Panel for matching Fukushima to Indian Point

That anti-nuke section discussion commanded by former NRC head person Greg Jaczko went off just about as anticipated today, with Jaczko claiming that localizedizedized stakeholders should get together shortly to organise for the closure of the vegetation. You'll forgive us if we plead to differ. In the meantime, another previous NRC head person, Dale Klein, issued the following declaration through NY locality in relation to how many members of the panel tried to compare a promise accident at Indian issue with the misfortune at Fukushima Daiichi: “Comparing the misfortune at Fukushima Daiichi to a hypothetical misfortune at Indian Point or Pilgrim is intellectually dishonest and resembles the classic worry mongering proposed to create pointless anxiety. The added safety schemes and security methods supplemented to the US nuclear power plants after the 9/11 attacks have substantially enhanced their ability to handle the decrease of off-site power, decrease of the crisis diesel generators, and the loss of back-up electric electric battery supplies. Just like automobiles today have additional security characteristics contrasted to the 1970s designs, todays US nuclear power plants have added substantial security schemes from their primary concepts. The nuclear power plants at Fukushima Daiichi did not have the same improved security schemes as implemented at our US atomic power plants. matching the US atomic power plants to those that have not supplemented new safety schemes and methods is simply wrong.”

Former NRC Chairman Dale Klein remarks on AP Story on Nuclear vegetation security

Yesterday, Jeff Donn of the affiliated Press (AP) published a article on security inspections at nuclear power plants that seemed to raise more inquiries than it responded. Here's the introductory paragraph: The number of security violations at U.S. nuclear power plants varies spectacularly from region to district, pointing to inconsistent enforcement in an industry now operating mostly after its initial 40-year permits, according to a congressional study awaiting issue. Here are a couple of items to hold in brain when considering this article and its deductions: NRC inspections and commerce tendencies show industry security presentation is high. The most latest report from NRC recognised no significant harmful tendencies in security. NRC conducts an mean of more than 2,000 hours of inspections a year at each reactor. NRC will boost the number of inspections if recurring issues are recognised, and NRC habitually has option to close a plant if an inspector deems it doesn't meet government measures. In the initial story, NEI's Steve Kerekes denied to commentaryaryary as AP wouldn't share a exact replicate of the GAO report that they had got. It's a full day later and we still don't have access to the genuine report. One individual who did read the article was former NRC Chairman Dale Klein. He shared the following statement with us once he got a possibility to look at Donn's report: The recent article about security violations at US atomic plants is a blended bag. From a regulatory viewpoint it is significant to recognise mistakes, discover from them and double-check that corrective actions are taken. The atomic Regulatory charge (NRC) has inhabitant inspectors at every atomic plant in the country. These inhabitant inspectors are going to find matters, simultaneously with other inspections that the NRC conducts. It is not the number of safety violations that is significant. The point is to double-check a ascertain and balance scheme is in location to identify potential problems and fix them before a important happening can occur. As a former controller, I have been influenced with the dedication of the inhabitant inspectors that work with nuclear power plant operators to double-check safe and protected procedures of our nation’s atomic plants. Nuclear power is a clean source of electrical energy that should be a part of our total energy program. We should to remind our readers that this isn't the first time Donn has enclosed the atomic energy industry. Back in 2011, Donn composed a multipart sequence on commerce safety that we called "shoddy," "selective," and "misleading." We weren't the only ones who took topic with Donn's describing. The Columbia Journalism reconsider had this to state about the series: [T]he AP sequence, while it undertakes a critically important public policy issue, bears from lapses in organization, narrative exposition, and rudimentary material assortment, what to depart in and what to depart out. Too much is left to rest on inconclusive he-said-she-said exchanges that end up more bewildering than illuminating for readers. In any case, with the help of an technician here at NEI, I'm cutting into into the article and finding some things that just don't appear to add up. gaze for more in this space soon.

