September 2nd, 2007
Dear readers,
When Al Gore lied to Congress last spring (2007) about nuclear power (by not denouncing it as a solution to Global Warming), Larry E. Craig (R-ID) made a speech in support of nuclear power so that the supposedly left-leaning former Vice President Al Gore didn't have to.
Here's an excerpt from my report on the hearings, from March 30th, 2007:
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[Al Gore] agreed with Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) who said Three Mile
Island proved we're "GOOD" (because it didn't completely melt down
and destroy Pennsylvania).
[Gore] laments that nuclear power plants "only come in large." He looks
forward to the next generation of nuclear power plants, which (he
feels) will solve all the problems of the previous three generations.
[Gore is] "less sure than he once was" about the usefulness of nuclear
power. "So I think it will play a small role in some areas, I don't
think it will be a big part" he says again.
"The waste problem may be solved" Gore reiterates hopefully. Senator
Larry Craig (R-ID) admits "Yeah, we still have problems ... waste
management..." He did not identify any other problems. Chairperson
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told Al Gore: "I'll give you 60 seconds
to respond to that speech about nuclear energy [by Senator Larry Craig]."
Gore used his minute to reiterate that he DIDN'T say nuclear power
"wasn't a factor" in his proposed solution to the problem of global warming.
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A few months earlier, in December 2006, Senator Craig, who was on the Senate's Energy Committee, had this to say about Senator Harry Reid's distaste for having the entire country's nuclear waste deposited at Yucca Mountain in his home state of Nevada:
"Harry in his wildest dreams wishes it would go away, but it is not going to go away,"
High on Craig's "to do" list at the time was INCREASING the allowable capacity of Yucca Mountain (since it won't be big enough to do its intended job anyway), and in a January 2007 op-ed in a Boise, Idaho paper, he attacked attempts to limit greenhouse gases as "California dreamin'."
Craig's always been a strong supporter of nuclear power. In 1999, for instance, he backed the "Mobile Chernobyl" bill (HR-45), along with two other Senate "atomic industry gophers" (as Michael Marriot and Mary Olson of NIRS rightly called them) Frank Murkowski (R-AK) and Pete Domenici (R-NM). That same year, Craig wanted to weaken the 1872 Mining Law with a rider attached to a Senate Interior Appropriations bill (S1292) to make it easier to dump toxic waste onto public lands.
He thinks the world is his toilet and the toilet is his world. Also in 1999 he was pushing hard for Yucca Mountain:
"The biggest problem is what to do with the waste and in this country it's a political problem," Craig said. "It's not a scientific problem. It's not an engineering problem. It's purely political -- 'Not In My Back Yard.' "
His statement is utter fiction. Nuclear power's other problems include: Incredibly high start-up and running costs; Falsification of data on the danger of small amounts of radiation (especially to children, infants, and fetuses); Nuclear proliferation though the extraction of plutonium, tritium, and other components of nuclear bombs from the atomic waste stream; Terrorism threats; Extremely low efficiency; Clean alternatives exist; Hundreds of billions of dollars in past government subsidies with hundreds of billions more to come; etc. etc. etc.. But Senator Craig never notices THESE problems!
In 2000, Craig was at it again, pushing for weaker suitability standards for Yucca Mountain. His cohort, Frank Murkowski, bluntly stated: "What we want is to make sure that the measuring is under a regulation that allows waste to go to Yucca." These two wanted expedience, not science, to be used to set the limits on pollution from the site!
But high-level nuclear waste is hardly the only problem created by nuclear power. A typical reactor produces about 3,000 55-gallon drums of so-called "low-level" radioactive waste EACH YEAR. This waste, too, has no safe place to go.
In 2001, and again in 2003, Craig was instrumental in securing billions of dollars in nuclear research funding for INEEL (now called INL, after being called INEL for a while) which, not coincidentally, is located in his home state of Idaho. And which also is the recipient of a $20+ BILLION dollar Superfund Cleanup -- because it needs it. Well, so do a lot of other nuclear waste sites, which are languishing (and leaking).
INL and the Argonne National Laboratory West (near Idaho Falls) are the country's designated design centers for next-generation nuclear power plants. The only problem is, the INTRACTABLE issues with nuclear power CANNOT be solved by redesigning the plants themselves. No design, for example, can survive a nuclear bomb attack, or a major earthquake, or human stupidity, or poor construction, and there is no solution to the problem of nuclear waste because science can't do the impossible -- and storing nuclear waste safely IS impossible.
When Senator Harry Reid pointed out that a fire in a tunnel in Baltimore in 2001 showed the dangers of trying to transport 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste across the country, a spokesperson for Craig's office stated that Reid's comments were: "a misguided and misinformed effort to connect something that should not be connected. The fact of the matter is, if that train had been carrying nuclear components, it would have been protected in containers that would have prevented this sort of a spill."
There was no truth to the spokesperson's comments. None whatsoever. The conditions in the tunnel fire exceeded ALL proposed standards for nuclear shipping containers.
Thank goodness Criminal Senator Larry E. Craig will not be a Senator much longer, having resigned in disgrace yesterday, effective September 30th. And not a moment too soon!
Sincerely,
Ace