Deepak Chopra: Focus Indian Point

Watch live streaming video from deepakhomebase at livestream.com

Harvey Wasserman in Peekskill, Sun Apr 10, 2PM

HARVEY WASSERMAN TO SPEAK IN PEEKSKILL, Riverfront Green, AT 2 PM

NOON ON SUNDAY, APRIL 10TH Join the PEACE PILGRIMAGE at INDIAN POINT as they begin their 206-mile walk to Vermont Yankee.

4/10 (Sun) Croton on Hudson – Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant - Peekskill (Starting at 11 am @ Shop Rite 460 Riverside Ave – to Indian Point to ending point Peekskill Metro North )

4/11 (Mon) Peekskill – Yorktown (Greenburg Town Meeting to close Indian Point 7 pm)

Just a friendly reminder...

That it's still all about the girl! A green model army!

See you all for Harvey Wasserman's
STOPPING NUKE POWER & WINNING SOLARTOPIA
Sunday, May 17, 3 pm
Beacon Institute for Rivers & Estuaries

199 Main Street, Beacon, NY

Ace Hoffman's Pick for Secretary of Energy would be Harvey Wasserman:

via [NucNews]

December 7th, 2008

Dear Readers,

Apparently John Bryson is on Barack Obama's short list for Secretary of Energy. And NASA climatologist James Hansen has endorsed nuclear power as a solution to global warming.

With such support, barring a meltdown, the 104 licensed nuclear power plants in this country will still be operating when Obama leaves office. And maybe a few "mini-nukes" will ALSO have been built by then, either for military, or for rich civilian use. And maybe a few new large ones, too, and a score of military propulsion units. Yucca Mountain will keep moving slowly, inexorably forward, unless there is a large earthquake nearby (there are routinely, lots of small ones).

Obama could leave America at least as vulnerable to terrorism, to human error, to unwatched embrittlement, and to unchecked creeping cracks as it is today.

Tritium and a thousand other radioactive isotopes could be pouring into our air, seas, and soil from every reactor that operates today. No change.

All Obama has to do, is do nothing.

And that's not good enough. The world has to undo this mistake; it can't just assume nuclear plants will go away by themselves, run out of raw materials or be shut down for cost reasons. NO. It won't work that way. They'll keep them going with toilet paper and spit and "recycled" military weapons -- thorium, anything -- until something awful happens.

Nuclear reactors employ a lot of union workers. Each of these workers -- every one of them, or they'd quit -- thinks radiation isn't so dangerous. Government and industry wouldn't lie to them to make a buck off their misery, they think. They don't know any better. They believe what they want to believe, to preserve the cocoon of self-confidence, and there's always someone "qualified" (a Health Physics professional, usually) to tell them it's safe -- to tell them it might even be good for them. To tell them everything is dangerous. Crossing the street is dangerous.

So Obama will have no trouble keeping the nuclear power plants open, if that's what he really wants. And there ARE more operating civilian nuclear power plants in his home state than in any other state in the nation.

Nevertheless, by his near-utter silence on the issue during the campaign, Obama practically single-handedly HAS killed the "Nuclear Renaissance," which is withering on the vine these days (but by no means is it dead). Was this just good politics, or what? We'll see.

It's certainly good to watch one multi-billion dollar nuclear project after another around the world falter, as has been happening, but it's not nearly enough, and perhaps is more due to the financial -- pardon the term -- meltdown than to anything else. We need to close the operating nukes -- all of them. Obama can take office with them already closed. Nuclear power produces an unreliable 1/5th of our (U.S.) electricity, about 7% of our total energy needs -- we can close them all and quickly replace them with wind power, peaking power -- ANYTHING.

But of course, it won't happen.

Unless there's a meltdown.

And that's not all that unlikely, when you think about it. With 104 nuclear power plants, most of them many decades old, with the entire NRC focused on trying to issue as many preliminary site licenses as possible before Bush leaves office, with "self-regulation" rampant throughout the nuclear industry, with constant demand for maximum power, with cost pressures forcing fix-on-fail for everything not called a "critical" part according to some arcane NRC regulation, with deadly dry casks popping up all over the country and then being forgotten about while they multiply -- and multiply their dangers -- with spent fuel pools full, even as some of the fuel is being offloaded into the even-more-deadly dry casks, a meltdown -- or something worse -- is not unlikely. It's not too late to impeach George Bush for not shutting the nukes down, for Dick Cheney's secret pro-nuke energy plan, for torture, for the million dead from the War on Truth, or for complacency in the face of imminent threats to the national security.

Finding the right person for Secretary of Energy is certainly one of the most important tasks Obama faces right now. Bryson doesn't fit the bill, but be warned: In a letter to this author, Harvey Wasserman stated, "the rest of the list I've been seeing isn't all that great."

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers: An Expose:
http://www.acehoffman.org
Author and programmer, All About Pumps, Animated Periodic Table of the Elements:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com
Carlsbad, CA

Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire!

The anti-nuclear movement eats its own... and it's all for the good... because the more people talk about the rebirth of the anti-nuclear movement, good or bad, there's no such thing as bad press, just spell my name correctly "so it comes up in Google!"

