LLAW’s All Things Nuclear #580, Monday, (03/25/2024)
LLAW’s All Things Nuclear #580, Monday, (03/25/2024)
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity.”
Ukrainians took to the streets to avert a nuclear disaster. Will Americans do the same?
WAGING NONVIOLENCE
PEOPLE POWERED NEWS & ANALYSIS
45 years after Three Mile Island, we need a ‘No Nukes’ comeback
As Biden sinks billions into nuclear energy, members of the historic Clamshell Alliance are reuniting to spark a new wave of anti-nuke resistance.
rnie Alpert March 25, 2024
When a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went from a technological miracle to a pile of radioactive rubble in a matter of moments in 1979, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire office of the Clamshell Alliance became a hive of activity. I was working there at the time, fielding calls from activists and journalists from around the world. Everyone wanted our opinion since — over the previous few years — our nonviolent demonstrations to prevent the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant put us at the forefront of a growing social movement.
From the arrests of 18 New Hampshire residents in our first act of civil disobedience in 1976 to more than 1,400 arrests the following spring to a permitted rally that drew some 18,000 protesters in 1978, the Clamshell Alliance touched off a grassroots anti-nuclear rebellion that brought the “No Nukes” message to communities across the country and into the popular culture.
With that groundwork in place, Three Mile Island took our message to the next level. The idea that “nuclear power is a bad way to generate electricity” soon became accepted knowledge across the United States. Everyone from Wall Street tycoons to congressional staffers to ordinary voters now understood that the nuclear industry’s promise of safe, clean and affordable power was a fraud.
Unfortunately, in recent years this understanding has slowly eroded, as the industry has worked to tout its product as the answer to climate catastrophe. With the Biden administration now sinking billions into nuclear energy — and Congress on the verge of passing legislation to ease regulatory precautions on new reactors — the nuclear fraudsters are aiming for a comeback.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE
“Whether they call it a ‘nuclear renaissance’ or a ‘nuclear enlightenment,’ nukes aren’t the answer to the climate crisis,” said Paul Gunter, who was one of the first 18 Clamshell members arrested at Seabrook in 1976.
Now the co-director of Beyond Nuclear, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Takoma Park, Maryland, Gunter says “Nukes are just too expensive, take too long to build and feature too many pathways to catastrophic accidents.” What’s more, as he maintains, their continued use — along with building costly new reactors — make climate change worse and the world less safe.
With this in mind, “seasoned Clams,” as we jokingly call ourselves, have been holding regular meetings over Zoom — and occasionally in person — to strategize on how to bring our anti-nuclear message to younger generations, as well as fellow boomers, for whom Three Mile Island has become a faded memory. We ultimately want to refute the nuclear industry’s claims that it has solved the problems posed by the old reactors.
In a statement on our new website, we assert: “A tsunami of nuclear power propaganda is sweeping the globe.” According to Gunter, this propaganda is backed by a multi-billion-dollar nuclear promotion campaign funded by taxpayers via the Biden administration’s Department of Energy. “They even have a plan to convert coal-fired power plants to nuclear generation,” he said.
Billions of dollars in nuclear subsidies were loaded into Biden’s infrastructure bill, with billions more in the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Advancement Act — which sailed through the U.S. House 365-36 last month — extends nuclear subsidies further by continuing the $16.6 billion cap on liability from nuclear accidents for the next 40 years.
“The still unrealized total damage costs of a severe nuclear accident, as evidenced by ongoing nuclear catastrophes at Fukushima (13 year ago) and Chernobyl (38 years ago), are already running into the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Gunter said, adding that Congress didn’t even hold a public hearing on the liability cap extension.
As the new Clamshell website maintains, new nukes are not needed to avert a climate crisis. “Far better options are being built much faster than nuclear power plants, at a fraction of the cost and without the grave hazards. They include solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, efficiency and conservation.”
