Isn’t it time we got the message?

In following the horror of nature rearing its awesome and unlimited power upon our friend and ally, Japan, it becomes ever more clear how fragile our hold is and how potentially insignificant we are in nature’s plan. So the question is: why do we continue to taunt her power? We build in flood plains, fire zones, ignore the true signs of global warming and talk about building more nuclear power plants. When will be get the message?
These are all things we can do something about. We can stop building in flood plains and high fire areas, we can address the sources of global warming and climate change and change our behaviors (if not too late). These are conversations we’ve been having regularly, especially in California and this is good. Ignoring the fact that the Koch brothers, their other oil and coal-burning billionaire buddies deny and lie about the changing climate, the importance of their carbon-burning products and their impacts on the planet, we know that they are in this strictly for the money. Truth and nature be damned.
But what we haven’t been talking about and are facing immediately and dramatically, is what happens when nature challenges the “safety” of nuclear power plants. Ninety miles from where I live, in Santa Barbara, is PG&E’s San Luis Obispo’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, so aptly named as its meltdown would create a hell for those of us downwind. How many are downwind? Well, you start in Santa Barbara and then go straight through Los Angeles, down the coast to San Diego and you get a sense of the magnitude of danger such a situation would create. Oh, and did I mention that Diablo is sited on an earthquake fault? No biggie…….
Of course, it IS big and the fact that Japan has 54 of these facilities is no less mind-boggling as Mother Nature has shined her often harsh countenance on the Rising Sun many times over the past decades and the latest on March 11, 2011 (not to be ignored is the human imposition of nuclear destruction on this nation in 1945).
With all sources of electricity to cool the nuclear reactor rods out-of-commission—back up diesel generators badly damaged by the earthquake, and an estimated 8 hours of battery time to keep the rods cool enough so they don’t melt and release radioactive material into the atmosphere, we are either facing or will face-down a Chernobyl/Three-Mile Island incident. So the next time we start talking about building more nuclear power plants, let’s remember that Mother Nature can neither be fooled nor beaten when her powers are unleashed.
There are many lessons to be learned from this incident. Most important is that we are powerless in the face of nature’s wrath when unleashed. We live in earthquake country in California. So, why are we cutting emergency facilities, the people who are our first-responders and otherwise destroying the very government that will be called upon if and when we face the inevitability that nature will act harshly — perhaps tomorrow, perhaps decades from now but inevitably? And while we ponder this, we need to prepare. And while we do that, let’s remember that nuclear power is not harmless and no amount of protection we develop can ensure against such a catastrophe. For those of us old enough to remember the campaign to substitute margarine for butter we should remind ourselves that “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Let’s not allow ourselves to find out why. Let’s reject building more nuclear power plants and find other safer ways to generate the power we need to fuel the future… we have a future to fuel.
And to the people of Japan we send you our prayers and hopefully our promise that we will not make the world any more dangerous than it is today—mother nature notwithstanding.

2 thoughts on “Isn’t it time we got the message?

  1. It is frustrating to me that liberals never understand the concept of risk. It would be nice if there was a source of energy in which there is no risk. It would be nice that as engineers we could create system so secure that all natural catastrophes, no matter how unlikely, are always managed safely. However, this world does not exist. It is a fantasy land created by liberals.
    Everything in our society has risk associated with it. We have risks when we drive to work, we have risks in the buildings that we work and live in, we have risks in the food we consume, and so forth. Understanding, managing, and accepting risk is what an industrial society must do. So, should we learn from the Japanese experience? Of course. But, should we panic and in a non-thinking way say no to nuclear power? I think not. For if we say no to nuclear power then what is the alternative? Coal? Oil? Natural Gas? Windmills? Each and every one of these have series economic and social costs.
    On other point, references to Cherynobyl are quite outlandish. The reactor there was a carbon moderated reactor. These were reactors designed to produce weapon grade plutonium and should never have been used for generating power. It was done so because the Russians were broke and were trying to save money. The Japanese reactors are not that type.

  2. It is frustrating to me that advocates of risk do so in the name of making money at the expense of safety. There are sources of energy which are safe and without the risk of nuclear energy (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, ocean current), but the people who advocate for nuclear energy propose that we create nuclear waste for which there is no depository. They propose that we build plants that cannot withstand earthquakes. They propose that we get by with practically no protection from accidental discharge, and they propose that we store the waste all over the country where it is vulnerable to terrorist access.
    All of this proposed nuclear risk is so that a few companies in the nuclear business, like G.E. who paid no taxes in the U.S. last year because of their vast influence in government, can make a profit exposing us to this risk.
    Engineers live in a fantasyland that they can control the forces of nature – well, they can’t. However, they do dream up risky ventures for capitalists to exploit for money at our expense.

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