Published: November 29th, 2011 at 12:43 pm ET
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Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate, New York Times, Feb. 3, 2008 (Emphasis Added):
[...] Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama’s campaigns for the United States Senate and for president. Two top Exelon officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among his largest fund-raisers.Another Obama donor, John W. Rowe, chairman of Exelon, is also chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power industry’s lobbying group, based in Washington. [...]
In addition, Mr. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, has worked as a consultant to Exelon. A spokeswoman for Exelon said Mr. Axelrod’s company had helped an Exelon subsidiary, Commonwealth Edison, with communications strategy periodically since 2002 [...]
“Exelon and Illinois state officials waited for four years until 2006 before disclosing that Exelon’s Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station, a nuclear plant 60 miles southeast of Chicago, had spilled millions of gallons of water containing tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, multiple times over a decade. Exelon officials eventually apologized and said the risks from the leak were “minimal”, with tritium levels in surrounding wells all found to be below regulatory limits.” (SOURCE: Chicago Tribune via Wikipedia)
“Exelon Nuclear, a business unit of Exelon Generation, owns/operates the largest nuclear fleet in the nation and the third largest fleet in the world. Exelon Nuclear represents approximately 20% of the U.S. nuclear industry’s power capacity with 10 power plants and 17 reactors—located in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey —and produces enough electricity to power 17 million average American homes annually. Approximately 93% of Exelon’s total electricity generation is nuclear power.” -Exelon Website
Published: November 29th, 2011 at 12:43 pm ET
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The Obama/Exelon marriage is one aspect of the festering problem of campaign finance laws…no doubt BO’s gung ho position on the future of the publicly unpopular nuke industry deeply eroded what little trust Americans (the few who even know of this connection) had left for their govt after the Bush years of unending preemptive war and excessive spending on things that just dont matter to the people
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I sometimes wonder if the US government’s response to Fukushima would have been different if the Obama administration had not been in power. Republicans also tend to love nuclear plants, but they are also more likely to be financially supported by the fossil fuel industries. No doubt there would still have been nuke industry pressure to downplay Fuku, but there might also have been some counter pressure from the oil/gas forces who saw a chance to benefit from it–one faction might have helped to at least diminish the influence of the other.
Would the EPA have turned off the monitors if the head of the executive branch hadn’t been so thoroughly owned by the nuclear industry?
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Tacomagroove posted a link on the government’s budget.
The amount of $$$ that goes to the nuclear budget is astounding!
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s1867pcs/pdf/BILLS-112s1867pcs.pdf
Pages 676-680
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“Frank Clark, CEO of Exelon’s Chicago-based subsidiary ComEd, was an Obama advisor and fundraiser, and Exelon director John Rogers has also raised funds for Obama.”
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Exelon
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I am quite sure that if we had a different democrat in it would have been different. Over 95% of democrats in California have excellent environmental records.
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o Biggest receivers of “nuclear cash”:
Rep. James Clyburn, Democrat, South Carolina
Steny Hoyer, Democrat, Maryland
Peter Visclosky, Democrat, Indiana
Joe Barton, Republican, Texas
o Nuclear Energy Institute and Exelon together “spent nearly $6 million lobbying Washington last year”
o Nuclear Energy Institute and Exelon “gave a combined total of $4.4 million to congressional candidates in the past two elections.”
summary of: http://craigcrawford.com/2011/03/17/nuclear-cash-in-congress/
Thanks to midwestern for linking above article
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This is the biggest reason we need to draft Bernie Sanders 2012. All current candidates are Pro-Nuclear Power.
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Hi Lil,
Totally agree with you about Mr. Bernie Sanders.
Both Democratic and Republican Party’s are funded by the Energy Corporations and they work for them.
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…Obama is calling for $36 billion in loan guarantees for traditional nuclear power plants…
In other words a $227,000 investment yields a $36,000,000,000 return!
don’t EVEN lol right now.