Look, face it, back in 2006... nobody was even aware that Indian Point was coming up for relicensing... None of the lead organizations in the "movement" (if movement there still was) to shut down Indian Point were getting ready for the big battle on the Hudson.

Everybody in New York had pretty much given up... I remember one woman with a table at the Earthday fair outside Grand Central in April of 2006... I'd just posted our pictures of Betcee May posing in front of Indian Point on my website, Rock The Reactors had just been born... I told her with conviction, "We're going to shut down Indian Point!" and she started crying, because she beleived me... I knew in my heart it was possible... that feeling I had was contagious.

I wasn't taking no for an answer... all these people who came to me and said Remy, you're crazy, you're set as King Green, why go stir that puddle of mud and torpedo your career as green mentor to the rich and famous? But I didn't listen, I found myself at the Vanity Fair green issue party a few days later, and first thing that came to mind, in front of le tout green New York was to walk up to ex-Governor Pataki, stand firmly in front of him, and recite that same mantra: "I'm going to shut down Indian Point!"

I didn't say "we" because at the time, there was no "we"... except for Betcee and Seth Leitman who were both starting to think I'd gone completely crazy... amazing what one will do on blue eye whim... I was all alone... I remember calling on Clearwater and Riverkeeper a few times, offering help and assistance, showing them my new webpage, trying to explain that hey guys, I got experience as an organizer, I've hosted huge parties, I've built nightclubs, I've promoted rock shows and helped put hundreds of green products on store shelves... I can sell this, I can brand this... I can get this all over the news!!! They wouldn't hear of it... It was like talking to a stone wall... they were dead set on the politics of failure, they wouldn't let me in, I didn't exist... That's when I realized I was truly on my own if I wanted to get the job done.

So rather than waste my time climbing up a broken down ol'tree made up of tired, battle worn defeatists, I decided to take it on the road... I'd been planning a trip going down Route 66 to promote electric cars... and so, I made it about electric cars and shutting down Indian Point... I took my message across the entire country, making friends, carving strong alliances with anti-nuclear groups all over the land... by the time Sherwood Martinelli and I discovered each other on the Information Superhighway, we just plugged into each other's network and Green Nuclear Butterfly was born, sweaping the anti-nuclear movement by storm, creating the largest coalition since the Clamshell Alliance, but all invisible to the naked eye, because the media hadn't picked up on it yet, still hasn't really... it's the elephant in the room.

Sherwood is the hardest working son-of-a-bitch I've ever met... I'm a workaolic, he's worse... I keep praying he doesn't give himself a stroke... then all the balls in the air would fall back flat on the ground, and we'd be right back where we started... because there is no campaign to shut down Indian Point without Sherwood Martinelli and his contentions... and there is no campaign to shut down Indian Point without Green Nuclear Butterfly and Rock The Reactors beating the drum with a battle cry! There is no shut down of Indian Point without FUSE USA!

Once IPSEC finally woke up to the fact Sherwood had stumbled on a legal mean to stop Indian Point dead in its tracks, it went looking for him... that's how the IPSEC subcommittee was born, with Susan Shapiro as its point person... they had Sherwood chained to the basement writing his contentions like masters rule over their slave on the plantation. And of course, they kept me at bay... They did everything they could to break us up... we played along, for as long as we could, until it flew apart like a sling shot!

Last night's train wreck on the New York Nightly News with Chuck Scarborough is a testament to IPSEC's incompetence, its complete abject lack of media savvy, the reason why after so many years, Indian Point, despite its horrendous technical and public image problems, is still open, still ticking away, still looming over the Hudson Valley, a disaster waiting to happen. And it's all because Riverkeeper, Clearwater and IPSEC can't get their act together long enough to hire a PR firm! So guess what, de-facto, Sherwood and I became their propaganda arm... Hey, nobody else was doing it, we had the field wide open... We sold the shut down of Indian Point to the masses, with our antics, our blogs, our fierce determination and yes, courage.

But we're not exactly the prim and proper image of quiet affluent Stepford Wives suburbia... so ouch... we sent all these charming wonderful ladies screaming in horror... Pumpkin head riding through Sleepy Hollow, don't take candy from that stranger...

While everyone else was barely doing this part time, raising kids, going to work, Sherwood and I stopped everything in our lives and have done nothing else but this for going on a year now... Because we both know that's how you get a job like that done. Native American groups are working with us, French groups, Australian groups, Canadian groups, activists all over the country now feed us, knowing that shutting down Indian Point would mean the beginning of the end for the nuclear power industry, unraveling their entire web of deceit. That's why the resistance is building up into this gigantic wall of insanity, where even the head of PR for Entergy is out there on National TV, making a complete fool of himself, because we put him to it, and he fell for it hook, line and sinker!

And this is only the second act! Can you imagine what we have in store for you once all the contentions are in, once Sherwood and I can get back to outreach and promotion? Yippie... You know the saying, nobody is going to come to your revolution if it ain't fun... it's got to be a party... I'm going back to my old heavy metal roots, putting out a call to all my heavy metal friends... we can do this guys, we really can... I mean look around you, MySpace and YouTube are making stars out of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, the two most unlikely Democrat and Republican candidates any US election has ever known... Pro-nuke Hilary Clinton's got American flags falling down all around her, touching the ground... bad omen... We don't need the media anymore, We're the media!!!

