it's place. and welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sacks in for tom hartman coming up in this half hour besides the vast health and safety concerns surrounding nuclear power one of the other major concerns is where and how to store the nuclear waste isn't time we gave up on nuclear power altogether so trying to hide nuclear waste wouldn't be an issue at all. and republicans have taken billions of dollars away from state local governments instead choosing to siphon that money to the wealthy elite how much destruction have republicans caused to states and towns across america.

sixty seven years ago today a nuclear bomb was dropped on nagasaki japan a lesson learned after that and the bombing of hiroshima a few days earlier was that nuclear weapons are apocalyptic and should never be used again and for the most part they haven't been used to it yet japan is still reeling from a nother nuclear crisis this one self inflicted more than five hundred days after an earthquake and tsunami crippled the fukushima nuclear power plant which as we've now learned was woefully unprepared to handle such a disaster the japanese government and tepco are scrambling to bring this current nuclear crisis under control. the main problem centers on the hundreds of tons of radioactive waste that stored in the roofs of the crumbling reactor buildings referenced in this chart as the spent fuel pool the severely damaged reactor four

which you see in this picture holds one hundred thirty five tons of waste on its own and is dangerously close to toppling over and igniting a radioactive fire capable of releasing more radiation into the air than tension ovals how to transport these massive amounts of nuclear waste over of the excuse me out of the crippled plant and to somewhere else that's not in danger of collapsing is now the big question something on this scale has never been done before and frankly it could take decades which raises the question of whether or not nuclear waste in the evitable byproduct of nuclear power is adequately being dealt with that question has now reached the united states this week the nuclear regulatory commission announced it is temporarily freezing the approval or extension of licenses for any new nuclear reactors in the nation that decision was prompted by a u.s. court of appeals ruling in june that the nuclear regulatory commission is in violation

of the national environmental policy act for not properly laying out guidelines for the safe storage of nuclear waste if there is no such thing as safe storage of nuclear waste previously the n.r.c. provided provided slices under the assumption that the disposal of nuclear waste will simply be handled in the future when it becomes quote necessary or under the assumption that nuclear waste can just be safely stored at reactor sites like in the roofs like where it's stored at fukushima. so will this new debate over waste storage wake up enough people to the fact that nuclear power just isn't worth it paul gunter joins me now he's the director of the reactor oversight project at beyond nuclear paul welcome back to shanks again sam so are you encouraged at all by this decision that i guess the n.r.c. was kind of forced into here they were forced into following the laws as written under the national environmental policy act as it was brought forward by the state

attorneys general from new york new jersey connecticut vermont and twenty four environmental groups from around the country that's what forced this decision do you think that the ruling that this court ruling had anything to do with what's going on in fukushima i think that the the accident in fukushima has certainly raised the just how significant and serious the environmental impacts of a nuclear waste fire could be and as we fear it still could be in japan and i think that it's you know people need to understand that where fukushima has you know for has one hundred thirty five metric tons plants like davis bessie have more than a thousand tons of nuclear waste in these storage ponds or in the case of oyster creek in new jersey seven hundred fifty tons on the roof in one of these pools so

you mentioned two examples where they store the waste in the roofs in the reactors where is nuclear waste predominately stored and we've got seventy two thousand metric tons of nuclear waste sitting. one hundred four operating reactors and fifteen sites that are permanently closed that three quarters of that waste is in these storage ponds which are basically forty feet deep and you know. forty about forty to forty something like that so so there's discussion though about trying to find a permanent nuclear waste site and yucca mountain is what's what keeps being thrown around. why does the nuclear industry i mean it seems like they really want a permanent site just so they don't even have to think about storage anymore as a kind of the case is that why there lobby the nuclear industry and the government want a political solution because there is no way to provide right now

a reliable scientific scientifically approved solution i mean we're talking about the storage of hazardous materials for tens of millions of years and really there's no way of providing any assurance that we have ten years of safe storage in some of these facilities exactly there's a giant to be a giant unknown when it comes to nuclear waste we're seeing that played out at fukushima because we have these designs that have the spent fuel in the ceilings and we have was that the case internet that where this was the spent fuel and sure noble in the ceilings i think it was a ground level so this is kind of the first time where we are having to deal with a nuclear crisis in which they have the storage pools in the ceiling and these are predominantly the general electric boiling water reactors and in the other reactors in the united states the pressurized water reactors the the storage of this nuclear waste is in great but still vulnerable i mean what i think that what we're what

