Certainly there are serious issues surrounding nuclear energy that must to be addressed. The issues are well known and I won't catalog them here. But I do think the opponents of nuclear energy too often argue the negatives in a vacuum, as if there were no negatives to the possible alternatives, or as if those negatives were somehow less significant. The debate about nuclear energy begins with a negative bias unlike any other energy source. Now where are we going and what's with the handbasket?
you talk about bias, when it's citizens defending themselves from something no insurance company will touch with a ten-foot geiger counter?
worst things about going nuclear:
please....people...this is ridiculous - as ridiculous as bush v.1 saying 'our way of life is not negotiable' and then bombing little brown folk into oblivion.
negotiating with nature should be done by leaders with the humility to realise what an intelligent organism nature is, and how willing it is for us to live peacefully with plenty of energy, instead thugs beat it out with destructive cudgels.....for what?
more landfill-to-be stuff, cheaper?
we've been ad-washed into believing we're special, when the only reason we're special is that by guile and historical accident we're in a catbird seat, global power-wise.
ho ho how great!
we're the lucky ones whose ancestors brought europe into a power position, we've lived off the colonial fat of the globe for centuries, and what if the shoe had been on the other foot and africa had ripped off all our resources and was now wondering if they should deign to stop screwing us with high interest as we paid back loans of the money generated by their military-backed middlemen from our own natural resources and the sweat of our enslaved backs?
that's the cognitive dissonance here and everywhere.... we just can't do the simple, right thing of putting ourselves in the shoes of the other 4/5 ths of the world, while we boost perfume and fast cars as 'value' in our slick, smugly mediated, medicated self-congratulation.
we don't want to be 'invaded' by their 'immigrants'; they are our shadow, and we know (but we don't admit it) they have revengeful reason to wish us pain, koran in hand or not. they're jealous of us, because we hoodwinked them with fine talk while we undermined them with corporate 'values' like fining them for keeping their own seedbanks alive, or selling them their own water, while 'educating' their politicians' sons at prestige universities and propping up pomp.
there are those who are grateful for our education facilities, the generosity of our charities, the warmheartedness of religious volunteers who in any number of ways do fantastically useful things, but where are our governments?
keeping secrets...about why our quality of life sucks for so many, and who pays big behind the curtain to keep us distracted with superstar soccer and baubles on the shopping channel, while our energy policies continue to avoid what's already staring us in the face so bad, any fool whose head hasn't been twisted off his gimbals can see we're gunning for trouble.
what kind of world would we have? ....if we devoted 1,000,000th of the money into clean energy we presently pour into fancy ways of killing people, militarizing space, grooming poodles and chasing celebrities to death, (especially of they actually wake up a few folks about what their tax-paid-for-landmines were doing for afghan kids while they discussed which brand of brie to serve at that important new client presentation).
my best friend's father died of thymus cancer when she was 12, working in a nuclear power station. her mother died in her 50's driving a 2 hour, 20 kilometre commute to work for amoco every day for 20 + years, of cancer.
every house on her street in n.w. germany had a family member with cancer.
this. is. not. supposed. to . be. like .this.
hello? ~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.
