So our local nuclear power plant had a little incident last week. Just a little explosion. They shut down one of the reactors as a result, though it is half-functional again at this point. It’s the third one they’ve had in three months. If there is one thing I don’t like about living here–just one–it is that nuke plant. There is a long and bitter history surrounding its construction; locals have told me no one really wanted it, but like most things involving greedy politicians and private industry, locals were overruled. It was the last one ever built in the U.S. Now it is aging and in need of new steam generators. (I sincerely hope the permits for those are denied). Have I mentioned it was also built on an earthquake fault?

My sister and I have a friend in Pennsylvania (don’t we all have a friend in Pennsylvania?) who was going to college next to the Three Mile Island plant. She is now trying to fight off a weird form of leukemia. The kind you might get if you were once exposed to nuclear radiation. A local guy here with a case of Lymphoma has said on his website that his job at the plant had nothing to do with it:

In December of 2000 I was diagnosed with Lymphoma, and some people have suggested that there must be a link between my job and the fact that I got cancer. While it’s possible, I really doubt it…There are more than a million new cases of cancer in the USA every year…it just happens. Diablo Canyon probably had nothing to do with mine.

It’s a fascinating study in the power of denial. On his cancer page he said he actually enjoyed his cancer experience, so PG&E certainly picked the right guy for that job. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but my friend in Pennsylvania is not so easily convinced, nor does she find her medical troubles pleasant.

He also says the accident at Three Mile Island was contained because of our country’s superior engineering of nuclear plants. Except it wasn’t.

It’s a sad thing that the Bush administration is trying to put nuclear power back on the table, because I will never understand how people can think something like nuclear power is a sane way to produce energy. It is woefully inefficient, environmentally insane, and worst of all, just plain incredibly dangerous. Our particular reactor stores it’s waste pretty much out in the open (in pools!) and it doesn’t take too much brains to figure out what a lovely terrorist target that would make. But for the people that work over there, the story is always the same: Of course it’s safe! They also claim it’s a vital source of energy for the area, and for this argument, they cite the Enron energy crisis that California got tangled up in years ago. This is a laughably transparent non-argument when you consider the fact that the “crisis” was an just cynical charade game manufactured by a bunch of greedy executives. It wasn’t a real energy crisis, and the nuclear power plants were not our saviors. Our governor at the time, Gray Davis, ended up taking the fall for all that even though he had nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, even though the truth about that whole mess has been exposed for some time now, everybody seems to have stopped caring. Anyway, if the thing produces so much vital energy to the area, how come all of us still had power with one of the reactors not even working?

I don’t know how the paid liars that work for the nuclear industry sleep at night.