Welcome. This is James Corbett of the Corporate Report with your Sunday update from the Center for Research on

globalization at global research.CA on this third day of July 2011. And now for the

real news. A series of disasters, potential disasters, bad news, and worrying studies over the course of the past week have brought public attention back to the issue of radiation and its attendant health risks, and further exposed how governmental agencies that are supposed to protect the public have in fact knowingly put the public at risk and even colluded with the very industries they are supposed to be regulating.

Last Sunday a wildfire started in New Mexico that grew to a 162 square mile inferno

and came within 50 feet of the grounds of the Los Alamos National Laboratory

that was the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

The site is an historical testing ground for nuclear weapons and a storage area for about 20,000

barrels of nuclear waste.

The disaster exposed the remarkable fact that this nuclear waste was stored not in a secure containment facility or even in a solid building, but in a fabric type building that would be quickly consumed by the fires.

In addition to the risk of the nuclear waste burning up in the fire and sending radioactive materials

into the atmosphere, Joni Arens of the Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety has pointed out that the fire could stir up the nuclear contaminated soil on lab property where nuclear experiments have long been conducted.

In either event, harmful radiation could pass into the jet stream to be distributed across the United States and beyond.

As a recent report from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability documented, the site has been the disposal ground for some 18 million cubic feet

of radioactive and chemical solid waste since 1943, as well as 899,000 curies of so-called

trans-uranic waste, including plutonium.

Liquid waste from the plant were discharged into the canyons, initially with little treatment

whatsoever.

Winds have now shifted the fire away from the facility and initial air samples from the inferno have indicated there has been so far no catastrophic release of radiation in the area

but it is unclear why no basic precautions were in place to secure the nuclear waste at the facility prior to the fire, or what such measures, if any, are being contemplated in the wake of this emergency.

Also last Sunday, floodwaters from the Missouri River reach the containment buildings of the Fort Calhoun nuclear station.

A levy protecting the site's electrical transformers gave way, and the plant was forced to switch on emergency generators in order to continue cooling the nuclear reactor.

Although officials are maintaining that the plant is still functioning and is not in meltdown,

...