Each day - we’re learning more and more about the nuclear crisis in Japan - not just about the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear radiation - but about the dangers of too much corporate influence over government.

In the days after the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima plant - thousands of nearby residents in the city of Namie - about five miles away from the crippled nuclear plant - fled north from the threat of radiation to the city of Tsushima.

They figured they were safe there - mainly because the government didn’t issue any warnings - and because TEPCO - Tokyo Electric Power COmpany - TEPCO - the private, for-profit corporation running Fukushima - informed the government everything's just fine.

We now know today - they lied to protect their profits.

Government projection models ACTUALLY showed a cloud of radiation spewing from Fukushima and heading right toward Tsushima… yet no one was warned.

Why? Well, most likely because TEPCO and the government regulators and officials they were buddy-buddy with wanted to downplay the crisis from the very beginning. All the evidence points to that.

TEPCO was thinking about their shareholders - the government workers were thinking about their jobs, because angry TEPCO executives could probably get them fired - and no one wanted to take responsibility for what was happening - so thousands of people were put in danger by a government and a corporation that the Japanese citizens trusted in a time of crisis that had gotten too close to each other.

With their inaction - the Mayor of Namie said the government and TEPCO committed “murder”.

And today - nearly half of the almost 1100 children who lived around the Fukushima plant test positive today for damaging thyroid exposure to radiation.

Tragically - the consequences of this exposure will be felt for decades - maybe even generations - to come.

And here in the United States - we’re victims of this very same sort of corporate capture of government regulators - it’s a topic I explore in my book “Unequal Protection”.

In 1910 - President Teddy Roosevelt said, “There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains.”

Over the last ten years - the energy industry in America - that includes oil, coal, gas, and nuclear - has spent nearly $3 billion - that's three thousand million dollars - lobbying 435 members of Congress.

And thanks to all that political activity - as Roosevelt warned - we’ve lost our ability to effectively control energy corporations in America… just like the way TEPCO wasn’t effectively controlled in Japan.

Regulations have been carved up - mishaps overlooked - outright crimes dismissed.

And this has disastrous consequences - as we see today in Fukushima - and as we learned in America with the coal and mining disasters, with the BP oil disaster last year when corporate capture of oil drilling regulations was so rampant - that regulators were literally in bed with the oil industry - you remember this? They were attending sex and cocaine parties - the regulators and the industry executives.

So when 11 men died after an oil rig exploded in the Gulf and dumped millions and millions of barrels of oil into the waters choking wildlife, ruining shorelines, devastating peoples' incomes and altering our ecosystem for a generation or more - we shouldn’t have been too surprised that the rig had a history of problems that were routinely overlooked.

Not to mention - as the oil was flowing - the government constantly told half-truths and obstructed investigations into exactly how much oil was contaminating our Gulf of Mexico every day.

Just like in Japan - our regulators and the CEOs were covering their butts at the expense of the public interest.

And did you know that just a few weeks ago - we almost lost the city of Omaha?

Probably not - because regulators and nuclear power executives swept a potential Fukushima-like disaster right under the rug.

Floodwaters came from the Missouri River came within inches of consuming the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant and knocking out the cooling pumps that keep its reactors from melting down.

Fort Calhoun sits about 20 miles away from Omaha - a city that would have been blanketed by radiation had the floodwaters risen just a few more feet.

The FAA immediately arrived on the scene to do what? Enforce a no-fly zone over the plant - you know - to make sure no news helicopters could get in there and take pictures to show how bad the situation really was.

But stuff like this happens all the time.

Every single day on its website - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents so-called "minor" mishaps at nuclear plants across America - and as a report released in March by the Union of Concerned Scientists noted - there were 14 nuclear "near-misses" in America just last year and hundreds of "incidents" with the potential to compromise plant safety. 14 times. We almost lost it all.

Yet business continues as normal - the profits keep coming in - you and I as taxpayers keep subsidizing the oil industry, the coal industry, the gas industry, the nuclear industry, as we inch closer and closer in all these cases to minor or major disasters.

So what needs to be done?

It's really simple - we kick corporations out of the business of managing our energy needs.

Today - energy is just as important as food, water, education, and national security - it should be considered part of our commons - and it should be treated that way - as something that is both vital to - and belongs to - all of us - something that we collectively - we the people - control.

In fact, local communities should be responsible for determining how they generate their own energy needs - not some transnational corporation that's looking for a cheap land deal to build a nuclear reactor on.

I can promise you if the residents of Namie had a say in where the Fukushima plant was built - then it wouldn't have been 5 miles down the road in their own back yard.

We need to kick the CEOs out of the commons - and tell them if they like nuclear power so much - they can build a plant on their own private resort islands down in the Bahamas.

That's The Big Picture.