There's a line at the end of Bladerunner... "If she lives..." and that says it all... It behoves us to make sure, as the Trilateral Commission once drafted in its original charter back in 1973... to orchestrate a smooth transition away from oil... and coal... and nuclear... so Mr. Harvey Wasserman, who jumped ship too soon... can have his non-violence, even though they shot Lennon, they shot King, they shot Kennedy, they probably shot Monroe with a needle, and downed Jr.'s plane in front of his mom's house...

They shot everyone... No wonder Robert has cold feet, face it... screaming "join me on the barricades" at Live Earth was a stretch for him... going out on a limb in a moment of wild abandon, forgetting he's done practically nothing about Indian Point for years... except paying lip service to it, thumbs up "good issue" guys! Leaving Lisa Rainwater with the lonely office all the way down at the end of the hall...

Our greatest ally in this fight, as unlikely as this might sound, almost Lyndon Larouchian in enviro-conspiratorial scope... bring back horses... save the planet by throwing it into a feudal dark age... may indeed turn out to be the all-seeing eye Rockefellers, who against all odds, want to shut down Indian Point as badly as we do.

They have revived their 2002 Indian Point Collaboration group, hosting a strategy breakfast meeting December 4th at the offices of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. If anyone's interested in attending, Alex Matthiessen at Riverkeeper holds the keys to that Magic Kingdom!

Doesn't that tell you something, that if the family which owns the Federal Bank Reserve, holds court at the Bohemian Grove and Bilderberg conferences, with its trillions of dollars in secret assets all over the globe... yet that same family still can't find a simple, quick and easy way to unplug an old raggedy nuke just a few miles from its organic hog farm, that something's just a little too politically screwy? Let's not forget Laurance Rockefeller, David's brother, funded the When Cosmic Cultures Meet conference in Washington and a companion UFO report for members of the Hill.

Doesn't that make you think for a second, that maybe, just maybe, it goes deeper than you ever imagined, NRC, DoE, DoD... the layers and layers of classified compartementalization into the shadow government, Wackenhut, which resulted from the National Security Act of 1947 to hide all cutting edge energy conversion discoveries from the civilian population and commercial exploitation... as a desperate measure of self-preservation during the cold war?

It was after all, the Rockefellers who funded Billy Joel's first concert behind the Iron Curtain, which led to Iron Maiden swirling Soviet youth into a metal frenzy, and finally Ozzy... the straw that broke the camel's back! That's how the Berlin Wall fell folks, Gorbachev and Reagan were just spectators in that black-ops seed of dissension three ring circus.

The energy conversion secrets our nation keep under the guise of National Security have created a trillion dollar parallel universe with a network of hundreds of secret military bases... their outpost into our society are each and every one of its nuclear power plants... they even went so far as buying into all the local music halls to make sure no anti-nuclear entertainers could get a chance to perform in nuclear power plant hosting communities! Which is what happened when Bonnie Raitt was refused the Paramount in Peekskill to play a fundraiser for two-faced John Hall.

So now John is out there making deals, thinking that maybe by playing the game, selling out here, selling out there, the NRC will give him Indian Point... making Faustian bargains with a devil... because John forgot his roots in rock & roll... he forgot rust never sleeps, he forgot Sisters of Mercy's Mother Russia... and War Pigs! Selling his soul down the river for an all nuclear Navy... and all this time his friends are standing by him, because they don't know any different... they're so afraid of the new world Sherwood Martinelli and I come from... an unholy alliance between the Grateful Dead and Black Sabbath... they don't see or feel the rumble of the Rainbow warriors, the intentional communities, the tribal subcultures, folks who haven't given up their guitar picks and the song in their heart for a blue suit, a red tie, and a retirement fund!

The debacle on NBC last night was nothing short of shameful... an event FUSE USA had been preparing, scheduling, nurturing, to be something extraordinary and special, stolen from us at the last possible minute, because they couldn't bare Green Nuclear Butterfly keeps pointing out the emperor has no clothes! Nuke Free... into FUSE USA... that's the plan... those who really, really want to shut down Indian Point, not just quietly see it go away, make it into a rallying cry for saving what's left of our humanity, this is where we are every morning, reading this blog... keeping up with the constant soap opera that is our lives.

There is no Phase... there is a new and improved FUSE USA which is going to take the ball all the way down to the finish line... and slam dunk that sucker on the grass so hard, they'll have to pry it out with a crane!

Good morning campus.
RemyC.

Has Anti Nuclear Rocker John Hall Sold His Soul To Nuclear Devil?

Making news all over America in the past couple of weeks was the reemergence of MUSE as stalwarts in the music industry Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and others launched a new movement to stop the $50 Billion Loan guarantees slated for the Commercial Nuclear Industry as they push for a Nuclear Renaissance here in America. With great fanfare a petition drive was launched, complete with a new web site and organization as Congressman John Hall's friends in the music industry rode into town on their white steeds. (http://www.nukefree.org) It was a start, and many of us in the anti nuclear movement were anxiously awaiting ACT II...would MUSE finally do something to oppose the wrongful license renewal of 104 again reactors such as Entergy's aging Indian Point? Would the music industry step up to bat, and beat back a wrongful Nuclear Renaissance, oppose the license renewal of trouble plagued plants, and oppose all new build applications being filed with the NRC...so many questions as we enjoyed the new video, as 120,000 anti nuclear folk poured out of the wood work to rush off and sign the petition!



