well i'm starving in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the swollen missouri river continues to spill the water in the fort calhoun nuclear plant workers be able to avoid a fukushima like disaster before it's too late it's a battle of spending cuts versus tax increases on capitol hill will there be applied partisan agreement on the debt ceiling this time around and the u.s. economy may be shaky but americans have been here for a hearing for years that your hand is in

a depression but even fingleton begs to differ and has the numbers to prove it later this hour. you need to know this impending nuclear disaster nebraska just got worse over the weekend a floodwall protecting nuclear plant from the overflowing missouri river gave way inundating the facility and flood water plant is less than twenty miles away from all the hot rascals largest city and is now cooling its reactors and spent fuel pools with back up diesel power generators if those generators go and only batteries with a few hours a life will stand between all my hot and nuclear catastrophe it was a tsunami triggered the walls world's worst nuclear meltdown in japan's fukushima plant a few months ago. and if floodwaters continue to rise and upstream dams can't hold

them in nebraska in the same thing could happen here and we might lose all the hype but that's not all wildfires in new mexico are threatening to take out another nuclear facility the los alamos facility last night winds kept a sixty eight square mile rial fire at bay about one mile away from the nuclear facility if those winds could change direction at any moment but that facility back on the path of the fire as we all know nuclear material and fires just don't seem to mix too well so just how dangerous are these extreme weather threats against our nation's nuclear power plants here to offer some insight as kevin camps radioactive waste watchdog and beyond nuclear kevin welcome welcome back thanks for having me if you have is what's the latest on what's going on in the press well as you said that they lost their flood berm which was an eight foot tall rubber wall that was inflated with water actually and if i may interrupt there's actually two nuclear plants on this river they're both floating the one you're talking about is the fork

hill whom for calhoun about one thousand miles north of omaha and they had this eight foot tall rubber wall that was inflated with water and they were moving the sand behind it in the dry area and they nicked it they let the water out and so that's why now the entire facility has two feet of water lapping up against the there's reactor containment building against the auxiliary building so so this is basically was like a giant water balloon around it and somebody popped the balloon that happened sunday at one twenty five am what happened immediately down was they were pumps in that dry area that had a lot of fuel next to them for running them to get water out of there that fuel was spilled into the floodwaters that's a flammable substance that's something they're not prepared to deal with is the potential for that to catch on fire in addition water began to lap at a transformer nearby actually a concrete flood barrier failed daughter was getting near the trance. farmer they

had to shut it down that cut them off from offsite electricity supply the grid and that's when they had to fire up the emergency diesel generator so they lost some major safety margin there when they lost the grid they were on diesels for twelve hours and they're reportedly back to the grid at this point but you can see how dicey it is when they're losing connection to the grid like you say they have diesels then if those fail then there's batteries and another worry that we have is that with all the floodwater around if that diesel fuel supply they have a month fuel supply supposedly were to get fouled with water then those diesels wouldn't work there's all kinds of ways you could lose the diesels there's quite a history of diesels simply failing in the united states or in nuclear power plants at a nuclear power plant it's sad that this plant has been that particular plant has been shut down since april when they stepped down for a normal refueling outage but they saw these floods coming and you mention the tsunami in japan there was very little notice at all that the tsunami was coming it

came an hour after the earthquake so they've had weeks or even months to know that these floodwaters were coming to put protections in place luckily the n.r.c. did its job last year over the last couple years they cited for calhoun for a major safety violation they were not prepared for flooding that condition had persisted since one thousand nine hundred seventy eight one nine hundred seventy eight two thousand and nine and arcee busted and fortunately they have a lot more protections in place because of that and the other nuclear plant on the missouri river what's what's going on with the tonic reactor is an identical twin difficulty my daiichi units one through four it's a general electric boiling water reactor of the mark one design incredibly they are not shut down they are at full power they're operating a way full steam ahead with the floodwaters rising they have about a foot and a half of margin before they would have to shut down under safety regulations so they're running that thing at full steam and they have as well put in flood barriers on the river. does it is that it is the river continuing to come up or is

the river nose has it crested does it start well and also do we know is are there any more storms coming you know very tornado came through into a part of the grid or something like that i mean exactly what you what's what is the look like maybe have the army corps of engineers which is in charge of a half dozen major dams upstream of these nuclear power plants has said that these flood levels will persist into august actually these are controlled releases from the dams to prevent them from overtopping there assuring that the dams will not breach but that is a concern that's been raised if one of those dams were to fail that would send a wall of water down the missouri river arnie gundersen at fairwinds associates has called out the potential for an inland tsunami so that's a danger to keep our eyes on but there are predictions of rain this is only a prediction that there won't be major rains in the near future if that were to happen that would increase the flood levels and we've got very little margin f.

