Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Governments Have Been Covering Up Nuclear Meltdowns for Fifty Years to Protect the Nuclear Power Industry

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, March 21, 2011

Governments Have Been Covering Up Nuclear Meltdowns for Fifty Years to Protect the Nuclear Power Industry

from Washington's Blog.

If you check his sources, once again you will find that this intrepid investigative blogger does his research very well.

The nuclear power industry, spearheaded by such influential corporations as General Electric and Westinghouse, have worked their magic to insure their massive profits and to satisfy the voracious appetite of capitalist enterprises for cheap energy. Both the nuclear and fossil fuel industries have made their energy sources even cheaper with government subsidies and highly favorable tax policies. Nuclear power is particularly expensive as well as dangerous. See the conclusions reached in this report starting on page 24.

This brings to mind an incident in 1979 while I was interviewing for social worker positions at some medical facilities in northern Nevada. During one informal conversation with some staff members at one facility, they confided in me in rather hushed tones that the area had abnormally high cancer rates, but such data went unreported in the media. Under capitalism, public health like everything else, takes a back seat to corporate profits.