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So who pays for damages should any of those PLANTS have a FUKUSHIMA?
Right now each USA plant has 300M in insurance, and the US Government has a “slush” fund to cover further damage. Of course..damage has to be proven..as the poor Japanese victims of FUKUSHIMA have found out.
With Obamas track record of loans to businesses who immediated go bankrupt…hummmm do you think …???
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go to http://www.muckety.com and type in Exelon, Entergy, General Electric or any other nuclear invested company and you’ll see the octopus-like connections between politicians, businesses + nuclear companies
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The president needs to allocate 1 trillion dollars over the next 5 years to shut down and store all waste from every nuclear plant in the US. The nuke plants in this country need aggressive reform more than any other utility companies. If they don’t mobilize the population to fix the decaying plants the chances of our very own Fukushima become higher day by day. The fixing of the nuclear industry in the US should have a massive amount of funding to cold shut down, transport and store all the waste somewhere. Leaving spent fuel in danger zones is just asking for an American nuclear nightmare. Too bad the current administration took the nuclear lobby money. Obama needs to use that secular turkey brain of his to learn from Japan’s failure.
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Grampy – You said ” The president needs to allocate 1 trillion dollars over the next 5 years to shut down and store all waste from every nuclear plant in the US.”
Let me first say that I always look forward to reading your wise comments and almost always agree entirely with them. I must admit, however, that the first sentence in this comment is very bothersome to me. Are you suggesting that American taxpayers, naturally, should be held responsible for the shutdown, cleanup, and storage of the mess that the nuclear industry has made over the past 50 years. I would not agree with this. In any negotiations with the industry relating to the shutdown of it’s nuclear plants, I would argue that the issues of cleanup and storage are crucial negotiating points that need transparent argument before any deal is struck. Let’s not give the store away on this one. Best wishes and please continue commenting!
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Buffalojam,
Cost of Decommissioning a plant is supposed to be in the kitty by owner before the plant is built, if I am correct they have to show regulators the money is there to decommission it after life cycle !
But as I said last week, would surprise me one bit that them moneys are somehow gone, could be the reason the keep giving extension’s on plants, the cozy relationship again, … Ahem ! BP and All !!!!!
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Hi xdrfox
I would not be surprised one bit either if the money, some how has gone.
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WindorSolarPlease,
did you get what you wanted to know on ows ?
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Hi xdrfox
Don’t know what you mean, did I get what I wanted to know on Occupy Wall Street?
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Yes !
: )
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You just confused an old lady. Which is not hard to do.
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xdrfox – I am sorry that I missed the discussion on this is issue from last week that you referred to. If I understand what you are saying correctly, the industry has insured it’s longevity by misappropriating the very funds it was required to have on hand for it’s eventual decommissioning and, when shutdown does become necessary, the citizens will be left holding the bag. Grampybone suggests we will need 1 trillion dollars to close and store our nuclear plants and waste. Is this even close to being enough? Where will all this come from?
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In another time and place this would be called “paying off the guard at the gate to keep his mouth shut while you rob the mansion” only in this case its not gold and jewels but years off peoples lives, babies that will never make it to birth, lots and lots of pain and suffering from the robbing of DNA chains
A friend who survived 300 roentgens for adenoid “treatment” in the 50s plus all the fallout which accompanied those decades has two generations of physical and mental defects which followed and fears he’ll outlive them
BTW on the issue of breast cancer, new data proves there is NO GENETIC link so it must therefore be, you guessed it, environmental.
Hmm, I wonder what is all around us that’s known to cause cancer and has been proven by Dr. Gary Null to have higher breast cancer rates near…
Ah, what’s that y’say, NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS?
Are you listening, Messrs. Axelrod and Obama?
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I just replied to some stupid email from the Obama campaign that wanted my opinion on some artistic design [I didn't actually read the email]. I replied that the most important issue is to shut down all nuclear power plants worldwide immediately and to stop using uranium in munitions worldwide. They immediately [no doubt automatically] replied in an email thanking me for my reply.
