| Mike Pirtle: Merits of Gordon’s nuclear waste bill ‘self-evident’ |
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By: MIKE PIRTLE, Post Prsident and Publisher
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Posted: Sunday, May 24, 2009 9:08 am
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Nuclear waste from Italy could be passing through our state in the not too distant future after a U.S. District court and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined no laws or regulation prevent such activity.
Since common sense would seem to dictate we wouldn’t bring someone else’s poisonous waste, that virtually lasts forever, into our country, we have to wonder what else we don’t specifically ban that could be imported.
Mad-cow bovines? Plague-ridden rats? Cancer-causing chemicals?
In America we have a heritage that some things are “self-evident.”
In this particular case, U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, chairman of the U.S. House Science Committee, is sponsoring a law that would ban importation of foreign nuclear waste except when a specific national or international interest is involved.
With the Italian glow-in-the-dark waste, the only interest is the profit of a private company that wants to bring the stuff to Tennessee, repackage it and then move it to Utah for supposedly permanent storage.
Since we are right in the middle of the state, Rutherford County can probably expect that dangerous stuff to be transported pretty close to us.
Factoring this non-service to the American public with the debacle a couple of years ago with disposal of extremely low-level nuclear material at Middle Point Landfill with the full and deceptive cooperation of state hazardous waste officials, one thing comes abundantly clear.
Our public-payroll officials charged with protecting us as well as possible in issues involving nuclear materials are in the pocket of the nuclear industry companies.
You may remember in the case at Middle Point the company burying the material here asked that the practice not be made public.
Our public servants in Nashville did all they could to make sure that happened, hiding the file on the practice in a single storage place in Nashville under a heading of “Bulk Survey for Release.”
That title, the epitomize of bureaucratic gobblygook, proves without question the intentions of the state officials in cooperating fully with the request to keep the public in the dark about what was going on out at Walter Hill.
Now the NRC tells us it has no rule about bringing foreign nuclear waste to our country.
The NRC says that it doesn't have the authority to restrict foreign radioactive materials from being imported. They don't "distinguish between domestic and foreign waste."
Well, let’s see. Is it the World NRC or the United Nation’s NRC, the foreign NRC, or just maybe the NRC of the U.S.A.?
So, let’s distinguish between USA waste and foreign waste.
Let’s just hope Russian officials don’t decide to start shipping us giant containers from Chernobyl.
With governments at all levels struggling with balancing budgets, or at the federal level deficit spending, the state and nation should save a chunk of money by just doing away with their agencies that supposedly regulate and oversee nuclear-power industries.
Here we are some three decades since we began to address our problem with domestic nuclear waste. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars and finally come up with the long-term answer to … uh.
Oh, that’s right we still don’t have an answer.
We just have the NRC of allegiance to whoever or whatever (read nuclear companies) and no answers.
So, why are we spending the money?
Why not just bid the NRC out to nuclear industry concerns and pocket the money without all the subterfuge, lying and deception?
We turn an expense into a revenue stream and the public is just as unprotected as even but at least knows it.
Tennessee’s department is maybe even worse, betraying the public fully and concertedly while cashing our checks.
But, no one was fired or punished in any way that we know of.
Are we better protected with the NRC and state agency supposedly looking after our interests? Or would we be better off knowing fully those agencies are doing whatever the industries they are supposed to be regulating really call the shots?
At least we would really know where we stand. |
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