Too Cheap To Meter: The Top 10 Myths of Nuclear Power

"Our children will enjoy in their homes with electrical energy too cheap to meter.”

Lewis Strauss, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, 1954

Nuclear power was sold in the United States as being “Too cheap to meter.” This miracle power source that harnessed the might of the atom to light American homes and power their TVs was seen as a way to put a happy face on the horrors visited upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Lewis Strauss who chaired the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954, the predecessor of today’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC), spoke of an era when “atomic furnaces” from fission and fusion reactors would provide clean, safe, reliable, abundant and cheap power for generations to come.  It hasn’t been the panacea he foretold.  In fact, it’s been a train wreck of accidents, cost overruns, nuclear weapons proliferation and an ever-growing waste problem that is always on the verge of being solved.

This hasn’t stopped the nuclear power industry from promoting its product as the safe, clean alternative to coal for a green future.  Wrapping nukes in a green cloak and declaring their oneness with those concerned with climate change has helped to sway public opinion.  The banks are still skeptical but the industry, like their friends on Wall Street, has turned to the government for support.  The Bush and Obama administrations have kept the light on for nuclear power with loan guarantees, federal dollars for research and foreign policy initiatives like the treaty with India that forgave its transforming a research reactor into a bomb factory.

The impact on the industry of the Japanese reactors destruction as a result of the earthquake and tsunami may reverse the tide of support built by the nuclear industry.  But trust me they won’t give up.  They’ll try to spin the disaster as proof that nuclear power is still safe and that if anything can be learned it’s that we need newer nukes, with more safety features, not alternatives.  So, to arm the public with some mental shielding from the thought rays likely to be beamed by the misconstruers of fact and swayers of emotion here are 10 myths of nuclear power you need to know.

Myth #1: Nuclear Power is Safe

The experience at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex, the Russian reactor at Chernobyl and the meltdown at Three Mile Island in the United States, the nuclear Trifecta, are the most well known nuclear accidents but there have been thousands of accidents and near misses that could have led to a disaster.

The biggest fear, in all of these cases, stems from the fact that a nuclear power plant has about as much radioactivity inside it as the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.  There is more sitting in the adjacent pools where the used nuclear fuel rods are stored.  In Japan, we’ve seen what happens when there isn’t enough coolant to cover the fuel rods.  The rods start melting and, in a worst case scenario, the China Syndrome, the core melts down and breeches the containment facility.  The heat build up can stop short of a China Syndrome but can get hot enough to melt the metal around the fuel rods and create a reaction that produces hydrogen gas that triggers an explosion.  Which is what happened in Japan.  Having redundant safety measures, a plan B, C and D, doesn’t mean they can’t all fail.

“The only safe nuclear reactor is 93-million miles away, the sun,” said Daniel Hirsch, president of the nuclear policy research group, Bridge the Gap.

Myth #2 Nuclear power will help us kick our addiction to foreign oil.

Senator Charles Schumer (D, NY) on last Sunday’s Meet the Press cited our need to get off of foreign oil as a strong reason for pursuing nuclear power.  He’s wrong.  We don’t use a significant amount of oil to produce electricity in the United States we mainly use it to power our cars and trucks and to a much lesser degree, to heat our homes.  Unless we’re proposing to put a nuke under the hood of our cars this “argument makes no sense” said  Hirsch. 

Of course, if we all switched to electric cars we’ll need power to charge them but this can be provided by wind, solar and other sources.  We don’t need nukes.

Myth #3:  Without nuclear reactors, the US cannot hope to combat climate change.

“It would be like combating world hunger with caviar,” said Peter Bradford, former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner.  The least expensive and most productive way to reduce our carbon footprint is to be energy efficient not to build expensive nuclear power plants.

“The money that was sunk into building the reactors in Japan should have gone into something that would really have helped us combat global warming like solar or wind power,” and improving the national energy grid so that it’s integrated, said Hirsch. 

We can’t spend money on everything we should spend it on solutions and not on technology that creates more problems.

Myth #4: The US is in the midst of a nuclear renaissance

We’ve had a nuclear bubble but “when builders came to realize the costs it started to dissolve,” said Bradford.

The myth of the nuclear renaissance has been an effective public relations ploy of the nuclear industry but we’ve seen the operators at the Calvert Cliffs, Maryland reactor pull out and the backers behind a proposed reactor in Houston, Texas have also pulled out.  Things are sputtering.

“If this is what the original renaissance looked like then we never would have had Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci,” said Hirsch.

Myth #5:  Without new nuclear reactors, we won’t have enough power in the United States.

Dave Freeman, who calls himself the “green cowboy,” knows something about large-scale power generation.  He ran the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the municipal power department in Sacramento and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP).  He says this is completely false.  The best way to generate new power for the long term is not to build nukes but to invest in large scale solar and wind, coupled with natural gas as a transition in the short term. 

The problem has been coordinating the power produced when the wind blows and the sun shines, distributing the power and storage.  There are solutions to all of these.  “You need to link up the disparate sources to compensate for when the wind is blowing and the sun isn’t shining,” said Hirsch.  He also pointed to new ways that we can store excess energy in batteries or use it to create hydrogen, which can also be employed as a power source.

The problem is “old people have forgotten about the dangers of Three Mile Island and young people never knew,” said Freeman.

Nuclear power is a limited resource dependent on mining compared to solar power.  An unlimited amount of solar power exists, “which would you choose,” asked Freeman?

Myth #6  Why not fund nuclear power just to make sure we do have enough power since there’s practically no risk of losing any money with government loan guarantees?

The nuclear industry has asked for loan guarantees from the Federal government because the banks looked at the risk and took a pass.  With the loan guarantees in hand the companies can get financing and if they default, or walk away from the projects (which is what happened before) the taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.  “It’s the same as if you defaulted on your mortgage and the Federal government had to step in to pay the banks back,” said Hirsch.

The problem is that these plants are so expensive, and it’s not clear that they’d ever be profitable even with guarantees, that the likelihood of companies abandoning the effort mid way through is pretty high.  Look at what’s happened at Calvert Cliffs and in Houston.

Myth #7 The nuclear industry’s past problems were caused by overzealous environmentalists, regulators and the public’s fear after Three Mile Island.

“The industry’s problems were the result of trying to build too many plants too quickly,” said Bradford.

The industry couldn’t compete in the marketplace in the US or anywhere else in the world.  This is why it turned to loan guarantees that shift the risk to the taxpayers.

Pacific Gas and Electric (PGE) ignored the environmental concerns of one group, The Mothers for Peace, when it was building a reactor near Diablo Canyon in California.  The Mothers said that the plant was situated on an earthquake fault and the company just plowed ahead.  The Mothers were right and PGE had to go back and retrofit the plant to increase its safety.

