While natural and unnatural disasters aren't everyone's cup of tea, there are few Kossacks who are still unaware of the mass nuclear disaster ongoing in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, which began after the 9.0 earthquake and subsequent 45-foot tsunami on March 11. Tens of thousands of Japanese citizens have been evacuated from their homes and land, the crops hopelessly contaminated and the livestock dead or dying, entire towns turned into ghosts. Nobody knows if any of the people in the expanding "exclusion zone" will ever go home again.
Just this week TEPCO began releasing data from the accidents demonstrating that conditions at 3 reactors and 4 spent fuel pools are far worse than they've been letting on, even as our own Nuclear Regulatory Commission engages in a desperate snow-job on behalf of its nuclear industry masters, aimed at securing the $36 billion in new nuclear subsidies (in addition to 'the usual' billions the industry enjoys every year) before our terminally partisan Congress notices what's going on and strips the new subsidies from the 2012 budget. NRC has speeded up its blanket approvals of 20-year license extension for our rickety, aging nuclear fleet of power reactors while at the same time waiving away any safety reviews based on the events in Japan, despite the fact that the U.S. has 31 reactors of identical design to those melting at Fukushima.
The NRC/industry game plan will probably succeed because our government is currently so hamstrung by radical right jihadists and an ongoing economic depression engineered by Wall Street as the greatest generational theft and cash-out ever conceived. Neither the radicals in Congress nor the greedheads on Wall Street care that their evil deeds will destroy this once-great country, so why would the nuclear industry and their governmental protectors care that their mouldering monsters are lined up to deal out mass amounts of physical death and destruction as they melt and spew one by one (or two by two, or three by three…)? What's left of the wealth still in the hands of the people who still have jobs is just more for the cash cow to milk and launder through to the takers at the top. FUBAR.
Meanwhile, in the very midst of this nuclear horror story, the live-in nuclear PR promoters and apologists have been diligent in pushing for their favorite 'New and Improved' technological fantasy beasts - reactor designs still on the drawing boards, promised to be cleaner and safer (as well as more expensive) than 'old' nukes like the 104 we now have running in the United States. They promise these 'new generation' nukes as a cure for global warming, claim them to be meltdown-proof, and they want ALL the money we as a nation could manage to put together for development and deployment of alternative energy sources to get ourselves off fossil fuels.
For example see Is Thorium the Key to a Nuclear Renaissance?. Your basic PR job for an industry terrified that its own lousy record might kill its cash cow at long last.
One need not know anything more about nukes than the fact that they melt down and spew filth (and kill people, devastate huge swaths of land, have no place to put their waste, etc.) to find this PR offensive. Deeply, shockingly offensive…
An utterly insensitive insult to our intelligence and humanity.
In that diary I noted in response to one of our long-term nuclear apologists how insulting this attempt to sell 'new' nukes while 'old' nukes are busy melting and spewing and destroying northern Japan. He had the temerity to reply…
Pro-nuclear people, the ones I know, are seeking solutions...from specifically dealing with other sea-side tsunami prone reactors to finding better forms of nuclear energy that can provide low carbon energy that is more safe, cheaper and abundant. That's what humanity needs. No more fossil fuel AND no more Fukushima type accidents.
This absurdity flows thusly:
1. They want more money from the public pig trough.
2. They are afraid that Fukushima will get them banned from the public pig trough.
3. They trot out untested and unproven fantasy designs and claim these are (as ever) "clean, safe, too cheap to meter."
4. To add oomph to the sales pitch, they claim these fanciful future-nukes will END nuclear meltdowns and mass disasters.
Starting to get the picture? They're refusing to take any responsibility for the 104 aging reactors we now have that are falling apart, each just a glitch or storm away from total meltdown, all of which just got 20-year extensions on their past-due dates, sans any review of their vulnerabilities in light of Fukushima. And still - after 50 years - with no place to put their trash. As if that's someone else's industry, someone else's problem. Distancing themselves from the filth and horror they engendered, reaching solely for the billions and not really caring whether or not it ever gets spent on energy production.
All while innocent people sicken and die in evacuation facilities in Japan, while the filth spews unchecked into the Pacific Ocean, while radioactive contamination pollutes land, water and food supplies throughout the northern hemisphere for generations. It hasn't even been 90 days yet, untold thousands (and more) will continue to sicken and die for decades. Untold numbers of children will be lost before birth, born dead, and born with very serious defects.
This is unforgivably insulting. A direct affront to human decency.
That's all I wanted to say.
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