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Indian Point NYC Thinking people can but wonder what’s wrong with the US NRC, and those working for the nuclear industry in general. Are they suffering from psychopathy (anti-social personality disorders)? Are they lacking in common sense along with having cheated their way through school? Many would have gotten their training on US Navy Nuclear Subs, and it was recently revealed that there was seven years of cheating on one or more US Nuclear Navy exams. Already, anyone who would willingly work on a nuclear sub is a bit strange upstairs, to say the least. Overall one can suspect that evil people within the US NRC promote those who are either not very bright or not very knowledgeable. The same appears true for the US EPA.

Do they hate all life in America so much? Many US NRC workers are foreigners, probably with dual citizenship. Even the head of the utility research group EPRI’s nuclear branch is a foreigner, (trained by the UK Navy.) This raises another question. Maybe the US NRC is working for ISIS-Al Quaeda? Regardless, the repercussions of NRC exemptions, playing with statistics, etc., will eventually have the same impact, if they are not stopped.

According to the 911 report, Al Quaeda contemplated attacking nuclear power stations, probably including Indian Point, near NYC. (It has been said that they decided that the repercussions were too serious.)
“KSM has insisted to his interrogators that he always contemplated hijacking and crashing large commercial aircraft. Indeed, KSM describes a grandiose original plan: a total of ten aircraft to be hijacked, nine of which would crash into targets on both coasts—they included those eventually hit on September 11 plus CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants, and the tallest buildings in California and the state of Washington. KSM himself was to land the tenth plane at a U.S.airport and, after killing all adult male passengers on board and alerting the media, deliver a speech excoriating U.S. support for Israel, the Philippines, and repressive governments in the Arab world. Beyond KSM’s rationalizations about targeting the U.S. economy, this vision gives a better glimpse of his true ambitions… KSM concedes that this proposal received a lukewarm response from al Qaeda leaders skeptical of its scale and complexity…” (p. 154) http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

The saying of “with friends like that, who needs enemies” certainly applies to the seemingly never-ending exemptions, statistical and methodological games played by the US NRC. The US EPA seem surprisingly lock-step, goose-step, in these dangerous nuclear games. They are so endlessly stupid, that it’s kind of funny in a graveyard humor sort of way. A pathologist once joked that they need to promote smoking because it was so good for their business, and indeed it was. Among the US NRC’s latest outrages is supporting the idea of putting a high pressure gas pipeline within 105 ft of Indian Point’s Nuclear Power Station’s spent fuel pools.

In “Nuclear Accident at Indian Point: Consequences and Costs“, 2011, the NRDC referred to a 1982 Sandia National Laboratory study conducted for the NRC which gave a Unit 3 accident scenario 50,000 immediate fatalities as far as 17.5 miles downwind, 167,000 immediately injured, and another 14,000 fatal cancers. The NRDC has estimated that an accident at Indian Point Unit 3 involving a full reactor core melt could result in a 25 rem (250 mSv) radiation dose for people in New York City, which they say would lead to a 7 percent increase risk in cancer deaths. This is apparently during the accident. After the accident, exposures would continue and risks increase over time. They further cite a 2004 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists which estimated 44,000 near-term deaths from acute radiation syndrome and up to 518,000 long-term cancer deaths among people living within 50 miles of Indian Point Nuclear Power Station, in the event of a severe accident. Hypothetical calculations are for only one of Indian Point’s operating reactors and scenarios do not involve radiation released from the spent fuel pools [nor dry casks]. As they point out, the value of real estate and the economic activity in New York is among the highest in the world. Economic damage from radioactive contamination would be enormous. Over a decade ago, a UCS (2004) study calculated damages within 100 miles of Indian Point as in excess of $1.1 trillion, for the worst cases which they evaluated, using the NRC’s own methodologies. See: http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/indianpoint/files/NRDC-1336_Indian_Point_FSr8medium.pdf
This figure far exceeds the amount available under the limited liability Price Anderson Insurance Pool. Furthermore, injured parties are not allowed to sue those liable for the disaster: https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/price-anderson-act-billions-in-bailout-for-nuclear-disasters/

