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Japanese nuclear disaster should be a wake up call
 national |
environment |
opinion/analysis
 Thursday March 17, 2011 18:02 by ferret
Recent events in Japan and revelations by wikileaks regarding the nefarious and corrupt activities of the nuclear industry working in India should be a wake up call for those considering the arguments of vested interests who are quietly pushing the nuclear agenda in our media. It would certainly be a nice profitable centralised earner for themselves and their friends but a panacea for our future energy woes it certainly ain't!
 Fukushima reactor 3 explodes
Reading some of the nuclear industry damage limitation spin, I was just wondering whether nuclear death / injury figures should include deaths and deformations as a result of nuclear weaponry and of course in this category I include depleted uranium weaponry which are made easily possible by the existence of a large widespread nuclear fuel and energy industry.
And Just wondering if the minds that would create such misuses for nuclear phenomena should be allowed access to anything other than rocks, let alone to wield a technology that could wipe us all out several times over, or poison every inch of our planet for hundreds if not thousands of years
Interesting recent revelations by wikileaks as to bribes paid by the nuclear industry to promote their technology in India supported by the US government
Interesting also that some of the terms of nuclear corrupt "cooperation" with India from the US meant the closing down of many operations producing cheap generic aids drugs for third world countries. The subsequent drying up of such cheap generic aids drugs in poorer areas of Africa to be replaced by very expensive labelled versions is essentially a death sentence to those relying on these generics. Should we include those too?
It's not quite as simple as the pro nuclear shills paint it. From their arguments, you'd think that humans were coldly logical entities like the Vulcans on star trek in all their dealings with nuclear technology. Sure we can be trusted to be careful with this stuff. 1000 years, no problem to us.
Yeah, I'm convinced. That is until I turn on my TV and scan through the channels building up a picture of the greedy petty fragility and incredible stupidity of the human race. These are not the Vulcans painted by the nuclear industry. These are weak fallible creatures driven by short term gains and monkey hierarchical ego prestige motivations. I'd have to think very carefully about putting most average examples of our much vaunted species in charge of a corner shop for an afternoon without fear of bankruptcy, let alone in charge of large concentrated quantities of some of the most highly dangerous, long term environmentally polluting and persistent elements in the known universe for periods of time that are a large multiple of the human lifespan.
Plenty of controversy and corrupt dealings surround this industry yet in the face of all this, in the face of the impending nuclear disaster in Japan unfolding before our eyes, and despite the constant threat of annihilation that has hung over the entire world each day since the end of WWII, the pollution of the environment in an insidious way costing billions in expensive yet ineffective cleanup operations which are often compromised to save money (e.g. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/031200-01.htm ). Still the nuclear shills come out of the woodwork.
It seems there is still a lot of money to be made promoting this technology. There is clearly a renewed nuclear agenda at work in Ireland in the last few years. In my own opinion RTE's earlier "coverage" of the nuclear crisis in Japan compared to the drastically different parallel coverage on the likes of NHK and Al Jazeera are a case in point that this agenda has infiltrated even the main broadcaster. Early broadcasts totally played down the crisis until it could no longer be denied how serious it actually was. On Vincent brown recently a representative of this agenda this week candidly acknowledged that the whole nuclear industry is about public perception and admitted that this event has set them back years. (Good! ;-)
The technical arguments can be made for pebble bed reactors etc but in the final analysis, it comes down to whether humans can be trusted to be the reliable stewards for dangerous waste products over long periods of time without succumbing to greed, stupidity, short term expediency and cutting corners. History tells me that the answer to that question is a resounding NO.
The laws of nature are relentless and unforgiving and take no prisoners. So, whilst there are cold technical arguments that can be made for the careful use of nuclear energy in certain forms, the fact remains that in practice, in the real world that is, Humans are not the Vulcans the well funded nuclear shills permeating our media would have us all believe. Putting aside all other considerations, the fact remains that humans are just too greedy petty and stupid to handle this technology as it needs to be handled and for that reason alone we should not seriously consider implementing further examples of it. Perhaps we can revisit the idea when the human species moral compass and ethical awareness and sense of environmental responsibility have evolved to match the tools we have developed.