we're confronting now is that. the nuclear regulatory commission and the industry have been perpetrating a confidence game in that they have been looking to win or swindle the public of their confidence that someday somewhere somebody is going to come up with a solution and yet just keep producing this material without without this scientifically accepted or license facility so you know what we're concerned with right now is that the courts essentially every man did this whole confidence decision. back to the ultimately the confidence man the nuclear regulatory commission yeah and i think that's reflected exactly in what the n.r.c. has guidelines were before this before this court ruling which was basically saying something like the way we're going to deal with nuclear waste is we're going to

deal with it when it becomes necessary in the future and that should really elicit too much confidence from people who think that their government is protecting them from nuclear waste that's essentially a swindle of future generations of their environmental protection so given the fact that there doesn't seem to be really any viable solutions for nuclear waste storage what is the n.r.c. going to come up with before they start you know some more license just another con of some sort we're concerned of course it could be a repeat but at this i mean i think that there is a positive side to this in that the national environmental policy act does provide us with due process that provides us with disclosure and the opportunity for intervention and the until this is closed out these licensing proceedings for new reactors and for licensed extensions on aging old reactors is frozen so

you know it is a game changer in that we are in the arena where since one nine hundred eighty the public has been denied these kinds of hearings under this nuclear waste confidence decision so this is a battle that's going to ultimately be one of the courts we have or politics or politics or in the streets i think it's a combination of all absolutely well it seems like everything nowadays is going to probably have to be one of the streets got thirty seconds left on a daily basis there's problems in nuclear plants all around america which one sure is there one in particular right now that our viewers should be most concerned about i think that we're focused on these general electric mark one boiling water reactors mark two particularly as well where all of this nuclear waste thousands of tons is sitting up in the. rooftop pools and these are essentially. knoebels waiting to happen tens of thousands of times more than what we saw and we did the video talking more about it but they're owned by general rick paul thank you they're going to comment on their nukes one thing remember when it comes to

nuclear power is there's no such thing as a safe level of radiation no matter how small the dose and in japan we're seeing massive doses radiation can be deadly and will eventually be deadly here's tom explaining why. first of all just a an interesting story so this picture here this picture is from the one nine hundred fifty s. when i was seven years old i used to walk home from first grade past a shoe store and the shoe store they had this machine right here and you could stick your feet in here and look at the top and see the bones in your feet inside your shoes it was an x. ray machine to see if your shoes fit now they made these things illegal in one nine hundred sixty because they were killing people i mean this is pretty awesome stuff so the question is how does radiation cause cancer how does the you know what why why is that machine dangerous this is d.n.a. d.n.a. is made out of you know you've got the. the the sugars basically out here to hold

this thing together but but there are four amino acids adenine climbing guanine inside as seen one inside as seen always form a pair adding and wanting always for a player adding in time you know his form fair but sometimes it's this way sometimes it's that way and the positioning of these pairs and the sequence of these pairs on the d.n.a. chain is what determines whether you're a human or a mouse whether your eyes are blue or brown and when and a million other things course and also whether or not this cell is going to duplicate or die and how quickly it's going to duplicate now radiation comes along and whether it's particulates radiation which can hit one of these things and just knock right out. i can alpha particle or whether it's ionizing radiation like x. rays that just electrically energizes the thing to the point where it reacts to something nearby something in the bloodstream gets pulled out a hole is created in that d.n.a. what that whole does is it means that when this d.n.a. splits it's no longer it's no longer intact is usually what happens is that cell

dies but occasionally what happens is the cell simply loses its mechanism to regulate its ability to replicate in other words it starts reproducing over and over and over faster faster faster and we call that cancer. there is no safe level of radiation because every cancer that's caused by radiation started by one photon of energy and one little tiny piece of an x. ray or one little particle one the hitting one piece of d.n.a. in one cell and that one cell became the cancer that consumes the person's body anybody who tells you there's a safe level of radiation is lying it does not exist. coming up the republican budget cuts two hundred forty seven billion dollars in state funding over the next decade while letting the romney super rich get even richer so what are the consequences of this financial destruction on the state and local levels

will explain in tonight's. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know. welcome to the big picture.