“The safety of millions was put at risk to hubris,” said Hirsch.

Myth #8 Nuclear power will be an important source for jobs and economic development.

It’s true that building the reactors does create jobs but these disappear when the reactor is complete.  And there are staff positions for running the reactors, providing maintenance and security but not enough to warrant the high costs and risks. Building an alternative energy industry is a much better long-term proposition that will create more jobs in manufacturing and stimulate exports.  People will need to build the windmills, the photovoltaic cells, install them, maintain them and even replace them as they wear out. 

Ironically some fear that building new nukes will chase jobs away because electric rates will have to dramatically increase to pay them off.  “No state ever created a net increase in jobs by raising electric rates to commercial and industrial customers.  Such a policy drives jobs out of many businesses to create relatively few permanent jobs at the new reactor,” said Bradford.

Myth #9  France has found solutions to all of nuclear power’s problems.

France is pointed to as demonstrable proof that nuclear power can be affordable and safe.  While it’s true France gets about 75% of its electricity from nuclear power and it has avoided a large scale disaster, we don’t know very much about their accident record since its industry is nationalized and run behind a veil of secrecy.  We’ve been told that Japan runs its program much better than France and we've just seen what that means.  One can only assume that their aging reactors are just an “accident waiting to happen,” said Hirsch. “They are just playing a game of Russian roulette.”

As far as cost is concerned, the French pay about 20% more for electricity than we do here in the United States.

Many point to their ability to make nuclear waste disappear into easily stored glass balls while we continue to battle over where to bury our barrels of waste which keep piling up in temporary storage ponds next to the reactors.

“In high level waste they are no further along than anybody,” said Hirsch.  They just dissolve the waste in highly toxic acid and store it in warehouses in the glass.  Which is still radioactive and the glass eventually disintegrates and has to be replaced.”

The famous scene of 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley lovingly holding one of the glass balls came to mind.  “That was just a prop,” said Hirsch.

They also reprocess their fuel to create new fuel but this still leaves, “most of the radioactivity to disposed of,” explained Bradford.

It also adds to the costs of the producing nuclear power and creates plutonium that can be used to make nuclear weapons.

Myth #10  The growth of civilian nuclear power won’t promote the spread of nuclear weapons, or as it’s called, proliferation.

There is no “peaceful atomic power.  If promoting nuclear power you are promoting bombs,” said Freeman.

According to Victor Gilinsky, a former NRC commissioner, the “main obstacle to obtaining nuclear weapons is the material.   Robert Oppenheimer, the father of America’s nuclear program, feared that countries could too easily start with a civilian power program and then build a bomb.  He proposed, that an international authority handle all nuclear material.  Eisenhower reversed course and launched the Atoms for Peace program that spread civilian nukes around the world and taught the basics of nuclear engineering to people in countries like Iran.  This boosted the earnings of the contractors but laid the groundwork for weapons programs in all the countries that obtained nuclear weapons after the first five nuclear powers.  There’s “too much greed and too little fear,” said Gillinsky.  All civilian nuclear programs create spent fuel that can be reprocessed into weapons grade plutonium.  This is what Iran, North Korea, India and Pakistan have done.

It doesn’t take much.  At first you needed a chunk of plutonium about the size of a softball now it’s down to the size of a golf ball.  “If a country has done its engineering it can take about a week to go to a bomb,” said Gillinsky.  “Safeguard inspections are too late.”

Currently there are plans to build new nuclear power plants throughout many unstable parts of the world like Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kazakhstan and more.

We need to stop looking at nuclear power and concentrate on real clean energy sources like wind and solar.  But these aren’t really fun challenges for scientists.  Building a solar collector or an improved windmill is boring compared to unleashing the power of the atom.  Especially, dabbling in that chimera, the real Holy Grail, fusion power.  Can’t beat that for a fun brain twister that’s sucked up countless billions of federal research dollars but is still “the power of the future.” While scientists like to do what’s hard, exotic and new, people want and need what’s simple, effective, reliable and affordable.

To paraphrase President Eisenhower’s speech about the Military Industrial Complex, every dollar we spend on nuclear power is stolen from developing real solutions to our energy needs.  Nuclear power, once touted as “too cheap to meter” is now too expensive and dangerous to use.

Many thanks to Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission whose presentation “The Myths of the Nuclear Renaissance” inspired this piece, Daniel Hirsch who teaches nuclear policy at UC Santa Cruz and runs the nuclear information group, Bridge the Gap, Victor Gilinsky, former NRC commissioner and David Freeman, an energy expert who as a Presidential adviser helped to establish the EPS and then ran the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and other large scale utilities.

Elvis Rocks the Motor City May of '56

An Elvis book I'm writing about a one week period in the Spring of '56 has garnered some welcome publicity courtesy of the Detroit News.

Elvis was wrapping up a long tour and the last legs when he stopped in Detroit for a one night, three concert gig at the fabulous Fox Theater.  Tickets were $1.50 but the steep price didn't keep people away.  The place was packed and Elvis would return six more times to the Motor City.

The book starts in Detroit, follows him to his next stop in Dayton, Ohio and wraps up with his week off at home in Memphis.

Inspired by a cache of never before published photos I stumbled on while researching my documentary, Elvis: Return to Tupelo, I wanted to explore this brief moment in time.

For a taste of what the book will be have a look at Susan Whitall's Detroit News article.

Jimi Hendrix -- West Coast Seattle Boy

Just gifted by the Hendrix estate with the new amazing Hendrix boxed set, "West Coast Seattle Boy, The Jimi Hendrix Anthology," 4 CDs, 8 LPs (vinyl lives), a DVD and a beautiful 35 page, LP sized booklet. The booklet, LP jackets and CD covers feature a number of photos from our archives. It's great seeing them put to... such good use. Can't wait to listen to the 99 tracks, watch the DVD and read the booklet. What fun!!!

Boxed set info: http://www.jimihendrix.com/us/music/west-coast-seattle-boy-jimi-hendrix-anthology-8lp-box-vinyl

The Lion in the Kabul Zoo

After the US invasion of Afghanistan I discovered a story that I thought was perfect for Animal Planet -- about a one-eyed lion that had survived horrendous abuse during the Taliban's rule, including being shot.  To me the zoo represented the plight and the hope of the country.  To Animal Planet it sounded like a disturbing show that would upset their audience.  Once again it was clear that cable was not the place for filmmakers to tell stories about anything.  It was and is largely the home for distraction entertainment.  I think this would have been a good show.  Of course, my earlier pitch to Nat Geo about the destruction of  the Buddha statues at Bamiyan by the Taliban would have been good too.

The Lion of the Kabul Zoo

Ravaged by war, the animals of the Kabul Zoo are starting to receive food, medicine and veterinary care from other zoos, animal lovers and international agencies.