The movement seemed to stumble at a Press Conference when everyone but Jackson Browne seemed to stumble...the most noticeable stumble came from Congressman John Hall, perhaps the most NOTABLE Anti Nuclear musician of his time, who ran on the promise of CLOSING DOWN INDIAN POINT. When asked if he would SUPPORT Pro-Nuclear Presidential Candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama if they win the nod to carry the Democratic banner, he said he would support them! WHAT! wait a minute, say it ain't so John!

Whispers rushed through the grassroots here in New York, telephones rang as conversations on this revelation began...with a certain sadness the consensus seemed to be that John Hall had to play politics, and was just doing what he had to do to keep his ducks in a row inside the beltway. With tears in our eyes, and a bit of doubt in our hearts, it was decided to give John Hall the benefit of the doubt. After all, he is only a Freshman, and besides, LOOK at what he is making happen with MUSE...120,000 signatures is NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT. Further, he, Nita Lowey and Maurice Hinchey are all in favor of shutting down Indian Point, they have told us so, have stated they are against NUCLEAR ENERGY.

Shaken, but reassured, we moved forward, taking solace in Jackson Browne's comments, and the incredible list of Music Titans who had signed onto the petition such as Herbie Hancock, Musician/Activist, David Crosby, Musician/Activist, Pearl Jam, Musicians/Activists and even Melissa Etheridge. Even more assuring at the time was the fact that long time environmentalist and anti nuclear legend Paul Harvey was in charge of the new web site.



Imagine the resurgence in our ranks as we began believing we had friends in high places who were TRUE TO OUR CAUSE, would carry our anti nuclear message into the Halls of Congress, work with us to stop the wrongful license renewal of trouble plagued nuclear reactors like Indian Point, Vermont Yankee, Pilgrim, Diablo Canyon and others.

Then, the other shoe dropped when I was reading and article today about the Defense Appropriations bill passed by Congress for 2008. The House-passed measure that would require the Navy to make its future fleet of surface combatants nuclear powered. WHAT? OH MY FREAKING GOD, a major expansion of nuclear propulsion cruising around the worlds oceans! Thinking it was a mistake, I ran off to do some research into the bill.

GovTrack.us. H.R. 1585--110th Congress (2007): National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, GovTrack.us (database of federal legislation)

Sure as God makes little green apples it was true! From hence forth if the Congress has its way, all Naval ships will be floating Nuclear Reactors! My first thought was, "Does John Hall know about this?" My second thought was, "How did our anti nuclear members of Congress (Lowey, Hinchey and John Hall) vote on this? OH MY FREAKING GOD! All three members supported this bill, voted in favor of AN ALL NUCLEAR NAVY!

Such a vote, showing support for a bill that calls for a all Nuclear Navy is nothing short of treason to the Nuclear Movement. The very people we are counting on to help close down Indian Point, to stop the plants leaking of tritium and strontium 90 into the Hudson River voted to have all future war ships powered by nuclear reactors!

Are Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Hornsby and Harvey Wasserman aware of this betrayal? Stay tuned as the Green Nuclear Butterfly investigates this story further.

NukeFree.org Responds to the Rebuttals

From www.Nukefree.org

3 Reasons To Stop the Nuclear Power Bailout.

Why the nuke power bail-out must by stopped by Harvey Wasserman.

MUSE 2007 ~ NO NEW NUKES

NUCLEAR INFORMATION AND RESOURCE SERVICE
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340
Takoma Park, MD 20912
301-270-NIRS (301-270-6477)
Fax: 301-270-4291
nirsnet@nirs.org
http://www.nirs.org

October 12, 2007

Dear Friends,

There are two major developments we want to tell you about regarding loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors and the pending energy bill in Congress:

First, we’re happy to tell you that Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Keb Mo, Ben Harper and other artists have joined the effort to stop the loan guarantees in a major way. They’ve set up a new website, http://www.nukefree.org, and there you can sign a petition against the use of your tax dollars for new nuclear reactors. Please do so right now. They’ve also remade the classic Buffalo Springfield song, For What It’s Worth, and you can watch that on their website, on youtube, or from NIRS website, http://www.nirs.org.

Second, we have learned that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has given up on the idea of setting up a House-Senate conference committee to formally address the differences in the House and Senate energy bills. Instead, a more informal process will be used. Both Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently want a final energy bill completed by November 1. That will be difficult to do in the little remaining time, and it means that some of the more controversial provisions in the two bills may be dropped entirely. We need to make the loan guarantees as controversial as possible.

So after you’ve signed the petition at http://www.nukefree.org, please call your Senators and Representative (Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121), and tell them: no taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power. Please call even if you’ve called before. Ask your friends and colleagues to call. This is the time to take action!

