Marsha Blackburn voted to allow foreign countries to dump their nuclear waste in TN! I don’t think any Tennesseans would agree with that vote. Specifically a company was trying to import 20,000 tons of low level radioactive waste from Italian nuclear facilities for processing. The bill in question banned the importation of nuclear waste.
Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill 34-12 on a mostly party-line vote, with Democrats voting yes and Republicans voting no. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Brentwood, the only other Tennessee member of the committee, voted against the bill.
Her explanation “Blackburn is confident that the foreign waste would have a minimal impact and that processing the material would create jobs in Tennessee”. Blackburn is my representative and I am very unhappy that someone supposedly representing me voted for importing toxic waste into my state.
For more information see the original Tennessean article at: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091120/NEWS02/911200372/1009/NEWS02
Support Greg Rabidoux to replace Marsha Blackburn for TN’s 7th district. http://rabidoux4congress.com/
I don’t care if they bring it here, it has to go somewhere, I’m sure we wouldn’t do it for free.
Really Scott, you wouldn’t care if it was near your house, near your place of employment, or near your kids school?
It’s someone else’s radioactive nuclear waste – let them deal with it.
Along with the waste would come what economist call “externalized” costs. Externalized costs are expenses that the governemnt ends up paying for instead of the company. One of the arguments against nuclear power is the huge “externalized” cost related to waste storage and clean up. Nuclear waste usually live longer than the companies (1,000’s of years)that make money of dealing with it…so the government gets called in to clean it up for free.
I am for nuclear power, maybe if we concentrated on nuclear power, and developed the infrastructure to deal with radioactive waste, then we could consider taking the world’s waste.
Thanks for the article Beth!
From what little I know about nuclear waste, I’m definitely NIMBY on this issue. Any my backyard includes all of the US, not just Tennessee. I’m also not real thrilled with American nuclear waste being dumped here. Or anywhere.