for calhoun they say they're good until one thousand and fourteen feet above sea level they're already at i believe it's a thousand and six point three feet they've got less than eight feet margin at this point before they have not prepared for that flood at that point. los alamos so potentially dangerous are these fires around that will sell los alamos was just before i left to come here i saw news reports from los alamos county that the county had declared an evacuation emergency so they're actually evacuating people just for the fires not for the nuclear for the fire but the los alamos nuclear laboratory that's been there since the days of the manhattan project has a lot of radioactivity contaminated sites pall over the place including the most concentrated radioactive waste storage locations and ten years ago there was a major fire out there very dramatic satellite images of the plume of smoke going across several states. and that plume of smoke contained radioactive contamination

including plutonium so the same risks exists now you don't want plutonium americans know about this stuff i mean. we have thirty seconds for oh i don't know even ten years ago the environmental protection agency in this was under the clinton administration and was very quick to say there's no danger to the public well there's plutonium in the air and the same now under a new democratic president we have dismantled any post emergency radiation monitoring that had been set up and i wasn't much set up so. this is just plain old . kevin camps thanks for sharing the story of her she being here and the great work you guys are doing thank you for the rest of the world is ditching nuclear power we're doing nothing except pray in the flooding doesn't get worse it's time to retire nuclear power the most expensive and most dangerous energy source on the planet for good in america and why because the weather is getting crazy in the nuclear these these two these three nuclear plants are two

nuclear plants and nuclear facilities are risks from the weather over at the weather underground blodgett dr jeff masters w. underground to work here these are just he wrote a long article these are just those sudden heads in the article just a list of the of the kind of you know paragraph summary it's. the work the earth is hot and by the way this is about the year two thousand to earth's hottest year on record most extreme winter arctic atmosphere circulation on record snow again is the result arctic sea level the lowest volume on record third lowest extent record melting in greenland and a massive aveeno event that's where giant icebergs are falling off and we see fresh water pouring into the city second most extreme shift from el nino to rania in history second worst coral bleaching in history the widest year over land in history. amazon rain forest experience is that second one hundred year drought in

five years global tropical cycle and activity the lowest on record by the way this is what's predicted cycle own numbers go down but intensities go up radically. hyperactive atlantic hurricane system third busiest on record a rare tropical storm in the south atlantic strongest storm in southwestern u.s. history strongest non coastal storm in u.s. history pakistani flood most expensive natural disaster in pakistan's history the russian heat wave and drought deadliest heat wave in human history record rains trigger australia's most expensive natural disaster in history heaviest rains on record trigger colombia's worst flooding disaster in history tennessee's one in a thousand year flood kills thirty those two point four billion in damage and bat was just two thousand and ten before jackal was taken out by a tornado all mile wide which is just unimaginable and and the wildfires now in texas virtually the entire state is on fire you mexico arizona what we're looking

at is total global weirding and in the midst of this we have these fragile nuclear power plants that if the if the high tension lines coming into them are caught or if the if flood waters are the rivers most of the scituate and rivers because they use it for cooling go up boom fukushima. it's time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's the day's question does seem like america's plan for dealing with a potential disaster at the fort calhoun nuclear power plant is to be simply praying that the flooding doesn't get worse your choices are yes the flood wall protection a nuclear plant will just give way or no experts will figure out how to keep us safe even if the plant floods or going to let us know what you think the pope will be open until tomorrow morning.

crazy alert it's the other john wayne and the show are you that once was bachmann officially kicked off her presidential campaign today in iowa and as you'd expect she's already stuck her foot in mouth given going off some bad intelligence bachmann attempted to connect with iowa voters by saying she has the same spirit as another famous i want john wayne take a look at what i want to know is this like john waynes from waterloo iowa that's going to see is that i have to. yeah well bachmann's right john wayne was one of waterloo's most famous citizens but it wasn't the john wayne who was the cape brought american boy actor instead it was john wayne gacy the american serial killer who raped and murdered thirty three little boys and buried many of them under his house who claim bachmann claims to share a spirit that explains

a lot. coming up time is seriously money terms of the debt ceiling is there any flicker of light at the end of our nation's gloomy economic. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right. i think they wanted well. we're never going to says further safe get ready because their freedom.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you don't i'm sorry this is the.