“Projected Impacts of Large-scale Radiological Releases at Atomic Reactors in the U.S. Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences (CRAC-2)” report by U.S. NRC & Sandia National Lab, 1982:
http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/356082/10875171/1298351245463/CRAC+2+chart.pdf?token=%2F94J1gS%2Fc0R4yABYKsbkgR2zEmE%3D

Harvey Wasserman (15 May 2015) has recently underlined that the owner of Indian Point, Entergy, “would not be financially liable beyond the sliver of cash they’ve contributed to the $12-odd billion federal fund meant to cover such events. Likely damage to health and property would soar into the trillions, but this is none of Entergy’s concern. Small wonder the company has no real incentive to spend on safety, especially when a captured regulatory agency lets it do pretty much whatever it wants… Even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission concedes that Indian Point—-among other reactors—-has been out of compliance on simple fire protection standards for years.” It has simply issued waivers, allowing Indian Point to operate anyway. Currently Indian Point Two is even operating without a license! https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/05/16/did-we-almost-lose-new-york/

This graph, for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, shows how much more dangerous a spent fuel accident would be, and the urgent need to take this into consideration. As can be seen, the repercussions could be far far worse than Chernobyl. And, little known is that Chernobyl contaminated areas one to two thousand miles away (UK and Scandinavia), which remain highly contaminated with Cesium, almost 30 years on, even though the half-life of Cesium 137 is 30 years. One curie is 37 billion becquerels (radioactive disintegrations-emissions per second). They generally don’t bother to even measure the really long-lived radionulides. Now may be a good time to recall that cesium can impact the nervous system and the heart since it mimic potassium in the body. It acts as both a chemical and a radiological poison.
San Onofre Cesium 137 vs. Chernobyl by Donna Gilmore SanOnofreSafety
Slide from “Dry Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Problems and Solutions“, by Donna Gilmore SanOnofreSafety.org, May 17, 2015, presentation to the NRC: https://sanonofresafety.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/dry-cask-storagedgilmore2015may17a.pdf

“It has long been established that the accused 9/11 attackers contemplated hitting the reactors at Indian Point, 35 miles up the Hudson from Manhattan./Neither US military nor local police forces could not have stopped such an attack, which could have poisoned millions of people in the American northeast and gutted the entire US ecology and economy./ Worldwide there are more than 430 commercial reactors still operating…just under 100 in the US./ Not one of them can be effectively guarded against a concerted terror attack. Each could spew massive radiation releases and do untold damage to the human race, the planetary ecology, the global economy.” (Wasserman, 13 Jan. 2015)

In a seemingly never-ending spiral of either psychopathy or stupidity, the US NRC’s analysis was apparently instrumental in FERC’s approval of a high pressure gas pipeline 105 ft from Indian Point Nuclear Power Station’s spent fuel pool: “Why on Earth Did the Feds Approve a High-Pressure Gas Pipeline Near a Nuke Plant? Nuclear safety expert: “We’re talking tens of millions of people who could be endangered.” By Alison Rose Levy / AlterNet March 27, 2015 http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-earth-did-feds-approve-high-pressure-gas-pipeline-near-nuke-plant

For obvious reasons, a speaker at yesterday’s public hearing has qualified putting a 42 inch high pressure gas pipeline 105 ft. from Indian Point Nuclear Reactor spent fuel pools, as insane, a psychotic plan: http://youtu.be/g2K1EdtpZos Approval was given by FERC based on the sorts of faulty assumptions: http://sape2016.org, in which the US NRC specializes. (If you are new then read old posts and you will quickly see that this is no exaggeration).

Now, we finally arrive at what we intended to be a simple post – a re-posting of Harvey Wasserman’s excellent reminder about the risk of a terrorist attack on nuclear reactors.

However, as discussed above, with the US NRC nuclear henchmen at work, there is no need for outside foreign terrorists. Furthermore, at every stage of the nuclear fuel chain – mining, processing, reactor operations, waste, dangerous, long-lived radionuclides are legally leaked into the air, earth and water. The amounts are not even restricted in the US. Only the dilution is. 70 years is enough. The entire nuclear industry needs to be shut down now and a Manhattan Project to deal safely with the waste is needed.

