Clean! Safe! Nuclear Energy!

Via The New York Times:

Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.

G.E. Apologizes

In an early morning press conference today, General Electric Chief Executive Jeff Immelt apologized for their recent corporate tax controversy. G.E. is the nations's largest corporation. Despite reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion for 2010 (5.1 billion from US operations), G.E. not only paid zero in federal income taxes in 2010, they claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

Immelt acknowledged, "The fact that we paid nothing to the I.R.S. this year can only be described as obscene." He went on to add:

"When a company's lowest paid employee pays more in federal taxes than the company itself there is a fundamental flaw in the system. In this tough economy millions of hard-working Americans are struggling to just get by let alone to pay their own taxes. Moreover, they are being hit on all sides by cutbacks in government services at both the federal and state levels. Frankly, I'm surprised that they aren't rioting in the streets."

Immelt said that corporations like G.E. should not be able to concentrate their profits offshore and said that as President Obama's liaison to the business community and as the chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, he plans to lobby other American multinationals to imagine a better way. "We must be better corporate citizens. We must pay our fair share," he said.

At the end of the presser, Immelt replied to a question about the G.E.-designed reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant with, "My bad." .

Do you feel lucky?

Perhaps, in a perfect world -- one without earthquakes and tsunamis -- nuclear power plants make sense. But, this world is not perfect -- it's not just full of natural disasters -- it's full of people who make disastrous decisions.

We now know that the regulators and plant operators made wrong assumptions about just how much seismic activity the plants needed to be able to withstand (they were only designed to withstand a 7.9 quake and the one in Japan has now been upgraded to a 9.0).

We also know that Japanese ministers ignored warnings about plant vulnerabilities.

I know what you're thinking. "Do I trust governments and businesses to always do the right thing?" You've got to ask yourself one question:

Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?


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Clean! Safe! Nuclear Energy!

Articles:
Explosion Destroys Walls of Japanese Nuclear Reactor Building, NHK Reports

Japan Orders Evacuation Near 2nd Nuclear Plant

Radiation leaks from Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant


Looking for livestreaming news from Japan in English? Check out YokosNews.

(h/t to Spork for the above video.)

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