Chernobyl 26 April 1986

[Magda Hassan]

Nuclear power is deadly, un-necessary, expensive and too tied to the military insanity.

Magda, I am not very familiar with the pros or cons of arguments for nuclear power, but in the UK we are in the midst of a debate on the subject. The government (thanks to that old Bliar guy) argues that for a green future, nuke power is the essential choice above a combination of renewables and old power (coal, oil, gas etc).

It seems that a number of apparent Greeny scientists are increasingly in favour of nuke energy as the best of all possible evils to stem global warming before the world tips over the edge of no return (arguably, it seems, this event might have a time horizon of no more than 10 years).

Thoughts?

Well, IMHO and FWIW, I don't think it is necessary at all. There are plenty of other alternatives. Tidal, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal for starters. All of which are pretty simple to do these days and safe to run and have no deadly by products that last 100's of 1,000's of years. If they breakdown they just breakdown. A major disruption to the supply of energy but not a major catastrophe to all living things. Also these systems can be decentralised which is great for avoiding terrorist (and false flag) targets or even just accidents. If one goes off grid there are others to take the slack and people and business can supply their own so life goes on smoothly. If every building had their roof made of pv material and used wind turbines all that energy can be fed back into the grid (which we already have so no new infrastructure) when there is no or low energy needs of that building - while asleep or empty or shut down after business hours etc. Plus there are things that don't cost a cent like changing building codes so that nothing new can be built or renovated with out incorporating sustainable energy design at every stage. Also changing people from mindless consumers to thoughtful adults costs nothing but does require political will. Then there is retro fitting. Where exactly is this energy needed? Housing? Industry (which ones) ? Military? Construction (of what)? Basically, society needs to change though. Much less consumption, less waste, more repair, more self sufficiency and self reliance etc. Business hates that.

I see the promotion of a nuclear 'alternative' under the guise of a supposed 'clean and green' alternative to nasty old dirty energy which is going to run out anyway as just another corporate grab for power and domination of the worst kind. The pressure is on to choose right NOW when there has been lots of time to implement gradual changes to other alternatives and I believe there still is. Nuclear energy has never been cheap. It is in fact very expensive and has had to be constantly bailed out by government and cannot be self sufficient financially. That is not even allowing for the cost of cleaning up another Chernobyl which will also be borne by the tax payer as it will be seen as an externality by the private nuclear industry. Nor does it account for the safe storage for the 500,000 years of the highly toxic and radioactive by product of the industry. They have yet to even come up with a solution for that apart from shunting it off to some one else and making it their problem (another one of those externalities).

And what it all comes down to is that they want to keep the corporate model above all else to keep the consumer dependent and needing to buy a basic necessity - energy. If people can supply their own and get it free and forever, plus use it to plug in their electric car, that is not good for their profits. It is un-necessarily complicated and no one can set up their own reactor so we would be dependent of these nuclear industry corporations for our energy. The nuclear industry works like any other corporation in the western world. Isn't that comforting? And it is tied in with the military through their use of nuclear arms. Even if solar and wind supply half the energy needs it is half the coal being used now. That would take pressure off and time to make a rational decision.

The very best case nuclear scenario is by using thorium. Thorium nuclear reactors don't use uraniuam, they can use nuclear waste as fuel and they only produce a very small percentage of low level nuclear waste with a half life of about 500 years compared to conventional reactors which have a half life of about 500,000 years give or take a thousand. They produce no plutomium therefore no bombs and can never reach critical mass and therefore can never explode like Chenobyl or Nine-mile Island. But is 500 years really okay? You prefer to die from arsenic or cyanide? They can still be blown up or flown into and pulled apart in earth quakes. Thorium and uranium are still finite resources and then we are back to square one again anyway.

The sun is just a giant nuclear reactor in the sky and if it ever runs out it will be when we are long gone. Same for geothermal. By the time the earth's core cools down we wont be able to live here anyway. We will always have the sun, the earth and the wind and the tides. All else can be consumed. Do it right the first time.