A short article on the practical and ethical failings of the modern nuclear industry provoked by redent events in Japan.
The smokescreens are back up after the latest nuclear catastrophe in Japan. 'Please go home.' 'There's nothing to see.' 'Everything is under control.' I've heard it all before from many different representatives of the nuclear industry back in the late nineties while an anti-nuclear campaigner in Bristol, England. The 'industry' only ever concedes to the mistakes it has to, and even then its dismissive justifications can be chilling.
It makes me think back to a member of the industry from the Ukraine speaking on the Chernobyl disaster, who referred to its long suffering victims as 'necessary statistics in a modern nuclear age'. 'Don't you just care about people?' was the reply from a Belarus based member of the public. But of course the question was rhetorical as it had already been answered by the callousness that had caused its reaction.
A clean, cheap and plentiful source of energy is often the contemporary argument. The excuses change with the ideological fashions of the times. We are dealing with an anachronistic industry long past its sell by date whose continuing existence is justified on cost effective environmental grounds.Nevermind the leakages, meltdowns, mass contaminations and the cancer rates well above average for residents all over the world with homes near nuclear power stations.
Have we learnt nothing? From Chernobyl in the Ukraine to Waterford in Connecticut to Fukishima in Japan, as long as we go on pretending that the price of nuclear energy is one worth paying we will continue to disregard the basic human rights of ordinary everyday people. One thing I learnt from my time campaigning against the nuclear industry and its defenders is that they are never more dangerous than when they are doing impressions of human beings.
Of course in bringing our attention back to the present disaster it's not just the stoic, brave and noble Japanese we must spare a thought for. The forces of nature are both precarious and unpredictable. The tsunami that caused the problems with the three reactors in Japan has demonstrated this. There are also potentially more complicated problems arising out of the initial disaster.
The leaked radioactivity could spread further a field to other countries if it hasn't done so already. And if we learn from the lessons of history it has shown that nuclear power itself is both precarious and unpredictable and that we cannot trust the secretive, dishonest and clandestine nuclear industry to be transparent and therefore keep we the public adequately informed.
If we put more finance into researching and developing ways of harnessing energy that avoided the consequences of nuclear energy, and put the people that use it first, we will have taken both a large practical and ethical step towards a cleaner, safer, kinder and more harmonious planet to live on. Yes it might not be as cost efficient and therefore leave us financially poorer. But surely we will be richer in the respect we have for our environment and others.
It makes me think back to a member of the industry from the Ukraine speaking on the Chernobyl disaster, who referred to its long suffering victims as 'necessary statistics in a modern nuclear age'. 'Don't you just care about people?' was the reply from a Belarus based member of the public. But of course the question was rhetorical as it had already been answered by the callousness that had caused its reaction.
A clean, cheap and plentiful source of energy is often the contemporary argument. The excuses change with the ideological fashions of the times. We are dealing with an anachronistic industry long past its sell by date whose continuing existence is justified on cost effective environmental grounds.Nevermind the leakages, meltdowns, mass contaminations and the cancer rates well above average for residents all over the world with homes near nuclear power stations.
Have we learnt nothing? From Chernobyl in the Ukraine to Waterford in Connecticut to Fukishima in Japan, as long as we go on pretending that the price of nuclear energy is one worth paying we will continue to disregard the basic human rights of ordinary everyday people. One thing I learnt from my time campaigning against the nuclear industry and its defenders is that they are never more dangerous than when they are doing impressions of human beings.
Of course in bringing our attention back to the present disaster it's not just the stoic, brave and noble Japanese we must spare a thought for. The forces of nature are both precarious and unpredictable. The tsunami that caused the problems with the three reactors in Japan has demonstrated this. There are also potentially more complicated problems arising out of the initial disaster.
The leaked radioactivity could spread further a field to other countries if it hasn't done so already. And if we learn from the lessons of history it has shown that nuclear power itself is both precarious and unpredictable and that we cannot trust the secretive, dishonest and clandestine nuclear industry to be transparent and therefore keep we the public adequately informed.
If we put more finance into researching and developing ways of harnessing energy that avoided the consequences of nuclear energy, and put the people that use it first, we will have taken both a large practical and ethical step towards a cleaner, safer, kinder and more harmonious planet to live on. Yes it might not be as cost efficient and therefore leave us financially poorer. But surely we will be richer in the respect we have for our environment and others.
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Pausing for breath.
17.03.2011 14:36
But the overall direction of the article goes toward a situation that may not be as straightforward as many believe. This disaster will undoubtedly send the world away from nuclear and back toward the use of fossil fuels and that means oil, gas and coal. Oil and gas is a serious problem.
The general argument recently with nuclear has been not just the cost effectiveness of the technology, but its capacity to level the situation with competition for resources and to serve to lessen the desire for that competition. Nuclear, in a nutshell, could serve as the motivation toward a position of conflict resolution. Nuclear could potentially be used to undermine any and all arguments for war.
As the current events show, that situation appears to have collapsed and one is extremely depressed at what this bodes for the immediate future. Libya is in uproar, Bahrain going the same way, Yemen now boiling, Egypt still simmering and other countries in pre-dissident status. This disaster in Japan, comes as the turmoil in these nations reaches a point where sparks can ignite into a return to competition for resources and inevitable war, across a number of fronts.
I think this is the time in which nuclear, anti-war, anarchists and human rights campaigners must engage in dialogue in order to prepare a strategy for how to negotiate this approaching situation. This appears to be the time in which the networks must come together to unite to press down on all governments the case for peace, cleanliness, equity and justice.
Of course, there is already pre-existing overlap between us, many nuclear campaigners have been, and are, anti-war campaigners and visa versa. Human rights campaigners are known to us all. In addition, we have hundreds of splinter groups each engaged in single issue campaigns who have also migrated into different fields at various times. But we now need a public illustration of unity and solidarity transcending politics and based on application of our talents directly to the events and situation we face.
At this time, while much of the MSM is engaged with reporting these events, it does so within the attention deficit environment under which they are organised. This does not permit the longer view or facilitate foresight that serves any positive function. These approaching events require a broader, more realistic understanding of the world and its foibles. The MSM cannot fulfill this function, but can act as a catalyst to disseminate information which we are clearly skilled at de-coding and using for the cause of peace.
What we are seeing has been slowly approaching for a while, but the events in Japan have pushed us toward the prospect of a situation that can, and will, accelerate at any time into uncontrollable chaos. Chaos the state governments of the world are proven to be incapable of dealing with.
Peace.
T