After years of bullets and bombs, the Kabul Zoo in Afghanistan lies in ruins, its 40 remaining animals scarred by civil war and torment. The only elephant was killed by a rocket. The sole lion has one eye; its other was lost in a grenade attack. The Afghan bear has a blistering sore on its nose from an untreated knife wound. The zoo grounds, once well-maintained, are a mess: the bars of the cages are twisted; fresh water and electricity are rare commodities; and medical treatment for the creatures is all but nonexistent.

But help is on the way.  American animal activists and zoo organizations have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the malnourished animals, marking the beginning of an international effort to save the war-battered facility and its inhabitants.

A team of animal experts who have the expertise and knowledge to work in these tough conditions will soon be on its way to begin the zoo rescue efforts.  We propose to document this dramatic story and bring it to the public in a one-hour special presentation.

This is an enormous opportunity for Animal Planet to show how the zoo world and the public can work together to come to aid of animals in a time of great need. 

“The response has been unbelievable," said Rod Hackney, spokesman for the North Carolina Zoo, which has received hundreds of e-mails from concerned patrons. "The story of these animals has really touched a chord in the hearts of many people."  It’s a story that is certain to touch the hearts of Animal Planet viewers.

The zoo team will be led by Dr. Ehsan Arghandewal, former Dean of the Science Faculty at Kabul University.  The University established the Kabul Zoo 30 years ago. Dr. Arghandewal, a zoologist, fled to Germany when the Taliban came to power.  Another member of the team is Taufik Nuri, a native of Afghanistan who is currently working at the Cologne Zoo, Cologne, Germany.  Nuri was formerly head keeper at the Kabul Zoo and is very familiar with the site. The third team member is Dr. John Lewis, a veterinarian with extensive experience in wild animal medicine.   Lewis is a former veterinary officer at the London Zoo and has been in private specialist practice, connected with both wild and zoo animals for many years.  He works frequently in difficult conditions, including work in central and southern Asia.

Our production team is uniquely qualified to create this important and timeless program.  Since September 11, our field team has spent over 3 months in Afghanistan covering the conflict for Channel 4 in the UK and Japanese TV.  We know how to get in and out of the country and have the confidence and support of the key power brokers we need in order to effectively and safely operate in this dangerous territory.  From the military we can call on Deputy Defense Minister, General Dostum.  We will have the support of the Foreign Minister, Dr. Abbudulah Abbudulah, the government’s spokesperson who speaks perfect English.  In Kabul our media needs will be handled by the former head of public affairs for the Northern Alliance, S’diq Abede, who will soon be named the head of Kabul Television.  We are experts in Central Asia and know how to translate that expertise into compelling storytelling.

We strongly urge a quick approval of this project so that we can document the teams’ first 8-10 days in the zoo.  We will follow up during the course of the next several months with their ongoing efforts but feel the first impressions of the return of the exiled zoo director will be powerful television.

The rescue has three immediate goals that we will illustrate:

1)    They will deal with the critical needs of the animals and staff, organizing essential repairs such as the establishment of running water and electricity.  Dr. Lewis will also assess the health of the animals and provide any immediate veterinary care necessary in collaboration with a local veterinarian who has been on call at the Kabul Zoo for some time.

2)    The team will make a full assessment of the zoo grounds, the animal enclosures and begin to devise plans to get equipment, food and other supplies to the Zoo on a regular basis.  It is hoped that supplies can be bought locally, and local labor used, providing some stimulus to the local economy.

3)    The team has been advised that considerable damage was done to some of the larger animal enclosures and the animals have been confined to some rather small spaces.  The team will organize for repairs to the larger areas so the animals can have additional space.

While we witness this effort unfolding we’ll learn how the damage happened and find out how the rescue effort was organized.

Telling this story will take us back to North Carolina.  We’ll meet Dr. David Jones, the director of the North Carolina Zoo, who heard about the plight of the animals and immediately offered his services, as well as those of the staff to aid the recovery plan for the Kabul Zoo.  He’ll tell us how the whole international zoological community joined together to help a struggling zoo staff keep their animals alive and healthy.  It will be clear that the response from the community and the animal-loving public has been overwhelming.

We’ll find out these efforts, under the banner of the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. (AZA) and its European counterparts, raised more than $300,000 --far beyond organizers' initial expectations in just a few weeks.  About 80% of the money came from individuals, the remainder from zoos.  In fact, they raised so much money that they’ve started another fund to aid domestic and working animals in Afghanistan, many of which have been injured during ground combat or abandoned after their owners escaped to Pakistan, organizers said.

But the zoo will remain the centerpiece of the association's efforts and the focus of our program.  This story will use archival photos and video to help us track what happened under the Taliban regime.  We’ll see that once they took control of Kabul in 1996, the zoo's 37 species were reduced to 19.  Zookeepers were powerless to stop the Taliban fighters, who regularly teased and tortured and reportedly killed some of the animals--including deer and birds--for food. Under Taliban law, women were forbidden to visit.  We’ll hear that they did visit and find out that the zoo became a sanctuary.  The zoo was a place where they felt safe to be outside with their children.

Even though the zoo remained a popular oasis, there was not enough money to keep it running properly.  During the recent conflict the situation continued to worsen.  The zoo and its charges were on the verge of dying out.

Zoo workers had not been paid since July and the head zookeeper reportedly has not received his $20 monthly allowance to run the zoo.  Somehow he bought food for the animals on credit, and his seven children reportedly pitched in even though they too were going hungry.  The children in our audience will relate to this example of sacrifice and learn something about selfless acts of kindness and courage.

We’ll find out that this is not the first time zoo workers and animal lovers have aided animals during war.  Animals historically have been among war's forgotten casualties.

During World War II, Allied bombs destroyed much of the Berlin Zoo, which at one time housed 14,000 animals.  By the war's end, only 1,200 malnourished animals remained.  U.S. airplanes dropped food and medical rations not only for the civilians of the war-torn city but also for the zoo animals.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, soldiers set up camp in the Kuwait Zoo, teasing and shooting many of the animals.  At the time, Jones was director of the London Zoo, and he, along with various animal welfare agencies in the United Kingdom, organized a relief effort, sending in a team of veterinarians to nurse the injured animals back to health.

One of the most touching stories we’ll bring to light is that of Afghanistan's one-eyed lion, Marjan. This poignant tale will show how Marjan’s wonderful life turned to tragedy.  He was a gift to the Kabul Zoo from the Germans in the late 1970s.  He immediately became a star attraction, running regally in a compound along the Kabul River and drawing bigger crowds than the Australian kangaroos, the Indian elephant and the American raccoons.

