Nuclear turns out to be the safest form of energy there is. Period. By any measure – rate of human error, worker injury or death, equipment failure, effects on surrounding populations and the environment, number of unplanned shutdowns and level of occupational exposure.
The 40th Anniversary of Three Mile Island– Did Anything Bad Ever Happen?
A Note To Readers
Infrastructure, contrary to conventional thinking on the topic, has never been merely about repairing bridges and roads, or even building a dam or a railroad. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood and accomplished, a comprehensive up-shift in the productive power of the economy and the increased skill level of the population, must be the intent of an infrastructure building policy. FDR’s “Four Corners” project, his Rural Electrification Administration, and more, transformed the entire U.S. economy during the 1930s and made the mobilization for World War II possible. In that era, electrification of the economy was a “frontier” technology.
Nuclear power was the frontier technology in the post WWII era, and both President Eisenhower, with his Atoms for Peace policy, and President John Kennedy envisioned thousands of nuclear plants providing the bulk of electricity for the nation by the year 2000.
That did not occur, and today is the 40th anniversary of a decisive event that virtually stopped the construction of nuclear power plants in the U.S.– The “Three Mile Island nuclear accident.” Below are excerpts from the article, “The 40th Anniversary of Three Mile Island– Did Anything Bad Ever Happen?,” in which the first sentence states, “No, nothing did.” The author is correct, as far as he goes. But, what “bad” did happen was the boost given to the hysteria of that era’s environmentalists.
So, now is the time to bury the hysteria and build a few thousand nuclear plants to provide the energy for a $2-3 trillion per year serious infrastructure building program. But that is only possible as an element of Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws of Economic Recovery.
Note the Fourth Law focuses on fusion and the space program, for yesterday President Trump launched an initiative to “restore American excellence in space exploration,” stating that ”the Unites States will seek to land on the Moon’s South Pole by 2024, establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028, and chart a future path for Mars exploration.” A link to that statement by the Whitehouse can be found later in this report.
Here are LaRouche’s Four Laws summarized with a link: The Four Laws define a coherent economic recovery program, rooted in the American System of economics:
1. Reinstate Franklin Roosevelt’s original Glass-Steagall law, separating commercial lending activities from Wall Street speculation
2. Return to a Hamiltonian system of national banking
3. Direct federal credit to projects and initiatives which create rising levels of productivity and incomes
4. Launch a crash program for the development of fusion power and the rapid expansion of our space program.
Again it was Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy who also gave America and humanity that great “leap for mankind” with the Apollo Project to put a man on the Moon, the which, 50th anniversary we will celebrate on July 20 this year.
So, let us conclude this introduction with the words of President Kennedy to the Congress on May 25, 1961:
“Now it is time to take longer strides—time for a great new American enterprise—time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth. I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment…. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share…. I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
Later, Kennedy said: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”
The Rest of This Week’s Report
We begin with “What Drought?,” noting that the state of California for the first time in seven years is completely free of drought.
But, the affects of the drought and beetle infestation has killed 147 million trees, including 18 million last year. In addition, the groundwater aquifers of the state has seen a major draw-down as farmers and others increased their pumping of groundwater during the five year drought.
The Oroville Dam update reports that the newly rebuilt spillway may be used for the first time this week or next.
On the Colorado River, having approved the Drought Contingency Plan last week, the seven Colorado River basin states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – have sent a letter to Congress calling for federal legislation to authorize the plan.
The next section of this report is an excerpt from the President’s “Accelerating America’s Space Exploration” plan, announced on March 27.
We mark this 40th anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident with an excellent article, making the point that no was hurt by the small release of radiation. And that nuclear power production of electricity is the safest means of its generation.
Finally we have excerpted an article that tears to pieces all the “world is ending” scenarios spun-out by the hysterics: “The Problem With Climate Catastophizing–The Case for Calm.”
The Feature this week is the article by my colleague Marcia Merry Baker, on the mid-west disaster that finds major parts of the huge Mississippi-Missouri River Basins system now under water from the combined effects of lack of infrastructure, and the confluence of heavy rains, snowmelt and this month’s multi-state “bomb cyclone” storm. Had the planned projects on the Mississippi and Missouri River systems from the 1940s been built, then the extent of the damage, now in the billions of dollars, would have been significantly much less. For the farmers affected, this can be the death-blow for them as a severe farm-debt crisis has put many on the edge.
