Where is the outrage?
I do not want to be perceived as outraged.
I do not want to admit to that level of anger, frustration, lack of acceptance with what is.
The New York Times on July 6 printed the below piece, by Matthew Wald.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070607L.shtml
I would have included the direct NYT reference but many may not be able to read it without a subscription.
“A factory that makes uranium fuel for nuclear reactors had a spill so bad that it kept the plant closed for seven months last year and became one of only three incidents in all of 2006 serious enough for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include in an annual report to Congress.
With a resurgence of nuclear plant construction expected after a 30-year halt, agency officials say frequently that they are trying to strike a balance between winning public confidence by regulating openly, and protecting sensitive information. A commission spokesman, Scott Burnell, said that the designation as "official use only" was now under review."
- This paragraph negates the fact that had that “serious” accident been made public it may have turned the public away from its naďve uninformed belief that nuclear energy can ever be a logical or valid response to the global warming issue. In other words the “balance” taken by the NRC is tantamount to Public Relations spin/
http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_60486.shtml
Below is from the NYT article;
" As laid out by the commission's report to Congress and other sources, the event at the Nuclear Fuel Service factory was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid dribbling under a door and into a hallway. Workers had previously described a yellow liquid in a "glove box," a sealed container with gloves built into the sides to allow a technician to manipulate objects inside, but managers had decided that it was ordinary uranium.
In fact, it was HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM
(emphasis added / ed)that had been declared surplus from the weapons inventory of the Energy Department and sent to the plant to be diluted to a strength appropriate for a civilian reactor. The factory is under contract to prepare such uranium for the Tennessee Valley Authority. (gfv- TVA is the company that last month re-opened their Brown’s Ferry reactor after the accident that closed it nearly 20 years ago.)
In a puddle, the uranium is not particularly hazardous, but if it formed a more spherical shape, according to the commission, it could become a "critical mass," a quantity of nuclear fuel sufficient to sustain a chain reaction, in this case outside a reactor. According to the letter sent by the lawmakers, the puddle, containing about nine gallons, reached to within four feet of an elevator pit. The letter from the congressmen says the agency's report suggests "that it was merely a matter of luck that a criticality accident did not occur."
If the material had gone critical, "it is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death," the commission said. A spokesman for the company, Tony Treadway, said the elevator was better described as a dumbwaiter, meaning it was far smaller than a passenger elevator.
Almost anywhere else, the commission would have disclosed the details. But in 2004, according to the committee's letter, the Office of Naval Reactors, part of the Energy Department, reached an agreement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that any correspondence with Nuclear Fuel Services would be marked "official use only." The plant processes high-enriched uranium for Navy submarine propulsion reactors.
The memorandum that declared such correspondence to be "official use only" was itself designated "official use only."
After an investigation, the commission changed the terms of the factory's license and said that the public had 20 days to request a hearing on the changes.
But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no member of the public could find out about the changes. The document describing them, including the notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely affected, was stamped "official use only," meaning that it was not publicly accessible. "Official use only" is a category below "Secret" and, while documents in that category are not technically classified, they are kept from the public."
I guess if it is kept from public eyes no one can get outraged.