Today, his face is lopsided, and he can barely walk.  He is almost blind in his remaining eye.  His injuries came from a grenade attack that is said to be the work of an Afghan seeking revenge because the lion reportedly killed a friend of his who had entered the compound to tease the lion.

Such tales prompted the outpouring of support from people across the country.

More importantly, we believe that the rescue of the Kabul Zoo is an important effort that will show that the recovery of the whole city and country is possible.

We are ready to embark on this important project and are seeking your support for a co-production.  We have budgeted this program at $250,00 US and are requesting $130,000 (for US rights) from Animal Planet.  We are able to tap into a tax fund in the UK and can cash flow this project.  Once the project is approved by Animal Planet, 100% of the funds will be released for this production.  Animal Planet will not be asked to disburse any funds until April 2003, long after the program has premiered and paid its way through advertising revenues.

We look forward to discussing this with you and embarking on this urgent program.

The response --- the show would disturb our audience.  

Public Television -- A Separate Reality

 

Public Television:  Introduction to a panel I moderated at Westdocs September 13, 2011 -- Navigating PBS

I’m Michael Rose – your moderator for this session.  Like many of you, I’m an independent producer, sounds like an AA meeting.  And in some ways it should.  I can’t help myself.  This is what I do.  And like many of you, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the decline of the media landscape starting with America’s newspapers, including the LA Times that was taken over by a real estate shark who looted the employee’s pensions in order to buy the paper and then ended up firing many of them because the paper was saddled with an enormous debt.  Paper’s like the Times were once seen as a public trust.  Now many are struggling to survive.  And the public interest isn’t being served.

Local TV news – with its emphasis on celebrities, crime, sports and the weather doesn’t fill the gap.  It’s distraction not news.  Infotainment, not information.

National cable outlets aren’t doing the job to cultivate a well-informed electorate.  Fox News is a propaganda outlet for the Republican party and MSNBC has joined the partisan shout fest on the other side with a sagging CNN offering breathy headlines somewhere in between.  Analysis is left to faux news pundits, Jon Stewart and his counterpart Stephen Colbert. 

Perspective we might have once thought could come from The History Channel has vanished as it shifts its focus from Hitler to tree cutters and crab fishermen.  The Discovery Channel loves its sharks and MTV’s Snooki isn’t exactly Rock the Vote or rock the boat.  A few meaningful efforts sneak through these outlets every year but making programming that matters is not what the shareholders demand.  Then there’s HBO that provides support for half a dozen to a dozen high minded docs a year and airs several more it acquires.  And a few other potential outlets like the Sundance Channel, LinkTV and the documentary channel  do aspire to offering a platform for serious work. 

This bleak landscape exists in a world where a wacky preacher whose congregation is smaller than the number of people in this room diverts the scant resources of the national networks news outlets while we’re embroiled in endless wars that have cost the country nearly a Trillion dollars as the economy stays stuck in neutral.  It’s a landscape where reports of gas natural leaks in a community in Northern California go unheeded for years until a town erupts.  Where aging electrical transmission lines that the local utility no longer maintains come tumbling down setting 85 homes a blaze in Detroit.  We are not wanting for stories that need to be told.  But how to fund those efforts and where can your work be seen?

Our panelists are here to help you think about how to navigate the Public Broadcasting system, what I believe is the one domestic television outlet that offers the most hope for those of you who are interested in producing something besides the latest bit of distraction fluff.  The bad news is that PBS like the rest of the institutions in this country – with the exceptions of several Wall Street firms and banks -- is strapped for cash.  The good news – last year, in a Roper poll, PBS ranked number one in public trust, ahead of newspapers, commercial broadcasters, the judicial system and Congress.  No surprise there.  So if you want to work with the outfit that everyone trusts – PBS is the one

That's Celebritainment!: Paparazzi Are the Stars in Two New Docs

I remember growing up in Malibu--well, I don't remember all of those years; it was the '60s. We'd see stars at the supermarket, gas station, post office, out walking on the beach or at a community meeting discussing whether or not we should have sewers. No one was bugging them. No one chased them. They were our neighbors.

When it was Academy Awards time, these neighbors would be picked up in a limo and whisked away to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, where they'd walk the red carpet and smile to the cameras. The next day, they were home weeding the garden.

This was an era before the Internet, TMZ and the 24-hour news cycle. Even though the studio system had collapsed, the tabloids hadn't completely taken over the supermarket aisles, and the culture wasn't completely obsessed with the comings and goings of anyone with the vaguest claim to being a celebrity.

Sure, there were faux stars and minor celebrities. The Monkees come to mind, as well as all the occupants sitting in the guest boxes on Hollywood Squares--the original B-, C- and D-list. There were flash-in-the-pan, one-hit wonders who came and went, and publicists who tried to get their clients some ink (remember ink?) or pictures in the papers. Or keep their pictures out of the paper--something that was much easier to do then. Speaking from my own experience, the LA County Sheriffs assigned to Malibu were known to drive inebriated locals home instead of locking them up. Most wouldn't have dreamed of giving some newshound a picture or a story. Even if they did, the editors could be dissuaded from running some stories.

Triggering these thought bubbles was the opportunity to view two recent documentaries on the paparazzi phenomenon. One, Teenage Paparazzo, a film about a prodigy of sorts, a 14-year-old "pap," is directed by Adrian Grenier, who plays Vince in the HBO series Entourage. Teenage Paparazzo gives Grenier an opportunity to see the world from the point of view of those who prey on him as a celebrity.

The other documentary, Smash His Camera by Leon Gast (known for When We Were Kings, the Oscar-winning documentary about the 1974 heavyweight championship fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman) traces the career of one of the earliest practitioners of the black arts of the paparazzi, Ron Galella.

Watching these films in the wake of Andrew Breitbart's video assault on Shirley Sherrod, the Chelsea Clinton wedding clamor and the nail-biting drama of Lindsey Lohan's time in the slammer, I wondered if we should see Teenage Paparazzo and Smash His Camera in a wider context--the tabloidization of the media. Not an original thought, but it made me feel I was doing a public service watching these two highly enjoyable, yet provocative, films.

Galella was at the forefront of this media transformation, and now it's something that even a kid can do. But when Galella first got out of the military service and turned his sights on New York's glitterati in the early '60s, he had the field to himself. This hard-working everyman from New Jersey was probably a difficult child who rebelled against coloring in the lines; as an adult, he decided not to stay behind the rope lines at events. He wanted to capture those candid, unscripted moments that to him were more real. Like a good beat reporter, he developed sources among limo drivers, doormen and nannies who tipped him off about the whereabouts of such stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Marlon Brando. Galella had a system that would involve faking invites and credentials and knowing all the entry points in every New York hotel--especially the kitchen, which he recommends. No one ever seemed to stop him. His hours-long stakeouts produced millions of black-and-white photos, some iconic, that newspapers and magazines snapped up. This allowed him to build a home in New Jersey decorated in a style that Tony Soprano would love.

