How much pollution can the world's rivers and oceans bear before they reach a tipping point and begin collapsing? The BP spill spewed 200 millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. Japanese officials have released thousands of tons of radioactive waste water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant directly into the Pacific Ocean. Fracking, the natural gas extraction process that has caught fire across the country, is jettisoning naturally occurring radioactive material and other known human carcinogens into rivers and other waterways from Pennsylvania to Texas to Colorado. And, one of the latest and most troubling revelations is that the offshore oil and gas industry is dumping hundreds of millions of gallons of radioactive waste water directly into the Gulf of Mexico. See, my recent post entitled, "Chernobyl in the Gulf" (http://www.stuarthsmith.com/chernobyl-in-the-gulf-of-mexico). Now, according to an article in the Natchez Democrat, the U.S. nuclear industry is making its presence felt, as it scrambles to explain how radioactive tritium was released directly into the Mississippi River from the Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant in Port Gibson. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) is investigating how tritium – a highly toxic nuclear byproduct – came to be present in standing ...
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