Tidbits

Shawn F. Summers, Frum Forum:

Could a Japanese style nuclear disaster happen here?  There are currently 23 GE nuclear plants currently operating in the United States with a design that is identical to the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi installation which has been in the news. Even more troubling, many of the plants are operating past their intended 40-year operating life. This is only one of the many concerns of Henry Sokolski, the Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.


Sokolski ... blamed media outlets and pro-nuclear politicians for jumping quickly to calm the public and hide the potential scope of the disaster. “Here in Washington, there’s lots of spinning going on. The New York Times was trying to downplay this before… but they’re not anymore,”


The scope of the disaster can’t be understated. Even the American military has taken action in response to the disaster. As of Tuesday morning, radiation dosage levels around the plant had been reported as high as 400 millisieverts per hour. A dose of 400 millisieverts per hour is generally adequate to induce mild (relatively speaking) radiation sickness after less than two hours of exposure. Sokolski noted to FrumForum that the US Navy’s aircraft carriers, which had been sent to help, had been repositioned to 100 miles offshore, ostensibly to avoid radiation danger to the sailors on board the (nuclear-powered) vessels.


... He warned that until the disaster, the US government was preparing to sell nuclear energy technology to the governments of both Jordan and Saudi Arabia, neither of which possesses adequate operational expertise.

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Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish says:  Have you noticed how almost every single big story in the last few months has been buttressed by something found in the Wikileaks trove of government cables?

He goes on with a pre-tsunami cable on Wikileaks expressing concern over the stability of Japanese nuclear power plants, and says:  Damn information. Whatever happens, the public must be protected from it.

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