Gast was drawn to Galella's attitude. "He had a drive. He's a workaholic--as Muhammad Ali was." Galella's dogged persistence appears harmless in the film, but he got under people's skin. Tracking Brando, who was out for a nighttime walk with talk show host Dick Cavett, caused the mumbling actor to lose it. As Galella got in his face, Brando cold-cocked him, breaking his jaw and knocking out five teeth. Galella decided to wear a football helmet the next time he saw the actor.

Brando broke Galella's jaw, but it was Jackie O who broke his heart. His fixation with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis between 1967 and 1982 resulted in a harassment suit and a countersuit, spurring debate about the limits of a free press that still stirs heated emotions. Galella's obsession also produced a number of memorable images, including his most famous shot of Jackie walking across the street. Mid-stride she turns her head and smiles as the wind tousles her hair. Galella got her to turn towards him by having the cab driver honk his horn. It was magic.

"Jackie is his Mona Lisa," says Gast. "What you have here is a love story. It's ‘Beauty and the Beast.'" It didn't work out for Galella, but the vitriol of Richard Burton, who "threatened to kill him," or Elaine Kaufman, owner of the once trendy restaurant Elaine's, "who threw a garbage can at him" (which made a good photo), seems misplaced. "Ron said you have to be thick-skinned," Gast notes.

Flash-forward from tramping the sidewalks of New York with the 77-year-old Galella to keeping up with 14-year-old Austin Visschedyk as he skateboards around Hollywood bagging shots of Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Entourage star Grenier saw Austin in the "Pap pack" and was struck not only by his tenacity but its subtext: "He was being taught at such an early age some of the base and animal things practiced by the tabloid media." This came at a time when Grenier was looking at his "own role in the media and taking a hard look at myself and what I wanted to put out in my work," he says.

Focusing on the world of "celebritainment," as practiced by the hungry hordes who make a living capturing the comings and goings of Hollywood's latest heartthrobs, seemed like a good way for Grenier to explore the media's "world of mirrors." He'd been thinking about these questions while reading anthropologist Thomas De Zengotita's book Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It.

Zengotita looks at the impact of media saturation and how it can be navigated and understood. "He talks about our modern mediated experience like it's the Blob (from the 1958 sci-fi horror film)," Grenier notes. "You can't kill it, and anything you do just makes it bigger." In Grenier's film, we see the Pap pack, or Blob, swarm around a beach house as he and Paris Hilton wait inside, curtains closed. Like the frightened citizens in fictional Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, who were menaced in the film, Grenier and Hilton can't make it go away, so they go out to confront the inevitable.

Neither Gast nor Grenier have seen the other's film--something they plan to do when they get together in New York--but Teenage Paparazzo premieres September 27 on HBO. Smash His Camera, which aired on HBO and in theaters through Magnolia Pictures this past summer, comes out on DVD this fall, and will include bonus material of Galella talking about his experiences.

Asked if we'll see another movie about paparazzi in the future, Grenier observes, "Now that there is an explosion of celebrity, and everybody has a camera, the money's gone, but it's evolving."

Originally published in Documentary Magazine.

Daytona Bike Week

Each March, tens of thousands of motorcyclists flock to Daytona Beach, Florida to show off their custom rides, swap stories with other bikers and celebrate the rebel spirit of the open road.

Considered the largest motorcycle event in the world, Bike Week attracts 500,000 enthusiasts from all over the world arriving on every type of motorcycle in the world; from Hondas and Kawasakis, to Ducatis and Triumphs, and of course Harley-Davidsons.

Motorcyclists began making the trek to Florida in 1937, when the first motorcycle race was held on the hard sands of Daytona Beach.

The race continued until World War II, when rationing of fuel, tires and engine parts put the event on hold.  Even without a race to attend, bikers continued to show up at Daytona each year for an unofficial party known as Bike Week.

By 1947, when racing on the beach continued, 176 riders were making the yearly pilgrimage to Daytona.  The event took on a rugged edge, with outlaw bikers raising havoc in the sleepy beach town.  Locals began to fear the yearly invasion and police began to crack down on the revelers.

Relations between bikers and the law continued to deteriorate, reaching a low point in 1986.  The next year a special task force was organized by the city in cooperation with the local chamber of commerce to improve relations and change the magnitude and scope of the event.

Today Bike Week has been transformed into a 10-day festival where motorcycle enthusiasts enjoy hundreds of events.  Through these riders we’ll get an inside view of the event.

Be prepared to attend the motorcycle exhibits, the concerts, the race at Daytona International Speedway, the spectacle of main street as well as all the behind the scenes parties.

Bike Week has become such a success that in 1992, organizers decided to offer a fall event that would give riders one last hurrah before the long, cold winter months, Biketoberfest. 

You'll discover why half-a-million people carve out one week in March to make the pilgrimage to Daytona for the madness of Bike Week.

Californian's and Their Cars

California has been called the "Car Capitol" of the world.  Not because any cars are made here, but because people love their cars and drive them in droves.  Some think we are defined by our cars or our wheels.   That we sort of wear our cars here like someone would wear an expensive overcoat in New York.  Our cars are a way of showing the world who we are.

Californians have been nuts about cars right from the start of the motoring age.

No one knows what the first car in California was but it's clear some couldn't wait to have their auto itch scratched by an import from back east.  So they built their own.  A tradition of tinkering that's lasted until today.

These early cars were rather crude.  Mostly converted buggies or carriages.  The horses were put out to pasture, an engine was installed and some sort of steering device.  One early LA car used the wheel from an irrigation pump.  Innovation was the key.

While there were a few poor backyard builders, most early auto enthusiasts were rich.  Cars were expensive and they weren't being mass produced.  Cars were not really a practical means of transportation but more a device for adventure.

Bad roads, and finnicky engineering meant that any drive was an adventure.  Auto owners doubled as mechanics.

Someone who could fix the inevitable flat tires that would occur on an outing.

Henry Ford set out to make cars for the masses.   In the process he shaped our state.  It's said that Ford got the idea for the moving assembly line while watching how cattle were slaughtered and progressively dismembered in the stockyards in Chicago.  His breakthrough was to reverse the process and apply it to auto assembly.  Instead of packages of neatly wrapped parts of prime meats his factory took metal parts and turned them into Model T's.  By 1913, his Highland Park, Michigan plant was turning out a car every few minutes.

And Californians were being led to his dealerships by the siren call of the open road.  The commoners were discovering what the rich saw in the car.  Within a days drive you could take the family to the mountains, the beach, the desert or find a secluded spot to court a girl.  The world was shrinking and opening up at the same time. 

