Can We Trust TVA in a Deregulated Age?

It is bad enough that the Tennessee Valley Authority can pretty much lay claim to however much utility money it wants from Tennesseans at any time. Now we're supposed to trust that radioactive tritium that they dumped into the environment that we share with them is safe for the public. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is supposed to protect us from nuclear waste, says that the rivers, if contaminated by the tritium, would dilute the material "until its concentration would not be a health and safety issue for the public." Until?! Does that not indicate that TVA dumped dangerous levels already? And why is it okay to use our rivers to dilute radioactive wastes? I am sure that we can now depend on the NRC to fail to monitor radioactive levels and possible leaks of the tritium, or any changes in the health of humans and animals downstream of the dump. The last thing "the nation's largest power company" needs is to be named the defendant in a class action lawsuit, which is a possibility monitoring might bring about.

A big thanks to all those deregulators out there for this undue health risk. Ya'll and your unapologetic faith in the marketplace to protect us make our state a safer place to live. And let's not forget those tort reformers, who are probably even now working to make sure that omnipotent power companies cannot be sued for endangering us and screwing around with our environment.

HT: Knox News