Fear Exists for a Good Reason

Over the past week I have followed the story of Amanda Baggs via various neurodiversity blogs. Baggs who I mentioned in my 500th post is an Autistic and a fascinating writer. She is most well known for her You Tube video "In My Own Language". Based on what I read, Baggs had gastroparesis that caused several instances of of aspiration pneumonia. As I understand it Baggs needed a feeding tube inserted to increase her nutrition and lower the risk of aspiration. This is not complex medical care--I suspect it is standard operating procedure. But her experience has been anything but standard. Multiple neurodiversity blogs and people directly in contact with Baggs have reported she was repeatedly questioned about her decision to get a feeding tube. Thankfully the neurodiversity community in particular and the disability community in general leaped to help and protect Baggs. Her experience in a Burlington Vermont hospital was a nightmare. Fortunately she not only survived but is in fighting spirit. She is writing about what she experienced and its implications. See: http://youneedacat.tumblr.com/

I was deeply moved by Baggs most recent post. What she wrote today is shocking and a testament to how deeply ingrained disability based bigotry is within the American health care system. Below is her entire post.

Are you at peace with your decision?

Before I got my feeding tube. After I'd already signed an informed consent form. A pulmonologist came into my room with a gaggle of interns and residents behind him. People who were learning from him. People who looked up to him as a teacher and role model.

He had seen my cat scan. He knew how many times I have had pneumonia recently. He knew it would keep happening if we didnot find a way to stop it. He knew that pneumonia is a deadly disease and that my health was worsening with each infection. He knew how many doctors had tried to talk me out of choosing the feeding tube choosing to live.

Are you at peace with your decision? Is a question I would expect to be asked repeatedly if I'd chosen to avoid treatment and go home and wait to get the infection that would kill me. Not a question that goes with choosing life. He asked me at least three times in a row.

I had a friend who came to visit from out of state, in the room with me at the time. She came because she heard I had pneumonia. Her father died of pneumonia. She was terrified for my life. She witnessed this conversation easily, as she put it, the most genteel of the ways I'd been pressured to die.

And yet she likened it to the recommended harassment that people who choose abortion get or for that matter, people who choose not to abort a fetus with disabilities. She said it was bullying, harassment, pressure to end my own life, no matter how genteel it looked on the outside. Who the hell gets asked repeatedly if they are at peace with wanting to be alive? For me, choosing a feeding tube is choosing life. There were risks, there remain risks, but the risk of not getting the tube was imminent death, so, yeah. A no brainer, for me. When you choose between two risky things, you choose the one with the most possibility of survival. And feeding tubes are safer than aspiration pneumonia by far.

Are you at peace with your decision? Really? Seriously? Who asks that? Someone profoundly uncomfortable with the kind of life that requires certain kinds of technology. Someone who overtly or covertly hates disabled people.

I intend to use the life this feeding tube gives me, to ensure that no other patient in this hospital has to go through what I have been through. That nobody gets asked this question for choosing to live. Not even once. That doctors don't get to try to persuade patients, especially disabled and other hated patients, that its better to reject life saving treatments. Regardless of what the doctor thinks. When I am through with them, when the Vermont disability community is through with them, they will no longer be allowed to go there. They can stay bigots if they feel like but they won't be allowed to express it on the job.

Because we don't just naturally want to die the moment our body requires some kind of nonstandard way of sustaining itself. Right now I am hooked up to a machine pumping food into my intestines and I LOVE IT BECAUSE IT MEANS LIFE.

Genteel pressure to die. I too experienced that genteel pressure. Such pressure is put in ever so polite terms. For Baggs it was "Would you like to consider alternative treatments"? The non genteel interpretation is "Would you like to die"? For me a hospitalist stated "We can make you comfortable if you decide to forego antibiotics". The non genteel interpretation: "We can let you die."  This genteel pressure to die is not out of the norm. In fact I cringe when I hear the term "patient centered care". My translation of "patient centered care" is "you are on your own". Being on your own in a hospital is dangerous for any person but for a person with a disability the risks are exponentially greater. We people with a disability represent the limits of medical science and its failure. We are perceived to be in pain; suffering horrific indignities because we have lost our autonomy. Our bodies are compromised, abnormal. We are confined to a wheelchair. We are bed bound. Our life is a disaster. But wait! There is hope. We miserable cripples have the power to say no more. Hence the physician "caring" for Baggs asks "Are you at peace with your decision". The internists and residents that accompanied the physician have learned a lesson in empathy--or at least that is likely what the physician in question believed. I would offer the lesson learned was much more basic. Death is preferable to living a life with a disability. Who would want to live like that? Imagine if you had Autism. How horrible. I suggest we need to ask a very different set of questions. In Baggs case, the question is not if you want to live but rather how we can we as physicians charged with your care empower you to live a full life.