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December 4, 2001
Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your
Eye on the Target
Susan
Herman
Ashcroft
and the Patriot Act
Tariq Ali
The Afghan
King and the Nazis
November 30, 2001
Jordan
Green
Disappeared
in the Southland
Willliam Blum
Rebuilding
Afghanistan?
November 29, 2001
Phillip
Cryan
Defining
Terrorism
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
November 25, 2001
Ralph Nader
The Crisis
in Leadership
Sam Bahour
Israel's
Choice
November 24, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
He Who
Has
the Guns Rules
November 20, 2001
Sam Bahour
Plain
Truths About Palestine
Michael Ratner
Moving Toward
a
Police State
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 19, 2001
Edward
Said
Suicidal
Ignorance
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
Resources:
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8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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December 5,
2001
Atomic Treason in the House
By Harvey Wasserman
If terrorists turn a US nuclear plant into a radioactive
holocaust, the House of Representatives wants you to pay for
it. But the Senate can still say otherwise.
The House voted November 28 in virtual
secret to shield new reactor builders from normal insurance
liability, even if they lack safety domes to contain radioactive
releases.
Only a handful of Representatives were
present for the vote. Led by Texas Republican Joe Barton and
Michigan Democrat John Dingell, HR 2983 sailed through under
a "suspension of rules," traditionally used for unanimous
resolutions to rename government buildings, proclaim heroes
and commemorate holidays. Facing a barrage of grassroots opposition,
a very cynical nuke caucus used the loophole to avoid full debate
and hide their votes on the free insurance ride for a new generation
of reactors.
Barton received more than $131,590 in
utility contributions leading up to the 2000 election. Dingell
got $109,679. Dingell is also related by marriage to major partners
in Detroit Edison, which built the Fermi nuclear plant at Monroe
Michigan. Fermi Unit I, a breeder reactor, nearly exploded in
1966.
That near-catastrophe was memorialized
in John G. Fuller's WE ALMOST LOST DETROIT, from the Readers
Digest Press. By official 1982 estimates, such an explosion
could have killed tens of thousands of US citizens and done
$592 billion in damage.
But since 1957, the atomic power industry
has been shielded from such consequences. Utility presidents
considered the reactors too risky. So a pro-nuke Congress passed
the Price-Anderson Act, limiting the industry's liability. The
Act's current version allows public indemnification only up
to roughly $9 billion. Private citizens who lose their health,
families or property would have to beg Congress for any more.
To this day, all US homeowner insurance policies claim exemption
from damage caused by a nuclear accident.
But the public was originally told Price-Anderson
was just a "temporary" fix until private insurers
gained confidence in reactor safety. The initial exemption was
to last just ten years.
That was 44 years ago. A re-re-re-renewed
Price-Anderson is now slated to expire in August, 2002. The
103 US reactors now licensed are grandfathered under the law.
But the industry wants a new generation of reactors which it
says will be perfectly safe, even though some of the heavily
subsidized designs are almost entirely untested. Vice President
Dick Cheney, among others, has made it clear none will be built
without this public-funded insurance safety net.
The renewal's grassroots opposition has
been deeply embittered by the terrorist attacks of September
11. The London Sunday Times has reported that the fourth hijacked
jet, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field, may have been headed
for a nuke. Regulators and the industry concede that no US reactor
containment is designed to withstand the crash of a large fuel-laden
airplane. But incredibly enough, the new Pebble Bed design promoted
by HR2983 has no containment at all!
Multiple lawsuits filed in New York and
elsewhere now demand operating nukes be shut. Reactors over
the years have routinely flunked a wide range of "anti-terrorist"
tests even though operators in many cases had six months warning
and the tests were essentially rigged. Severe operating and
structural problems still plague the industry, as at Ohio's
Davis-Besse, now in line for a rare official inspection. And
as of today, 2400 central Pennsylvanians who can document harm
from radioactive releases at the 1979 Three Mile Island accident
still can't get their cases heard in federal court. Thus the
industry's infamous assertion that "no one died at Three
Mile Island," with which the plaintiffs vehemently disagree,
remains untested in a public jury trial. The whole debate is
overshadowed by the escalating success of wind power, the world's
fastest growing new source of electricity, now a $5 billion
industry leaping ahead at 25% per year. Wind-driven kilowatt
costs are plumetting, as are those from solar power and fuel
cells. Conservation and efficiency measures are already far
cheaper than reactor output. None are subject to terrorist attack.
None threaten a radioactive holocaust. None require Congressional
insurance immunity.
This latest Price-Anderson renewal must
still pass the Senate, where the Bush-Cheney Administration
may attach it to its larger pro-nuclear energy bill.
But building new reactors would give
future terrorists yet more chances to perpetrate a nuclear holocaust
at public expense. And mandating a design without even a simple
containment dome raises questions of basic sanity.
After nearly a half-century of atomic
failure, the House and the White House seem intent on handing
our avowed enemies ever more dangerous versions of the uninsurable
ultimate weapon.
What could be more treasonous?
Harvey Wasserman is author of THE LAST
ENERGY WAR (Seven Stories Press).
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