President Obama's Dirty Energy Fixation: Obama's support for nuclear power is unwavering.

[Better Believe It]

Obama's Dirty Energy Fixation
As radioactivity levels continue to spike in Fukushima, Obama's support for nuclear power is unwavering.
By Daphne Wysham
Daphne Wysham is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and the host of Earthbeat Radio and TV, now airing on public radio stations and on The Real News Network in the U.S., Canada, and other countries.
April 18, 2011

Just days after a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami unleashed a nuclear disaster in Fukushima, President Barack Obama signed a nuclear power cooperation agreement with Chilean President Sebastián Piñera. Like Japan, Chile is seismically active. It suffered the sixth-most powerful earthquake--8.8--ever recorded on a seismograph only last year.

Inexplicably, as radioactivity levels continue to spike in Fukushima, Obama's support for nuclear power is likewise unwavering. Public concern about nuclear energy is at an all-time high. But Obama--hailing from the nuclear powerhouse of Illinois (also home to the largest quantities of unsafe, radioactive spent fuel in the country)--is either tone-deaf or too beholden to Exelon and other nuclear companies to speak candidly on its dangers. Or perhaps his top jobs advisor, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, has urged him to stay mum.

Energy security and climate security aren't mutually exclusive. Nor must economic security be sacrificed for climate security. If he were truly visionary, Obama would heed the lessons of both the BP oil disaster and Japan's nuclear crisis and start providing the economic and political space for the truly clean and renewable energy alternatives to gain ground.

I've still got hope. And one of those hopes is that my president will absorb our collective shock over Fukushima, break out of his trance, and stop embracing dirty, expensive, unsafe nuclear power.



Read the full article at:

http://www.otherwords.org/articles/obamas_dirty_energy_fixation


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The Fatal Flaws of Nuclear Power

Costly nuclear power poses unnecessary safety and environmental risks, is heavily dependent on taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies, and generates deadly radioactive waste. Building new nuclear power plants will also not effectively address climate change. To learn about the myriad issues associated with nuclear power, explore our educational fact sheet series:

The Fatal Flaws of Nuclear Power Fact Sheets
Just the Facts: Cost
Just the Facts: Security
Just the Facts: Safety
Just the Facts: Waste
Just the Facts: Proliferation
Just the Facts: Nuclear Power and Climate Change
Just the Facts: Reliability


This series of educational fact sheets about nuclear power is aimed at refuting some of the central arguments that nuclear power advocates use when advancing their message. Specifically, there are six key reasons why nuclear power is not a solution to the United States’ energy needs: cost, security, safety, waste, proliferation and it will not address climate change.

The subject of nuclear power is making news headlines, but missing from the public debate are many of the facts. The same company executives and members of Congress repeat their message over and over, but that message must be dissected to ensure it’s accurate.

Click on and read the fact sheets at:

http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=2183

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