president obama injected himself into the debt limit ago she ations today a few days after house majority leader eric cantor stepped away from the table because democrats wanted to eliminate the tax break for corporate jets with cantor gone in less than a week to go until the president's deadline to raise the debt ceiling at a little more than a month ago and so our nation actually goes into default on our debts president obama's minority leader mitch mcconnell to the white house to figure out a way to go forward in the senate meanwhile in the house speaker john boehner drew a line in the sand saying his party will not support a debt limit deal that includes any tax increases instead arguing that as far as deficit reduction goes only spending cuts targeting average working american should

be on the table that spending cuts only approach by republicans was smacked down last week by both ben bernanke and the congressional budget office who both warned that such cuts will shrink our economy so what can we expect moving forward will be possible. both sides to reach a deal that not only keeps america from defaulting but also keeps our fragile economy our economic recovery from slowing down and what should we really be focusing on anyway our debt or jobs here to offer his take on this is dean baker co-founder of the center for economic policy and research and the actual economist . thanks for me great to have us with it we great to have you with us. our debt our national debt. if we were to put that in the context of a mortgage on your home for example. most people don't look you know if they've got one hundred thousand dollar mortgage on their house or whatever it is they don't look at it go level got a three thousand dollars mortgage i don't you know i don't know how do i make that

much how can they what they do is they look at they go and see it hundred seventy dollars a month of payments can i afford that isn't the real question can we afford the three hundred billion or so it is in annual interest payments on our debt rather than getting hysterical about the amount of this right i mean you care about the amount of interest the drain on the economy and pain that interest and currently it's less than two percent g.d.p. by comparison if you go back to the early ninety's when president bush left office president clinton came in it was almost five percent g.d.p. so we have a long way to go to we face the same interest burden as we faced in the early ninety seconds interest rates were different bits the biggest part of the story we have much higher interest rates coming out of the eighty's and some of the debt gave back from the seventy's were paying very high interest rates there not because they were gods that were issued during the thirty year bonds here yet so we have a long way to go to you have better crushing interest i should also point out one of the things that's really mentioned the federal reserve actually holds a wand is dead and the reason why that's important is that the interest that's paid to the fed is simply refunded back to the treasury so last year the fed refunded

eighty billion back to the treasury so we get from three hundred billion dollars first figure then includes the eighty billion that the fed refunded back well and which raises an interesting question we're going to get into this more with our next guest who's actually from japan and you know an economist is right there but but japan their g.d.p. debt is like two hundred twenty five percentage points for their debt but japan's fed can buy treasuries directly from japan's treasury they don't have to buy them on the open market so if they buy a billion dollars from the treasuries across a billion dollars here in the united states we passed a law some thirty or forty years ago i believe it was you i'm sure you probably know that we really three days here over the years ago. if i can. if the the fed wants to buy our debt by bonds they have to do it on the open market they've got to buy them goldman sachs and goldman sachs takes their part of flesh out of this so q.e. two actually made a lot of money for the banks because they got to sell the fed bonds and i just

thought. it's a good idea i mean i would place it is a much less important concern because i'm more concerned for example if the fed were to continue to hold federally funded eighty billion in interest of the treasury last year if the fed were to continue that rather than someone back to the public which is what it plans to do they can save us over a trillion dollars in interest payments over the next decade my point i mean if we blew up the law so that you didn't have it in there that's not what you don't have to change a lot on still with q e two with this is a question where you buy and this is a question of whole budget but didn't didn't a couple hundred billion dollars of the eight hundred billion from q e two end up in the hands of the banks wanted a couple hundred billion spread on it might have been the best of one percent here it would be so if there so what's the most important thing for this well then for these great jobs i mean that's what we should be talking about that's the real tragedy here is you have this whole charade of these people running around the

world's going to and you know what are we going to do to raise the debt ceiling are we going to raise taxes how much are we going to cut spending and we're going to cut medicare maybe and chopping block social security it's all aside the plan we should be talking about twenty five million people that are either unemployed working part time work full time jobs have left the labor force altogether that's the real disaster in front of us no one's talking about here in washington and what's the best way to put these people back to work well there's different ways i mean the stimulus got a part of the way their bows nor near not large enough we had three hundred billion of stimulus to try and counter a one point four trillion drop off an annual demands on the right size the other thing we can do if we can expand the economy we could phone in germany we could encourage employers to shorten work weeks rather than people why have a policy short time work instead of unemployment insurance and in germany it's been so successful that their unemployment rates actually lower today and was at the start of the downturn right percent it's

