Showing posts with label Nuclear energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nuclear energy. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AND LOVE THE ATOM.









Why should you fear the neighbor’s dog when there is a tiger in your back yard?    

I don’t mean this to be more doom and gloom but…   what the hell; we love doom and gloom.   The ratings tell us that the movies with extreme violence, graphic bloodshed, rape, carnage and chaos are the movies people tend to pay to see. 

Global warming is a fact.   Ninety-three percent of all environmental scientists agree (the other seven percent have a religious or corporate agenda.)   We are experiencing the changes at this time.   Weather patterns are disrupted as oceans warm and the ecology adjusts.  But, at sometime in the distant future (perhaps decades) the change will have completed and the earth will stabilize with a new ecosystems. 

But, there is a more pressing danger:

 
NUCLEAR PLANTS IN THE US


Nuclear plants exist across our country.  These plants were designed to operate for thirty years.   Many are operating on an extension.   The nuclear wastes produced by these plants are extremely hazardous and will remain so for thousands of years.  The plants themselves have to be sealed after their life span; and the physical plants and the land they occupy will be uninhabitable for thousands of years.   

Unbeknownst to the public, nuclear waste from operating nuclear plants are being constantly transported on our highways and railroads to storage facilities.  These storage facilities will have to maintain these materials for thousands of years – what could possibly go wrong?  

We have had a number of nuclear emergencies: the two most noteworthy are Chernobyl






 An there is the human cost:




And Fukushima.






The radioactive waste water from the Fukushima plant is, at this time, draining into the Pacific Ocean.  The Japanese government claims that the volume of radioactive water to the vast Pacific Ocean will result in no discernible danger to the ecosystem. 



Our government’s energy plan includes building more nuclear energy plants and building new nuclear weapons to replace our aging stockpile.  We are looking at short term, government subsidized, energy programs with long term pollution and disaster potential.  


But again: what could possibly go wrong?


the Ol’Buzzard