3/11/11 THE TRUE MEANING OF MARCH MADNESS
I am writing this on the 14th and the situation in Japan United States Big Island
The sea wall and a lot of this video is Kailua Alii Drive
The surge on the East side of the Island where I am didn’t get above normal storm surge levels.
Now for some words on what is really on my mind today. Our species is always acting like teenagers sure of their own immortality and even smug enough to believe we have the right to not only poison ourselves off if we want to, in the name of cheap profitable fuel, but also poison the planet for all higher life forms for thousands of years with nuclear weapons or, more slowly, with nuclear power. We have no plan to deal with the waste even though we know it will be dangerous longer than we’ve been in existence. Even though we have the ability to provide every home with solar or other pollution free energy, what we plan the most on for replacing dirty coal is more nuclear power.
In the 50’s when our government was already the leading nuclear weapons power on earth we went to extraordinary lengths to force a nuclear power industry into existence “to harness the peaceful uses of the atom”. Since no private company could afford to insure the risk of malfunction, in 1957 the PRICE-ANDERSON ACT was passed through congress allowing us, the tax payers, to cover all but the first 60 million dollars of damage. This made it profitable for private industry to build centralized power plants to serve large areas at guaranteed profit levels and minimal risks. It was the means for private profits from socialized risks and one of its tools became world wide insurance pools in our case represented by American Nuclear Insurers.
This scam was somewhat improved upon through a series of revisions.
When the Three Mile Island partial meltdown occurred, evacuation cost claims, lost wage claims and economic harm to business and individuals came to a total of $65,000,000. A public health fund got $5,000,000 in addition.
The latest revision to The Act was in 2005 and although on the surface it appears to offer much better compensation there are a couple possible loop holes. A larger amount of money is in the insurance pool but only 1/3 of it is required to be kept available in this country and the rest may be invested in world wide pools. Also the power plant operators are required to pay a larger dollar amount ($111,900,000) and all must pay it at once in the event of a plant failure but it is not really larger when inflation is taken into account. But shakiest of all might be that the operators are not required to have this money on deposit but just “available” by the means of their choosing. If we can’t even trust private companies to guard the pension funds of their employees (or even local or state governments now) how can we trust them to make prompt disaster payments that will damage their company’s future at a time when it is already in doubt?
Of course we need to question why we should be concerned with compensation for damages when lives and the whole land’s inhabitability is in question. But it is illustrative of the fact that the risks are huge and would NEVER be undertaken were it not for the fact that the PROFITS ARE PRIVATIZED AND THE RISKS ARE SOCIALIZED.
The Japanese disaster will reduce the funds available if we have a nuclear disaster here. A major earth quake in California , where the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Reactor is built right on a fault, or one on the New Meridian fault along the Mississippi River may damage more than one reactor at once. We are so arrogant to believe that we can predict what the earth will do next based on our puny short lifetimes or upon our nearly as short “recorded history”.
The power plants failing in Japan
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