"Clean, safe, too cheap to meter..." -- Harry Shearer's sarcastic "News of the Atom," on Le Show

Shearer, voice of Mr. Burns on The Simpson's, reported on: dangerous embrittlement of pipes at the Pilgrim reactor near Boston...hazardous rock falls at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico...and the risk of a reactor meltdown at Tricastin nuclear plant in Provence, France due to human error leaving the reactor vulnerable to catastrophic flooding.

Japanese "News of the Atom" from Harry Shearer on Le Show

Harry Shearer, voice of Mr. Burns on The Simpsons, reports on nuke news from Japan: debris is so complex, and radiation levels so high, at Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 and 2, that operations to remove highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel pools at the ruined reactors will be delayed for three years; a court in Chiba, Japan ruled in favor of plaintiffs harmed by the nuclear disaster, requiring Tokyo Electric to pay them $3.3 million in compensation (but holding the Japanese government not responsible); and key chains and compasses, manufactured in China and the U.S., sold in Japan, were four to eleven times too high in radioactive tritium content, and had to be reclaimed from consumers.

News from "Our Friend the Atom," by Harry Shearer on Le Show

The actor and comedian behind the voice of Mr. Burns on The Simpson's reports regularly on nuke news on his Le Show. This week, he reports on ocean contamination levels from the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe; the scandal of a secret report by Bechtel Nuclear, compiled two years ago, that warned of widespread mismanagement at the Summer Units 2 & 3 new reactor construction sites in South Carolina, now cancelled at a cost of $2 billion to ratepayers; and German authorities in Aachen have distributed potassium iodine tablets to residents who live near an age-degraded Belgian reactor (to protect people's thyroid glands in the event of a release of hazardous Iodine-131 radioactivity in the event of a meltdown).

"The End of Cassini": NASA vaporizes 72.3 pounds of plutonium in Saturn, despite nearby moons that could support extraterrestrial life forms

As Karl Grossman reports at Nation of Change:

The crashing of the nuclear power-energized Cassini space probe into Saturn – a process that began on April 22, Earth Day – will culminate this Friday, September 15. The probe – containing more deadly plutonium than has ever been used on a space device­ – will then reach Saturn’s atmosphere and disintegrate as it plummets to Saturn.

Central Florida was spared a regional nuclear catastrophe on October 17, 1997 when Cassini's launch from Cape Canaveral's Kennedy Space Center did not lead to a Titan IV rocket failure. The risk of that happening was a very high 1 in 1,500 chance, even according to NASA's own admission. (Remember the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion on lift off. Grossman scooped the story that the next payload on Challenger was to have included plutonium.)

And Planet Earth was spared a global catastrophe, when Cassini's risky slingshot maneuver or flyby did not result in the probe crashing back into the atmosphere and vaporizing. If that had happened, NASA had admitted that “Approximately 7 to 8 billion world population at [the] time…could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure.” (Remember when NASA missed Mars, by failing to properly synchronize metric and English measurement figures?!)

But Planet Saturn won't be so lucky. NASA will intentionally vaporize Cassini, and its 72.3 pounds of ultra-toxic plutonium fuel, in the planet's atmosphere. This despite the fact that Saturn's nearby moons, Titan and Enceladus, are seen as among the most likely places in the solar system, besides Earth, for the presence of extraterrestrial life.

Grossman's article includes these powerful quotes from leading watchdogs on "nukes in space":

“When I heard that NASA would be dive-bombing Cassini into Saturn with 72 pounds of deadly plutonium-238 onboard, I thought of the Army handing out smallpox laden blankets to Indians on the reservations,” comments Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, which has been in the lead in protesting NASA nuclear space missions. “NASA readily admits that ‘biotic or prebiotic’ life very possibly exists on Saturn­ – are they trying to kill it?”

Said Gagnon: “We are told that NASA is out searching for the origins of life in the universe but they seem to have forgotten the prime directive from Captain Kirk on Star Trek to ‘do no harm.’”

Felton Davis, an activist with the Catholic Worker movement in New York City, who participated in anti-Cassini protests through the years, said NASA “should face the environmental reality that other celestial bodies are not garbage dumps.”

Gagnon and Davis's words echo the poetry of Native American poet, musician, and activist/philosopher John Trudell, as well as Native American spiritual leaders, as from Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. These Native American voices and others have warned that we have no right to trash or otherwise abuse outer space, which is sacred, just like Mother Earth. 

NASA knows there are demonstrated, successful alternatives to using high-risk, ultra-toxic plutonium on deep space probes. After all, as Grossman reported, on Independence Day 2016, NASA's solar powered Juno probe reached Jupiter.

Karl Grossman is a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of Old Westbury on Long Island, N.Y. Karl is a co-founder of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, still serves as an advisor, and regularly writes about plans to launch nuclear power into space. Karl is also a founding member of the board of directors of Beyond Nuclear.

Beyond Nuclear to co-present alongside Nukewatch & NIRS at MREA's inaugural MN renewable energy festival!

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, alongside John LaForge of Nukewatch and Diane D'Arrigo of NIRS (Nuclear Information and Resource Service), will conduct a workshop entitled "Nuclear Power Realities and Climate Chaos" at the Midwest Renewable Energy Association's first ever Minnesota festival, "Clean Energy + Sustainable Living".

Here is the workshop description:

This workshop will discuss what it takes to site, approve, construct, and license new reactors, a time-consuming process which robs resources from conservation and efficiency efforts. Investing in nuclear power hinders the deployment of clean, renewable, safe energy systems required to confront climate disruption.

This year's workshop comes as South Texas Project nuclear power plant in Bay City, TX just dodged a radioactive bullet from Hurricane Harvey, and as Hurricane Irma bears down on the Turkey Point and/or St. Lucie nuclear power plants on Florida's Atlantic Coast.

John and Kevin have held down the anti-nucler power fort at the MREA's annual Custer, WI festival, for the past couple-three decades. Their workshops there are, by default, entitled "Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer," no matter what the question -- an homage to Dr. Helen Caldicott, Beyond Nuclear's founding president, who was a keynote speaker at the MREA festival in WI in 2007.

In 2014, NIRS executive director, Tim Judson, and NEIS (Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago) executive director, Dave Kraft, joined John and Kevin in WI, to rebut the nuclear power industry's attempt to "kill the competition" -- the strategy by the nuclear power industry to sabotage renewables and efficiency as unwanted competition.

And as they've done at the WI festival for a quarter-century, Kevin and John will hold down an info. table at this event, as well.