Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more disconnected from reality than ever.
Political elites are still clinging to the oxymoron of "safe nuclear power." It's up to us - people around the world - to peacefully and insistently shut those plants down.
There is no more techno-advanced country in the world than Japan. Nuclear power is not safe there, and it is not safe anywhere.
As The New York Times reported on Monday, "most of the nuclear plants in the United States share some or all of the risk factors that played a role at Fukushima Daiichi: locations on tsunami-prone coastlines or near earthquake faults, aging plants and backup electrical systems that rely on diesel generators and batteries that could fail in extreme circumstances."
Nuclear power - from uranium mining to fuel fabrication to reactor operations to nuclear waste that will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years - is, in fact, a moral crime against future generations.
But syrupy rhetoric has always marinated the nuclear age. From the outset - even as radioactive ashes were still hot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - top officials in Washington touted atomic energy as redemptive. The split atom, we were to believe, could be an elevating marvel.
President Dwight Eisenhower pledged "to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma" by showing that "the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life."
Even after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 - and now this catastrophe in Japan - the corporate theologians of nuclear faith have continued to bless their own divine projects.
One of the biggest problems with this nuclear crisis is the reaction of some of the press-- fear-mongering and sensationalism.
ReplyDeleteLike it or not, I think nuclear power is in our future.
The idea that we must scrap it because of some problems encountered in one of the worst earthquakes in history is a bit premature.
Does it need to be examined carefully?
Absolutely.
But let's not rush to any conclusions just yet, and let's take an honest look at whatever facts become available instead of becoming hysterical.