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Three Mile Island: Exposing the Government's Cover Up

Started by NicholeW., March 31, 2009, 08:07:49 AM

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NicholeW.

Three Mile Island: Exposing the Government's Cover Up of Our Most Infamous Nuclear Accident
By Harvey Wasserman, AlterNet. Posted March 30, 2009.

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/134174/three_mile_island%3A_exposing_the_government%27s_cover_up_of_our_most_infamous_nuclear_accident/

People died -- and are still dying -- at Three Mile Island.

As the world marked the thirtieth anniversary of America's most infamous industrial accident this week, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history.

As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases.

That quickly proved to be false.

The public was then told the releases were controlled and done purposely to alleviate pressure on the core.

Both those assertions were false.

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lisagurl

If there was a release there would be evidence on the ground today as there is in Russia. There is still evidence all over the U.S. from the atomic bomb tests in Nevada. You can find maps of the amount of fallout across the U.S. It smacks of ambulance chasing lawyers.
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Yochanan

Last semester I did a research paper on nuclear energy. It was a pro-nuclear paper, and I'm pro-nuclear. One of my major points was about TMI and the "no one died" thing. I feel cheated. This is rather upsetting.
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NicholeW.

Quote from: lisagurl on March 31, 2009, 10:38:18 AM
If there was a release there would be evidence on the ground today as there is in Russia. There is still evidence all over the U.S. from the atomic bomb tests in Nevada. You can find maps of the amount of fallout across the U.S. It smacks of ambulance chasing lawyers.

Well, a lot of possible problems like this seem to get that response from you. Lisa. Not to say you're wrong. But is it always the ambulance-->-bleeped-<-s out to win a case? In this instance, the suits aren't being allowed. I'm not sure how anyone is going to make money from them given that.

Perhaps we can all eat radiation and never die. Although the history of Earth (geoplogical and anthropological) would tend to make that seem not true. Life rose after the radiation was mostly gone, until, that is, we brought it forth again.

Perhaps the stacks at Limerick (also on the Susquehanna) are safe as the day is long. Perhaps not. They are quite ... imposing, dwarfing things around them for miles, visible from great distances, miles and miles. Is there reason to be watchful and fearful?

Have corporate boards allowed damaging things to occur to people and denied they ever have happened or that there is any danger at all? Perhaps not. But I wonder why Phillips-Morris no longer advertises in many places.

Nichole
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tekla

Hey, I worked for Bechtel Power Corp, and we built Limerick, and its built very well, and at any rate, the threat is not the cooling towers, which are kinda cool in their own way.  Matter of fact, the critical different between TMI and Chernobyl is how well, or poorly, those reactors were designed and built.  TMI has a containment structure that kept all that from spreading and blowing up like Chernobyl did.

But make no mistake about it, as I said, I worked for Bechtel, we built more nuclear power plants than any other company, and after TMI (which we did not build) Bechtel was hired to go in and figure out how to clean it up. They basically said "can't do it."  TMI is going to sit there because there is absoluty no safe way to do a damn thing about it. Just like Chernobyl, except Chernobyl took out an area equal to 1/3 of the state of Iowa. 

But the reactor core melted.  MELTED.  That's a very serious problem.  There is no getting around that.  And there is no way to deal with that either.  Not for a few thousand years, at least. 
FIGHT APATHY!, or don't...
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NicholeW.

Quote from: tekla on March 31, 2009, 12:31:23 PM
Hey, I worked for Bechtel Power Corp, and we built Limerick, and its built very well, and at any rate, the threat is not the cooling towers, which are kinda cool in their own way. 

Yes they are, quite lovely in a rather gigantic and ominous way -- so tall, so wide. Quite amazing actually.

I try to separate my knowledge from my experience of seeing them. That helps in seeing what you, rightly I think, call their beauty. Bechtel never had an accident, did they. Too bad about ... Westinghouse?

Didn't you tell me once that Cheney was a Westinghouse guy? :laugh:

Nichole
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tekla

Bechtel only built them, we never ran them.  It's the operator who gets credit for an 'accident' - but no, other than TMI, and Fermi in Detroit back in the very early days - nuclear power has a great safety record, its just that when things do go wrong, they go wrong on a catastrophic level.

