a serious CHUNK of GE stock...you know, the same GE that is wanting to race around the world building NUCLEAR REACTORS. He also divested himself of serious holdings in BP (Brittish Petroleum) Chevron, and of course the oil company we ALL LOVE TO HATE, Exxon! MY MY...quiet the investments for a man who now wants to present himself as MR LET's FIX GLOBAL WARMING.

Let's leave our readers with this thought...Mr. McCain has done a fine job of tying up most of the major supporters that made George Bush president...one of the KEY group of Bush Supporters interestingly enough was the NUCLEAR INDUSTRY.

GREENPEACE STATEMENT ON McCAIN-LIEBERMAN CLIMATE CHANGE LEGISLATION INTRODUCED TODAY
Responding to the introduction of The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007, introduced by Senators McCain (R-AZ) and Lieberman (D-CT) today, Greenpeace issued the following statement from John Coequyt, Greenpeace energy policy analyst:
January 12, 2007
WASHINGTON — “While this shows that the center of gravity in Congress is shifting toward significant long-term reductions in global warming pollution, the target reductions fall very short of what scientists tell us is actually necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. Regrettably, the Senators have also included subsidies for nuclear energy which is inherently dangerous and provides no real solution to global warming.

"Scientists warn that we must make significant reductions in global warming pollution within the next ten years to address the most severe climate impacts and the average build time of a nuclear power plant generally takes ten to twenty. Providing subsidies to the nuclear industry in the form of loan-guarantees that the Congressional Budget Office states have a greater than 50 percent chance of being defaulted on, is therefore not only ineffectual, but foolish and wasteful.
To read rest of story....

Important Emails Found On NRC Site?

Know who the opposition is, and use that knowledge to reach out and communicate your dissatisfaction of a regulatory system meant to protect the licensee over public health and the environment. I was on the NRC site this evening searching out their meetings list, and found this very interesting email list as a part of it. Sharing it with my readers for general principles. It provides and interesting view into the special access to the information flow given to licensees, while stakeholders in the general public are kept in the dark.

For brevity of space, the entire list has not been republished here...if you would like the list, feel free to email roycepenstinger@aol.com and it will be emailed to you as soon as your request is recieved. Apparently, the NRC has no problems having a email service list for LICENSEES, but has a problem adding members of the stakeholder public to said list, since I have personally been told on more than one occassional that no such email notification is possible. Could it be, that not having a email service list for both documents and meetings is just a means of mitigating public involvement in the process? We'll see what happens, since I sent the NRC employee who posted this list to the NRC a request to be placed on the same service list.

Another Piece Of The Stealing Green Puzzle from Entergy Watch

Growing HEMP...PRISON TIME, RUNNING A FAULTY REACTOR...reason to have DOE reward you for being a green citizen.

Just in on one of Green Nuclear Butterfly's sister blogs, Entergy Watch. Yet another piece of the puzzle, further proof that Entergy, NuStart, Christine Todd Whitman and the CASEtergy folks have a deviously dangerous plot to steal the GREEN MANTLE by selling America on the false promise of GREEN NUCLEAR, as the Hydrogen Economy pops out of the birth canal of the death reactors known as Indian Point.

Saturday, January 6, 2007
Entergy, NuStart...Stealing Green...The Secret Plan

Over on Green Nuclear Butterfly there has been written a serious group of articles on how the DOE, George Bush, the nuclear industry (Entergy) want to give reactors a rebirth, and how they plan to steal the GREEN MANTLE from the environmental movement to accomplish this fact. Naysayers are sure to shake their heads and mumble something about another nutcase conspiracy from the far left...but is it?

Green Nuclear Butterfly suggests that readers start doing some research on their own compliments of the Google search engine. Terms such as NuStart, Entergy, DOE Nuclear 2010, and CASEnergy to name but a few. If you start connecting the dots, it paints a very disturbing picture, raises some very serious questions about our supposed Democratic Government, and the Industrial machine here in America.

For instance, one claim made by Green Nuclear Butterfly, is that our government in cahoots with the Nuclear Industry wants to position said nuclear industry as the Birth Mother of the new Hydrogen Economy...in fact, if you start searching the web for the Atlanta 7, and NuStart you can even find them ADMITTING this fact. Lending credence to this accusation, and perhaps as a means of encouraging people to search for the truth being spread on Green Nuclear Butterfly, Entergy Watch shares this little gem of and article found over on the DOE site.

August 21, 2006
US$ 1.4 mil for nuclear to hydrogen research

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it intends to fund approximately US$ 1.4 million for two projects to partner with industry to study the economic feasibility of producing hydrogen at existing commercial nuclear power plants.

Teams selected by DOE for funding will be headed by Electric Transportation Applications and GE Global Research. Both teams include DOE national laboratories and nuclear utility companies as partners. "Hydrogen is important to our economy today and will be even more important in the future as a potential clean, renewable carrier of energy, particularly in the transportation area," DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon said. "Finding efficient ways to produce hydrogen by using emissions-free nuclear power has long been an important part of President Bush’s energy strategy."

Electric Transportation Applications plans to perform a study looking at the economics of producing hydrogen at existing nuclear power plants using commercially available production technology. ETA will partner with DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory and Arizona Public Service. GE Global Research proposes a feasibility study of hydrogen production using alkaline electrolysis powered by existing nuclear power plants. Their proposal is based on the low-cost alkaline electrolyzer technology developed by GE, in part under DOE’s Hydrogen Program. Partners for this project include DOE’s National Renewable Energy Lab and the Entergy Corporation.

These studies support President Bush’s Advanced Energy and Hydrogen Fuel Initiatives, as well as the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the first piece of comprehensive energy legislation in over a decade. Funding for these studies is provided by the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy’s Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative, with industry sharing a minimum of 20 percent of the cost. WOW...must be REAL HARD to look into a new business venture when the DOE is willing to put up as much as 80 percent of the money...do we have a similar plan for say Solar? Wind Power?

Source: DOE