Published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, on Thanksgiving Day,

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/1105/24edmckinney.html

By Cynthia McKinney

Just as Senator Bill Frist is telling Georgians "Nuclear power plants have a sound safety record," Southern Company's Edwin I. Hatch nuclear plant along the Altamaha River near Baxley has reported that they lost 68 inches of highly irradiated nuclear fuel.   As highly radioactive waste, this irradiated or "spent" nuclear fuel is millions of times more radioactive than new fuel.  Hatch says the missing fuel is either at the bottom of the fuel pool or it was mistakenly shipped out with radioactive scrap regularly collected by the filters. The problem?  There is NO facility in the United States licensed to accept commercial irradiated reactor fuel.  The containers that it was shipped out in are said to be safe for hundreds of years.  The half life of irradiated nuclear fuel exceeds a million years.  You do the math.

Hatch's safety record is hardly "sound."  In 1984 cracks in the containment system were discovered.  Hatch is also on record for one of the largest release of radioactive water into our environment.  In 1986, combined human error and equipment failure led to the release of 84,000 gallons of radioactive water from Hatch into a wetlands area on plant property, only a few hundred yards from the Altamaha River.  Both plant Hatch and Vogtle plants have also had ongoing worker safety violations.

But never mind all that, says Mr. Frist, nuclear power is safe.  Is it safe from terrorist attacks, Mr. Frist?  Not according to the FBI Director who testified to Congress in February stating otherwise.
 
In 1986 a NRC commissioner testified to Congress that he expected a core meltdown to happen over the coming 20 years.  It sounds like we could be overdue.  Accidents?  Heck, says Frist, Three Mile Island was no big deal.  And Chernobyl?  According to Frist it only killed "scores of people and rendered about 20 square miles of land uninhabitable."  Frist fails to say anything about the global fallout, which touched 3 billion people worldwide, or about how incidents of thyroid cancer in neighboring Belarus are 100 times higher than before the accident. "Chernobyl heart" is a condition found in children from the region who develop holes in their hearts and will die without surgery.  Thousands of children each year are on the waiting lists, but only a few hundred receive treatment.  The Chernobyl nightmare is far from over, Mr. Frist.  

Now anyone who raises concerns about nuclear power safety immediately gets branded as a fear-monger.  Were the writers at the Times-Picayune labeled that when as early as 1998 they predicted that a level 3 hurricane could breach the levies and flood the City of New Orleans?  But even when the "fear-mongers" turn out to be right, as they did in Louisiana, why should we worry?  Haven't we all seen how swiftly and judiciously FEMA and the DHS responded to that catastrophe?

Frist wants Georgia to embrace building new nuclear reactors.  I am told Mr. Frist is a doctor. What kind of doctor would tell the citizens of Georgia that their nuclear plants have a "sound safety record" when the facts say otherwise?  Only a spin doctor.

 [The above is the original version as submitted to Atlanta Journal Constitution.]