that just burns your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual paper it's a food product essentially. this is much stronger than anything if you buy a lot of sort of louise's thousands of times we're stronger than any kind of body of ever put. into it only a military. can do the work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government's doing. you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. but

. now a quick screen report american should be getting used to hearing this by now but we're coming off the hottest month ever recorded in the history of the united states according to the national oceanic and atmospheric administration the average temperature for the month was seventy seven point six degrees that's more than three degrees higher than the century average and the hottest july recorded since eighteen ninety five when they first started recording those sort of things as this chart shows temperatures in only four states were considered near normal last month with the majority of the states in the quote much above normal category the same time sixty three percent of the nation is mired in a historic drought that's threatening not only our nation's food supply but the

rest of the world's too as we talked about on the show earlier this week for the first time in recent history the world is dealing with three major food crises one in east africa one in west africa and one in yemen and we're just barely into august stay tuned this is just the beginning of climate change induced global weirding. and now it's time for tonight's the good the bad and the very very mellow terrorists leave ugly good job corps corps is a republican running for congress from colorado seventh district his home state is currently considering a radical personhood bill that would define a fertilized egg as a person and outlaw in vitro fertilization and contraception this is actually colorado's colorado's third attempt at passing the radical law and corps thinks

it's a bad idea saying voters have made their voices heard twice on this issue already and he's more focused on getting the economy back on track luckily other republicans have joined in as well in opposition to this person hood amendment hopefully these guys will soon understand that we shouldn't be trying to give personhood rights to fetuses instead we should be stripping personhood rights from corporations. the bad drum corps that move over birth there's corsi a tea party activists author and conspiracy theorist extraordinary posted a video to you to recently in which he claims to have evidence that president obama was married to a man before he was married to first lady michelle obama take a look. i want to talk about a couple of the stranger articles written how they raised the question was there an opera is gay or bisexual is something i've accumulated

a great deal of evidence on and here's a crackpot rumor has it that donald trump and his crackpot team of investigators is officially on the scene god help us all and now the very very ugly congressman steve king after managing to stay out of the news for a couple of days can retake. his rightful place in the very very ugly this time it's because he told a crowd at a campaign event in humboldt iowa that he wants to introduce a bill that would repeal everything president obama has signed into law course that includes obamacare but if things got his way other things would be repealed too like legislation to strengthen security on the border and legislation to give medals of honor to nine eleven first responders and even legislation to honor the one the only ronald reagan clearly king didn't think this one through what else is new jackass and that is very very ugly.

so what's next on congressional republicans hit list well they've already gone after women trying to turn back the clock and deny women access to contraceptives and equal pay for equal work they've already gone after the poor and the unemployed slashing away at food assistance programs and unemployment insurance they've already gone after american muslims holding mccarthy esque hearings on radicalization while ignoring the far more serious threat of domestic terrorism something we were all reminded of over the weekend with the sick temple massacre in wisconsin and they've already gone after our planet passing more anti environment legislation than any other congress in the history of well congress so what are

they going to go after next the answer. american cities and states a new analysis of the paul ryan budget which passed out of the house of representatives nearly unanimously earlier this year reveals the devastating effects republican spending cuts would have on states and cities that are already dealing with budget crunches thanks to the bush recession the republican budget slashes two hundred and forty seven billion dollars in state funding over the next ten years directly affecting education programs health programs for women and children housing assistance and police and fire fighter budgets because you know they're not important in other words republicans are calling for even more layoffs of teachers more layoffs of firefighters and more layoffs of cops while the same time screwing over over screwing over the poor and the sick who rely on social safety nets to see

a doctor or just put enough food on the table already republicans are forced to lay off of six hundred eighty thousand public sector workers around the nation with their austerity agenda and at the same time they're proposing slashing state funding republicans are proposing a three trillion dollar tax cut for the romney super rich in america let states and cities go bankrupt let the rich get richer and richer and richer and richer the consequences of this financial destruction at a local level in states and cities across america is the subject of tonight's daily take. books movies and t.v. shows have all often tried to paint a picture of what our future might look like some like george orwell's iconic book one thousand nine hundred four envision a dystopian big brother government ruling over all of us others like the hunger