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This and his Monsanto connections have soured me on the Hope and Change.
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I didn’t realize Obama had Monsanto connections too.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronnie-cummins/the-unholy-alliance-monsa_b_642385.html
It is a sad state of affairs on so many level…
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Thanks for the link . . . I had no idea about all of that.
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Great!
Do we have any hope?
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Hey Gb,
You said:
“Leaving spent fuel in danger zones is just asking for an American nuclear nightmare.”
I wrote on another thread:
Hate to break it to you but, there are reactors and other places here that have been leaking all kinds of radiation poisoning into the environment long before fukushima as these charts that have been taken down by the epa prove. Los Alamos and Richland, WA are big offenders. There were many of these charts, but they are all gone now.:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/59/billings.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/843/graphden.jpg/
We have seen increased cancer deaths and heart attacks and lots of others sicknesses and diseases that have killed people for how many years in the US? Like all of a sudden, in the recent history of this country, something magically happens killing more and more and it is because of what?
Who really knows. All we do know is, there has been a lot of historical high amounts of radiation pouring out all over the country according to these long hidden charts. Back during the days after the March 11th catastrophe in japan there was a lot of historical info on the epa web site and now it is COVERED UP. Some day, someone should do a FOIA information request from the epa before the destroy the records.
Anyone can plainly see that the nuke industry is a BIG part of the population control agenda and they are blatantly killing us all off right in our face and saying, there is nothing you can or will do about it human kind.
As we used to say…8…9…10!
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This is the biggest reason we need to draft Bernie Sanders 2012. All current candidates are Pro-Nuclear Power.
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Hi Lil,
Unfortunately, we will never see a Bernie Sanders in 2012 or any other year.
The candidates have been hand chosen, before we even vote.
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This shouldn’t surprise anyone, since they all work for the same people.
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Hi jimbojamesiv
+100 < Totally agree
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The other alternative is for everyone to get behind Jill Stein, the Green Party Candidates. This would take a huge amount of work on all of us anti-nuke people as she is relatively unknown. However, the Green Party puts Candidates into office in Europe, so if we could get them to help us inform people?
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Spiderwebs of affiliation–like we see in muckety.com, the website that PayAttention introduced here:
“Mr. Rowe is a member of the boards of the Nuclear Energy Institute, Edison Electric Institute, Institute for Nuclear Power Operations, Sunoco, Northern Trust Co., Illinois Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago Urban League, Field Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University and Chicago Club. He also serves on the visiting committees of the Oriental Institute and the University of Pennsylvania Museum.
His civic and professional commitments emphasize historical education and diversity. He serves as chairman of the Chicago Historical Society, chairman of the Mies van der Rohe Society and vice chairman of the Commercial Club of Chicago.”
http://nei.org/aboutnei/governanceandleadership/johnwrowe/
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Why do you think the Obama Administration is so silent on the Fukushima meltdown? http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/intrnational/2011/10/19/1268.html Shameful
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We need an ANTI-Nuclear candidate! Is Sanders running? I heard that he was trying to get another candidate to run against Obama.
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+1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
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Sen. Bernie Sanders Blocks William Ostendorff’s NRC Nomination Over Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant Lawsuit
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/28/sen-bernie-sanders-blocks_n_885866.html
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Thanks for the link. It is crazy that the state voted to shut it down(not renew the license) and they are still trying. What happened to the power of the people? Was the vote legitimate or not?
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The vote was legitimate. By the contract, the company knew that they could be voted out. The company is suing in court to override the vote.
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I hope the court throws out the case!
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The “Power of the People” became a ghost some time ago, and grows apace.
As to Bernie, he has said loudly, clearly, and unequivocably that he does not want to run for President.