And Westinghouse is more into the turbines end of things.  For all its 'new fangled' allure, a nuke works just like any other power plant, using steam to turn turbines that turn generators.  We'd get sets of binders with all the stuff/information/maintenance issues/specs about Your New G.E. Turbine.  And, oddly enough or not, they pretty much start off just like the manual for your toaster. . . . . Thank You for buying a G.E. Trip Turbine, with proper maintenance it should bring you years of happy power generation.
FIGHT APATHY!, or don't...
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NicholeW.

Yes, I knew that what's different is the heating element that makes the steam that drives the turbines that induces the current. My son was aghast on Saturday when we were about fifteen miles away (from Limerick) and he saw the steam from the cooling tower. "It remind's me of Sauron's Tower! Look at that smoke; what's in it do you suppose?"

"Just steam, luv. Just steam, water vapor." He seemed calmer after finding that out, but went on to quiz us about what happened at TMI. "The heat got hotter and hotter and they weren't able to cool it." "Now what do they do at TMI?" "Wait, wait for a couple of ... thousand? years to pass so they can approach it."

"Why would we want to have something that you can't touch for that long?" "Because most of the time you don't have to touch it love, everything works they way it was planned to work."

"But when it doesn't?" "Well, then ... then you hope. You just hope."

Yes, there aren't a lot of "minor" mistakes open to one when the reactors burn are there?

Nichole



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tekla

The cooling towers, which are not at all plants, are just huge indoor waterfalls.  That's just how hot the water is coming out of the turbines.  Because nuclear power can heat water like nobodies business, super-heated steam as they call it in the power biz.  But the water is too hot to stick back in the river, so you have too cool it down first.

My best understanding of TMI is its just going to sit there.  At some point they might flood the containment vessel with concrete, but inside that structure is a very large pile of uranium and plutonium and we have no way to handle it in the first place, and in the second place, to do what with it?  Move it somewhere else?  Who would want it?  Nah, its just going to sit till it cools off, a long, long time from now.
FIGHT APATHY!, or don't...
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lisagurl

QuoteBut is it always the ambulance-->-bleeped-<-s out to win a case? In this instance, the suits aren't being allowed. I'm not sure how anyone is going to make money from them given that.

It is an honest judge throwing out a frivolous law suit.  He should have been on the 54 million dollar pants suit.
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sd

Chernobyl was more or less destroyed on purpose.
They disabled safety measure to check if the next safety check worked, and kept going until there were none left. Why? Who knows, but that is what they did.
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NicholeW.

Quote from: lisagurl on March 31, 2009, 03:01:43 PM
It is an honest judge throwing out a frivolous law suit.  He should have been on the 54 million dollar pants suit.

So, "honest judges" are basically those who have the same thoughts as you about the merits of a case? :)
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Genevieve Swann

There was an accident in Idaho at one the first experimental reactors. Most people never heard about that. A very good cover up. The radiation in the soil in southern Utah will take hundreds of years to clean up. All of the Super Fund money has been spent paying attorneys in law suits. A nuclear power barge called the USS Sturgeous while being towed to the east coast for storage offshore accidentally sunk in the Caribean Sea. The fuel was depleted and the barge would have required security guards for many years, so it sunk instead. Depleted uranium and plutonium can be used for a dirty bomb and is therefore very hazardous.

lisagurl

Quote from: Nichole on April 01, 2009, 07:34:58 AM
So, "honest judges" are basically those who have the same thoughts as you about the merits of a case? :)

QuoteThe radiation in the soil in southern Utah will take hundreds of years to clean up.

If there was a radiation leak there would be evidence today. you can measure it with over the counter equipment. No evidence no case. Our system is being destroyed by frivolous law suits and the judges have the power to stop them. Today we live in a strange world world where teachers can not touch children and they removed all the fun toys form play ground even dodge ball because of law suits. Insurance and time and money has to be spent on defending charges of any greedy person. It is one thing to seek damages on legitimate claims it is another dragging people to court over myths. Risk is a part of life. without risk is a nanny state.
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Genevieve Swann

The reactor meltdown in Idaho happened on Jan. 3,1961. It killed the three operators on site. SL-1 experimental reactor. That was a cover up.

tekla

Personally I hate the nanny state, and have great fun reading things from England (which is the worst) and cringing when I hear it in the US in all its forms, which include - but are not limited too - zero tolerance anything, mandatory minimum sentences, and government actions in places they should not ever go into, like say, bedrooms, or how many vibes you can buy.