Bad roads made driving a problem but civic leaders formed groups like the California Auto Club to lobby for ways to bring order out of the chaos.  Roads were paved, traffic lights were invented, stripes painted on the roads and rules drawn up to regulate the impulses of harried drivers.

Roads improved in the cities but getting from one city to the next was still a difficult matter.  In 1911, a prize was offered to anyone who could drive from San Francisco to Reno, Nevada.  There were many attempts but finally one team made it.  It only took them eight days to make what is now a four to six hour trip.  Demonstrations like these and the efforts of others prodded the state to build and improve roads.

At the same time, another new invention, the movies, discovered the car.   The first films of the Keystone Cops showed them on foot or in wagons chasing bad guys.  But the Keystone force became mobile as more cars came into the state.  These slapstick law enforcers helped to further popularize the car and Los Angeles. 

Many of the early silent films were geared for the growing immigrant audiences around the country.  Since they were silent and you could pretty well make out the plot without the reader cards, you didn't need to understand English to enjoy the stories.   They were cheap and accessible.  Like cars. 

The vision of Los Angeles that was seen in these early silents was an open, sunny town.  This proved to be a lure to many who slipped into a theater on a cold day in New York and saw images of bright California skies flickering on the screen. 

Aided by the mobility of the car, Los Angeles started to grow out, not up like New York as the westward migration turned into a stampede.

LA is a late bloomer as far as cities go but this tardy development made it the first major city on earth whose shape was forged by the automobile.  LA's vast stretches of turf were knitted together by the car.

Hollywood's image factories continued to influence the auto world.   As the car became commonplace the cinema's stars wanted something different. 

They turned to specialty builders in Southern California.  All the major stars wanted to have custom cars.

The tradition continued through the Depression as a new raft of stars turned to custom builders like Pasadena's, Bohman and Schwartz to conjure up something unique for them to be seen in.

It didn't take Detroit long to catch on that there was something happening out here.  In 1928, General Motors Chairman sent out a search party to find out why so many Cadillacs were being shipped to one Los Angeles dealer.

The answer was simple.  Harley Earl.  Earl's neighbor, C. B. DeMille had instilled in the young man a sense of showmanship and Harley applied it to his car designs. 

GM had to have him.  They lured Earl back to Detroit and let him start the first auto design studio at a major manufacturer.   This forever changed the auto world. 

Earl instituted the annual design change.  Started to get rid of running boards.  Molded the headlights into the fenders and worked to lower the cars over the frame.  His was a modernist view of design.

To do this, he employed more artists than any enterprise since the Renaissance.  Hundreds of sculptors and painters were charged with turning sheet metal, leather and plastic into dream machines. 

He never left his California custom roots far behind.  Earl is credited with dreaming up the dream cars.  His one-of-a-kind show cars helped to stimulate America's appetite for new cars.

In the 1940's, Earl's auto alchemists had to put down their tools and pick up rifles as they headed to War.  The auto industry ground to a halt.  All new car production was stopped and the factories were converted to become the Arsenal of Democracy.

In California, the car craze was put on the back burner as the boys shipped out.

When the War ended, the returning heroes were itching to turn their savings and pent up desires into new auto realities.

Some couldn't wait for Detroit's factories to retool and decided to build their own.  This group of pioneers also enjoyed to race.  Others heard about their weekly races on California's high deserts lake beds and started to flock to the meets.  The Hot Rod movement took off.

California's Drive-Ins became the headquarters for the movement and the place to go if you wanted to pick up a race or a date.

Street racing became a problem.  The police and the newspapers joined hands to stamp out hot rodders. 

Fearing that their sport and lifestyle were threatened with extinction, California's hot rodders came up with a solution -- drag racing.   It was safe and it got the racers off the streets.  You could even charge for people to watch.  It caught on and spread all over the country.

Hollywood knew a trend when it saw one.  Moviemakers quickly took the hot rodders to heart and started to turn out drive-in movie fodder to lure the young make out artists into the theaters.  Hot cars, squealing tires, and giggling breasts.  It was a formula that worked. 

Detroit finally started to build cars again but many Californians weren't impressed.   The hot rodders thought they were too slow and another group, the sports car lovers, thought they were too cumbersome.

Right after the War, many returning GI's started to lust after mechanical brides --- cute little red MG TC's.  The theory is that they'd driven them while overseas but it's unclear if that's true.  What is certain is that these cars caught on in a big way in Southern California.  They were made to be driven on curvy roads with the top down.  They didn't go too fast but they were fun to drive. 

Jaguar and others saw how MG was pulling in buckets of solid American currency with its MG and decided that they'd also pursue the American market.  Jaguar's stunning XK-120 set hearts racing and upped the sports car ante.

Mercedes quickly rebuilt its War damaged factories.   After showing that it could once again race on the world stage they transformed their racecars into a stunning and fast road car.  The Gullwing Coupe is considered to be one of the most beautiful cars ever built.

Porsche also had its eyes on the US sports car world and its biggest market -- California.  The slippery Porsches were quickly grabbed up by California enthusiasts who found these Teutonic tyros were perfect for a trip up the coast, into the canyons or even to the office.

The winning exploits of Santa Monica's own Phil Hill, showed the world that Americans were more than just consumers.  We needed to be taken seriously on the track.

By the mid-50's some of California's hot rodders had infiltrated Detroit's auto companies and helped the automakers discover ways to make their cars faster.  With the advent of the Chevy V-8  Detroit began to give performance hungry buyers something to cheer about.

Californians flocked to these powerful Detroit Muscle and Pony cars.  T-Birds, Mustangs, GTO's, and Dodge Chargers all found a ready welcome mat in Southern California garages.

But there was a counter culture that rejected both the sleek sports car and the muscle cars.  For an increasing number of buyers the simple, rugged and inexpensive Volkswagen, and the few Japanese cars, represented what a car should be.  Even before the gas shortages they thought about fuel efficiency, quality and durability.  They were laughed at in Detroit but when OPEC shut down the oil pipeline many joined them.

Gas prices shot up and people flocked to the imports.  They discovered that not only were the Japanese cars fuel efficient they were well built.  Something complacent American car companies had ignored for years.

As the imports started to clog California's docks the Japanese companies set up administrative offices near the ports.  Eventually these offices would grow to include design centers and marketing departments that would add millions of dollars to the California economy

The design centers were built because it became clear that their cars were not very exciting and they needed to create cars that the California market would like.

While Detroit continued to dismiss the imports as not much of a threat,  the Japanese, and then the Europeans, began to aggressively recruit from California's Art Center Design program to tap into that unique California sensibility.

An early success story out of this Pacific Rim cultural cross-pollination is the Mazda Miata.  Created by Mark Jordan, the son of a former General Motors chief designer, Jordan set out to design what he thought an MG would look like today.  It reignited the sports car world and led to a slew of wonderful sports cars.  The BMW Z-3, the Porsche Boxster, the Mercedes SLK and a new Jaguar roadster.