The idea for this statement came from Anna Gyorgy, author of the influential 1979 book “No Nukes: Everyone’s Guide to Nuclear Power.” And true to the Clams’ old principles, the statement was drafted by two writers after consultation with a larger group, reviewed by a committee and ultimately approved by consensus. We have also stuck to our belief that nonviolence is the best method for social movements to disrupt unjust systems and promote alternatives.
“Nonviolence, in the tradition of King and Gandhi, is an effective way to challenge institutional injustice,” said Gyorgy, who serves as communications coordinator for the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in Western Massachusetts. “Nonviolence is also the best way to build the communities we need to get through crises caused by violence, racism, predatory capitalism and climate disruption.” Nuclear power and its evil twin, nuclear weapons, have no role in the future Gyorgy has been trying to build for decades.
“Nukes just cannot compete with zero fuel cost solar and wind, and that means the era of base load plants running on fossil and nuclear fuel is ending,” said Roy Morrison, a former Clamshell staff member who has worked for years as a commercial solar energy developer. “Solar arrays combined with energy storage from home rooftops already are acting as virtual power plants to meet utility demands for peak power.”
According to Morrison, new battery technology and plunging prices for solar will displace fuels that produce carbon dioxide. “The future for our economy and our planet lies with renewables, not nukes, oil, gas or coal,” he said.
Morrison and I first met in 1977, when were among hundreds jailed in a National Guard armory following the mass arrests at Seabrook. In 1979, when Three Mile Island melted down, we were working together in Clamshell’s scruffy second-floor suite in downtown Portsmouth. With little money and a mimeograph machine — the most advanced technology in our possession — we did battle with a complex of utility companies, banks, engineering firms and government agencies that were doing their best to foist nukes on the American public.
When a reporter from a national news agency called for our comment on the unfolding accident in Pennsylvania, I was the one who happened to pick up the phone. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I do remember that, at roughly the same time, Dresser Industries — the company responsible for the valve that malfunctioned at Three Mile Island — was buying pro-nuke display ads featuring Edward Teller, the physicist known as “the father of the H-bomb” and a dedicated advocate for all things nuclear.
When the news story came out, it went something like, “Physicist Edward Teller says nukes are safe, but Arnie Alpert from the Clamshell Alliance says they aren’t.” It’s a good memory, but more than that, it’s a reminder that grassroots movements engaging in what John Lewis called “good trouble” can shake up power structures and bring about change.
In the current moment, when renewable alternatives to fossil and fissile energy are urgently needed, the Clams are trying to figure out how to make it happen again.
Arnie Alpert
Arnie Alpert is a longtime nonviolent action trainer in New Hampshire. He blogs at inzanetimes.wordpress.com.
LLAW’s CONCERNS & COMMENTS, Monday, (03/25/2024)
We do need to stop this growing nuclear power plant and nuclear weapons of mass destruction created by the dark capital commercial, ignorant political, and fear-based military nuclear industries, who are peddling disgraceful propaganda from capitalists, and politicians at every level, who understand nothing at all about nuclear horrors, anything nuclear, and find world peace, making the world’s militaries, who understands all things nuclear all too well, impotent and useless, before they begin the 6th Extinction in earnest. We have very little time left to reverse our self-destructive direction and remove ‘all things nuclear’ from ourselves forever.
I departed from the nuclear industry in disgust over the industry attitude over the 3-Mile Island near meltdown and the fact that we in the industry (including me) were not sympathetic to the reality of what happened there, all of pretending that it was nothing, and that our rallying cry was “Let the Bastards freeze to death in the dark”, the words that turned me away from an entire industry that I had been mistakenly proud of since the 1960s. I left in May of 1980 and started my own minerals exploration corporation with a mission to evaluate useful metals deposits, including gold and silver.
