Politics

[jadecat]

John McCain continues to astound me... and not in that good way. ;) The emphases in bold/italics are my additions.

McCain’s Michigan Melt-Down Madness
by Harvey Wasserman

Leave it to John McCain to pick the site of a horrific atomic meltdown to symbolize his push for nuke power.

McCain says he wants at least 45 more US reactors as part of his “do everything” campaign for American energy independence. Apparently that strategy does not include inflating car tires, long known as one of the easiest, cheapest and most reliable ways to significantly improve auto gas mileage. McCain had only ridicule for Barack Obama’s ideas to fight waste in our energy economy.

...

Thus it was fitting he chose Monroe, Michigan for a nuke-powered energy push. The town’s central square hosts a statue honoring General George Armstrong Custer, wiped out by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Big Horn in the summer of 1876.

More important was the melt-down at Monroe’s Fermi Unit I on October 5, ninety years later.

...

In 1966 a blockage occurred in the $100 million plant’s cooling system. Because it carried highly volatile liquid sodium, which can explode when exposed to air, all of southeastern Michigan stood at the brink of an unthinkable catastrophe. Police officials seriously debated evacuating Detroit, just forty miles north.

But an explosion at Fermi would have permanently irradiated the Great Lakes and a gigantic area of land stretching hundreds of miles in all directions. Countless thousands of people would have died from both short-term and long-term radiation sickness. One actual victim from the releases that did occur may have been then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who spoke in Monroe the day after the accident, and later died of cancer.

The public was kept totally in the dark. That day I served as Editorial Director of the University of Michigan Daily, where we were tapped in to the core of the nation’s major news sources. Though I was the Time Magazine and United Press International correspondent for Ann Arbor, just forty miles west, I never heard a word about this accident until I stumbled upon John G. Fuller’s legendary WE ALMOST LOST DETROIT in 1974. Writing for the Readers Digest Press, Fuller’s astonishing tale still sends chills down the spines of a whole generation that lived in the neighborhood and never suspected the danger we were in."


The full article is from Common Dreams and can be found here.

Comments

[losgunna.livejournal.com]

Err....you might want to do some editing...you've got it posted up twice, and the link is bad to boot.

That said...yeah, McCain's a putz.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing that out... forget one little " and it all goes to hell. ;)

I can understand how he might not have known about the meltdown- but I can't believe none of his people knew.

[losgunna.livejournal.com]

Yeah, know how finicky those " can be!

I suspect that this is a prime example of politicians playing on what they think is the stupidity of the common people. They're probably betting that nobody else paid attention to it.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

Well considering the people in the area were kept in the dark about the meltdown in the first place... I wouldn't be surprised if McCain/his people didn't think anyone would comment on it.

But someone did, and I figure I'll do my part by sharing the info. ;)

[losgunna.livejournal.com]

Totally off topic, what the hell is up with the dragons the last couple of days?

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. It was working for me yesterday just fine, but I can't get the pages to even load today.

[losgunna.livejournal.com]

I haven't even seen any eggs available for the last couple of days, even during the proper times. My sprites on LJ will sometimes load, sometimes not, and sometimes only half will load. It's all a mystery.

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

Hubby grew up in the shadow of that plant, and thinks nuclear power is a grand idea (and is pretty sure most Monroe residents feel the same way).

I'd never heard of the near-explosion, either.

[losgunna.livejournal.com]

You can't deny that a huge part of the economy in that area is tied to that plant.

There's also the brainwashing aspect.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

*grins* Show him this article. ;)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I think nuclear power is an okay idea, if it's well-regulated and very, very tightly controlled. I think there are other avenues that would be better, however. And given that it's Michigan, where huge numbers of jobs have disappeared in recent decades, he may have been playing up the employment issue and gotten a good response.

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

If he gets elected it will be a global travesty...

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more.

[myfanwy-65.livejournal.com]

Wow. That was a year after I was born. We lived in an upstairs apartment in an old farm house at a berry farm in Saline, MI, which is about 6 miles from Ann Arbor. I never knew about that. Monroe is closer to Saline that it is to Detroit, I think. lol Been a while and I suck at geography.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if Saline is closer or not, but given the area of disaster- it would have been close enough to Monroe for it to be a problem. If Ann Arbor would have been a radioactive wasteland, I think Saline would have gotten hit too.

[myfanwy-65.livejournal.com]

Yep probably so. I was only 15 when we moved and I never knew there was a nuclear plant in Monroe.

[dizzydog.livejournal.com]

You'd be amazed at how many nuclear incidents there have been that most people don't know about, including one reactor explosion. Wikipedia has lists broken down by military or civilian related accidents.

As a former reactor operator in training I support nuclear power, but I do think there's much better ways to improve Americas energy situation than by building a large number of new plants. Putting that money into researching other alternatives would do better, but right now everyone's just lost their minds making random suggestions to see what voters will bite on to be reeled in.

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

I knew there was a serious problem of some sort at Fermi, but I didn't know the details. When I was younger, Fermi was a running joke. So while they may have tried to cover it up at the time, at least some of the information leaked out.