The success of these cars helped to reconfirm California's importance in the auto world.  The trends start here and you can't ignore the California mind set.  The Prius caught on here first and both the electric Tesla and Fisker are products of California.  An automaker may survive without a California presence but it's not clear that they will thrive.  While we can't predict the future many feel we'll see it here first.

California is the home to eleven import car companies and design studios for most domestic manufacturers.  Almost every carmaker has a design studio here responsible for turning out cars for the world. 

It's an exciting place to be for a car lover.

Twisted Metal -- The Russian Mob Auto Fraud Rings in Southern California

 In 2005, investigators noticed that millions of dollars of insurance claims have been piling up from minor car accidents taking place in the Russian and Filipino communities of San Diego.  Most of the claims are for less than $6,000 but they add up?  Are they all legitimate or is there an auto fraud ring operating in the San Diego area?  And, if so, who is behind it?  The investigators discover it’s the much to be feared Russian Mob.  They’ve set up shop in San Diego and are operating under the radar while post 9/11 America’s law enforcement shifts its focus from organized crime to terrorism.

The story unfolded in around the Russian immigrant community in San Diego where the Russian language is still spoken by people in parks walking or playing chess, at stores, community centers and at an appliance repair shop.

We meet Tom Newell a claims adjuster from Farmer’s Insurance Southern California Special Investigations Unit (S.I.U.) who told us what led to the first inklings that something was wrong – a pattern was developing in San Diego with Pilipino and Russian immigrants getting into lots of small car accidents.  All of the claims were for only about $6,000, but there were a lot of them.  He contacts the Department of Insurance and finds out that other insurance companies had also noticed the pattern.  The Department starts their investigation and asks Farmer’s to standby to help by issuing some “pretext” policies for them.

Investigation Widens:

Enter Tony Torres, the investigator who goes undercover on this case.  Tony is an ex-Special Forces, ex-cop, Mexican-American, and now a crack investigator for the California Department of Insurance, Fraud Division.  Tony, posing as Tony Miramontes, a petty crook, was introduced to Boris (we can’t reveal his real name for reasons that we’ll explain later), the suspected ringleader of the auto insurance fraud ring by an informant the division had developed.  Boris owned an appliance repair shop and insurance fraud was his other “business”.  Tony begins the story of how he gained Boris’ confidence and worked his way up to become a “Capper” in the ring. 

After being introduced to Boris by the informant, Tony agrees to let his car be hit in a staged collision.  Boris tells him he will get $1000 and some massages (at his doctor visits for his “injury” during the accident) for doing this.  We re-enact the first staged accident Tony is involved in:  The accidents generally took place in a dark vacant lot somewhere in the neighborhood where the gang operated.  A gang member would stage the collision, parking one car and driving the other car into the empty car while the car owners/potential insurance claimants watched on the side.  This was so no one would actually get hurt in the accident and so the amount of damage could be controlled.  Then the claimants were told to drive the car home and call their insurance company in the morning.

The next morning, coached by Boris in what to say, Tony was instructed to call the insurance company and report the claim.  Then Boris tells Tony that he will be contacted by a doctor later and he should make an appointment to see the doctor. 

While he was undercover, Tony was involved in 11 staged accidents like this one.  He tells us how he initially gained the trust of Boris.  He told Boris he had lots of friends who would be interested in making money and soon became a “capper” in the scam – someone who finds other people willing to be claimants.

On the first accident, however, Tony hit a bit of a snag.  When he was sent to the lawyer on the case to tell his story, instead of telling the lie he was told to tell, he said he didn’t know exactly what happened and that they should just ask Boris.  He was trying to see if the lawyer would take the case, even when actually being told it was a scam.  The lawyer refused to take the case.  As soon as Tony left the lawyer’s office, he got an angry call from Boris, who demanded to see him immediately.  Boris suspected Tony was a cop, because who else would say something so stupid to the lawyer?  Tony replied that he just said that because he thought the lawyers were in on the scam.  Boris began frisking Tony to see if he was wearing a wire (which Tony was wearing), but Tony grabbed Boris’ hand and started to shove it down his pants, challenging Boris that if his he’s going to search him, he should really do it.  Boris backed down and didn’t discover the wire.  He just gave Tony a lecture about how he had to play “the game” (as the gang called the scam) no matter who he was talking to.

As Tony got closer with Boris and his cohorts, he learned that they were pretty tough guys.  At one point, someone stiffed Boris out of some money, and he was furious.  He asked Tony to castrate the guy.  Tony said, “But the guy will die.”  Boris explained that he could show Tony how to do it so the guy wouldn’t bleed to death.

At another point, Tony was owed some money by Boris and, staying in character as an equally tough guy so he could maintain his position with the gang, he demanded his money right away.  When Boris put him off, Tony threatened to cut off Boris’ finger if he wasn’t paid the next day.

Finally, after almost three years undercover, Tony and the Fraud Division felt they had enough evidence to go to the DA with the case.

Prosecution:

Tony and his team turn over their evidence to both the US Attorney and the San Diego DA’s office.  The US Attorney is ready to prosecute, but the San Diego DA doesn’t want to.  Why?  Because Tony threatened to cut off Boris’ finger!  Tony and the US Attorney tried to reason with the San Diego DA but to no avail.  The US Attorney suggested that they present the case to the DA in Los Angeles’s Fraud Division, to an aggressive ADA there who has more experience with organized crime gangs, like this one.  They contact Anthony Colimino, who is an expert on the Russian mob.  He has jurisdiction because the insurance companies that were defrauded also have offices in Los Angeles.

Colimino dives into the case.  He finds links to another group in Los Angeles that was actually holding classes on how to get away with insurance fraud.  He uses his knowledge of the mob to make his case.  A case that threatens their growing enterprises.  Colimino finds out how threatened they are when a wheel on his SUV almost comes off while he’s driving to the office one morning.  Someone had loosened the lug nuts.  A warning he notes but doesn’t heed.

He presents his evidence to the US Attorney who indicts 13 defendants for mail fraud.  Colimino and his team indicted another 54 defendants for various counts of insurance fraud.  The defendants included claimants, attorneys, paralegals, doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists and, of course, Boris.  When Boris was first brought into custody, Tony went in to confront him.  Boris said, “I knew you were a cop.”  Tony replied, “No, you didn’t.”  And Boris admited, “No, I didn’t.  You were good.”

All but two of the defendants pled guilty and cut a deal with the prosecution.  Some got probation and fines, others went to jail.  A chiropractor and physical therapist refused to plead guilty and went to trial.  They were convicted and went to prison.  But the Russian mob continues to grow in influence.

