Interview with eco-activist, Harvey Wasserman
Harvey Wasserman is a life-long activist who speaks, writes and organizes widely on energy, the environment, history, drug war, election protection and grassroots politics. He's also an author, teacher and frequent contributor to OpEdNews.
Joan Brunwasser: Welcome back, Harvey. I understand there are some interesting developments on the energy/environmental front. Would you like to bring us up to date?
Harvey Wasserman: Good to be with you, Joan. We have just won a HUGE victory with the cancellation of the two reactors under construction at VC Summer in South Carolina. That leaves just two nukes under construction in the entire US, a situation that dates back to the 1950s.
The last two reactors being built here are at Vogtle, Georgia. They are also teetering on the brink.
These reactors cannot compete with gas, wind or solar, so the whole industry should fold up over the next few years. The question is whether we'll get them all shut before one or more of them melts down and blows up.
This is all happening alongside a spectacular revolution in renewable Solartopian technologies, with the price for solar panels and turbines plummeting while that for nukes is soaring. Breakthroughs and innovations with renewable energy are happening every day so it's an exciting time for that. We can indeed get to Solartopia, a 100% green power Earth. But we've got to get those reactors shut.
There are 99 left operating in the US now, and about 430 worldwide. The real test of the intelligence and survival instinct of our species will be to get them all closed before the next one blows.
JB: Congratulations on this big win, Harvey. Tell us more about how it came about. I'm pretty confident it didn't happen without a lot of kicking and screaming.
HW: A lot of really great activists put decades into this. We owe them a huge load of gratitude.
JB: Indeed. Was the abandonment of plans, ultimately, primarily a matter of dollar and cents? How much money was sunk into these two reactors before the plan was scrapped? Please tell us more. Most of us have not followed this as closely as we might have.
HW: My understanding is that about $9 billion has been purely wasted on these two SC reactors, but that could well be a gross underestimate. For that money, much of the state could have been solarized.
Had it not been for the activist opposition, the utilities and other perpetrators would now be gouging the public for even more money to build this thing. Hopefully, now the victims can turn their resources to renewables and efficiencies that can actually make economic sense while helping us save the planet.
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