Profit before people

Just the tip of the iceberg here. Each of the sites which have received media attention represent literally hundreds of other sites which remain to be investigated. Where possible, we have included each company's board of directors in the event folks would like to write and express their opinion of the behaviors which are killing the planet.

Here are the top 10 States with Toxic Waste Superfund Sites:

New Jersey 140 sites
Pennsylvania 122 sites
New York 110 sites
California 107 sites
Michigan 84 sites
Florida 71 sites
Washington 65 sites
Texas 54 sites
Illinois 51 sites
Minnesota 46 sites

Text Module

GE and TEPCO

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

(From Wikipedia) The plant comprised six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric (GE) and maintained by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). At the time of the earthquake, reactor 4 had been de-fueled and reactors 5 and 6 were in cold shutdown for planned maintenance.^[18] Immediately after the earthquake, following government regulations, the remaining reactors 1–3 shut down their sustained fission reactions automatically, inserting control rods in what is termed the SCRAM event, following this, emergency generators came online to power electronics and coolant systems, which operated right up until the tsunami. The tsunami arrived some 50 minutes after the initial earthquake. The 13 meter tall tsunami overwhelmed the plant's seawall, which was only 10 m high,^[6] with the moment of the tsunami striking being caught on camera.^[19] The tsunami water quickly flooded the low-lying rooms in which the emergency generators were housed.^[20] With the flooded diesel generators failing soon afterwards, cutting power to the critical pumps that must continuously circulate coolant water through a Generation II reactor to keep the fuel rods from melting down following the SCRAM event, the rods remained hot enough to melt themselves down as no adequate cold sink was available. After the secondary emergency pumps (run by back-up electrical batteries) ran out, one day after the tsunami, 12 March,^[21] the water pumps stopped and the reactors began to overheat due to the high decay heat produced in the first few days after the SCRAM (diminishing amounts of this decay heat continue to be released for years, but with time it is not enough to cause fuel rod melting).

As workers struggled to supply power to the reactors' coolant systems and control rooms, multiple hydrogen-air chemical explosions occurred from 12 March to 15 March. It is estimated that the hot zirconium fuel cladding-water reaction in reactors 1-3 produced 800 to 1000 kilograms of hydrogen gas each, which was vented out of the reactor pressure vessel and mixed with the ambient air. The gas eventually reached explosive concentration limits in units 1 and 3. Either piping connections between units 3 and 4 or from the zirconium reaction in unit 4 itself,^[24] unit 4 also filled with hydrogen. Explosions occurred in the upper secondary containment building in all three reactors.^[25]

TEPCO admitted for the first time on October 12, 2012 that it had failed to take stronger measures to prevent disasters for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants. There are no clear plans for decommissioning the plant, but some estimates extend to thirty or forty years.

On 22 July 2013, more than two years after the incident, it was revealed that the plant is leaking radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. This had been denied by TEPCO.^[30] The report prompted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe to order the government to step in.^[31] On 20 August, in a further incident, it was announced that 300 metric tons of heavily radioisotope-contaminated water had leaked from a storage tank.^[32] On 26 August, the government took charge of emergency measures to prevent further radioactive water leaks.