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<p align="left"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="+1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman07172007.htmlJuly">http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman07172007.htmlJuly</a>
17, 2007</font></p>
<h1><i><font face="Times New Roman" size="+2">California's New Nukes War</font></i></h1>
<h1><font color="#990000" face="Times New Roman" size="+2">Nuclear Surge</font></h1>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="+2">By HARVEY WASSERMAN<br>
<br>
</font><font color="#990000" face="Verdana" size="+3">A</font><font
face="Verdana" size="-1"> major pro-nuke "surge" against the renewable
solution to global warming is about to erupt in California.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">State assemblyman Chuck DeVore
(R-Irvine) has moved for a statewide vote to allow new nuclear power
plants to be built in the Golden State. He wants to repeal the 1976 law
requiring a solution to the nuke waste problem before new reactors are
built. A business cartel says it wants to build a new reactor near
downtown near downtown Fresno. (For more information on the California
situation, visit <a href="http://www.a4nr.org/">http://www.a4nr.org/</a>)</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">So the nation's biggest state may
soon be at war over new nukes. In essence, it's King CONG (Coal, Oil,
Nukes and Gas) versus Solartopia. The core issue is who will control
our energy: corporations, or the public.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">The irony is that we stand at the
brink of the greatest technological revolution in human history. But
we're being dragged away from it by Big Money's push for a technology
with fifty years of proven ecological disaster and financial failure.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Green energy is poised to remake our
world.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Wind power is the cheapest form of
new generation now available. There are sufficient wind resources
between the Mississippi and the Rockies to generate, with available
technology, 300% of the electricity we use. There's enough in North
Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to do 100%.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Solar technologies ranging from green
architectural design to desert power towers to photovoltaic cells that
go on every rooftop are booming toward a multi-billion-dollar mainstay
of our electric supply. Bio-fuels based on sustainable, organic
practices can transform our transportation sector. Tidal, wave,
geothermal, ocean thermal and a wide range of other green production
processes stand at the brink of epic profitability.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Meanwhile, increased efficiency and
revived mass transit are the cheapest, cleanest ways to salvage the
energy we waste. In concert, these <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0975340247/counterpunchmaga"><img
src="cid:part1.04070403.02070601@aim.com" naturalsizeflag="3"
align="right" border="0" height="170" width="130"></a>revolutionary
green technologies are poised to bring us to Solartopia, a
post-pollution planet powered totally by energy harvested in harmony
with our Mother Earth. They promise an abundance of efficient supply
with the power to boom our economies and save our ability to survive on
this planet.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">But here's the hitch: renewable
energy has the "flaw" of tending toward community control. In the long
run, a true Solartopian revolution must involve re-shaping our
corporate culture into one based on sustainability, accountability and
grassroots democracy. Though some astute corporations are cashing in,
in the long run green technologies are the door to decentralizationand
economic democracy. A green-powered Solartopia will own its energy
supply at the grassroots. Wind, solar, bio-fuels-they hold the keys to
community control.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Against all that, new nukes are the
ultimate weapon of mass distraction. There have been numerous
rationales put forth for building more reactors. Except to an
entrenched corporate power elite, none of them make any sense.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Some advocates claim new reactors can
fight global warming. In fact, through their own "normal" emissions, in
the construction process, in mining, milling and enriching fuel, in
decommissioning, in managing radioactive waste, in accounting for
inevitable catastrophic accidents and terror attacks, in weapons
proliferation, and much much more, atomic reactors are a global warming
nightmare.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Some also claim nukes will generate
cheap electricity. But fifty years of proven failure (the first
commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957) says
exactly the opposite. Overall, the nuke power experiment has been a
trillion dollar disaster, with explosions, melt-downs, cost overruns,
expensive failures, massive subsidies, undoable insurance, deregulatory
bailouts and much more on the debit sheet.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Overall, at its ultimate corporate
root, the new nuke push is a coup d'etat, a rightist putsch to prevent
the community ownership of our Solartopian energy supply.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">The irony in California could not be
more obvious. The only way the industry can build new nukes is for the
community to NOT require a solution to the radioactive waste problem.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">The world was told fifty years ago
that such a solution was "just around the corner." It was also told
atomic energy would be "too cheap to meter."</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">These two biggest of all 20th Century
industrial lies are about to be rationalized and atomized by a
corporate King CONG desperate to hold power.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">But the vision of Solartopia burns
bright and real.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Humankind now possesses all the
technology we need to solve global warming and bring us a world of
post-pollution prosperity. The new nuke surge just declared in
California is an early test in the larger war for a sustainable future.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana" size="-1">The question about to be asked in
California, and worldwide, is: Do we have the will to win Solartopia
for ourselves and our children?</font></p>
<b><font face="Verdana" size="-1">Harvey Wasserman</font></b><font
face="Verdana" size="-1"> helped co-ordinate media for the Clamshell
Alliance, 1976-8. He was arrested at Diablo Canyon in 1984 and at
Seabrook in 1989. He is author of "<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0975340247/counterpunchmaga">Solartopia:
Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030,</a>" He can be reached at: <a
href="mailto:Windhw@aol.com">Windhw@aol.com</a></font>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
"The past is the Textbook of Tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free" - Herman Melville</pre>
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