[News] Obama's Greening of Plutonium

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/day020310.html

Obama's Greening of Plutonium
by Susie Day

(PU) The White House moved today to protect Americans from nuclear 
accidents and attack by buying up rights to alarming facts pertaining 
to those subjects.  Speaking to an enthusiastic audience of the 
unemployed, President Obama announced that, in the wake of 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/energy-environment/17nukes.html>federal 
approval of $8.3 billion in loan guarantees to build two new nuclear 
reactors, the U.S. government will begin to secure 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/26/science-shackles-intellectual-property>patents 
on the dire warnings of global catastrophe that have long plagued the 
nuclear industry.

Mr. Obama said that these gloomy, "anti-nuke" predictions -- 
radiation poisoning; mass outbreaks of cancer; permanent genetic 
damage; the capacity of fuel from even one reactor to make a bomb 
more devastating than all the explosives in World War II; the 
extinction of life on this planet, etc., etc. -- can now be legally 
managed by the Department of Energy, as a form of intellectual 
property for which nuclear naysayers would have to pay hefty copyright fees.

"For years, scientists and doctors have been blah-blaming about 
medical dangers and meltdowns," stated the President.  "They claim 
that nuclear byproducts, released into the air and groundwater, cause 
cancer.  That might have been true back in the '80s, when 
<http://www.helencaldicott.com/>Helen Caldicott was young and public 
condemnation of nuclear power was at its height.  But recent 
Democratic National Committee polls have shown that it is these 
horrifying nuclear statistics themselves that pose the real danger."

Citing recent DNC studies indicating that higher profits create 
greater safety, the President continued: "Did you know, for instance, 
that just hearing someone say, 
'Cesium-137-in-the-air-or-groundwater-remains-active-for-600-years-and-locates-in-muscle-fiber-producing-sarcoma' 
can give you cancer?  Now, with our intellectual property laws, we 
can legally minimize these health risks, while curbing carbon 
emissions with nuclear energy."

Although the administration's renewed push for nuclear power is 
intended to increase employment and the supply of "clean" energy, it 
remains an open secret that Mr. Obama is also using this "nuclear 
renaissance" to court broader Republican support.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu 
explained, "Our strategy is simple.  We steer the public away from 
negative facts like how fossil fuel is essential to every stage of 
the nuclear energy cycle, and how we still haven't figured out how to 
safely store growing tons of radioactive waste.  Instead, we focus on 
upbeat messages like how totally great it is that the word green 
rhymes with clean."

While admitting that the two words do rhyme, most Republicans remain 
unmoved by the administration's efforts.  "I still think Obama's a 
socialist," said Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.  "If he was really 
serious about clean energy, he'd send 
<http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0415-23.htm>Helen 
<http://calitreview.com/19>Caldicott and all those other 
solar-powered terrorists to Gitmo."

Despite a cool Republican reception, the Obama administration's 
efforts to buy the rights to negative information about nuclear power 
may actually pay off in the next election.  Many American voters, 
already lacking jobs, homes, and healthcare, say they would welcome 
"big government" interference, if it were to stop them from thinking 
about other, more horrific things, especially nuclear things, which 
they hardly ever think about anyway.

"Sometimes I catch myself almost worrying about strontium-90 in my 
milk, or a terrorist attack on a reactor," admitted out-of-work 
barber Troy Burns of Troy, NY.  "Then I remember that I'd have to pay 
royalty fees if I complained out loud about all that, so I stop.  Not 
that I'm totally off science.  Like, don't you think it's cool, how 
they figured out King Tut died of malaria?"

Actually, under the new patenting guidelines, Troy Burns would be 
charged only a minimal fee for disseminating negative information 
that is already well documented.  He would, however, incur a much 
heavier fee for describing appalling nuclear disasters that have not 
yet come to pass.  Legally, therefore, Mr. Burns would be permitted 
to describe deposits of 
<http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2004-01-02-babyteeth_x.htm>strontium-90 
in baby teeth for about the price of a large order McDonald's freedom 
fries.  Conversely, it would cost him approximately two new cooling 
towers if he were to publicly decry 
<http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/12/news/economy/nuclear_security/index.htm?postversion=2009111209>the 
possibility of some terrorist flying a plane into New York's Indian 
Point nuclear plant.

Predictably, the issue of patents on harrowing nuclear data has 
attracted its share of shrill First Amendment detractors.  "It's my 
right as an American to talk about 
<http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sagan_nuclear_winter.html>nuclear 
winter," asserted Muffy Wentworth, Sierra Club member and author of 
the book Nuclear Winter: Sure Way to Beat Global Warming!

"Besides, there's no need to pay royalties on dread nuclear 
factoids," added Ms. Wentworth.  "As long as we have a first strike 
policy, I feel Americans are justified in going into deep 
psychological denial about all kinds of horrible things, including 
nuclear bombs detonating, ensuing global firestorms with gale-force 
winds, followed by interminable years of darkness and drastic 
cold.  Personally, if I'm feeling a little rage or grief, I just turn 
on TV and watch the Violence Channel."

The concept of nuclear winter, like similarly inconceivable nuclear 
calamities, is also discounted by a growing body of market-driven 
data suggesting that, if it hasn't happened yet, it's never going to happen.

President Obama would be the first to agree.

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Susie Day is Assistant Editor of <http://monthlyreview.org/>Monthly Review.







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