![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
patentdragonJust watch the panic. It's sad, isn't it? No two news reports, and no two experts have the same things to say about the situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan - oh, sorry, that's not strictly true; the "green" brigade are universally delighted...
When Japan goes *BOOM*, that's the death-knell of nuclear power, isn't it? There must be anti-nuclear hippies hunched in front of their computers, night and day, pants round their ankles, ready to "massage" themselves into a foaming frenzy the moment Japan gets consumed in an atomic fireball...
No joke. Those who supposedly "care about the environment" are begging for meltdowns.
Some countries are already dropping nuclear power like the proverbial hot potato, desperate, I'm thinking, to make some influential friends in the "green" community, even though there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of a Fukushima scenario in, say, Germany (a fraction of the coastline of Japan, and no substantial techtonic threats), or here in the UK. "But the main threat to nuclear power stations is terrorism", say the hippies - but there haven't been any terrorist attacks against our power stations, have there? To crack open one of our reactors, you'd have to crash a passenger plane into one - and we all know how likely that is going to be, even with our recent defence cuts...
Okay, let's be sensible about this. YES, nuclear power stations have a far greater potential to contaminate than other forms of power, but they have to go wrong for that to happen, whilst other forms of power, equally unfashionable at present, do their ecological damage when they go right - "global warming", anyone?
The nuclear industry have learned major lessons from past incidents, in particular Chernobyl, and it's something you do not pursue "on the cheap". The Fukushima facility has thirty year-old reactors (or so I've heard), and with nuclear reactors, you don't just unscrew a panel, and slot in an upgrade - and these things take a heck of a long time to safely decommission.
It strikes me that the nuclear nay-sayers have conveniently forgotten several very important factors in the Japanese incident - there was, y'know,
a Magnitude 9.0 earthquake
followed very swiftly by
a freaking huge tsunami
which wiped out power lines, roads, and crippled the generators running the cooling systems. It could be that the incident has been poorly managed, but could the lack of solid information be because of communications deficiences and, well, people not wanting to die horribly just so all the SKY subscribers can know how many fuel rods are explosed, or damaged...
Could the Japanese authorities be hiding the truth? It's a possibility, but with the eyes of the world upon you, a pretty piss-poor idea...
Could corruption in the past have led to sub-standard reactors? Also possible - but then the fault doesn't lie with the reactors; it lies with the greedy bastards who pocketed a fortune, and said a hearty "Fuck you" to the rest of Japan.
These scenarios say very little about the safety of nuclear power, and a whole bunch about the dangers posed to the world by humanity, in all its supreme pettiness and avarice.
Oh, and never mind, we can still build all those lovely windmills along the coast, and the hippies will be happy - oh, what's that? A bunch of dolphins beached themselves because the vibrations screwed up their navigation? The dusky corncrake just became extinct when the last flock of them got splattered by a colossal propellor?
Tough. You had to keep your gadget-laden high-tech existence, Mister Hippy - if you didn't have your computer and internet access, you wouldn't be able to constantly bitch about shit, rather than set an example and go back to the land, just like you've been preaching all these years...
That's it. I'm done with this. Agree, disagree, the choice is yours - but those who preach seem to be the least willing to lead the way. And that's just so typical of the human race.
End rant transmission...
When Japan goes *BOOM*, that's the death-knell of nuclear power, isn't it? There must be anti-nuclear hippies hunched in front of their computers, night and day, pants round their ankles, ready to "massage" themselves into a foaming frenzy the moment Japan gets consumed in an atomic fireball...
No joke. Those who supposedly "care about the environment" are begging for meltdowns.
Some countries are already dropping nuclear power like the proverbial hot potato, desperate, I'm thinking, to make some influential friends in the "green" community, even though there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of a Fukushima scenario in, say, Germany (a fraction of the coastline of Japan, and no substantial techtonic threats), or here in the UK. "But the main threat to nuclear power stations is terrorism", say the hippies - but there haven't been any terrorist attacks against our power stations, have there? To crack open one of our reactors, you'd have to crash a passenger plane into one - and we all know how likely that is going to be, even with our recent defence cuts...
Okay, let's be sensible about this. YES, nuclear power stations have a far greater potential to contaminate than other forms of power, but they have to go wrong for that to happen, whilst other forms of power, equally unfashionable at present, do their ecological damage when they go right - "global warming", anyone?
The nuclear industry have learned major lessons from past incidents, in particular Chernobyl, and it's something you do not pursue "on the cheap". The Fukushima facility has thirty year-old reactors (or so I've heard), and with nuclear reactors, you don't just unscrew a panel, and slot in an upgrade - and these things take a heck of a long time to safely decommission.
It strikes me that the nuclear nay-sayers have conveniently forgotten several very important factors in the Japanese incident - there was, y'know,
a Magnitude 9.0 earthquake
followed very swiftly by
a freaking huge tsunami
which wiped out power lines, roads, and crippled the generators running the cooling systems. It could be that the incident has been poorly managed, but could the lack of solid information be because of communications deficiences and, well, people not wanting to die horribly just so all the SKY subscribers can know how many fuel rods are explosed, or damaged...
Could the Japanese authorities be hiding the truth? It's a possibility, but with the eyes of the world upon you, a pretty piss-poor idea...
Could corruption in the past have led to sub-standard reactors? Also possible - but then the fault doesn't lie with the reactors; it lies with the greedy bastards who pocketed a fortune, and said a hearty "Fuck you" to the rest of Japan.
These scenarios say very little about the safety of nuclear power, and a whole bunch about the dangers posed to the world by humanity, in all its supreme pettiness and avarice.
Oh, and never mind, we can still build all those lovely windmills along the coast, and the hippies will be happy - oh, what's that? A bunch of dolphins beached themselves because the vibrations screwed up their navigation? The dusky corncrake just became extinct when the last flock of them got splattered by a colossal propellor?
Tough. You had to keep your gadget-laden high-tech existence, Mister Hippy - if you didn't have your computer and internet access, you wouldn't be able to constantly bitch about shit, rather than set an example and go back to the land, just like you've been preaching all these years...
That's it. I'm done with this. Agree, disagree, the choice is yours - but those who preach seem to be the least willing to lead the way. And that's just so typical of the human race.
End rant transmission...
