March 28, 2008 was the 28th Anniversary of the Meltdown at Three Mile Island, which makes March 29 the 28th Anniversary of the Day After Three Mile Island.

Still, it’s hard to say ‘Happy Anniversary.’ The last nuclear power plant to come on line in the United States, the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, took 23 years to complete. And no new nuclear power plants have been ordered or built.

This is in part because of Three Mile Island, and its sister-disaster, Chernobyl. While the American nuclear power industry says ‘We do it better’ the truth of the matter is that American reactors are safer because American anti-nuclear activists have forced the United States government to pay attention and American nuclear plant owners and operators to build in redundant safety systems.

And it is also because the investment bankers on Wall Street, the “heros” of Enron and Bear Stearns, have learned, by watching Three Mile Island (safely, from NYC – 200 miles away) how quickly a Billion Dollar investment can become a Five Billion Dollar Toxic Waste Dump.

For some “routine” releases of radioactive materials have become, well, routine. We are content in the belief that someone else is on top of things, and comfortable with the notion that we can shop our way out of trouble. Others, the people reading this blog, working full time or part time to shut-down the nuclear power industry and stop global warming, know the NRC is more like ‘Nuclear Rubberstamping Commissars’ than ‘Nuclear Regulatory Commission.’ We know the watchdog needs to be watched.

This despite the Price-Anderson Act

which severely limits plant operator/owner liaiblility – and places it in the lap of the taxpayers, and their wallets.

We know that in the words of the folk song there ‘ain’t no such thing as clean coal’ (click here ) that nuclear power isn’t ‘too cheap to meter’ and still, in 2008, requires massive government subsidies and a tremedous government security and regulatory infrastructure. We also know that there are alternatives to nuclear and coal. That these include solar, wind, marine current, geothermal – the clean sustainable technologies, and conservation, ‘negawatts’ – doing more with less – insulating our homes, driving fuel efficient cars. These technologies don’t contribute to global warming, don’t put mercury and other toxics in the food we eat, don’t create radioactive wastes. They provide electricity at lower cost and make our nation more secure.