And in a small green country with abundant wind and wave resources off our coast and lots of gas, (if our corrupt public representatives didn't just give it away to fat greedy corporations that is!), this technology makes little sense except to profit a small number of well placed people. As the price of oil climbs again on the back of indiscriminate speculation (why is this allowed??? and food speculation too?? Further examples if needed of our abject stupidity and lack of ethical evolution) We should reject moves to foist this technology on the Irish people and instead spend any money on wave power research, creating jobs and potentially a long term renewable energy source based on safer and cleaner branches of physics
Caption: Video Id: 9oNEIj7EmNo Type: Youtube Video
Ah...sure it will be ok in a few days. Here is the latest celebrity gossip story
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Comments (17 of 17)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17They didn't release the info on Windscale at the time of what was then the world's first major nuclear power accident for 'political' reasons ...
The spin doctors who provide the gumph on so called safety of nuclear power are the same spin doctors who support, if not don't oppose, the bombing and shooting of civilians in the name of 'peace' ...
Simple they may be but they are simple lunatics and that makes them terribly dangerous in their ignorance.
..may be cartoon caricatures, but as somebody somewhere said, '..many a true word spoke in jest'.
The record of the nukocracy, back to falsifying of reports at the US Department of Energy after WW II to fastrack nuclear over other energy contenders is a litany of spin, lies, denial and disinformation. Result, anyone who has payed the slightest attention to the contradictions can never credit them with the capacity for a truthful or near-honest statement. Its been bred out of them. Handing this crew a licence to run anything is a bit like putting a sociopathic six-year-old in charge of the arsenal. Not smart.
Therefore it will happen. Homo stupidus knows best.
Using the excuse of 'It might interfere with rescue efforts' the US Military and Japanese Gov't block citizens access to Youtube. Japan has one of the best networks in the world - it is highly unlikely that Youtube would in anyway interfere with anything - so I conclude that they are trying to prevent dissemination of bad news
"Military Blocks High-Volume Websites as Precaution After Japan Quake" - http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/militar...10315
where is the condemnation which Mubarak/Iranian Mullahs were subjected to, when they did the same?
Caption: Video Id: 15gGuQJzD-U Type: Youtube Video
Angry French guy in Japan gives us his thoughts on Nuke Meltdown
As we know early on in this unfolding disaster we were told that they were using seawater to cool the reactors and it was made clear that seawater is corrosive although it wasn't clear what exactly would be the mechanism nor how long it would take and what would happen.
According to Dmitry Orlov who has written about this on his blog, he says the effect could be to result in significant release of radioactivity in the form of an aerosol. If true, then an aerosol has the potential to spread for hundreds of miles and if this happen, it would be extremely serious.
What do they mean when they say that they are cooling the reactor with seawater? Seawater is corrosive, and is probably the worst coolant imaginable. Normally, nuclear reactors are cooled with fresh, filtered, deionized water. The crew at Fukushima used seawater because they had no other choice. When the cooling pumps failed because the tsunami caused a blackout, they called in the fire brigade, and the fire engines there apparently use seawater. The reactor cooling systems are plumbed with stainless steel pipes, which degrade rather rapidly on contact with sea water because of the chlorine in it, especially if they are hot (which they are). At Fukushima, “containment” has already become a relative term, since the reactors are vented to the outside air in any case to keep them from bursting, but once these pipes disintegrate (a process that might take a few days to a few weeks) the containment vessels will become riddled with holes, letting in outside air and, if by then there is any zirconium left to burn, possibly causing hydrogen explosions inside the reactors, compromising them further. Their radioactive contents will then be carried to the atmosphere in aerosol form. We will probably know when that happens because the Geiger counters in the area will peg out.
