Announcer: Welcome back to The David Pakman
Show.
David: Back on the show here. You know that
there's a flooding situation happening in
Nebraska that's threatening a nuclear plant
with having to shut down, and this is barely
being reported in the mainstream media, Louis.
And no surprise, and I'll tell you exactly
why it's no surprise in a second.
This is on the Missouri River, which rose
to just 18 inches of shutting... of forcing
a shutdown here with this plant which sits
at 903 feet. There's levies around it, and
the river has to hit 902 feet in Brownville...
or, at Brownville, rather, for the plant to
have to be shut down. Now, it went as high
as 900-and some change, so it got very, very
close, Louis.
And you know that what's incredible here is
that I believe there is a concerted effort,
this is the Cooper nuclear power plant, to
prevent reporting on this. And how are they
doing this? They've actually shut down the
airspace above the immediate area surrounding
the power plant. And as you know, Louis, if
you can't fly over it and get pictures and
video, you're probably not going to cover
it on mainstream television news. So it's
a brilliant strategy, isn't it?
Louis: Yeah, I guess so.
David: And this is now in the midst of the
Fukushima disaster, in the midst of all of
the renewed discussions about nuclear power,
alternative energy, nuclear energy, this is
a concerted effort, this is the epitome, Louis,
of trying to control... of corporations successfully,
not even trying, successfully controlling
the news. And... go ahead.
Louis: No, no. Go ahead.
David: And the FAA, which agreed to shut down
the airspace above, is basically complicit
in that task.
Louis: There's also something to be said for
wanting to prevent panic. But that's not the
only problem here. The other problem is that
well, why is this even occurring? Why is this
a problem? Why is the flood a problem? I mean,
don't you plan for every eventuality? I know
there are levies and they didn't hold the
water, but can't you predict that that might
happen at some point?
David: We can always ask that question. I
hesitate to always ask the questions of couldn't
you just see this coming, because it was asked
in Japan, and the argument was made, well,
you could've relocated the plant elsewhere
so that the water wouldn't be as much of an
issue, but maybe they couldn't.
Louis: Well, we know... we know that in Japan
they had the option of, for more money, building
the plant on the hill that it was near.
David: Right.
Louis: And they didn't, to save money.
David: Fair enough, that was a factor. But
in other words, anytime that you start saying
couldn't it have been predicted, and therefore,
shouldn't you have done something differently,
we could argue, well, wait a second, why is
anybody even living in Florida? I mean, when
we figured out that Florida gets hurricanes
and that they cause disaster, why are people
even living there, period, right? We can always
ask that question.
I don't... my concern is more that this strikes
me, again, as another example where subsidized
industries... we have oil and we have power
in general are highly subsidized industries
in this country, are involved in the prevention
of getting bad news... of bad news leaking
out. And this time the airspace has been shut
down, and as we know, no video means no news.
So this is... this is really a big story.
If what happened in Japan was a big story,
and it was, the potential, and I get that
the population in the immediate surrounding
area is not what it was in Japan, but the
potential for a similar type of disaster,
given that we're talking about water flooding
a plant, is there. People deserve to know
about it. And this time, it's not an earthquake
that just happened in an instant that triggered
it. Here we're talking about a flood that
was rising, is rising, over a period of time.
But we're getting almost no reporting on it
whatsoever, period.
Louis: Reminds me of BP a little bit. I mean,
I wonder what's going on in and around the
area of the plant.
David: You know why? I was just reading about
this. I was actually talking to people...
I was talking to Tom Hartmann about this at
Netroots Nation, specifically. BP now is loving
the fact that you can no longer fly over a
lot of that affected area in the Gulf. And
it instantly just got out of the news. Once
there's no more video, and a couple... we've
seen a couple of pictures suggesting there's
still huge oil slicks there, as soon as you
can't really get video and pictures, it's
basically like it's not happening, even though
we know it's still a huge issue down in the
Gulf. It's incredible.
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