now that's where i come in. on r.t. america i'll make sure you don't get railroaded you'll get the straight talk and the straight through. it will. be. well i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture as part of its cleanup efforts the company that runs the crippled fukushima power plant wants to dump almost eight hundred thousand tons of radioactive material into the ocean how could that possibly be safe as paul gunter just and exxon mobil lied to the public for

decades about the threat of climate change should we give it the corporate death penalty on this day mccall and eleanor goldfield and tonight's big picture. is the american nuclear industry on its last legs all across the country right now reactor projects are failing and existing power plants are sinking deeper and deeper into the red all of a sudden the so-called energy of the future is starting to look at awful lot like a relic what's going on with us joining me now is paul gunter director of the reactor oversight project of nuclear paul welcome back thank you tom it's great having you with us so the big news in the nuclear world right now two utility companies out of south carolina south carolina electric and gas and santee cooper recently stopped construction on a couple of advanced reactors. the not have passed your thoughts on that these are

supposed to be the future of the declare industry what's happened well in fact the news today is that south carolina lecture can gas never bothered to even stablished a schedule for. construction with a set of goals so you know here's an industry that is notorious when i could first got started with this in the one nine hundred seventy s. . we understood that this that these construction projects could be bridges to nowhere and in fact the industry in the seventy's and eighty's failed on the fact that they could not control cost and they could not provide for any reliable. construction schedule completion and so they failed and now we see this industry in in an effort to bring about

a renaissance they essentially fell into the same trap shut this industry down in the eighty's but you know they've essentially been able to get. the rate payers in the in the taxpayers to put all the financing and construction. and the companies themselves were pretty much trying to keep all their financial skin out of the game but again with out of control of the of the construction costs without the ability to predict when you would be able to complete these things you know they have essentially failed and why would one of these companies want to build a nuclear power plant to begin with the things are losing money they're dangerous the decommissioning is insanely expensive in fact we don't even know really the ultimate cost of decommissioning a nuclear power plant but we're going to find out and cassie and we're probably going to have to pay it are they are they building these things these two that were built they build in them because they are making a profit just in. the process of building them that they're getting subsidies or

tax breaks or something i mean is there something some reason beyond the hope of future electricity well for example the the the two george utilities were getting the control the construction paid in financed through what they call construction work in progress so they were charging a rate payers for the in the in their utility bills for the construction costs and the. down in georgia where they're building the vogel nuclear power station that had a eight point three billion dollars federal loan guarantee tied to it so they basically are using ratepayer in taxpayer money and it's all about impaired building tom this is really. an adventure that we've seen fail time and time again but this industry gets to reimage itself

and they sinned congress and the consumer chasing after these new mirages so what used to be the peaceful atom you know turned out to be a bomb what was too cheap to meter is now too expensive to matter and now they're reframing this image as as a way of addressing climate change through what they called zero emissions which it's not sense right so but i understand that the industry at least here in the united states according to bloomberg investigation they're losing almost three billion dollars a year. how long can this this last can these things are literally bleeding cash is what the article said but this is really all about. again in an adventure in using other people's money for empire building and. but what good is having an empire if if if it's broke if

a good chunk of all of the people are going to walk away with a pocket full of money i mean i'd like us you know you should also be aware that the these same utilities are now going to come back to the rate payers through a captured regulator to recover abandonment costs so they're going to look to soak rate payers for billions more and you know what we're about to see and what we should really see is i rate payers. will resist and refuse so are you expecting a massive bailout of the nuclear industry is that the next thing that's on the horizon well actually i think that what we're looking at right now is the collapse so you know they're going to play it like a specialist rather than like the banks so they banks when they collapse through their own screw ups we just said oh here's fourteen trillion dollars when the as best as somebody has collapsed we were like well there's no way we can resuscitate this industry so we will pay the victims of the as best as the federal fund and you

guys just go off and declare bankruptcy and take your money and run and you leave these this radioactive decay behind just which is just as companies left all yes this is this is you know this is criminal negligence is what it is except that they saw i mean you were out in the one nine hundred seventy s. saying this is exactly what's going to happen and you were right right it was. it actually even repeated itself and unfair tom they are talking about again reimaging this failed industry no. through what they call small modular reactor so where they sold this industry originally on a on an economy of scale with these huge facilities now they're reimaging it as you know we can make these into small modular reactors and we'll be able to simply lines so that. we'll just make lots of little ones and that's that's the new

