More stricken Cold War-era nuclear workers qualify for aid

[jpak]

http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/20080105_ap_morestrickencoldwareranuclearworkersqualifyforaid.html

APOLLO, Pa. - Alarms warning of possible radiation contamination sometimes sounded as often as two to three times a month at the Pennsylvania nuclear fuel processing plant where Gloria DeBiasio worked for two decades starting in 1963.

She says she and other employees at Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., or NUMEC, responded to the pulsating tones by simply walking out of the facility in Apollo, a tiny town about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh.

"When we heard the alarms, we left and whatever was outside we breathed in," DeBiasio says. "There was no air conditioning, so wherever there were windows, we had windows open."

Nearly 20 years after being laid off by one of several companies that owned the plant over the years, DeBiasio was diagnosed in 2002 with thyroid cancer , a disease her doctor believes was precipitated by her long-term exposure to radiation at NUMEC.

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[NNadir]

1. And in other news, unreported by the popular press, the anti-nuke cult,

with all it's crododile tears over the pop imagination of Cold War workers, couldn't care less about coal workers who died this year from their pro-coal efforts:

http://www.ohsonline.com/articles/50304/

Recent data released by NIOSH indicating that the prevalence of coal workers pneumoconiosis, also called black lung disease, has doubled nationwide over the past five years signifies a "shocking and disturbing trend that must be investigated and must be reversed," United Mine Workers of America International President Cecil E. Roberts said yesterday.

"Black lung is a preventable disease that was supposed to be on the way out after the passage of the 1969 Mine Safety and Health Act," Roberts said. "That Act contained a respirable dust standard that all the experts said would be low enough to prevent miners from getting this horrible disease. But now what we're seeing is a trend upward in the prevalence of the disease among miners who began working in the industry after that Act was passed.

The fundie anti-nuke faith depends wholly on the immoral conceit that only nuclear power must be perfect.

There is NOT ONE anti-nuke who can compare the numbers in a paper on external costs. This is why the anti-nuke cult agitated for the use of dangerous fossil fuels in Germany.

www.externE.info

Since the anti-nuke cult cannot compare numbers, it is perfectly content and, in fact, anxious to replace nuclear capacity with coal.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL2582663020071025

Nuclear energy does not to be perfect to be better than everything else. It merely needs to be better than everything else, which it is.

But in the anti-nuke religion - which doesn't care who or how many people it kills - only nuclear energy needs to be perfect.

[Zachstar]

2. Yes

Whoever is still is that stupid movement needs to think about what they are doing.

If they hate the radiation part they need to fund fusion that uses fusion reactions to produce high energy neutrons. Such reactors can actually "burn" the waste from fission reactions while providing power to the grid.

If they hate the possibility of meltdown. (Even tho the scram systems are so extreme) they ought to fund fusion in order to convince the companies to shut down their reactors and build fusion reactors instead.

Fusion is their solution. Not stupidly going after the cleanest major producer (Solar, Wind, Hydro is minor) of power we got now.

And they mise well get used to the way things are now. At this rate they will see the subs and carriers sitting in dock with power cables hooked up to their reactors.

Remember survival will trump environmentalism every time. The Anti-Nuke people are pushing people towards the survival aspect. They may already have thanks to the success of stopping the construction of more reactors.