Worth a scan
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23764
Judge for yourself how credible it is. It fits my understanding of the industry, all the way back.
Can anybody tell me : Where does Ireland dump it's radoi-active waste, i mean medical isotopes etc and those used
in engineering ?
There are reports circulating that quite high levels of radioactivity was detected in the sea offshore from Fukushima.
There are also reports of contamination of food supplies in the area. Surprisenly the Japanese government does not appear to have banned the sale of it.
It certainly looks like it is part of the Japanese psychic to play down these problems and of course the entire nuclear community worldwide and associated governments have been very low key about the radiation leaks now that we are over one week into it. It seems as if they have got a grip of themselves after the initial shock and the realisation has properly set in, that if they give this any more dramatic coverage then it is going to be very very damaging to the future image of nuclear power. So we now have the situation where there are leaks, there is still a serious accident in progress, but we are basically being lead to believe it is all under control now and I guess the hope is that we will all soon forget about it.
One of the best sites at the moment for a technical understanding of what is happening can be found at http://allthingsnuclear.org/
Chernobyl was the wakeup call and we know what subsequently happened. There was an expectation during that crisis that a second explosion of a dirty bomb type could take place. Documentary published information broadcasted on Chernobyl crisis stated that had second explosion taken place “All of Europe would have become uninhabitable”.
The questions that need to be asked is why, given, the aforementioned scenario, is it necessary to continue with nuclear development and how people or organisations opposed to same could reasonably apply pressure for change.
In the wake of Japan’s nuclear accident Britain has just announced, that there is going to be no change, to their programme of building nuclear power stations.
Any campaigner trying to change the status quo needs to understand that the nuclear industry is a no go area, backed by the full might of the state. Hilda Murrell was an example of the harassment to be expected that has unlikely gone away, if anything, modern technology in all its complexity would be brought to bear to discredit any opposition.
Richard Dawkins once observed that people will die rather than think. Perhaps they are right as we lurch towards the techno singularity which might explain why nuclear is needed as a fuel. Furthermore are we just pawns in our evolutionary path where we have little control over our ultimate destiny.
Under the headline " Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power" , the former eco-warrior George Mombiot explicitly defended nuclear energy in his Guardian column yesterday.
In the article Mombiot admitted that many of his readers would be surprised to learn that he has dropped what he termed his former "nuclear-neutral" stance at such a critical point . As well as surprise there will surely be disappointment and a sense of betrayal for those who haven’t been following the implicit nuclear endorsements in Mombiot’s recent writing .The former radical is now shamelessly resorting to the same arguments used by the nuclear industry over the years to discredit its opponents: that , barring a return to some pre-industrial revolution bucolic ideal, the alternative to nuclear energy can only be the burning of fossil fuels.
Mombiot has already managed to conclude - by studying graphs from the safety of the Guardian’s Farringdon Road offices in London or from his eco-house in North Wales presumably - that the dangers of radioactive pollution for Japan have been “ wildly exaggerated” and that the impact of the accident on people and the planet has been small .
Perhaps he has had a Geiger counter and a crystal ball chipped into his brain . It surely couldn’t be the case that Mombiot ,who wrote in support of the Liberal Democrats in the run-up to last year’s UK election , has in fact been a closet supporter of the nuclear lobby for quite some time, but only came out openly in its defence at a time of crisis for the industry.
Link to the Guardian article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro...shima
There are some facts of science that stubborn old lefties need to take on board- for example the best think the UK has done for the environment so far is the closure of the Welsh coal pits! So the left should have gone green sooner instead of wasting so much energy on destructive planet killing coal. Monbiot is is a very long standing green activists and one of the few responsible grown-ups on the left that knows what's what about the environment. dialectical and logical arguments should be able to actually move with the times and admit a previous stance was wrong.
