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Issues That Matter Until They Are Accomplished

The only thing that SHOULD matter: End the effect of corporate globalism on the US.

 
At one time I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. During that time I had taken notice no nuke plants were being built. Wall Street Journal laid it out...... they could not be insured, radio active waste is poisonous and above all else they are too expensive to build and maintain which all comes back on the ratepayers = a risky and bad investment. Nuke juice is way too expensive for my wallet.

Uranium processing is extremely toxic and radioactive waste is a necessary ingredient for nuke warheads.

Why would any sensible consumer want to be on the hook as the insurance policy?

Chernobyl is sill leaking. Putin attacked a nuke power plant in Ukraine. Terrorists are a real threat to radioactive nuke power.

And there is no truly safe place to store radio active waste for thousands of years.
 
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1. Solar Energy​

Our beautiful bread and butter, solar energy. We experience this amazing clean energy source through sunlight and heat, and we can utilize this energy to create electricity through technology like solar panels or concentrating solar power plants (reflective mirrors). We generate this electricity without any emissions or pollution, so it earns a checkmark.

gppenergysupplygraphicr2.png
Source: EPA

2. Wind Energy​

Another clean energy source, wind energy is technically another form of solar energy since the sun is partly responsible for all weather patterns on Earth. However, for the sake of how electricity is produced by solar panels and wind turbines, they are considered two different forms of energy.

Like solar energy, power generated from wind turbines produces no air pollutants. So, it’s an easy check on our list of clean energy requirements.

3. Bioenergy​

Scientists are working to create a super species of algae that can produce copious amounts of fat, which can be converted into biodiesel.
This is a really fun source of energy! Well, not fun, per se, but it’s nonetheless interesting. This form of renewable energy is created by living organisms such as algae, wood, crop residue. It can also come from food waste, landfills and fermented crops. The most common application is fuel for transportation and heating buildings.

It’s such a versatile form of energy because, while it can and does generate electricity, its most prevalent use lies in the creation of biofuels for transportation as a replacement for fossil fuels. And since we need fuel for everything from our cars to airplanes, bioenergy lowers the carbon impact on the environment. Check!

4. Geothermal Energy​

Unlike water, solar and wind, geothermal energy isn’t derived from the sun. Instead, it is energy in the form of heat from the Earth itself. Most often, geothermal is used to heat and cool people’s homes.

To create geothermal electricity, the Earth’s heat energy is used to boil water to create steam. This steam then rotates turbines that generate energy. It’s similar to a coal-powered power plant, but it’s run on the Earth’s heat instead of burning fossil fuels.
Another checkmark!

5. Hydropower​

Again, another source of energy technically powered by the sun, hydropower is fueled by the water cycle. The sun evaporates water, which then forms clouds that then drop rainfall and snow that create rivers, streams and other large bodies of water. The famous Hoover Dam, the giant structure holding back the raging Colorado River, is only one example of how hydropower is used today.

Hydropower relies on the kinetic energy from flowing water and transforms it into electricity through spinning turbines located in a moving body of water. Hence, hydropower can be a large-scale operation like the Hoover Dam, or it can be small-scale without a dam. Most importantly, this process doesn’t create greenhouse gases when generating electricity.
 
Eliminate nuclear weapons.
Reform the UN.
Free China and North Korea from tyrannical, corrupt governments.
Adopt ranked-choice voting.
Restore more fair taxation and reduce inequality.
 
Agriculture

Agriculture

American agriculture is being dominated by two contrary trends in the 21st Century. First, conventional family farm agricultural production is being destroyed by low prices and lack of market access due to mergers, acquisitions by big agribusinesses and their monopsony power over farmers. Second, there is a boom in more sustainable agricultural production and consumption due to increased consumer awareness and demand for healthy, fresh, and nutritious food. Continue reading ...
Corporate Crime

Corporate Crime

The US needs to crackdown on corporate crime, fraud and abuse that have just in the last four years looted and drained trillions of dollars from workers, investors, pension holders and consumers. Among the reforms needed are resources to prosecute and convict the corporate executive crooks and to democratize corporate governance so shareholders have real power; pay back ill-gotten gains; rein in executive pay; and enact corporate sunshine laws, among others.Continue reading ...
Fair Trade

Fair Trade

NAFTA and the WTO make commercial trade supreme over environmental, labor, and consumer standards and need to be replaced with open agreements that pull up rather than pull down these standards. Continue reading ...
 
Issues that Matter ALWAYS!
  • Adopt a carbon pollution tax
Why? GHG are not a serious problem nor an urgent issue. Does a tax even help?

  • Adopt a Wall Street securities speculation tax
Defining that would pure hell.

  • Adopt single payer national health insurance
Bad idea.

  • Defend, Restore and Strengthen the Civil Justice System
Why not just say make it easier to sue insurance companies? This is misleading.

  • Open up the Presidential debates
Why? For whom? There are over 100 recognized parties. Who would choose and how?

  • Put an end to ballot access obstructionism
Done.

  • Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law
You're about two generations late on this.

  • Reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East
Which ones? Are you anti-Israel or anti-Arab?

  • Work to end corporate personhood
Finally a decent idea. It took you long enough and it's not a fire that needs to be extinguished.

So much for the Nader ticket. He does not even address jobs, the economy, or law enforcement. Nothing to see here.
 
The Fukushima nuclear disaster was a 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that occurred 11 March 2011.

