Technosanity #6: Hazards of U.S. nuclear power plants, part 2 (ifyoulovethisplanet.org)

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Rebroadcast from ifyoulovethisplanet.org:- Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear and former director of the Reactor Watchdog Project at Nuclear Information and Resource Service, illuminates the operation, disrepair and vulnerability of U.S. nuclear power plants. This episode also includes an excerpt from the 1983 Oscar-winning documentary, If You Love This Planet, which features Dr. Caldicott giving a lecture about the risks and consequences of nuclear war.

Hazards of U.S. nuclear power plants, part 2

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Hazards of U.S. nuclear power plants, part 2 (audio)

Links: 

http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/

Links: 

Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear

Links: 

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

External Media

Technosanity #5: Hazards of U.S. nuclear power plants, part 1 (ifyoulovethisplanet.org)

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Rebroadcast from ifyoulovethisplanet.org:- David Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, about the public health dangers of the 104 aging nuclear power plants in the United States. Hear about near-melt-downs, how terrorists could easily crash planes into the planes or sabotage them from the inside, and how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fails to ensure community safety. Also includes a short excerpt of a lecture by Dr. Caldicott about the Nuclear Age from If You Love This Planet (1983 Academy Award-winning documentary) with narration from U.S. nuclear propaganda films.

This is the first in a series of broadcasts from Dr. Helen Caldicott. As they say, it is imperative that this show reach a large audience, not just in the U.S. but worldwide.

Hazards of U.S. nuclear power plants, part 1

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Hazards of U.S. nuclear power plants, part 1 - Audio

Links: 

Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists

Links: 

If You Love This Planet (1983 Academy Award-winning documentary)

Links: 

http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/

External Media

Is Thorium better for nuclear reactors than Uranium?

It's so tempting to just shout NO NUKES in a knee-jerk reaction to any suggestion of any sort of nuclear power. Nuclear anything produces radiation and is dangerous, or so goes the stereotypical claim. But...

Th Better than Uranium discusses the advantages of Thorium over Uranium. It comes down to the side effects that come from using one over the other. Uranium run through nuclear reactor systems converts to a variety of other elements, some are benign while others are dangerously poisonous for 10's of thousands of years. To adequately protect ourselves from the latter elements we have to think about building facilities like the Yucca Mountain storage facility, where the location is hopefully geologically stable over a drastically long period of time. Thorium on the other hand has byproducts that become safe within a relatively short period, and some of the byproducts are directly usable in commercial products.

The blog Energy from Thorium is said to be eminently useful to understanding the issues.

This is a great example of a general concept I'm thinking about. Our society often does not consider the byproducts of our actions, we just act. We, as a society, accept that fossil fuel oil is the only way to power our cars etc, and don't consider the side effects. And that's just one example, if you reflect on how we live you can see many examples where society at large simply goes about living and consuming products without considering the environmental, physical, emotional, mental or spiritual side effects. There's so many things we, as a society, do where the action has poisonous and polluting side effects.