You should add that Congress should not cut itself out of the loan guarantee process—the Senate version of the bill would give full power to the Department of Energy to issue the guarantees, decide who gets them, and how much they should get. This is a job Congress has to stay on top of.

The Nuclear Energy Institute already has said it wants the nuclear industry to receive $50 billion in taxpayer guarantees over just the next two years. When that kind of money is at risk, Congress has to accept responsibility, not merely turn it over to the Energy Department.

Thanks for your help!

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org

Thank you to everyone who already has donated toward greater outreach for the statement on nuclear power and climate. We appreciate your help! It’s not too late, however: please consider donating now to help us spread the word and obtain thousands more signatures! You can contribute online at our secure site:
https://secure.campagne-online.com/registrant/donate.aspx?EventID=2927&LangPref=en-CA

Contributors of $60 or more will receive a free copy of Bonnie Raitt’s CD, Souls Alike, as our, and her, way of saying

THANK YOU!

Petition Signees
Jackson Browne, Songwriter
Graham Nash, Musician/Activist
Bonnie Raitt, Musician/Activist
Keb' Mo’, Musician/Activist
Ozomatli, Musicians/Activists
Ben Harper, Musician/Activist
Harvey Wasserman, Author/Activist
Tom Campbell, The Guacamole Fund
Herbie Hancock, Musician/Activist
Patti Smith, Musician/Activist
David Crosby, Musician/Activist
Don Henley, Musician/Activist
Emily Saliers, Indigo Girls
Amy Ray, Indigo Girls
Pearl Jam, Musicians/Activists
R.E.M.
Bruce Hornsby, Musician
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Environmental Attorney
Pete Seeger, Songwriter
Maroon 5
Emily Robison, Musician
Natalie Maines, Musician
Winona LaDuke, Author/Activist
Ani DiFranco, Musician/Activist
Henry, JoJo and Ringo Garza, Los Lonely Boys
Melissa Etheridge, Musician/Activist
Dave Stewart, Musician/Cultural Engineer/Activist
Wynton Marsalis, Musician
David Fenton, CEO Fenton Communications
Shawn Colvin, Singer/Songwriter
Robert Cray, Musician
Dave Marsh, Author/Activist
Mudhoney, Musicians/Activists
System of a Down, Musicians/Activists
Nanci Griffith, Musician/Activist
Danny O’ Keefe, Musician/Activist
Cris Williamson, Musician/Activist
Dar Williams, Musician/Activist
David Lindley, Musician
Adam Gardner, Guitar/Vocals, Guster
Holly Near, Musician/Activist
Peter Coyote, Actor/Writer
Joel Rafael, Musician/Activist
Brett Dennen, Musician/Activist
Michelle Branch, Musician/Activist
Paul Hawken, Author/Activist
Kenny Ausubel, Founder and Co-President, Bioneers
Dan Shugar, President, Sunpower Corporation, Systems
Randy Hayes, Founder, Rainforest Action Network
Thomas Van Dyck, RBC SRI Wealth Mgmt
Larry Fahn, Former President Sierra Club
Conrad Mackerron, As You Sow Foundation
Environmental Working Group
Natural Resources Defense Council
Greenpeace USA
The Sierra Club
League of Conservation Voters
TrueMajority.com
The Vote Solar Initiative
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Working Assets Wireless
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Nuclear Energy Information Service, Chicago
Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility
U.S.PIRG: Federation of State PIRGs
Friends of the Earth
Beyond Nuclear at NPRI
Southwest Information and Research Center
REVERB
Artists for a New South Africa

Harvey Wasserman's Mourns The Passing of Dr. Gofman

Published on Friday, September 7, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

The Genius Doctor Who Diagnosed Nuke Power’s Deadly Disease
by Harvey Wasserman

The nuke power industry now wants $50 billion and more in loan guarantees to build new atomic reactors. As it strong-arms Congress, the warnings of the great Dr. John Gofman, who passed away last week at 88, loom ever larger.

One of history’s most respected and revered medical and nuclear pioneers, Gofman’s research showed as early as 1969 that “normal” radioactive reactor emissions could kill 32,000 Americans per year.

At the time, Gofman was the chief medical researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission. He told the AEC that reactor emissions must be radically reduced. The AEC demanded he change his findings, then forced him out when he refused.

Since then, reactor backers have ceaselessly and erroneously attacked Gofman and his findings. But they could hardly have picked a more brilliant, committed opponent. Gofman was both relentless and uncorrupted. His findings should have doomed from the start an industry he called “insane.”

In addition to being a world-class nuclear chemist, Dr. John William Gofman was one of history’s most important heart specialists. His pioneer research helped define our modern understanding about cholesterol, distinguishing “good” fatty acids from bad. Gofman’s astonishing medical discoveries remain at the core of today’s common wisdom about diet and heart disease.

For that work alone, Gofman was a towering figure. Throughout his life, he was friend and peer to Nobel Laureates such as Linus Pauling and George Wald.

But Gofman was also a nuclear chemist. As part of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bombs, his pioneer work helped lead to the discoveries of plutonium and certain isotopes of uranium.

Yet his career suffered from an inconvenient truth: when he discovered that atomic power plants kill people in large numbers, he refused to shut up about it.