An ongoing intensive cleanup program to both decontaminate affected areas and decommission the plant will take 30 to 40 years from the disaster, plant management estimated.[22][5]

It was the most severe nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disasterin 1986. It was classified as Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), after initially being classified as Level 5,[8][9] joining Chernobyl as the only other accident to receive such classification.[

The accident was triggered by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on Friday, 11 March 2011.[11] On detecting the earthquake, the active reactors automatically shut down their normal power-generating fission reactions. Because of these shutdowns and other electrical grid supply problems, the reactors' electricity supply failed, and their emergency diesel generators automatically started.

Critically, these were required to provide electrical power to the pumps that circulated coolant through the reactors' cores.

This continued circulation was vital to remove residual decay heat, which continues to be produced after fission has ceased.[12] However, the earthquake had also generated a tsunami 14 metres (46 ft) high that arrived shortly afterward, swept over the plant's seawall and then flooded the lower parts of reactors 1–4.

This flooding caused the failure of the emergency generators and loss of power to the circulating pumps.

In the days after the accident, radiation released into the atmosphere forced the government to declare an ever-larger evacuation zone around the plant, culminating in an evacuation zone with a 20 km radius.[15]

All told, some 154,000 residents evacuated from the communities surrounding the plant due to the rising off-site levels of ambient ionizing radiationcaused by airborne radioactive contamination from the damaged reactors.[16]

Large amounts of water contaminated with radioactive isotopes were released into the Pacific Ocean during and after the disaster.

] An ongoing intensive cleanup program to both decontaminate affected areas and decommission the plant will take 30 to 40 years from the disaster, plant management estimated.[22][5]

 
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Chernobyl

A nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986. It is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history both in cost and casualties.[3]It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at seven—the maximum severity—on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.

The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the environment, involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion Soviet rubles—roughly US$68 billion in 2019, adjusted for inflation.[4][5]

The accident occurred during a safety test on the steam turbine of an RBMK-type nuclear reactor. During a planned decrease of reactor power in preparation for the test, the power output unexpectedly dropped to near-zero.

The operators were unable to restore the power level specified by the test program, which put the reactor in an unstable condition. This risk was not made evident in the operating instructions, so the operators proceeded with the test.

Upon test completion, the operators triggered a reactor shutdown. But a combination of operator negligence and critical design flaws had made the reactor primed to explode. Instead of shutting down, an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction began, releasing enormous amounts of energy.[6]: 33 

The core melted down and two or more explosions ruptured the reactor core and destroyed the reactor building. This was immediately followed by an open-air reactor core fire. It released considerable airborne radioactive contamination for about nine days that precipitated onto parts of the USSR and Western Europe, before finally ending on 4 May 1986.[7][8] Some 70% of fallout landed in Belarus, . About 49,000 people were evacuated from the area, primarily from Pripyat.

The exclusion zone was later increased to 30 kilometres (19 mi) when a further 68,000 people were evacuated from the wider area, and later it became the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covering an area of approximately 2,600 km2(1,000 sq mi).[10]

The reactor explosion killed two engineers and severely burned two more.. During the immediate emergency response 134 station staff and firemen were hospitalized with acute radiation syndrome due to absorbing high doses of ionizing radiation.

Chernobyl's health effects to the general population are uncertain. An excess of 15 childhood thyroid cancer deaths were documented as of 2011.[13][14] Model predictions of the eventual total death toll in the coming decades vary.

The most robust studies predict 4,000 fatalities when solely assessing the three most contaminated former Soviet states, to about 9,000 to 16,000 fatalities when assessing the whole of Europe.[18]

 

Three Mile Island accident​

Cleanup started in August 1979, and officially ended in December 1993, with a total cleanup cost of about $1 billion.[18]

The partial meltdown resulted in the release of radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment.

The Three Mile Island accident was a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island, Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor in Pennsylvania. It began at 4 a.m.[2][3] on March 28, 1979. It is the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.[4] On the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale, it is rated Level 5 - Accident with Wider Consequences.[5][6]

The accident began with failures in the non-nuclear secondary system[7]followed by a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve (PORV) in the primary system[8] that allowed large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant to escape. The mechanical failures were compounded by the initial failure of plant operators to recognize the situation as a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA).

TMI training and procedures left operators and management ill-prepared for the deteriorating situation.

During the event, these inadequacies were compounded by design flaws, including a cacophony of alarms, an inconvenient arrangement of instruments and controls, and the absence of clear indicators for coolant inventory or the position of the stuck open PORV.[9]

The accident crystallized anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the general public and resulted in new regulations for the nuclear industry. It has been cited as a contributor to the decline of a new reactor construction program, a slowdown that was already underway in the 1970s.[10]

The partial meltdown resulted in the release of radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment.

Cleanup started in August 1979, and officially ended in December 1993, with a total cleanup cost of about $1 billion.[18]

Three Mile Island accident
 
According to a 2010 survey of energy accidents, there have been at least 56 accidents at nuclear reactors in the United States (defined as incidents that either resulted in the loss of human life or more than US$50,000 of property damage). The most serious of these was the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
Nuclear reactor accidents in the United States - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Nuclear_reactor_accident...
That's an excellent safety record, outstanding even, especially considering the low amount of damage required to be considered serious.

Are you trying to say it isn't good enough?
 
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