a little over six but it was over so. been at the servant downturn and it's even though they've actually had slower growth in the united states so it's not their economies growing of it people talk about the german growth miracle no it's just that they had good labor market policies so this program is called kurtzer short week and we've got the government says the companies have your people work thirty hours instead of forty hours and we'll give you and then you can pay down the difference so it doesn't cost the companies it comes out of the government money but people still have money in their pocket so they're creating demand by spending money is my understanding is that correct that's essentially right i mean they do wind up taking them so much less pay but a much much smaller of their reduction hours so i think most people would much prefer working thirty hour week in tape you know maybe ninety five percent as much as they used to and having a job as opposed to you know an employer is that politically radioactive that idea it will there's actually some republicans to support it you want to biggest proponents is. kevin hassett and he's this is a lot of interest on the republican side i think the problem is that you have the leadership on this path of just being negative they want things to be bad i mean

and maybe i'm inferring things here but you know that there's a rule doggish mitch mcconnell came out and said his job is to keep president obama from being reelected right and which is if they can crash the economy that's going to be bad for president obama and that's that's that's really grim. thank you again for the great work you're doing and promoting your work sharing program is the. place for me and good on your for it for the work throughout this debate on our debt republicans often cite what's happening on the other side of the planet in japan as a warning of what could happen if we don't get our debt under control currently our debt is about ninety five percent of g.d.p. japan's debt on the other hand is about two hundred twenty five percent of g.d.p. far worse than ours and republicans claim that because of their enormous debt japan has suffered from a lost decade of economic activity with the once rory asian economic powerhouse of the one nine hundred eighty s. was badly wounded out of control spending and has been limping along ever since and

that's sad story could. strike the united states if we don't immediately cut spending that's the republican story or the conservative or the whatever story but one right now an economics writer who happens to live in japan disagrees and argues that japan is doing just fine thank you very much any one put his money where his mouth gets that magazine and fingleton former editor of forbes in the financial times author of numerous books including one of my absolute favorite images of the dragon americas coming from america's fate in the coming era of chinese had germany and a man walking back to the program. thank you tom delighted to be with you you made an offer of your put up ten thousand dollars of your own money to charity if someone can prove to you that japan has indeed experienced a lost decade. you have indeed and the the evidence really is enormous that japan has. remarkably well over the last twenty years you hear

a lot of stuff about the banks and so on. people are not looking at the real economy they're not looking at for instance electricity is an indicator that is often used by the world bank g.d.p. numbers. i'm arguing that has been. understating its g.d.p. growth for trade secret service so the the idea that your panel has been in a recession or depression for the last decade or two is actually not true and b it's a misconception that the japanese have either allowed or promoted because it allows them to be. continued to be protectionist with regard to trade policies is that yourself. basically the japanese top europe bureaucracy. an agenda to keep markets closed it knows that if. the americans think that the

japanese economy is feeling washington will be less likely to press for looking over for instance the car market here and so on. but i'd like to bring you back to answer the figures on for instance electricity growth in the last twenty years and japan between zero and two thousand and seven japan's electricity generation growth was forty two percent versus to thirty eight percent in the united states and if you adjust for population per capita the growth in japan was thirty seven percent versus fourteen percent in the united states now the economy has electricity growth is expected to closely correlate with economic growth so the something amiss here and i would like to know these issues in washington and put. this evidence before prominent people in washington you point out that

while there are some numbers that indicate that japan might have softened like their their stock market for example that really what's going on for the average japanese which is really where the rubber meets the road or whatever cliche. is a very very different reality that while the average americans reality is getting more and more dire and terrible the average japanese reality for the last twenty years has been pretty damn good. yeah exactly of course that was a terrible crash nearly nine you know actually it's but that's a long time and under the japanese really got over that much more quickly than the american press the british press would have you believe in in the interim the living standards in japan have increased very rapidly and very obviously things like mobile phones good leading indicator of further her living standards pick up

and japan was faster than the united states by the end of the ninety nine. japanese mobile phones in the japanese market were about two generations ahead of american mobile phones much like you have been with many more capabilities you can try to thirty times all sorts of other evidence of that sort but it was ignored all along in this talk about you know our feeling economy so of life for the average japanese this period plus they all have free health care they've got good retirement plans we have just a minute left here in what should america learn from japan is japan and gauging in protectionist trade policies that one of the main things as a value to them and should we be doing that the united states. you've hit the nail on the head i think that free trade is an impossible dream it's you took my old boss to be goldsman so twenty years ago and he was right basically it doesn't work

in the real world. the united states should look after its own economy rather than try to change the world economy america or anything else and thanks so much for being with us tonight my pleasure. great analysis. coming up with gazans governor scott walker's new budget bill chokes students i cut in eight hundred billion dollars in public education meanwhile walker's favorite was cousin supreme court justice as we're doing his fair share of choking as well i'll tell you more about the ethics going on in the cheesehead state.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here in the. i think rocker from a beautiful morning well. we never government says there's really confuse safe get ready because you get your freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so sorely sleep you think you understand it and then you live something else here see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big fish.