That being said, I'd also have to say as a small 'd' democrat, that I do see a role for government in the modern world.  And one of the governments jobs ought to be in taking steps to make sure that the 'public health' as broadly defined, is looked after.

Now, often that is a balancing act.  The issues of public health rub up against economic development, and the need for energy (and, not to be forgotten in this conversation, issues of national security and national power in the form of nuclear weapons - all these nuke plants started out under a program called 'Atoms for Peace) and have to be balanced out. 

When the Atoms for Peace program started, the power industry (the power companies themselves, the construction companies like Bechtel and KBR, the people building the components like Westinghouse) looked at building plants.  Of course, in that process, they talked to the insurance companies (cause business don't do nothing without insurance) and the carriers looked at the plants, at the risk of failure, and the price of failure.

And the insurance companies came back and said - no can do.  The cost of a catastrophic accident would be more then the company could absorb.  Then the government got all the insurance companies together, and they ran the numbers and found out that the liability for a catastrophic accident would be more then they all had together.  So, the government, under the guise of defense issues really, passed the Price-Waterhouse Act (I'm pretty sure of the name, real sure about the law) that basically exempted all that stuff from liability lawsuits.  Sure, if you slipped on oil at the TMI plant (remember, the other reactor there is still running) you could sue, but if TMI 1 blows up, and you lose your house, farm, business, industry - you can not sue.

That seems like bad government to me.
FIGHT APATHY!, or don't...
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NicholeW.

What's a "nanny state?" I mean besides the latest dismissive trope from the Bill Kristols and other assorted pundits who would like nothing more than to try to convince everyone that they are somehow better than everyone else. Ya know, cream rising to the top and all?

Well, someone should point out to them that cream ain't all that rises to the top. So does crap. And the Ayn Rand mythos of the "hero against the world" is not only wrong and untrue, it's downright absurd and stoopid as well.

Please do not think I am saying that every law-suit that comes to court in America is worthy of being heard. There are many that aren't. And yes, those do expend money, effort and time that could perhaps be spent elsewhere it would do more good.

But neither is every lawsuit frivolous and bad. And there are distinctions. For every "$54M pant-suit" there are three or four "Brown V. Board of Education"s.

In an anything-goes-may-the-devil-take-the-hindmost social model like the darned neo-cons and Randists seem to desire only the most ruthless and heartless buzzard is going to survive. That pretty well erases any notion of a "social contract" or "government-protection" (even protection from the government) altogether, doesn't it?

Ya wanna eat radiation and see if it kills you? Be my guest. I'll take the evidence of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl to heart and just think that it does.

But the crap about "nanny states" is more attune to someone whose world is tightly bound within the aetherial planes of reading philosophy than actually being alive in the material world. A government that shows in it's action concern for the well-being of it's citizenry is hardly a "nanny." It might be a "comrade-state" or a "decent-person state." but a "nanny-state" is a figment of the demented dreams of morons who wish to ride roughshod over the lives of billions.

Nichole

 
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tekla

There are good lawsuits and some dumb ones, but mostly there are misunderstood ones.

FIGHT APATHY!, or don't...
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lisagurl

Our education system is failing because of law suits that limit teachers to the job of warden. People bring teachers to court over poor grades even stopping fights. There needs to be common sense and the judges are the ones we gave that power to. The judges are the ones to separate ridiculous and common sense. It is too bad few use that power.
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sd

Quote from: lisagurl on April 01, 2009, 01:29:58 PM
Our education system is failing because of law suits that limit teachers to the job of warden. People bring teachers to court over poor grades even stopping fights. There needs to be common sense and the judges are the ones we gave that power to. The judges are the ones to separate ridiculous and common sense. It is too bad few use that power.
Define common sense.

One third of the judges want to make a name for themselves, another third doesn't want to make any real decisions and the last third does their job. Worse than that, I don't think half of them know what common sense is and the other half has their hands tied by the law.
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