No More Nukes!
Recently, Duke Energy and Progress Energy, two of the largest energy corporations in the world, merged and became the largest energy company in the United States. With this action, the power of this corporation more than doubled, perhaps making it the most powerful lobbying influence in legislatures throughout the southeastern US and in the US Congress. Not too many weeks after this merger, the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant No. 1 in Japan exploded on March 12, 2011, causing at least a partial meltdown. Not long after the explosion in Plant No. 1, other nuclear plants in the Fukushima Complex began experiencing emergencies, leading to at least one other partial meltdown a probable breach of at least one caontainment vessel and the release of large amounts of radioactive material as of March 15, 2011.
These seemingly disparate events are more connected than the reader might think. Duke Energy has been trying to convince the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), legislators in North and South Carolina and other agencies that it should build another nuclear power in the region. By becoming the largest energy corporation in the United States, the likelihood of this plant being built increased concomitant to the exponentially greater