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Title: The Fukushima crisis should not spell the end of nuclear power.
Source:
Monbiot
URL Source: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/16/atomised/
Published: Mar 16, 2011
Author: George Monbiot
Post Date: 2011-03-16 14:29:48 by go65
Keywords: None
Views: 19381
Comments: 27
The nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan is bad enough; the nuclear disaster unfolding in China could be even worse. “What disaster?”, you ask. The decision today by the Chinese government to suspend approval of new atomic power plants. If this suspension were to become permanent, the power those plants would have produced is likely to be replaced by burning coal. While nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong. The only safe coal-fired plant is one which has broken down past the point of repair.
Before I go any further, and I’m misinterpreted for the thousandth time, let me spell out once again what my position is. I have not gone nuclear. But, as long as the following four conditions are met, I will no longer oppose atomic energy.
1. Its total emissions – from mine to dump – are taken into account, and demonstrate that it is a genuinely low-carbon option.
2. We know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried.
3. We know how much this will cost and who will pay.
4. There is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be diverted for military purposes.
To these I’ll belatedly add a fifth, which should have been there all along: no plants should be built in fault zones, on tsunami-prone coasts, on eroding seashores or those likely to be inundated before the plant has been decommissioned or any other places which are geologically unsafe. This should have been so obvious that it didn’t need spelling out. But we discover, yet again, that the blindingly obvious is no guarantee that a policy won’t be adopted.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.
#1. To: go65, Mad Dog (#0) (Edited)
2. We know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried.
And politicians and plant owners are prepared to deal harshly with environmental saboteurs. Just say no to eco-nazis!
Eco-nuts are responsible for 100's of thousands of spent fuel rods being stored at Fukushima. Eco-terrorists are directly responsible for the worst of the radioactive nightmare happening in Japan. These storage "pools" do not have the same durable containment vessels as the reactors, and are the source of most of the emissions. The stuff belching out of them is greatly hampering work on the reactors.
Nuke power can be very safe, if you can keep eco kooks out of the process.
#2. To: hondo68 (#1)
Fuck off. Greed because of the expense was the cause of that stock piling. The simple truth is, the waste problem is the Achilles heel of that industry. Where to put it?
The Japanese's could of found their Yucca Mountain to store it; perhaps in Australia, or some other place that would accept payment for the dubious honor. After all, money does talk that way. As does greed when this stuff is stockpiled where it was used.
The simple truth about this industry is it has no real future. All the easy to extract Uranium has been extracted and used, and there is what is now estimated to be a 30-40 year supply of harder to process ore available to make fuel for this sort of plant.
The simple truth is the nuclear protest movement has been small and stalled the past few decades, and has never really existed in Japan like it did here.
You are like a German Nazi who scapegoated Jews for everything. You want a straw man to beat about to blame for the inherent weaknesses and shortcomings of this industry.
Replies to Comment # 2.
#5. To: Ferret Mike, buckeroo, Capitalist Eric, jwpegler (#2)
Fuck off. Greed because of the expense was the cause of that stock piling
And it's expensive because of?.... Eco-nazis have fought safe and sane storage tooth and nail. Your buddies at Save Japan Dolphins, have screwed the pooch. The dolphins will soon be glowing in the dark.
Environ-mental-cases don't really care how many people, dolphins, or other living things they kill, because they're for "population reduction". They'd rather kill humans because they believe that they're evil, but they take what they can get in the end.
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