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From: “Exelon Central”, in the lovely state of Illinois, USA, home to the most nuclear reactors and nuclear waste of any state in the USA. I live about 25 miles (40 km) from the Braidwood Nuclear Plant. Illinois is where Axelrod and Obama are from. The state is controlled by Democrats who are in bed with the nuclear industry. When Obama was a senator he was aware of the tritium leaks and the plight of the people near the Braidwood Plant. The people got Obama to put sponsor legislation the issue of to make it mandatory for the Nuclear Plants to report to the public their radiation leaks. It all looked great the people thought they had a champion in Obama. In the end he compromised it all away and the Nuclear Industry was left to volunteer notification to the public instead of it being mandatory. When Obama ran for president I knew he would compromise to a fault based on his performance on this one issue. Looking back now with Axelrod and Obama’s connections to Exelon and all the donations from Exelon you can see that Obama and other Democrats and I’m sure Republicans too, are in the palm of Exelon’s hand.
–continued–
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The leaks of Tritium at Braidwood were only discovered after the parents of a 7 year old girl with a rare brain tumor started investigating the source of the brain tumor. A few years ago I learned about the leaks of Tritium there. The issue was compelling to me. One thing led to another and I ended up meeting the group of people who brought the issue to light there. One woman showed me a map of her neighborhood, in the shadows of the cooling towers, in which she had gone door to door asking about cancer in the household. I am not an epidemiologist but based on her map I wouldn’t move into that neighborhood. There were many cancers. Last I knew the people who lived in the area still received coupons from Exelon to get bottled water so they didn’t have to take the risk of drinking Tritium.
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Here are two links to the real backstory of how this issue at Braidwood unfolded. I have met the Mom of the girl in this story. She is an amazingly strong woman, our own Erin Brockovich,
“Sarah Sauer at age seven fell ill with a brain tumor. The Sauers lived close to two nuclear power plants in Grundy County, Illinois, that had leaked millions of gallons of water containing tritium into the surrounding environment. Some of it seeped into water supplies used by local residents, including the Sauers, for drinking, bathing and cooking. Exelon, the owner of the plant and our nation’s largest supplier of nuclear energy, hadn’t informed the community of the leak. When the Sauers brought Sarah home from the hospital, her mother, Cindy, learned about an out-of-court settlement between Exelon and the Illinois attorney general of charges relating to violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act dating back to 1990. Sarah’s father, a physician with degrees in engineering, set about collecting data, did the calculated and found that brain cancers increased 30% and leukemias increased 31% within a 15-mile radius of the two reactors. The Sauers have moved far away from Exelon’s plants. Read more… http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2736:commentary-nuclear-energy-is-bad-for-our-children-and-our-economy&catid=5:original&Itemid=24
Another story about Braidwood and the challenge to get information: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-public-records-08-mar08,0,7706993.story
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Sad…thanks for the links and info.
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enoughalready45, I saw this today when I was looking for phone numbers for our senators:http://www.kirk.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=364
and it reminded me that I wanted to ask admin to create a forum for the gathering of information about the possibilities for storage for already existing nuclear waste. I haven’t done a lot of reading about the geological characteristics of Yucca mountain, but since it is a possibility that is still being considered as a repository, I’m really interested in the research that supports and critiques its use as a nuclear waste holding ground.
Nothing can contain nuclear waste forever.
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Yucca mountain is not a possibility except in the opinion of blind ostriches. In addition, there are between 2,000 and 6,000 train derailments every year in the US.
http://www.google.com/search?q=yucca+mountain+fault+lines&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
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Thanks for getting this started, Anne.
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There are a lot of other links that I posted some months on enenews.com. They are also probably on my computer somewhere also. But I have to teach this week until next Monday and am really too tired right now to find them.
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We’ll find those other links, Anne. Best to you in your teaching. Glad those students have the opportunity to study with you.
