Terrorism and earthquakes
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- November
- 15
New York’s attorney general is one of six asking that the threat of terrorism and earthquakes be considered when nuclear power plants apply for relicensing.
It’s been an issue in the application for the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan. It wants to renew its license for 20 years.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission now looks at environmental issues and the age of the plant, but not terrorism threats. Terrorism is evaluated on a continuing basis, according to the commission.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 6:22 pm by Noreen O'Donnell.
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Hello, Noreen….
Society has certain arms, or organs, to accomplish certain tasks.
The sane use of the organs of society, is to call upon the correct agency to accomplish its task, within its expertise, and to not “agency-bash”. For instance, we wouldn’t bash a police department, for failing to teach schoolchildren, or for failing to collect trash. We have other competent agencies, specifically mandated to do these tasks.
Congress has passed laws mandating (under the Department of Homeland Security), airport security measures, passenger screening methods, on-board airplane security measures, infrastructure protection measures, police and first responder coordination measures, and the Defense Department with its multibillion dollar clout, has pre-deployed assets, ready to act, should a terror event ever unfold within the USA.
Attempts by the Bush administration, to push the “protection envelope” further than the people in this country felt comfortable allowing, resulted in a disastrously failed administration, and 150,000 US soldiers, stranded in the middle east. We must learn from Mr. Bush’s failure, that trying to be overly protective, overly mock-safe, unduly fearful and over-reactive, will actually sap society’s resources, and its political cohesiveness, giving us not the ultra-protection we had sought, but in fact a more confused, less manageable scenario, where neither the public, nor responsible leaders see a clear path to success.
Within its expertise, NRC has determined that aircraft impact scenarios are already well within mandated limits for the structures inside our country’s 104 nuclear electrical generation plants. They ran tests, they used vast engineering expertise to calculate their results, and they reassure us that the design bases of the licensed plants are adequate for any foreseeable aircraft strike. This is their bailiwick. This is their legal mandate. We created this agency to take care of this task, and it has shaped its policies to this end for decades. (Earthquakes are well covered already by NRC).
Knowing this, how are we to judge the public statements of 6 untrained local politicians, all of them subject to re-election every 4 years, none of them possessing any qualifications to trump, gainsay, or best the NRC at its own work….. nonetheless urging NRC to reconsider, on the merest emotional motivation, and to thus “Pull a George Bush”, and redesign their agency to over-react, reject science, accept “agency-bashing” as an extra-legal means of the judicial branch (local attorneys general) hijacking the executive branch (NRC), and to lock-down America…..... all the while never petitioning DHS for a single new measure, for a single new deployment or allocation, and never petitioning the Defense Department for any specific assets to be deployed in their states?
Haven’t they left something out? Have they not simply joined a “rush-to-bash” , wrongly singling out NRC to secure the skies, to deploy protections, to build bunkers, and thus to take up, any and all shortfall in the performance of every other agency mentioned here, including the AG’s themselves?
We can only expect NRC to take out the NRC trash, not to vaccinate all of America. We can only expect NRC to test, to engineer, to determine the strength of the 104 sets of buildings, and to report back to us on whether some danger exists for us, in how these buildings are put together.
They have done this. They have determined we are safe.The issue ends there.
Any further inter-agency harassment, even if couched in frivolous lawsuits, is a no-win tactic, bogging America down in endless confusion, debate, and red tape, while the 1000 other steps that could be taken (outside of NRC) are never even broached.
And why is this?
Simple. The entire movement has been driven , not by healthy, responsible inter-agency desire to do good, but instead by a narrow covert agenda——- the desire to impede nuclear generation in this country. All the motivating briefs behind the 6 AG’s statements were written by antinuclear partisans. The downside to this reliance on privateers to motivate elected officials will come in a decade or so, when our power supplies run out, and a massive wrenching readjustment besets our society, at exactly the time when Asian economies not driven off the tracks by such blindered partisan goals, zoom past us, and leave us to become “the new Third World”.
As an antidote to the PR hacks on both sides, a short read at website:
http//:nuclearinfo.net
can put a lot of the electioneering excesses in perspective.
Forgive my repeat posting. I thought it a good exercise, and I suggest it might put any hollow, sef-serving posturing in perspective. I await the announcement of the politician who is to tell us:
“I propose the re-powering of New York State. I have arranged seed money for 20 new gas-fired generation plants, 10 solar plants, and 10 new windfarms. I have written up a detailed transition plan, to show just how all the power now derived from Indian Point, will be picked up by these new plants, as they come on line. I give you now my employment contract, offered to those employed currently at Indian Point, offering them first crack at jobs in the new facilities. I give you my new tax plan, to show just how the new construction will affect current tax structures, and I give you a referendum. I include a bond issue to buy Indian Point, and decommission it. Accept my proposal, or choose the status quo”.
Expect it anytime soon?
Then maybe any posturing on the issue is just this:
EMPTY POSTURING??
My apologies.
Add an “L” .. self-serving, not sef-serving.
(but you knew that).