games in vision a future very much like feudal times where the nation is run by a small and very very wealthy elite who plucked children from the vast working class poor to dual to the death of a televised contest and then of course there are those futurists like jefferson de tocqueville lincoln and f.d.r. who imagine a nation of the people by the people for the people for the future belongs to big brother or the super rich or we the people remains to be seen we're already catching a glimpse of the dystopian frankly absurd future america and which corporations run or own virtually everything we see and do virtually every single day all around the nation it's a future where all our commons the stuff owned by we the people in our school buses or fire trucks or police cars or public libraries parks road signs subways or all of them have been hijacked by corporations and admin and not too distant future and

already in some places around america corporate advertising runs everything take for example this fire hydrant in indiana which now belongs to kentucky fried chicken. apparently his manhole cover now belongs to contrary to colonel sanders the new york times explain what's going on here with a recent article about how broke cities afraid to raise taxes on their rich or corporate residents are instead selling naming rights to those same corporations that are afraid to axe the article looks at the cash strapped city of baltimore which just passed a resolution clearing the way for corporations to begin advertising on fire trucks so now and firefighters come to save your house or me and burn down the fire drug could be brought to year by the bank of america who at the very same time may very well be trying to foreclose on the very same house as the times writes baltimore is joining dozens of other financially struggling city's transit systems and school

districts around the country that are trying to weather the economic downturn by selling advertisements naming rights and sponsorships to raise money predictably after thirty years of reaganomics and starve the beast of government tax policy corporations which use are commons more heavily than do ordinary citizens and used to pay more than twenty seven percent of federal revenue for the use of those commons from our courts to have an educated workforce to the police and fire protection are no longer pay and that today after thirty years or reaganomics those corporations pay less than nine percent and it's become politically impossible to raise taxes anymore to close the budget gaps so all these lawmakers are growing down to grover norquist so instead lawmakers have to raise revenue by selling off what's left of our corporate commons to corporate advertisers for example in philadelphia the metro station formerly known as addison station is now called a t.n.t. station their fair cards have mcdonald's advertising. several states have now

passed laws to allow corporate advertisers to buy space cool busses like the school bus which doubles as a vehicle to take students to class animal being billboard to entice them to eat at little caesars pizza or this school bus advertising for a local car dealer since after all kids who ride a bus to school bus need their own car right over there will in syracuse new york police rescue helicopters are getting the corporate advertising treatment to john bolani a chief in the local sheriff's office said about the movie so people are a little put off by the idea that we're getting corporate sponsorships for what used to be a government duty i think the question is where will this end how long until our police cars are advertising for home security companies so that described distressed burglary victims can now be sold our new home alarm system when the cops show up how long until our money is stamped with corporate average

and goldman sachs can print logo on a twenty dollar bill for the slogan this is invest here that's right the private the reserve bank is already on our money and how long until our public parks are littered with billboards for natural gas fracking companies convincing tourists a park would be just beautiful with fracking wells all over how long until speed limit signs are advertising the newest ford or chevy sports car flaunting how it can reach the speed a lot less than six segments how long until penn station in new york or union station here in washington d.c. get renamed after corporate sponsors and become exxon mobil station and blue cloth blue cross blue shield station is this the sort of future we want where everything that used to belong to us to we the people now belongs to a corporate sponsor. or we can't leave our house or send our kids to school or.

you know get ride in an ambulance god forbid or call the fire department without being bombarded with by corporations telling us what insurance policy we should buy what pizza we should order or whether or not we should get our fried chicken extra crispy or original recipe this of course is the world in vision by an randon all our brave new world buddies like alan greenspan and paul ryan but frankly to paraphrase antonin scalia. if the founders had heard such a proposal it would have run for the exits. and that's the big picture for tonight thursday august ninth two thousand and twelve if you missed any of tonight's show you can now watch it in h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture for more information on any of the stories we covered visit our website to tom hartman dot com free speech oregon r.t. dot com also check out our two you tube channels there are links to tom foreman dot com also at tom foreman dot com check out all the different ways you can send us

your feedback and don't forget as tom always says democracy begins with you get out there get active occupy something tag your it we'll see tomorrow. wealthy british style massage holds a spot on the front of the. market . it's going to find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report. and download the official ati application to cell phone choose your language stream quality and enjoy your

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