In Episode 110 [20] of the CounterVortex podcast [21], Bill Weinberg rants against the current greenwashing [22] of nuclear power, and hype about a supposedly "safe" new generation [23] of reactors. Every stage of the nuclear cycle is ecocidal and genocidal. Uranium mining has poisoned the lands of indigenous peoples from Navajo Country [24] to Saskatchewan [25] to West Africa [26]. The ongoing functioning of nuclear plants entails routine emissions [27] of radioactive gases, factored in by the bureaucrats in determining "acceptable [28]" levels of cancer. Disposal of the waste, and the retired reactor sites [29] themselves, is a problem that inherently defies solution. These wastes will be deadly for exponentially longer into the future than biblical times stretch into the past. The Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP [30]) in New Mexico, hyped as secure for hundreds of millennia, leaked plutonium [31] after only 13 years. And finally there is the "sexiest" issue, the one that actually gets some media play, at least—the risk of accident. It is a mark of capitalism's depravity that even after the nightmares of Fukushima [32] and Chernobyl [33], we periodically get media campaigns about an imminent "nuclear renaissance." Meanwhile, virtually ongoing smaller accidents [39] go by with barely a media ripple. Nuclear versus fossil fuels is the false choice [34] offered us by industry. The imperative is to get off the extraction economy and on to one based on sustainability [35] and resource conservation.
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Production by Chris Rywalt [40]
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