[Marxism] UK to keep foreign nuclear waste

["Charlie Parks" <jcparks5550@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Anybody see the priceless episode of "The Simpsons" in which Homer is
elected director of sanitation for Springfield, promising a lavish expansion
of waste collection services? He is utterly profligate in his expenditures
and exhausts his annual budget within a month. To generate the extra funds,
he agrees to let nearby towns bury their trash in an abandoned mineshaft in
Springfield. All goes swimmingly until we see Homer playing golf with Mayor
Quimby, who is singing Homer's praises when suddenly garbage starts to burst
through the surface of the putting green.  Soon garbage is seen shooting out
of the ground like a geyser, eventually burying the entire town in refuse.
This forces Mayor Quimby to resort to "Plan B," Springfield's contingency
plan for (un)natural disasters: picking up the entire town and moving it
five miles away.  The show amounts to a parable for the consequences of
administrative short-sightedness and capitalism's tendency to resort to
unsustainable practices in the service of short-term gain. Well, despite the
UK's affinity for "The Simpsons," it seems New Labour wasn't watching the
night they showed this episode.  And unfortunately for Britons, "Plan B"
doesn't look like an option for a country sitting on an island! This would
all be quite funny if we weren't talking about NUCLEAR WASTE here. --CP

UK to keep foreign nuclear waste

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday December 15, 2004
The Guardian

The government has decided to bury Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, Swiss
and Swedish nuclear waste in Britain as a money-making venture to help pay
for the UK's own unresolved nuclear waste problems.

The decision, announced in a written Commons statement, has been taken by
the trade secretary Patricia Hewitt despite the fact that Britain as yet has
no depository for the waste. It overturns a 30-year-old policy that the UK
would not become a dumping ground for other countries' nuclear waste.

Previously both Conservative and Labour governments have said waste arising
as a result of lucrative nuclear fuel reprocessing contracts at Sellafield
in Cumbria should be returned to the country of origin.

Successive governments had intended to return all highly dangerous waste
contaminated with plutonium to its country of origin - a total of 225
nuclear shipments. This week's decision means keeping and disposing of the
bulk of that toxic waste in Britain.
full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,1373964,00.html



_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism