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