As a full professor at the University of California, Gofman’s combined medical and nuclear credentials made him an obvious choice to manage health research for the Atomic Energy Commission, which both regulated and promoted the young nuclear power industry. When public questions were raised about the health impacts of radioactive reactor emissions, Gofman was dispatched to prove the industry safe.

But his findings showed that reactors are serious killers. So even Gofman’s towering resume could not protect him from the wrath of an industry determined to build all the power plants it could. He and co-researcher Arthur Tamplin were driven from their jobs.

When their POISONED POWER detailed the killing potential of atomic energy, Gofman and Tamplin were attacked mercilessly by an industry with immense investments to protect. The experience showed that no matter how impeccable their credentials, and no matter how thorough their research, any scientists whose findings might indicate problems with atomic power would be automatically “discredited” by industry flacks to who did no comparable research.

Even at his passing, the tired attacks on Gofman’s findings have resurfaced.

But his research remains the gold standard on the health impacts of radiation. And as a gentle but firm advocate, mentor and friend, his integrity was matched only by his willingness to step outside traditional boundaries for what he believed.

One of Gofman’s most powerful and influential moments came in 1974, when he agreed to defend a civil disobedient named Sam Lovejoy in the small town of Montague, Massachusetts. A member of a communal organic farm, Lovejoy had manually knocked over a 500-foot weather tower erected as a precursor to the building of a large twin reactor complex.

Gofman agreed to testify in Lovejoy’s defense, arguing that building two nuke reactors constituted a lethal threat to the health and safety of the community. In a monumental moment for the rise of the anti-nuclear movement, Lovejoy was acquitted.

Gofman’s pivotal pronouncements appear in the award-winning LOVEJOY’S NUCLEAR WAR (http://www.gmpfilms.com), which has been shown all over the world. As a pivotal struggle over a “bailout in advance” for new reactor construction rages in Congress, Gofman’s words resonate with a renewed critical importance:

“The decision to build nuclear power plants,” he said, “may very well be, for the first time, a decision that can result in the desecration of the Earth with respect for life for all future generations.

“Why do we want to put every city and hamlet of the United States at risk by building a thousand of these plants? We can get the power from sunshine, very easily and economically.

“When we’re talking about a mass of a hundred tons or so of material, melting 5,000 degrees Farenheit, with water around, with hydrogen being generated and burning explosively, melting through concrete into soil, when someone tells me that we’re sure it isn’t going to go far away, I say that I’ve heard various forms of insanity, but hardly this form.

“Even if this hazard of a meltdown were securely answered, it doesn’t alter for one second my opposition to nuclear power, because I’m concerned about the fact that whether it melts down or doesn’t melt down, you ‘ve created an astronomical amount of radioactive garbage which you must contain and isolate better than 99.99 percent perfectly, in peace and war, with human error and human malice, guerilla activity, psychotics, malfunction of equipment do you believe that there’s anything you’d like to guarantee will be done 99.99 percent perfectly for a hundred thousand years?

After fifty years of proven failure, the nuke power industry is demanding still more taxpayer handouts to create still more of this waste.

The great and good Dr. John W. Gofman warned us all against this insanity. His words and spirit remain at the core of what must be done to save this planet.

Harvey Wasserman is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and Senior Editor of http://www.solartopia.org and http://www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. For a fuller account of the amazing life of Dr. John Gofman, see http://www.beyondnuclear.org.

© 2007 The Free Press

Astonishing tower collapse screams "No New Nukes!!"

Astonishing tower collapse screams "No New Nukes!!"
by Harvey Wasserman

August 27, 2007

A cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant has collapsed.

A broken 54" pipe there has spewed 350,000 gallons per minute of contaminated, overheated water into the Earth. "The river water piping and the series of screens and supports failed," said a company spokesman. They "fell to the ground."

The public and media were barred from viewing the wreckage for three days. But when a Congressional Energy Bill conference committee takes up Senate-approved loan guarantees for building new nukes this fall, what will reactor backers say about this latest pile of radioactive rubble?

This kind of event can make even hardened nuke opponents pinch themselves and read the descriptions twice. Who could make this up?

Vermont Yankee has been in operation---more or less---since the early 1970s. Its owner is Entergy, a multi-reactor "McNuke" operator that last year got approval to up VY's output by 20%.

Required inspections revealed worrisome cracks and other structural problems. Entergy dismissed all that, but was forced to issue a "ratepayer protection policy" against incidents caused by the power increase. The guarantee expired earlier this month, not long before the collapse.

The tower came down amidst angry negotiations between Entergy and plant workers. A strike was barely averted, but VY's labor troubles are by no means over.

The reactor's output has now been slashed 50%. A public battle is raging over whether it can dump water even hotter than usual into the Connecticut River. Reactors in Alabama, France and elsewhere have been forced shut because the rivers that cool them have exceeded 90 degrees.

Yankee's cooling system, vintage 1972, centers on 22 (now 21) wood, fiberglass and metal towers that stretch for 300 feet, and are 50 feet high and 40 feet wide. The company calls this giant rig a "rain forest."