I never looked back, but I also waited several years to begin speaking out against the nuclear industry in general and nuclear power specifically. But now I will spend the rest of my days speaking out (mainly in writing) against “All Things Nuclear” This nightly Blog Post is a beginning of my mission to help do away with public use of anything and everything nuclear. Tonight’s Post is #580 over a total of 580 days, so you, the reader, ought to be able to understand that I am serious about this project and also creating future projects to alert the world that uranium fuel with their reactors, bombs, and all other things nuclear are the most dangerous products on the face of the earth, especially in the irresponsible hands of us humans.
We are in the process of exterminating all of us, including all other life, with our own preferred uses of ‘all things nuclear’. It would sadly be the 6th Extinction, the 1st one that humans actually existed during such massive destruction of life, and we are solely responsible for the entire threat to all other life as well. ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Monday,(03/25/2024):
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
U.S. Imperialism's Depraved and Insane Buildup for Nuclear War:One More Urgent Reason ...
revcom.us
... all of humanity. Bob ... And of all the powers wielding nuclear weapons ... 5. One of the things that scientists have come to understand about nuclear ...
45 years after Three Mile Island, we need a 'No Nukes' comeback | Waging Nonviolence
Waging Nonviolence
... all things nuclear. When the news story came out, it went something like, “Physicist Edward Teller says nukes are safe, but Arnie Alpert from the ...
Shapiro's alternative to a key climate program needs GOP support - WHYY
WHYY
Listen Live • Weekend All Things Considered. 00 ... He did not specify how or where those jobs would be created, but said that increased demand for new ...
Nuclear Power
NEWS
UK's Sunak to unveil $252m investment in nuclear deterrent, nuclear energy - Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
“And nuclear delivers cheaper, cleaner home-grown energy for consumers.” “That's why we are investing in Barrow, the home of UK submarines, and in the ...
Permit issued for dismantling of Isar 2 : Waste & Recycling - World Nuclear News
World Nuclear News
... nuclear power plant. Isar 1 and 2 (Image: Regine Rabanus / PreussenElektra). The Isar 2 plant - comprising a single 1400 MWe pressurised water reactor ...
NATO Nation Shares Nuclear Update - Newsweek
Newsweek
Downing Street said its plan will see some $252 million invested in British nuclear power and in the country's nuclear-powered ballistic missile ...
Nuclear Power Emergencies
(There are Articles today for Nuclear Power Emergencies)
Nuclear War
NEWS
Kyiv's 'thousand cuts' strategy to curb the Russian war machine - Le Monde
Le Monde
After the failure of their counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, and the shift of their troops to a defensive position on almost the entire ...
Russia launches 57 airstrikes on Kyiv and Lviv as Ukraine targets Crimea - YouTube
YouTube
Russia has launched further air strikes on Ukraine targeting Kyiv and the western city of Lviv on the border with Poland claiming a missile ...
Why the West Should Not Be Afraid of Russian Nuclear Threats - ICDS
International Centre for Defence and Security
A Ukrainian serviceman, crew member of a German-made self-propelled anti-aircraft (SPAAG), better known as the Flakpanzer Gepard, ...
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
Why the West Should Not Be Afraid of Russian Nuclear Threats - ICDS
International Centre for Defence and Security
Excessive cowering in the face of Russian threats will only do us a disservice. First, the war will only come to an end when Moscow ends its ...
North Korean leader Kim visits tank unit and touts war preparations in face of tensions with Seoul
Washington Post
... nuclear-capable missiles designed to target South Korea, the United States and Japan, while issuing threats of nuclear conflict against its rivals.
'Nuclear Deterrance' is losing all of its meaning - Pipe Dream - Binghamton University
Pipe Dream - Binghamton University
However, this principle that arguably prevented war for so many decades is now under the threat of becoming outright irrelevant. ... threats. ... nuclear ...
Yellowstone Caldera
NEWS
The 1959 Madison Slide, Part 1: A deadly consequence of the Hebgen Lake Earthquake
USGS.gov
The effects of that landslide are still evident today. Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists ...