Smoke from the Las Conchas fire fills the sky near the Los Alamos Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., Tuesday, June 28, 2011. A vicious wildfire spread through the mountains above a northern New Mexico town on Tuesday, driving thousands of people from their homes as officials at the government nuclear laboratory tried to dispel concerns about the safety of sensitive materials. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico (AP) — "A wildfire burning near the desert birthplace of the atomic bomb advanced on the Los Alamos laboratory and thousands of outdoor drums of plutonium-contaminated waste Tuesday as authorities stepped up efforts to protect the site from flames and monitor the air for radiation."
"We are throwing absolutely everything at this that we got," Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico said in Los Alamos.
I swear I am not making this stuff up - for the full AP story click here Los Alamos Lab In addition we have the For Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska under alert because of floodwater from the Missouri River. That story can be found HERE.
Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant - June 2011
GOOD NEWS / BAD NEWS DEPARTMENT:
"First, on the positive side, the power plant's single reactor has been in cold shutdown since April for maintenance. But that's not a guarantee against problems. After all, Fukushima Daiichi's Reactor 4 was also down for maintenance, and the spent fuel in its cooling ponds still overheated and caused problems with hydrogen explosions and fires. That said, a reactor in cold shutdown is significantly less vulnerable than one that's operating."
"Second, on the downside, the power plant got into trouble with federal regulators last year, because its flood defenses weren't up to standards. But, on the positive side, that's ended up meaning that the flood defenses that Fort Calhoun is currently dependent upon are newly improved and inspected—the results of mandated upgrades."
Rational, thinking human beings should be getting the message by now that maybe, just maybe nuclear power facilities carry more of a risk than we should be willing to take. Fukushima / Fort Calhoun / Los Alamos have all been caused by 'natural disasters' - can you imagine what would happen under a different scenario?
In the olden days, if someone had come to us and said, "I'll give you 25% more power if you'll let me put many hundreds of thousands of tons of the most harmful material imaginable in your soil, stuff that will remain harmful for at least 50,000 years," I think we would have turned him down flat. But that's the bargain we got, in effect. Now we have to get people to see it for what it is. Keep writing, Annie.
ReplyDeleteI just read this piece about the aging and intended lifespans of nuclear plants, and it was pretty good. Eye-opening, for sure.
ReplyDeletehttp://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/29/6974478-old-nuke-plants-are-like-classic-cars
Katie - Thanks for the link. I love this country, but somewhere along the way greed and the almighty dollar have gotten in the way of good sense. From the link you provided:
ReplyDelete"The reason is simple: Money. Plants like Indian Point in New York and Fort Calhoun in Nebraska were expensive to build. With the original loans paid down, plant owners can finally start making a profit."
Nuclear power plants are really a double-edged sword; you have the aging plants themselves and then you have the continuing problem of storage of spent fuel. I don't think people realize that the nuclear power produced is not consumed 100%, but leaves behind this spent fuel which must be stored 'safely' FOREVER.
Thanks again for caring.