Nuclear Deja Vu - The Revival of Nuclear Power?

 Twenty some years ago – I made my first film.  It was nearly unwatchable but boy did it get attention.  Done in the afterglow of the meltdown at Three Mile Island, my UCLA Film School Project uncovered the hidden and accident strewn past of the American nuclear power industry.

I discovered that the first nuclear reactor ever to supply residential power was in the San Fernando Valley.  Edward R. Murrow brought out a crew to record the scene as the electrons raced from the experimental reactor over transmission lines to the bedroom of a young boy who flipped the light switch in his bedroom so he could study.  Murrow wasn’t there three years later when the reactor suffered a meltdown that could have wiped out the Valley.  Like many accidents that followed, this one remained a virtual secret. 

Digging through public government files and using the Freedom of Information Act, I found countless examples like this of reactor accidents (some that blew up), deaths from radiation exposure, deaths from exploding fuel rods that impaled nuclear workers to the ceiling of the containment building, leaking barrels of waste, lost nuclear dumping grounds and more.  My work was used by public interest groups, journalists, public health officials and lawmakers to bring the nuclear industry to heel.  Even when confronted with facts to the contrary, the official story was always that things were OK and that the technology was safe.

But as public pressure mounted after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island the nuclear power option appeared to be dead.  In fact, it’s just been lying dormant and the nuclear industry is planning a revival.

After a long hiatus many countries are contemplating building new nuclear power plants – including Iran.  In the U.S., the uranium mines that were abandoned in Wyoming and in Navajo country have been quietly reopened.  Their owners believed that their old friend, Dick Cheney, would come through. 

The reason used by Cheney and other proponents for the revival of nuclear power give this question a rather ghoulish irony.  After years of arguing that global warming is a figment of the imagination of tree-hugging, Volvo driving, New York Times reading liberals, they now use global warming to justify the need to fast track the building of new nuclear reactors.  They argue that, Since nukes aren’t carbon emitting – they are good.   They’ve even funneled money to one of the founders of Greenpeace who’s trotted out to put a smiley “environmentalist” face on Mr. Atom.  

Proponents tout technological breakthroughs that supposedly resolve the longstanding problems of risk of accident, vulnerability to terrorist attack, proliferation, and waste disposal.  In fact, many of these “fresh” approaches appear to be old technologies dusted off and presented as new.  They say that “new” designs, such as breeder reactors (that would produce more plutonium than they consume) and graphite-based reactors are ready to come to the rescue.  But these are really just variants of old technologies that failed repeatedly in the past.  One prominent physicist, Professor Frank von Hippel of Princeton, has described the new proposals as the same old thing with “lipstick.”

We suggest, given the potential consequences of a huge new wave of nuclear activity, that regulators and citizens take a moment to think about letting the genies back out of the bottle.  Each of the proposed “new” technologies was previously tried, and we need to understand what happened.  Then take a look at what could happen today throughout the world.

For example:

·      Breeder reactors.  Reactors that “breed” plutonium as they produce electricity have long been a dream of nuclear advocates, and they are now pushing for wide-scale use of them.  But they make stuff that can be used for bombs; they rely on liquid sodium metal for coolant, that explodes in the presence of water and burns in the presence of air; can melt if the coolant gets blocked; can blow up like a nuclear weapon if the fuel melts into a critical configuration.  Let’s see how well breeders have worked in the past.  Let’s travel to Idaho in the U.S., to the site of the Experimental Breeder Reactor (EBR-1) that melted down in 1955; to the Fermi nuclear power plant in Detroit, whose breeder reactor melted in 1966 (the focus of the book, We Almost Lost Detroit); to the troubled Super-Phoenix breeder in France.

·      Graphite reactors.  Most reactors use water to “moderate” the nuclear reaction (slow down the neutrons to make them more effective); proponents now suggest using graphite – carbon, like pencil lead.  Let’s travel to the site of the Windscale reactor in England, where graphite caught fire in 1957 and released large amounts of radioactivity into the countryside; and to Chernobyl, where its graphite caught fire in 1986; and to Fort St. Vrain in Colorado in the U.S., where the “pebble bed” type of graphite reactor now being touted had so many failures it was down more than it was up and running and eventually had to be shut down.

·      Reprocessing.  Separating the plutonium out of “spent” reactor fuel so it can be used in reactors – or bombs—has always been enticing.  Let’s travel to Sellafield in England, with its large radioactivity releases into the Irish sea; and the abandoned commercial reprocessing facility in West Valley, New York, site of one of the most difficult cleanup operations in the U.S. because of all the contamination; and to Hanford, Washington, where radioactivity from leaking high level waste tanks from reprocessing is migrating toward the Columbia River.

·      Nuclear Terrorism.  Terrorists disrupting the coolant of a reactor or spent fuel pool can cause the former to melt and the latter to catch fire, with massive radioactivity release – one thousand times or more the long-lived radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb.  Let’s go to Germany and examine the German government study that found terrorists flying a jumbo jet into a reactor can cause unacceptable damage; and to U.S. plants, where half of the reactors have failed mock terrorist tests, even with six months warning to the day and only having to defend against a handful of supposed attackers.

·      Nuclear Proliferation.  Nuclear reactor technology and the spread of nuclear weapons have long been connected.  Let’s go to Belgium, to the centrifuge facility where Dr. Khan of Pakistan stole the diagrams used to enrich uranium in his home country for its nuclear bombs.  Let’s go to Canada, from which the reactor used by India to produce material for its first nuclear weapons came.  Let’s go to Apollo, Pennsylvania, from which a large quantity of weapons-grade uranium was diverted to Israel for its weapons program.

·      Nuclear Waste Disposal.  Let’s visit the site of the proposed Yucca Mountain high level waste disposal facility in Nevada; then go to Lyon Kansas, where deep underground burial was first proposed until it was discovered that the local community was right in pointing out numerous leakage pathways back to the surface.  Let’s look at the history of ocean disposal of radioactive waste, in the seas off Europe.  Let’s look at the leaking “low-level” radioactive dumps at Maxey Flats, Kentucky and Sheffield, Illinois.

My past worked uncovered an astonishing number of past nuclear mishaps:  we found films of the inside of the melted core of the SRE reactor and the long, laborious cleanup after the accident; the SL-1 reactor explosion, leaving a worker impaled on the reactor roof by a control rod when the reactor had a destructive “power excursion”; footage from submersibles of decaying barrels of radioactive waste dumped in the ocean, with fish swimming by; two reactors in the very midst of blowing up when power ran out of control; and much more.

Conclusion

The past is prologue.  What is being proposed in light of a nuclear revival is a return to what was done decades ago and left behind a troubling trail of problems that will be with us for generations.  Taking a serious look at the past will help illuminate our choices for the future.