plan and that's what we're looking at is our meanwhile over in japan tepco the company that owns the fukushima reactors. according news reports that they want to dump almost eight hundred thousand tons of riley radioactive water into the pacific ocean what's the story here well. you know the the nuclear reaction. it creates all kinds of radioactive isotopes this accident created tremendous amounts of you know of probably one hundred twenty different radioactive isotopes in the fissioning process but one key one has been tritium which is radioactive hydrogen and the industry in talking about you know what they're going to do with all this radioactive water you can't filter tritium out because it is radioactive hydrogen in its

treated water so they're talking about either dumping it into the ocean or. the other option is to vaporize it but you create radioactive water vapor in that instance but. the industry likes to frame this stuff tritium as what they call a week amid or they like to frame it as harmless but in fact tritium because it is radioactive hydrogen you know it would it has a beta admit or it won't penetrate the skin but if you ingest it or inhale it. it will then displace the. normal natural hydrogen with radioactive hydrogen and then it starts to incorporated the most intimate biological levels where it will start bumping hydrogen out of the d.n.a. chain and. this then when it when it's at that level while it won't penetrate the

skin tritium itself is twice as affective as doing to do biological damage than x. rays or gamma radiation so the next time you hear the industry claim that this is a harmless emitter in fact once it's incorporated in the biology it's it's more effective than gamma radiation and destroying. our genetic make up which is a bad thing a for future generations and b. for anyone who doesn't want to get cancer is as absolute as we get it is tepco is also building in this ice wall we've been hearing about this i think it was over a year ago that you were kevin or first on our program talking about this this ice wall that they're building to try to constrain or or hold in the radioactive material from the. china effect kind of meltdown or are they out with that well you know they are talking about building a mile long perimeter around the. the wreckage of fukushima daiichi

which these meltdowns have they don't know where the molten cores are in three of these reactors but you know behind fukushima daichi is this huge mountain range and it's off that mountain range is tremendous amount of groundwater that's been flowing into these basements with these melted cores and then spilling over and back out into the ocean so the idea is to take about sixteen hundred pipes sink them ninety feet into the ground down to bedrock fill it with refrigerant down to minus twenty two degrees fahrenheit and then as the water moves up against these walls of these pipes it'll freeze and then you have an essentially an ice stamp. according to the japanese regulator the nuclear regulatory agency there in japan they. we believe that tepco is lying about the

effectiveness of these this unprecedented technology i mean you can you can use this to freeze under bodies of water you know soil so you can dig a tunnel but it's never been used in this kind of application to shore up against water moving into the this radioactive wreckage and so. plus isn't it i mean if the water is passing over the reactor of course the radioactive cores are not maybe literally read up but their damn hot they not only is it the ground water moving off the millions that they have to contend with but they're having to pour water over the. into the wreckage itself to keep the cores cool and we've been doing that for now is to heat if you're going to close the ice walls and just melt them more well you know again they're they're saying they're making claims that they're going to be able to freeze a wall but you know it might turn out to be just. a slushy and not really an ice

wall at all but again how long and you know that they don't really know so stay tuned paul yeah having you know nukes yeah there you go thank you coming up it's time to execute enron i'll explain why in tonight's big picture panel with dave mccall and eleanor goldfield right after the break. what do you have for breakfast yesterday why would you put those up for your wife or. what's your biggest fear. of a bit on the table when so let's talk a little bit more you say if you have the things the best part about. exploring the topic so simple. now i could give you due to the question more.

exact tonight a comment. that not defending my the corporate. you go after the corporations that just. prompted older people. to act it's not for me it's like medicine it's like a cancer do all the stress that the news puts you under redacted tonight is a show where you can go to cry from laughing about the stuff that's going on in the world as opposed to just regular crying we're going to find out what the corporate mainstream media is not telling you about how we're going to filter it through some satirical comedic lenses to make it more digestible that's what we do every week hard hitting radical comedy news like redacted tonight is where it's at.

and. why are american right wingers now copying isis and ramming their cars into crowds of people fast and it's big picture panel. with me for the ride big picture panel our david cohen national g.o.p. strategist and eleanor goldfield creative activist and host of act out occupy dot com thank you both for being with us it's great and both let's go back so a still unidentified man has been taken into custody after he drove his car into a crowd of marchers last night in st louis actually the night before last those marchers were participating in a protest honoring a local transgender woman who was killed by the police earlier this month

wednesday's attacks came just a few weeks after neo nazi james lee fields jr drove his car into an anti-fascist march in charlottesville virginia killing one person and injuring nineteen is the american right turning into isis eleanor. i think i think the comparison is a little difficult to make but do we have religious for. a wing extremist in this country country absolutely and as somebody who is in charlottesville and they are feet away from what happened. i can definitely say that the american right is willing and ready to take lives for their beliefs just like isis is and there are six states that have put up bills that would protect a driver's right to plow into protesters and we can't separate this sort of legislation from the impetus to you know hurt peaceful protesters that are merely exercising their free speech rights so i think the comparison is not necessarily

