Imagine what a field day
¾no, field decade¾the boys from Censorship, Brainwash & Slant (CBS) would have if a real nuclear disaster occurred, with 129 dead counted immediately, but the death toil gradually rising toward 200, with approximately 500 injured, at least 1,000 made homeless, and some 40,000 evacuated from the power plant's neighborhood! With what relish the American Brainwashing Company (ABC) would quote the president of the utility: "It was as if a gigantic flamethrower was being operated. About 30 people were engulfed by the flames... A fire truck was reduced to ashes within seconds."And how the National Baloney Corporation (NBC) would wallow in the gory details
¾the 100 charred bodies recovered the first night after the disaster, the 110 power plant employees and 87 firelighters trapped by the flames, according to a fire official who asked not to be identified -- perhaps because his figures add up to more than was officially conceded the first day. And imagine how the tax-subsidized network of Public B. S. (PBS) would dwell on the four journalists missing since the disaster, and on the horror of the journalist's body that could be identified only by her camera that lay nearby...Well, it happened.
It happened on December 20, 1982, at the Tacoa plant near Caracas, Venezuela, as described above, except for one little detail: the plant was not nuclear, but oil-fired. That little detail presumably was the reason why none of the radio networks comprising the American Censorship & Brainwash monopoly considered the item worthy of inclusion in their radio bulletins; they were devoted, that very day, to scaremongering over the nuclear waste bill just passed by the US Congress.
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That such things happen is not surprising: piled up energy is always dangerous, and the case of oil storage tanks is no different. Oil is dangerous not only because of catching fire, as happened in Venezuela, but because of the even more devastating consequences from the oil smoke if the weather situation prevents it from dispersing quickly. These dangers are described on pp. 87-93 of The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear,(*) together with the reasons why an equally serious disaster is incomparably less probable with a nuclear plant.
Less transparent to reason are the articles on the Venezuela disaster by Tom Wicker, Henry Kendall and Helen Caldicott: they were never written.
Yet what happened in Venezuela can happen in the US, especially in the predominantly oil-fired power plants of the North East; in fact, Brooklyn and Manhattan twice came close to a much worse disaster than occurred in Venezuela.(*)
One of the reasons why this danger keeps threatening is the failure of replacing oil-fired plants with nuclear ones. This is mainly due to irrational fear, fanned by Wicker, Kendall, Caldicott and the other fear peddlers.
Happy dreams, Tom, Henry and Helen; dreams of charred bodies of people who could have lived.
* $5.95 from Golem Press, Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306.
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Vol. 10, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 10, No. 6 Date: November 23, 2004 04:35 PM Title: Nuclear wastes: law and reality
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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