Books by Ralph
Nader
"Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" /
The Seventeen Traditions /
The Good Fight
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Nuclear
Nightmare:
Disaster in
Japan
By Ralph Nader
The unfolding
multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is
prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in
the United States—many of them aging, many of them near
earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to
potential tsunamis.
Nuclear power
plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that
generate electricity. Nuclear power's overly complex
fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with
deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no
permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of
thousands of years.
Atomic power plants
generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity. Over
forty years ago, the industry's promoter and regulator,
the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full
nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area "the size of
Pennsylvania" and cause massive casualties. You, the
taxpayers, have heavily subsidized nuclear power
research, development, and promotion from day one with
tens of billions of dollars.
Because of many
costs, perils, close calls at various reactors, and the
partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in
Pennsylvania in 1979, there has not been a nuclear power
plant built in the United States since 1974.
Now the industry is
coming back "on your back" claiming it will help reduce
global warming from fossil fuel emitted greenhouse
gases.
Pushed aggressively
by President Obama and
Energy Secretary Chu, who refuses
to meet with longtime nuclear industry critics, here is
what "on your back" means:
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1. Wall
Street will not finance new nuclear plants
without a 100% taxpayer loan guarantee. Too
risky. That's a lot of guarantee given that
new nukes cost $12 billion each, assuming no
mishaps. Obama and the Congress are OK with
that arrangement.
2.
Nuclear power is uninsurable in the private
insurance market—too risky. Under the
Price-Anderson Act, taxpayers pay the
greatest cost of a meltdown's devastation.
3.
Nuclear power plants and transports of
radioactive wastes are a national security
nightmare for the Department of Homeland
Security. Imagine the target that thousands
of vulnerable spent fuel rods present for
sabotage.
4.
Guess who pays for whatever final waste
repositories are licensed? You the taxpayer
and your descendants as far as your gene
line persists. Huge decommissioning costs,
at the end of a nuclear plant's existence
come from the ratepayers' pockets.
5.
Nuclear plant disasters present impossible
evacuation burdens for those living anywhere
near a plant, especially if time is short.
Imagine evacuating the long-troubled Indian
Point plants 26 miles north of New York
City. Workers in that region have a hard
enough time evacuating their places of
employment during 5 pm rush hour. That's one
reason Secretary of State Clinton (in her
time as Senator of New York) and Governor
Andrew Cuomo called for the shutdown of
Indian Point.
6. Nuclear power is both
uneconomical and unnecessary. It can't
compete against energy conservation,
including cogeneration, windpower and ever
more efficient, quicker, safer, renewable
forms of providing electricity. Amory Lovins
argues this point convincingly (see RMI.org).
Physicist Lovins asserts that nuclear
power "will reduce and retard climate
protection." His reasoning: shifting the
tens of billions invested in nuclear power
to efficiency and renewables reduce far more
carbon per dollar. The country should move
deliberately to shutdown nuclear plants,
starting with the aging and seismically
threatened reactors.
Peter Bradford, a former Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) commissioner has
also made a compelling case against nuclear
power on economic and safety grounds. |
There is far more for ratepayers,
taxpayers and families near nuclear plants to find out.
Here's how you can start:
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1.
Demand public hearings in your communities
where there is a nuke, sponsored either by
your member of Congress or the NRC, to put
the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the
table. Insist that the critics as well as
the proponents testify and cross-examine
each other in front of you and the media.
2. If
you call yourself conservative, ask why
nuclear power requires such huge amounts of
your tax dollars and guarantees and can't
buy adequate private insurance. If you have
a small business that can't buy insurance
because what you do is too risky, you don't
stay in business.
3. If
you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear
power isn't required to meet a
cost-efficient market test against
investments in energy conservation and
renewables.
4. If
you understand traffic congestion, ask for
an actual real life evacuation drill for
those living and working 10 miles around the
plant (some scientists think it should be at
least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and
hawing from proponents of nuclear power. |
The people in
northern Japan may lose their land, homes, relatives,
and friends as a result of a dangerous technology
designed simply to boil water. There are better ways to
generate steam.