Operators admit to hearing "strange sounds" coming from its fans last week, but say Tuesday's collapse was unexpected.

Nuclear opponents who warned about such an event have been scorned by Entergy and its supporters. That something as apparently absurd as the spontaneous collapse of an entire cooling tower could actually occur underlines America's Keystone Kops reality of atomic operation and regulation. "We need to understand what happened," explains the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Diane Screnci.

So does Congress. A definitive Conference Committee battle will be fought after Labor Day over an Energy Bill that includes taxpayer guarantees for $50 billion and more to build new nukes.
Meanwhile Vermonters will pay for this latest pile of radioactive reactor rubble. Maybe a "fall foliage" field trip to the Green Mountain State would do the Congress some good.

--Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA: OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is available at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and senior editor of Freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

HuffingtonPost and the Edison Electric Institute

Edison Electric Institute is a major advertiser for the HuffingtonPost. EEI is just a front for the nuclear industry...and the oil and coal industry...these are the same people who for thirty years have used every dirty trick in the book to keep energy alternatives like solar and wind from entering the marketplace...and they are still using the same slogan..."Do you know where your electricity comes from?" & "ensure that electricity is there for us when we need it" which are slogans I came up with, when I was still naive enough to trust real change was coming, when I was doing research for Solar Age and Photovoltaic International magazines in the early 80's.

I wrote the commercial these slogans came from... the PSA was to be a little kid asking: "Where does electricity come from?" and the answer was "the sun!" with 20 seconds of solar projects, as a PSA for the solar industry. I submitted the PSA pitch to NorthEast Utilities's marketing office when it was in Norwalk, Connecticut. They loved it so much they came back, and said we want to use it... Two months later, on TV, I see this ad with this little kid... and the kid says: "Where does electricity come from?" and then this hand reaches for a light switch and a paternal voice says: "Don't worry, all you need to know is that it's there when you need it!" Next day I went back to the marketing office... and as I reached the door, all the people who worked inside, ran away to hide, and wouldn't let me in.

This is the same sick puppy progenity you're dealing with here... who thirty years later, it's still the same brew, the same mentality who will talk to you green fields of dreams while cashing in their nuke paycheck... They're still using the same rethoric against the solar industry as they did in the 70's... it's still all about centralization of electrical production. They use alternatives like solar and wind in their ads, as a feel good greenwash, but if you look at their pie chart renewables are still only 3% of their total energy sources!!! Except now they call it "diversity" and use National Security as an excuse for their planetary trashing.

It's been a losing battle against the utilities for 30 years, and it's got to STOP! For every dollar they spend on reinforcing the oil, coal, nuke infrastructure, we could be gearing up mass production of solar gear, wind turbines, and battery farms... This is what the Tesla Motors company will bring us, Arnold... Earth Communications Office, Bonnie Reiss, Hollywood! This is the possible future Harvey Wasserman talks about in his new book Solartopia. This is what ALL the anti-nuclear activists and solar advocates have been talking about for years, and because the "enemy" used to have all the money, because they sell you the "electrons" and they won't let go, they're dragging us and the planet down with them. But now we have TED, and IT billionaires, who know the score, and won't sell out!

The Arianna Huffington's of this world. are just a party to it, by accepting dirty money, and if you don't speak up, so will you be. So this time, there's no quarter... we yank it away from them, and it's not going to be pretty, it's not going to be nice, it's war! It's all going to boil down to Indian Point.

HuffingtonPost refused to post my comments below to this post about Josh Dorfman's endorsement of green power in New York state.

"The whole "green energy" thing in New York is dubious, as Entergy, the company which owns the Indian Point nuclear power plant North of Manhattan on the Hudson is funding 3000Mw of wind energy in the state, through ACE-NY, in "addition" to nuclear energy, not "instead" of, as NY Governor Spitzer promised. So where could all this "green" energy possibly be coming from, since the company selling you the green energy credits, CommunityEnergy, is owned by Iberdola. In recent years Iberdrola has downplayed its connections with the nuclear industry, by referring to itself as the largest operator of renewable energy in the world, but it is a member of a consortium, which won the contract to expand and modernize Mexico's only nuclear plant at Laguna Verde. In its favor, Iberdrola recently bought out ScottishPower's renewable energy division, while casting ScottishNuclear aside, since renamed British Energy. We are not certain yet if Iberdrola's purchase of ScottishPower means the utility will or will not join other UK utilities in lobbying for a nuclear renaissance."

So from now HuffingtonPost is on my s*** list.

Harvey Wasserman Co-Signs Open Letter To Greenpeace

Green Nuclear Butterfly is pleased to announce that a hero in our movement, Harvey Wasserman, has signed on to our open letter to the Executive Director of Greenpeace, wherein we call for a Federal law that mandates (amoung other things) an Independent Safety and Security Assessment of every single nuclear facility in America. Hero is not a word we use lightly, and with Harvey, it's a word richly deserved, as he has been active in this movement for many, many years, has had his finger on the pulse of Nuclear truth when others did not yet grasp the reality. (Sure he could tell some tales surrounding the end of the Midwest Compact) Though I've not read it yet, am anxious here to have a look at his new writing project titled, "Solartopia." For now, thought I would share with our readers an article from back in the year 2000...always ahead of the curve, Harvey Wasserman then was already warning us of McNuke's, and Entergy's dismal inability to keep our communities safe.