I protested at sellafield like a good green in 2001 but now with fresh information it is time for a fresh stance. If old greens like Monbiot are coming off the fence and going pro-nuclear because they have a deeper and clearer understanding of how to go about saving our planet then the rest of the left should play catch up. An anti-technology stance stuck in 1982 is not Marxist.
Full article text at url.
When nuclear reactors blow, the first thing that melts down is the truth. Just as in the Chernobyl catastrophe almost 25 years ago when Soviet authorities denied the extent of radiation and downplayed the dire situation that was spiraling out of control, Japanese authorities spent the first week of the Fukushima crisis issuing conflicting and confusing reports. We were told that radiation levels were up, then down, then up, but nobody aside from those Japanese bureaucrats could verify the levels and few trusted their accuracy. The situation is under control, they told us, but workers are being evacuated. There is no danger of contamination, but stay inside and seal your doors.
ok, can any of the pro nuclear shills around here tell me how putting 4 nuclear reactors in close proximity to a known geological fault was ever a good idea except to turn a tasty profit for General Electric corporation?
The real environmental elephant in the room is trans national corporations playing countries off each other and corrupting and derailing political processes with cash so they can rape the worlds resources in double time to achieve ever more vulgar short term profits without having to give a shit about the environment or any environmental laws, labour laws or human rights.
The nuclear industry is just another example of this.
Humanity needs to cop on and defang these out of control monsters before they make meaningful human life impossible on a polluted prison planet
..state of automotive technology, he'd need roller skates.
Some info in this weeks New Scientist mag, including some of the history of cover ups in nuclear Japan. Worth a scan. Legible for non-science types like me. Dont forget your grain of salt for the damage limitation agendas. Lotsa funding in nuke research labs. MOD are regular advertisers so they tend to keep inside the tent, but do give criticism too.
Ritt Goldstein , an American investigative journalist based in Sweden , compares Fukushima to the Chernobyl tragedy in this report from Indymedia Japan .
http://japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/7723/index.php
Focusing on the impact of the Chermobyl accident on the Swedish town Gävle , which in 1986 had been struck by a heavy rainstorm as a cloud of Chernobyl’s fallout was overhead, Goldsein writes :
“Gävle is about a thousand miles from Chernobyl, and the amount of nuclear fuel present at Chernobyl during the 1986 accident is reported as about 180 tons, none of which contained plutonium, an element much more toxic than the uranium used in standard reactor fuel. Estimates of the amount of nuclear fuel present at Fukushima are roughly in the 2000 ton range, dwarfing Chernobyl, and one of the six reactors (number 3) does use a mixture of plutonium and uranium, ‘mox’.”
“According to a 2006 Swedish study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, it appears Sweden experienced approximately a thousand excess cancer fatalities because of Chernobyl, the number expected to increase, the cases concentrated proportional to the levels of radioactive exposure………….
A 2007 study performed by the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Reasearch, a Cambridge Massachusetts based think tank, examined the cognitive effects of Chernobyl’s radiation upon Swedish children. It found evidence that: “fetal exposure to ionizing radiation damages cognitive ability at radiation levels previously considered safe.”
of radiation being detected here and in other European countries.
'Not a matter for concern' according to the experts.
Now if only those fucking experts didn't have such a long record of lying repeatedly we might have some trust in them, and have some clue where we stand.
Meantime stopnato@yahoogroups.com report depleted Uranium use in Libya.
No doubt its being used to protect those 'civilian populations' from Gadafi's cruel health programs.
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power
Nice picture BTW!
Here is an interesting article from http://www.countercurrents.org about the water discharges from the fukushima plant
http://www.countercurrents.org/takahara050411.htm
It's really all about the long term pollution of our water supply and our food chain isn't it? Imagine eating a nice tin of cesium tuna then being constantly irradiated from within until eventually one of the millions of cells in close proximity to the highly radioactive cesium particlesl has it's precise mechanisms scrambled enough by stray radiation to become cancerous
thats why wind/solar/wave/geothermal are the only way to go