“In Wake of Charlie Hebdo, We Must Challenge Insanity of Nuclear Power, Published on Tuesday, January 13, 2015, by Harvey Wasserman – Common Dreams

The powerful global response to the terror attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo must now face a terrifying reality:

It’s a horrible thing when an organ of free speech is assaulted and journalists die.

It will be an apocalyptic thing when it happens to an atomic reactor and whole continents are irradiated, with children first to suffer, a death toll in the millions, and eco-economic impacts beyond calculation.

For decades our global security apparatus and its attendant media mavens have pretended that the radioactive elephant in the room of global terror does not exist. But after Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, 9/11, Charlie Hebdo and so much more, a terrible reality has become all too clear.

We have seen four American-designed reactors explode and three melt at a single Japanese site. A severely escalated thyroid cancer rate has followed, with more health disasters yet to come. Some two dozen sibling GE reactors currently operate in the United States.

We have seen an entire continent—and more—irradiated by Chernobyl, with at least one major study calculating well over a million downwind deaths. Chernobyl-style reactors still operate in Europe.

We have seen a US reactor rocked by a 1979 hydrogen explosion and melt-down (repeatedly denied by its owners) that poured still-unknown quantities of radiation into the Pennsylvania countryside.

Today the Ohio Public Utilities Commission is poised to force ratepayers to subsidize the fault-riddled Davis-Besse nuke—a Three Mile Island clone—with millions of gouged dollars to keep it running despite profound vulnerability to its own advanced deterioration and the absolute impossibility of protecting it from a possible terror attack.

It has long been established that the accused 9/11 attackers contemplated hitting the reactors at Indian Point, 35 miles up the Hudson from Manhattan.

Neither US military nor local police forces could not have stopped such an attack, which could have poisoned millions of people in the American northeast and gutted the entire US ecology and economy.

Worldwide there are more than 430 commercial reactors still operating. There are more than 50 in France, just under 100 in the US.

Not one of them can be effectively guarded against a concerted terror attack. Each could spew massive radiation releases and do untold damage to the human race, the planetary ecology, the global economy.

Every serious student of terrorism knows that such an attack is merely a matter of time. Every serious expert on atomic reactors knows the potential human costs simply cannot be calculated.

It’s impossible for a sane world to comprehend why someone would want to attack one of these reactors.

But it’s impossible to deny that there are probably those right now contemplating how to do just that.

Perfectly protecting these reactors is impossible. But their owners are almost entirely shielded from liability from the consequences of such an attack.

And the fallout would utterly dwarf any other catastrophe the world has yet seen.

We now have the ability to replace all these reactors with renewable sources and added efficiencies that are cheaper, cleaner, more reliable and—above all—safer than atomic reactors.

No city will be irradiated by an attack on a wind farm. No downwind children will die from a terrorist machine-gunning at a solar facility.

All across the world, from Illinois and Ohio to France and Japan, corrupt corporate reactor owners demand public subsidies to keep these obsolete, non-competitive, supremely dangerous machines in operation.

But in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and of so much else we now know about today’s world, there’s no excuse for running these reactors—anywhere.

Why must we wait for the inevitable disaster to occur, and for the talking heads to then tell us that such insanity “could not have been predicted”? And that there is “nothing to worry about”?

Charlie Hebdo was an anti-nuclear publication. Its cartoons repeatedly lampooned the horrible dangers of this insane technology.

Its warnings now bear an added dimension, far deeper than the atomic industry—or the world’s leaders—seem willing to face.

As millions march in fear and mourning, will we now ignore Charlie twice? Are YOU willing to pay the next radioactive price?

Or will you act, and shut them all down?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Harvey Wasserman’s Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Show is at http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com, and he edits http://www.nukefree.org. Harvey Wasserman’s History of the US and Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth are at http://www.harveywasserman.com along with Passions of the PotSmoking Patriots by “Thomas Paine.” He and Bob Fitrakis have co-authored four books on election protection, including How the GOP Stole America’s 2004 Election, at http://www.freepress.org.” http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/13/wake-charlie-hebdo-we-must-challenge-insanity-nuclear-power (Emphasis our own)

70 Years is Enough Campaign: Nuclear Energy is Nuclear War Everyday
Map locations exported from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center