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Here are some of them:
http://www.google.com/search?q=yucca+mountain+opposition&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
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The Science and Politics of the Proposed High-Level Radioactive Waste Dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, USA
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/yuccaitaly1.htm
Nuclear Waste Shipment Routes
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/states/us.htm
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Nuclear’s Fatal Flaws: Summary
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/article_redirect.cfm?ID=15422
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Meanwhile, every 1000-megawatt nuclear reactor continues to produce ’30 TONS OF HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE’ per year.
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It may be too expensive, in the minds of some,to decommission nuclear power plants. But soon so many people will have died that there will be no way to generate any revenue for anything at all.
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Lawmakers Investigate Fraud Allegations at Yucca Mountain
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/3171429/lawmakers-investigate-fraud-allegations-at-yucca-mountain
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Nuclear Regulatory Commission Deadlocked On Yucca Mountain
“The commission split, 2-2, on whether to uphold or reject a decision by an independent nuclear licensing board, which voted last year to reject the Energy Department’s attempt to withdraw its application for Yucca Mountain. The licensing board said the government failed to make a scientific case for why the application should be withdrawn.
“Despite the split vote, the NRC said in an order Friday that the licensing board should continue steps to close down Yucca Mountain by the end of the month….”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/09/09/140337262/nuclear-regulatory-commission-oks-closure-of-yucca-mountain
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/nuclear-illinois-helped-shape-obama-view-on-energy-in-dealings-with-exelon.html
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/03/14/exxon-chevron-bp-greased-obamas-campaign
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html
http://craigcrawford.com/2011/03/17/nuclear-cash-in-congress/
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Thanks Midwestern and Anne for all the links.
Just some more fun about Nuclear Illinois–
Illinois, USA -Home to the American Nuclear Society, a pro-nuclear organization. http://www.ans.org
Here is a quick summary of how they are portrayed in the press:
http://www.mysuburbanlife.com/lagrange/photos/x313366036/4-THINGS-YOU-DIDNT-KNOW-AMERICAN-NUCLEAR-SOCIETY
Illinois, USA -Location of Argonne National Laboratory where they continue to do nuclear research. Nuclear waste is located on site although I hear they have been removing it and relocating it to another location. I live nearby and it is nerve racking to think the trucks I drive by may have hot radioactive waste from Argonne on them.
Illinois, USA –Location of historic atomic waste dump.-open to the public. On the grounds of a forest preserve near Argonne Lab –”This is the surface dump site known as ‘Plot M’ where waste from the world’s first nuclear reactor [Stagg Field CP-1 components were reassembled as CP-2 and CP-3] was deposited during WWII. This top-secret site [known now as 'Site A'] became the early Argonne National Laboratory site immediately after the war. It is perhaps the only unguarded nuclear site in the world!”
Source: http://wikimapia.org/606271/Nuclear-Waste-Burial-Site-Plot-M
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Believe me, if a republican was in it would be the same. They would just take more money to keep out of it.
Hilary would have went in and snuffed it out with her heel. This is an interesting site. Liberal thinking about nuclear but saying the grand old party (good old boys) would handle this situation better? They are only focused on making the current admin look bad instead of helping the American people. I been out of work for over a year and no employment insurance because of the vetoes of GOP. Trickle down ain’t working. Except at Fukushima. (I don’t mean to make light of the subject)
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@ entropy
I agree with you about the Republicans and no I’m not saying they would handle it better. The Chicago Tribune has a columnist, John Kass, who discusses Illinois politics. He has coined a great term to describe it, “the combine”. What it basically means is that in Illinois the Democrats and Republicans work together, but not in a good way. Usually both sides have a hand in the back room deals and corruption here. The only reason I brought up the Democrats being in control of Illinois and Illinois being so pro-nuclear is because the article is referencing Axelrod a pro-nuclear democrat from Illinois. A lot of people like things to be black and white i.e. Republicans: anti-environmental, pro-nuclear, pro-oil etc…. Democrats: pro-environmental, anti-nuclear, anti-oil etc… If only it were so simple it would be easy to select whom to vote for. For me it always seems to come down to whom is the lesser of two evils.
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