It is not an option...
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
In the light of the events of mid-March 2011 following the earth quake and the tsunami in Japan nuclear power generation should be seriously rethought.
At least two nuclear power stations in Japan were in danger of experiencing core meltdown after this event and a full nuclear alert was in force around those two locations with thousands of people being evacuated from their homes.
One of the power plants reported on the morning (local time) of Saturday, March 12, 2011 that the cooling system of all five reactors has failed and that the critical point could be imminent. A core meltdown and subsequent explosion in a plant such as that would make Chernobyl look like a stroll in the park.
On the day in the morning UK local time reports have been coming in of one of the plants having exploded and a serious fire raging. However, Japanese authorities claim only small amount of radiation leakage. Sure, and pigs do in fact fly.
While an earthquake on the kind that was responsible for the initial damage and the the tsunami which caused further damage may be highly unlikely in Europe or even the in the United States, bar in the California region, nuclear power plants are a ticking time bomb, just waiting for something to happen in order to go off.
I do not care as to whether the authorities tell me that such accidents are very rare. That is irrelevant. One major accident should have told us the truth about those things, and Chernobyl should have been the real wakeup call. But no, we still play around with that stuff and intend to build more of those dangerous things.
Time for a most serious rethink, I should reckon, on nuclear power. And we have absolutely no time to lose there.
All those accidents, minor and major, proof that we have absolutely no way to control things when they go wrong, and that is aside from the fact that the material is poisonous for thousands of years afterwards. We cannot afford it.
© 2011