out of place but i think it it also makes it all too easy to take the focus off of what's happening in this country and say like oh it's just these extremists that are like isis and it's actually a much bigger problem that we're seeing across the country to say that the american right is a terrorist no bill that's absurd the one difference i would draw is. you know the guy who drove the car into the other higher. all of these people they're not willing to kill themselves the difference the isis guys are willing to kill themselves in the commission of a mass act of mass murder right wing terrorists who have committed as many murders as muslim terrorists in the united states over the last twenty years are not willing to kill them so that i can include religious belief whether or not i don't see a difference whether or not ones that want to martyr themselves or not for their cause whether it's right or whether it's isis or whatever it is in the name of all of whatever terrorists are terrorists whether what you call them right wingers because they are right wingers ok great that's like saying that that all muslims are bad or

terrorists or they're like isis all right we're all conservatives or republicans are somehow terrorists no that's offensive that's offensive to what i think a lot of the country well i mean it's not the same thing as a conservative there are two different ok so i'm right wingers make me a terrorist i just said right wing extremist i don't think you're hearing the words that are coming out of my amount of critical second time first i know you i think. implication was there or try to say that all republicans were all right we're only what i'm trying to say i was saying that right wing extremists are incredibly dangerous vigilante what violence has been on the rise in this country for decades the southern poverty law center counted nine hundred seventeen extremist white nationalist groups and that's just the ones that like have facebook pages that's not all the people that agree with them a lot of those people like we saw in boston only fifteen people showed up it's not just fifteen people that agree with them there are far more and that's really what's dangerous dangerous or terrorist in the united states into a domestic or foreign doesn't matter if they're right wing great ok you know what

they're bad terrorism is better period so you know who you are but while the right wing media was glorified running over protesters for example back in january the daily caller's michael rouse posed posted a video of trucks and cars bumping into protesters and told his readers study the technique because it may prove useful in the next four years. ai says publishes the same stuff in their magazine right. you know it's. terrorism is bad ok and we have a larger chance of getting killed by a white vigilante in this country than you do by any muslim act you know a new study out of harvard has confirmed that fossil fuel giant exxon mobil intentionally misled the public for decades about global warming study looked at exxon's internal communications and public statements between one thousand nine hundred eighty seven and two thousand and fourteen and found a stark difference between what they were saying internally and what they were telling the public while eighty percent of internal documents acknowledge that

climate change is real and human caused only twelve percent of advertorials did so with eighty one percent instead expressing doubt about climate change should we bring back the corporate death penalty for companies like exxon or if they're behaving in a way that is going to be destructive to the quality of life or just to life itself enough i agree i mean the general has the power to revoke a corporate charter. and i think that exxon has has given reason to revoke that many times i mean just in the ninety's alone they paid out millions of dollars in corporate settlements for everything from pipeline ruptures to tank spills i mean not to mention exxon valdez i mean they've given plenty of reasons to revoke their corporate charter destroying both people and planet they get huge amounts of subsidies while they cause their actions caused great detriment for the economy and people and yet we pay them to do that i think it's definitely time that we revoke

their corporate charter but the question is will that happen in a in a country where revoking that corporate charter comes with so much political baggage at something that most attorney generals if not all of them are unwilling to do you know we used to do this routinely dave up until the eight hundred ninety s. it was just absolutely a couple thousand a year companies would be put out of business because they were failing to function in the public for the public good or in the public you know in a way that promotes the public good which used to be required up until the charter modern era in the eighty's ninety's used to be required that every corporate charter said that is their first step sons a purpose of her statement of purpose. why not why not clear out some space here open it up let some smaller companies blossom i mean let's have some competition competition is great absolute competition but the idea of if you're doing the idea of a government going into a business say like oh no you're no longer you know you can't do that is why we have the court system this is why you have you know you have congress this is why they can go ask questions congress like they are insured and the courts the courts

have been. well. we've had this can't right now more than half of all federal judges are federalist society people i mean you know during the obama administration mitch mcconnell would not allow bush i think over one hundred federal judges that obama had appointed or wouldn't allow the appointments or would you know consider them and so trump has been i think he's got up to thirty seven of them so far. just cranking them through. and that's why i don't tend to trust our core that we have a republican mean we have an oligarchy which means the rule by the wealthy and the wealthy are the the rex tillerson says now this i mean it's absurd so these people are the ones running the government so of course then the government's not going to go in and say that you shouldn't have a charter but also means that we can't trust the government to actually put down laws and regulations that will keep people safe and this isn't just i mean if you don't like people or planet that's fine but a lot of people who don't like people and planet care about the economy well exxon is draining the economy by their actions because we have to pay for their subsidies

