Oyster Creek Nuke Water Slaughter Permit Hearing Today

Don’t worry that “it could happen here“.

You should trust Exelon and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Oyster Creek plant  and be happy that we are blessed with a competent, dilligent, safety motivated public servant like Bob Martin:

“We have a commitment from Exelon to continue to operate the nuclear plant in a safe and responsible manner until its closure.” [DEP Commissioner Bob Martin]

Everything’s exceptional and different in the good ole USA – no corrupt lobbying, no myths and no propaganda here -we have strict regulation.

So we doubt that the NY Times will train its powerful journalistic guns on the US nuclear industry and folks like Martin, instead of Japan, who they’ve hammered with stuff like this:

Over several decades, Japan’s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions. Bureaucrats spun elaborate advertising campaigns through a multitude of organizations established solely to advertise the safety of nuclear plants. Politicians pushed through the adoption of government-mandated school textbooks with friendly views of nuclear power.

The result was the widespread adoption of the belief — called the “safety myth” — that Japan’s nuclear power plants were absolutely safe. …

Japan’s government has concentrated its propaganda and educational efforts on creating such national beliefs in the past, most notably during World War II. The push for nuclear power underpinned postwar Japan’s focus on economic growth and its dream of greater energy independence

And of course US regulators like Martin don’t behave like the NY Times tells us Japanese officials do in: Japanese Officials Ignored or Concealed Dangers  and would never do something as dumb as this:

TOKYO — Just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the center of Japan’s nuclear crisis, government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety.

And Lacey Township officials and residents have their priorities right. They care first and foremost about the health of their families.

They are fiercely independent and care deeply about safety, not just money and local tax revenues, as the NY Times reports is the priority in Japan: In Japan, a Culture That Promotes Nuclear Dependency

As Kashima’s story suggests, Tokyo has been able to essentially buy the support, or at least the silent acquiescence, of communities by showering them with generous subsidies, payouts and jobs. In 2009 alone, Tokyo gave $1.15 billion for public works projects to communities that have electric plants, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Experts say the majority of that money goes to communities near nuclear plants.

And of course, the US protects whistleblowers like Dennis Zannoni, not like Japan, as the NY Times tells us about Japan’s “culture of complicity“:

In 2000, Kei Sugaoka, a Japanese-American nuclear inspector who had done work for General Electric at Daiichi, told Japan’s main nuclear regulator about a cracked steam dryer that he believed was being concealed. If exposed, the revelations could have forced the operator, Tokyo Electric Power, to do what utilities least want to do: undertake costly repairs.

What happened next was an example, critics have since said, of the collusive ties that bind the nation’s nuclear power companies, regulators and politicians.

Despite a new law shielding whistle-blowers, the regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, divulged Mr. Sugaoka’s identity to Tokyo Electric, effectively blackballing him from the industry.

So, think about all that and speak out at today’s hearing.

Today,  NJDEP will hold a public hearing on the draft water permit that rescinds a prior requirement to install cooling towers and lets Oyster Creek off the hook, allowing 10 more years of slaughter of billions of aquatic plants and animal life that are vital to ecological health of the Bay and fisheries.

A two-session public hearing on the draft permit will be held on July 7, from 1-4 p.m. and from 7-9 p.m., at the Lacey Township Municipal Building, Lacey Road, in Lacey Township.

Written comments on the draft document must be submitted in writing to Pilar Patterson, Chief, or Attention: Comments on Public Notice NJ0005550, Mail Code 401-02B, Bureau of Surface Water Permitting, P.O. Box 420, Trenton, NJ 08625 by August 1, 2011

My views are clear. According to the the December 21, 2010 Asbury Park Press story: “Critics Blast Agreement That Avoids Cooling Towers At Oyster Creek”

Allowing the Oyster Creek nuclear reactor to operate through 2019 without cooling towers will undermine efforts to reduce fish losses and thermal impacts at other power stations and could conflict with forthcoming federal rules for cooling towers, critics contend. …

The result “is a horrible precedent, reversing the draft NJPDES permit’s best available technology determination,” said Bill Wolfe of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a former DEP employee and agency critic.