Does Scott Walker Have Time to Peek At Fukishima's Wrecked Nukes?
He'll be in Japan until Tuesday: Maybe he'd like to swing up north and check out that wrecked and leaking "proven technologies" and hand out copies of this interview exactly three years ago today:
"I am 100 percent supportive of nuclear power," he said. "I think the more options we have, the better. I have no problem with adding in others, and one of the easiest and most proven technologies is to lift the moratorium on nuclear energy."
10 comments:
The SS Badger is doing more to harm the environment than a modern nuclear power plant ever would in Wisconsin.
"In Wisconsin" is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence.
If you like, I can say "in America" or "in almost all of the world" because very few places have the combination of earthquake and tsunami risk that northern Japan has, and the incredibly unlikely chain of events that led to the Fukushima disaster would not have occurred with a modern nuclear power plant design. The BP oil spill in the Gulf is far more devastating than Fukushima, too, but go on and be more scared of atoms than you are of the results of burning coal, oil, and natural gas and pumping ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is a crying shame that "progressives" who are otherwise concerned about climate change run scared from a proven safe electricity generating technology in use around the world.
I'll rethink my opposition to nuclear power the day the industry comes up with a safe, permanent system to handle the high-level radioactive waste those reactors generate. They've had 60 years and keep telling us a solution is just around the corner. The stuff is so deadly it has to be kept out of the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. Meanwhile we're storing it next to Lake Michigan, the Mississippi river and other important water sources, Coal is more dangerous? Really?
my point is that limiting the scope of your concern is not realistic; the spread of Fukushima's radiation damage has reached the west coast.
That goes for all the other methods too. Just because the damage is outsourced, doesn't mean that you won't be affected by them; the Earth is a small and fragile basket, and all our eggs our kept in it.
I heard one person say "nuclear power is a reasonable energy source, unless you do something monumentally stupid with it". Allowing for-profit companies to build and run nuclear power plants is monumentally stupid.
As is allowing for-profit companies to run any other parts of our critical infrastructure. Helloooooo, Enron! Are we really looking forward to Apple or Google running the Internet?
because very few places have the combination of earthquake and tsunami risk that northern Japan has, and the incredibly unlikely chain of events that led to the Fukushima disaster would not have occurred with a modern nuclear power plant design.
Not only do you emphasize my point, but perhaps the designers of the plant might have wanted to take the unique factors of that location into account?
the day the industry comes up with a safe, permanent system to handle the high-level radioactive waste those reactors generate.
my idea is that we put it into the undershorts of the Koch brothers and Scott Walker.
I am thinking about Kickstartering that idea.
ZRM, how about letting the US Navy run a civilian nuclear power generating program? Now that we're not so scared about nuclear bombs dropping everywhere, maybe we can put more research into waste reprocessing, breeder reactors, and thorium fuel cycles, too.
All that's as much of a pipe dream as convincing people that nuclear power doesn't have to be scary and that utilities shouldn't be run for profit, I know.
Also, mining and burning coal is absolutely a more immediate danger to the Earth's environment than nuclear power.
Anon., I'm glad you're not worried about nuclear weapons proliferation any more. I'm not sure everyone else is in that same frame of mind. Iraq, for one example?
ZRM, how about letting the US Navy run a civilian nuclear power generating program?
I say we put the waste in their undershorts also.
Also, mining and burning coal is absolutely a more immediate danger to the Earth's environment than nuclear power.
tell that to the folks in Chernobyl.
Look, I don't disagree with you. We have problematic methods of power generation at nearly every level, and little political willpower to focus in directions that might reduce that.
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