Listen
Sorry, the media you have requested has expired.
Episode: Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith - Scandals of Nuclear Waste
As we found out from Fukushima, when a nuclear reactor blows up or leaks, it's everybody's problem. Many of my listeners were sprinkled with radiation from that accident in Japan.
The same applies to nuclear waste. It will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years, threatening cancers and genetic mutations for all conceivable human time - just so we can waste more power in our homes and business now.
This week we hear about scandals in the American and British nuclear industry. Even the temporary stop-gap solutions for storing waste turn out to be untested, ludicrous, or known-to-be dangerous. They, or is it we, do it anyway. Our descendants have to figure out an answer. They will pay and pay, like a kind of debt slavery from the past, for tending the nuclear waste of today.
Following a successful lawsuit brought by four environmental groups, the American nuclear industry must provide an environmental risk assessment for nuclear waste. Some say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is evading the ruling, and the requirement of local democracy, but ramming through a one-size-fits all generic risk assessment for all the nation's power plants. You'll hear two points of view from the NRC hearing in Perrysberg Ohio, and I'll talk with long-time anti-nuclear activist Kevin Kamps about the fallacy of safe storage for highly radioactive waste.
Is Britain doing any better? Another veteran, nuclear engineer John Large tells us about the growing mountain of plutonium in the UK, and the big risks of nuclear terrorism.
This isn't going to end well.
Episode Hosts
None listed