This article contains some rare information and analysis about U.S. unions' positions on the Green New Deal and the climate disruption crisis in general.
Published onTuesday, August 06, 2019 by TomDispatch
MAJURO, Marshall Islands (AFP) — As nuclear explosions go, the US “Cactus” bomb test in May 1958 was relatively small — but it has left a lasting legacy for the Marshall Islands in a dome-shaped radioactive dump.
The dome — described by a UN chief Antonio Guterres as “a kind of coffin” — was built two decades after the blast in the Pacific ocean region.
Ottawa is pushing a new smaller, modular nuclear plant that could only pay off if mass produced.
M. V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at UBC, and the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India, Penguin Books, New Delhi (2012).
Although the mainstream media said next to nothing about it, independent experts have made it clear that Hurricanes Harvey and Irma threatened six U.S. nuclear plants with major destruction, and therefore all of us with apocalyptic disaster. It is a danger that remains for the inevitable hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters yet to come.
In a series of landmark statements following the May 2017 election of the pro-reform President Moon Jae-in, Korean energy, transport and public service workers have called for “a just energy transition” allowing the sector to “function as a public asset under public control.” Unions support the new government’s decision to close the country’s aging coal-fired and nuclear power stations, and its planned reconsideration of two new nuclear facilities – Kori 5 and Kori 6.