and then pay out so much money to clean up their mess regardless of the people employed by exxon. let me think i don't have the it doesn't matter i mean people would tell you how much of it i really enjoy you know if you're going to billion do you know how many people could be employed by green energy i mean the comparison is ridiculous that's like it's like somebody saying well if we didn't have oil spills you wouldn't be able to pay people to clean up oil spills that's an absurd argument these companies make profit off of torturing people and planet and that should stop if we didn't have an oligarchy it would stop ok so you want to have a government go in and disband an organization oh but you don't trust govern the first place to be able to say i don't like the laws government to do that i don't think that they will but should a government that is an actual republic should it do that would it do that yes but we don't have a republic i would argue that exxon mobil has broken many of our laws many times and so then sue them and you know what that's that and that's the problem then they just pay it out and they take it out of their you know out of their stockholders

dividends and it's no big deal to them it's just the cost of doing business that is you have to spend you know i think it's time for you know i'm a big fan of the death penalty at the core. i don't like killing people for a lot for a shuffle corporate ok donald trump's labor department delayed for a second straight time the implementation was so-called do shiri rule but for. a rule which was put in place by former president obama requires retirement account managers to act in the best interest of the people whose money they manage it prevents them from wine to their customers about how much of a commission for example they're making on your investments it was supposed to go to a fact back in april but an earlier delay by the trump administration push pushed its start back to the middle of twenty eight eighteen after this month's second delay it won't go into effect until twenty nineteen so the trumpet ministrations excuse is that they need more time to read research the fiduciary rules impact on markets

but all the research was done years ago by trying to keep it legal for your banker to lie to you about your retirement investments are just trying to find cover for an obvious favor they're doing for steve banks or buddies was draining the swamp the biggest scam in election history dave. i will say that when the president first came in and promised to drain the swamp kind of looks like that may not have happened but we're going to see little bit more of it one of the big things about this particular rule is not and i'm not suggesting that it's a bad thing what i'm suggesting is that the portion where is it talks about. the fate. fair compensation if that's the actual term fair compensation it's not well defined and a lot of the banker people have questions about then whether or not it's actually a legal thing they can do so yeah ok so there may be some questions about all this all this rule requires transparency there's a lot more to with it. transparency is a good thing you know i completely agree but there are some aspects of this thing having to do with fair compensation as that term applies what i mean you know i

have no idea and i don't know what you're talking about what i'm talking about is that part of the fiduciary rule that says that if i'm your stockbroker and this is your retirement funds and frankly i think this should apply to all money because this is now this is just applying to people's retirement funds the hippocratic oath for money but it's exact i think you know if i'm your general investment guy i can't lie to you about you know hey i put in this fund because it pays me a three percent commission and so this fund which will do twice as well for you but it only pays me a one percent commission the issue is is the government says that you have to be compensated fairly for for transaction fees and stuff like that and what that's defined as it's kind of out there but it has to be disclosed to the customer so the customer is going to have something to say about what's fair on it i mean i will say that i'm not an expert on this i haven't read up on it as much as it sounds like both of you have but i will go back to what i said in the earlier comment is that we have an oligarchy and that we are ruled by wall street and i mean we've seen this for and it's not just republicans i mean democrats are just as owned by

corporate money and wall street as republicans are but it's very clear that when wall street wants something then they will push it through and you basically have a company as your president so and wall street and big corporations and us when we are hillary clinton just has been. what are not great having both. of you with us thank you and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active tag your. all the food we don't need. everyone in the world should experience

fleas and you'll get it on the old the old. the old according to gesture. the modern world come along for the ride. all the world's a stage and all the news companies merely players but what kind of parties are into america playing artie america offers more artsy american personal. in many ways the news landscape is just like this you know real news fake news good actors bad act and in the end you could never hear on. so much parking for all the world's a stage all the world's a stage all the world's a stage and we are definitely

a player. i do not know if the russian state hacked into john podesta emails and gave them to wiki leaks but i do know barack obama's director of national intelligence has not provided credible to support his claims of russia i also know he perjured himself in a senate hearing. months before the revelations provided by edward snowden he denied to be n.s.a. was carrying out wholesale surveillance of the us. the hyperventilating corporate media has once again proved to be an echo. for the government claims that cannot be verified you would have thought they would have learned something after serving as george w. bush's useful idiots in the lead up to the invasion of iraq. it is vitally important that the press remains rooted in a fact based universe especially when we enter an era when truth and fiction are becoming indistinguishable.