Like the troubled
Japanese nuclear plants, the Indian Point plants and the
four plants at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon in southern
California rest near earthquake faults. The
seismologists concur that there is a 94% chance of a big
earthquake in California within the next thirty years.
Obama, Chu and the powerful nuke industry must not be
allowed to force the American people to play Russian
Roulette!
Source:
ReaderSupportedNews
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Responses
Rudy, Most
Californians know all this and have known it for a very
long time. Another example of how only some news about
the state makes it east. :) But of more concern should
be the plant in TN built near the TVA. One of my cousins
is a ...retired nuclear technician. He has worked all
over the world for Westinghouse. I was truly surprised
to hear about the 1 in TN. But then again, I'm from PA
and 3 Mile Island is about 3 hours from where I was
raised and where my mom currently lives, AND it's very,
very near to Hersey, PA. How many Hersey bars have you
eaten since the early 90s???—Linda
Let's not overlook
Turkey Point in South Florida.—Derrick
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Barack Obama and the Jim Crow
Media
The Return of the Nigger
Breakers
By
Ishmael Reed
For Ishmael Reed,
Barack Obama, like
Michelangelo’s St.
Anthony, is a
tormented man,
haunted by modern
reincarnations of
the demonic spirits
used to break
slaves. These were
the Nigger Breakers
men like Edward
Covey, who was
handed the job of
breaking Frederick
Douglass. Isn’t it
ironic, writes Reed:
A media that scolded
the Jim Crow South
in the 1960s now
finds itself hosting
the bird. In this
collection, which
includes several
unpublished essays,
Ishmael Reed brings
to bear his grasp of
the
four-centuries-long
African-American
experience as he
turns his
penetrating gaze on
Barack Obama’s
election and first
year in power
establishing himself
as the conscience of
a country that was
once moved by Martin
Luther King’s
dream.—Baraka
Books
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Becoming American Under Fire
Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship
During the Civil War Era
By Christian G. Samito
In Becoming American under Fire, Christian G. Samito provides a rich account of how African American and Irish American soldiers influenced the modern vision of national citizenship that developed during the Civil War era. By bearing arms for the Union, African Americans and Irish Americans exhibited their loyalty to the United States and their capacity to act as citizens; they strengthened their American identity in the process. . . . For African American soldiers, proving manhood in combat was only one aspect to their quest for acceptance as citizens. As Samito reveals, by participating in courts-martial and protesting against unequal treatment, African Americans gained access to legal and political processes from which they had previously been excluded. The experience of African Americans in the military helped shape a postwar political movement that successfully called for rights and protections regardless of race. |
For
Irish Americans, soldiering in the Civil War was part of a
larger affirmation of republican government and it forged a bond
between their American citizenship and their Irish nationalism.
The wartime experiences of Irish Americans helped bring about
recognition of their full citizenship through naturalization and
also caused the United States to pressure Britain to abandon its
centuries-old policy of refusing to recognize the naturalization
of British subjects abroad.
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For Love of Liberty
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Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher
By
Leonard Harris
and Charles Molesworth
Alain
L. Locke (1886-1954), in his famous 1925 anthology
The New Negro, declared that “the pulse of the
Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem.” Often called
the father of the Harlem Renaissance, Locke had his
finger directly on that pulse, promoting, influencing,
and sparring with such figures as
Langston Hughes,
Zora Neale Hurston,
Jacob Lawrence, Richmond Barthé, William Grant Still,
Booker T.
Washington,
W. E. B. Du
Bois, Ralph Bunche, and John Dewey. The long-awaited
first biography of this extraordinarily gifted
philosopher and writer, Alain L. Locke narrates the
untold story of his profound impact on twentieth-century
America’s cultural and intellectual life.
Leonard Harris
and Charles Molesworth trace this story through Locke’s
Philadelphia upbringing, his undergraduate years at
Harvard—where William James helped spark his influential
engagement with pragmatism—and his tenure as the first
African American Rhodes Scholar. |
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The heart of their narrative illuminates Locke’s heady years in
1920s New York City and his forty-year career at Howard
University, where he helped spearhead the adult education
movement of the 1930s and wrote on topics ranging from the
philosophy of value to the theory of democracy.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 20 March 2011
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