Please let the lessons of the recent disasters in the financial sector and the drilling and mining sectors be a warning Klaxon towards any further advancements to increase our domestic nuclear power capabilities.
It has been shown in the financial sector that individuals were risking their entire company on flim-flam games that they knew were corrupt and could explode. They didn't care because they were stuffing so much money into their pockets that the future of their company didn't matter to them. They knew the Ponzi scheme would eventually collapse and take shareholders down, but they didn't care. It was all about eating as much from the trough as fast as they could until they were caught.
Now we find out that the same was going on in the mining and drilling industries as well. I'm sure the same is true of most industries in this country. Any strong regulatory agencies that we have had in this country have been slowly bled to death over the past few decades (even under Clinton) in the name of smaller government and free enterprise.
Alan Greenspan finally admitted that his core belief in industry regulating itself due to self-preservation pressures was drastically wrong. When will our country wake up and realize that business and industry will never and can never be trusted with our lives or our futures.
Industry lies and cannot be trusted. President Obama only a few short months ago was touting the safety of off-shore drilling as he was proposing to open up even more areas for drilling off our coasts. I'm sure he wouldn't say this unless he believed it and he must have been advised on this topic before making this pronouncement. If even the President of the United States is being lulled into a false sense of security, then how bad has it gotten?
Industries that I never thought I would need to worry about are now subject for concern. Who would believe the food industry wouldn't be taking every precaution against poisoning its customers? Who would believe manufacturers of children's medicines would cut corners?
Does anyone here really believe that if we could know everything about what is currently going on at all of the nuclear plants in this country that we could sleep well at night? I used to sleep better. I don't anymore. I knew things had gotten bad in our government's ability to regulate, I just didn't realize how bad it had gotten and how flagrantly that industry is violating even the weak regulations that remain in place.
How much longer are we going to put up with this? How can anyone trust any industry anymore? Would you feel safe with a nuclear plant being built in your neighborhood?