The Free Press Journal
Summer 2000
Hideoue McNukes: FirstEnergy, AmerGen, Entergy and the Mistakes by the Lake
by Harvey Wasserman
July 29, 2000

“Anytime you have nine power plants fail in whole or in part in a 24-hour period,” says Gary Groesch, “that’s not bad luck. That’s not even bad maintenance. That’s a maintenance meltdown.” A veteran New Orleans-based consumer activist, Groesch is talking about Entergy, the huge regional utility based there and in Mississippi. The July 23, 1999 multiple fossil burner failure Groesch describes left half a million people without power, and was sandwiched between unexpected shutdowns at two Entergy-owned commercial reactors, River Bend and Waterford 3. Grand Gulf, another radioactive Entergy property, earned the nickname “Grand Goof” from its massive cost overruns.

Nonetheless, Entergy and AmerGen, a Philadelphia-based multi-national partnership, want to buy as many as they can of the 103 U.S. reactors currently to licensed to operate. They want to string them together in “McNuke” reactor chains and operate them in cut-rate style, with national pools of technical trouble-shooters.

In a deregulated electric market, the buyout strategies they’ve put in motion amount to a massive transformation of the way nuclear reactors are owned and operated in this country. This shift in reactor ownership from local-based utilities to national and multi-national chains has enormous health, safety and economic implications for all of us. And based not least on AmerGen and Entergy’s demonstrated incompetence, the overall prospects, says one critic, “border on the terrifying.”

Entergy’s guiding star in the reactor business is lead attorney J. Bennett Johnston. Long known as “the Senator from oil, gas and nukes,” Johnston reigned supreme on Congressional energy issues from his throne atop the Senate Committee on Energy and the Environment. In 1996 he came home to cash out at Entergy, guiding it deep into the turbulent waters of electric deregulation, just then hitting its stride in California.

Entergy itself arose in 1992 from the muck of Middle South Utilities, which Groesch says “had a name and reputation damaged beyond repair due to the massive economic failure” of its nuclear power program, especially at Grand Gulf. But the name change didn’t prevent Entergy from slashing its legally mandated energy efficient programs. Or from being cited for bad work practices by the Department of Public Utilities in Texas, where it has a substantial customer base. Nor has it stopped Entergy from negotiating a purchase deal with the owners of the Pilgrim reactor, south of Boston, that will allow it to fire half the workforce there, regardless of the safety implications. “The idea of Entergy owning a fleet of reactors does not contribute to a good night’s sleep,” warns Groesch. “This is a development that needs to be watched very closely.”

Entergy is currently negotiating to buy a handful of reactors around the US. But its rival AmerGen is much farther along.

AmerGen is a 50/50 partnership between British Energy and Philadelphia Electric, which hosts its headquarters. British Energy is described by Michael Mariotte of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service as “Margaret Thatcher’s revenge on the world.” When Thatcher privatized England’s utility system, she could find no one willing to buy its fifteen reactors. So British Energy was established, and immediately began slashing away reactor safety standards and the workforce meant to implement them.

Similar bad things could soon happen here in Ohio. FirstEnergy of Akron is about to get a gigantic $9 billion from the ratepayers, courtesy of the Ohio Public Utilities Commission and the Ohio Consumer Counsel. Northern Ohio’s leading electric buccaneers, FirstEnergy demands the ransom in the name of “competition,” saying it can’t compete in a deregulated environment unless it’s first compensated for its bad investments at the Perry and Davis-Besse nukes.

Of course, the fact that the public wasn’t allowed to vote on either project doesn’t seem to phase FirstEnergy or its minions at the PUCO or OCC. Nor does the fact that gigantic cost overruns are built into the price they’re demanding. Or the idea there will be no real competition in electricity if these surcharges are forced onto the ratepayers.

Indeed, the experience in California, where similar bailouts were granted to nuke-laden utilities, solar energy had just about been killed dead. “With these huge stranded cost surcharges,” says one energy expert, “there’s simply no margin for renewables to compete, even though they are much cheaper in the long run.”

Technically these stranded cost surcharges are the decision of the PUCO. But they can basically pass of the responsibility on the Ohio Consumer Counsel, which is allegedly mandated to stand up for the ratepayers.

In this case, the OCC has totally caved to FirstEnergy, and says the $9 billion rip-off is just fine with them. By doing so, the OCC has also deprived the public of access to taxpayer-funded studies showing how bad this theft really is.

If the PUCO does grant this huge bailout — a formal decision is expected this fall, though it’s all but a give thanks to the OCC’s collapse — we can expect First Energy’s nuke to be bought out. AmerGen or Entergy or another McNuke player will almost certainly roll in to pick up these Chernobyls-waiting-to-happen and run them into the ground — or lake —then walk away when they melt, or leave us all with yet another massive pile of radioactive poisons, killing into the millennia.

Harvey Wasserman’s THE LAST ENERGY WAR: THE BATTLE OVER UTILITY DEREGULATION is published by Seven Stories Press available at Amazon.