Top Censored Stories of 2009/2010

■1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
■2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
■3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
■4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
■5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
■6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
■7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
■8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
■9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
■10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
■11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
■12

...The Department of Homeland Security has marked Shearon Harris as one of the most vulnerable terrorist targets in the nation.

The threat exists, however, without the speculation of terrorist attack. Should the cooling system malfunction, the resulting fire would be virtually unquenchable and could trigger a nuclear meltdown, putting more than two hundred million residents of this rapidly growing section of North Carolina in extreme peril. A recent study by Brookhaven Labs estimates that a pool fire could cause 140,000 cancers, contaminate thousands of square miles of land, and cause over $500 billion in off-site property damage.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has estimated that there is a 1:100 chance of pool fire happening under the best of scenarios. And the dossier on the Shearon Harris plant is far from the best.
In 1999 the plant experienced four emergency shutdowns. A few months later, in April 2000, the plant’s safety monitoring system, designed to provide early warning of a serious emergency, failed. And it wasn’t the first time. Indeed, the emergency warning system at Shearon Harris has failed fifteen times since the plant opened in 1987.