Common Dreams: Lessons NOT Learned 120 Million Americans at Nuclear Fallout Risk! :

New map shows 120 million Americans at Nuclear Fallout Risk. Red flags for heightened risk factors of a severe nuclear accident abound in the United States: In the one year since the Fukushima nuclear disaster began, the Nuclear Regulator Commission (NRC) has failed to enact any safety mandate for US reactors, an oversight the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says is making 120 million Americans at an increased risk of radioactive impacts. The group's new US nuclear fallout map shows the risk factors associated with the nation's plants and the radioactive plumes that would have occurred had an area been hit with a Fukushima-like disaster. There are clear lessons learned from the Fukushima disaster, yet our government allows the risks to remain, said NRDC Scientist Jordan Weaver, PhD. It doesn't have to be an earthquake and a tsunami to trigger a severe nuclear meltdown. In addition to human error and hostile acts, more common occurrences like hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding, all of which took place around the country last year, could cause the same type of power failure in US plants. The NRDC reports: With 6 million Americans living within 10 miles of a US nuclear power plant, the evacuation zone defined by the federal government, and more than 120 million Americans living within 50 miles of a US nuclear power plant, the distance the US government told Americans to evacuate from the area around the Fukushima plant, we cannot afford to stand by and hope the worst won't happen here, especially with extreme weather intensifying around the globe. Red flags for heightened risk factors of a severe nuclear accident abound in the United States.