This is not a rhetorical question: I really want someone to walk me through this, because it is a statement at too high a level to be an axiom. Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
If an accident is reported the outcry is much more vocal when it's a nuke accident than if it's a burning oil dump.
Therefore profits will be hit, and a plant may be closed down. Therefore - since it's mostly about profit - it's better to minimise the truth than be honest.
I think De's point is that a key difference is that it's impossible for people to assess the risk for themselves, which means that nuke damage assessment relies on expert testimony more than any other industry does.
When something like Bhopal happens it's obvious who has been affected. With coal burning you'll see smog and acid rain. But an equivalent nuke accident will release deadly poisons into the air and no one will notice unless some bothers to tell them.
So it's a combination of the profit motive, legacy links to weapons development, the opaqueness of the process itself and - not least - the solid record of dishonesty that the industry has acquired over the years.
This doesn't mean the industry has to be dishonest. But it's very much harder to cover up a loose turbine blade than a leak of radioactive particles.
Well, burning oil dumps, just like uranium mine pollution, more often happen in places like Nigeria, which may incite some locals to form terrorist resistance movements, while we ignore it. (Tho' in Texas, the oil industry managed to cloak its environmental destruction in secrecy during Bush's governorship.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
the fact that people are not as stupid and gullible as governments and advocates of this grisly technology would like, so the rule of the people, oops, democracy, would not permit it to go forward if they didn't have the best paid liars in the world constantly keeping us in the dark and feeding us horseshit.
would you walk me through why that's so hard to understand?
would you be happy raising your children downwind of a nuke plant?
do you trust nuclear power companies to tell you the truth?
and what are they doing while feeding us lies?
it's a secret!
qed ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
On the other hand, I do not trust for-profit corporations or the military to tell me the truth, no.
the rule of the people, oops, democracy, would not permit it to go forward
Let me remind you of something...
El Pais: Zorita demands another [nuclear power] plant (30-04-2006)The mayor and a majority of residents of Almonacid [de Zorita, site of the Zorita nuclear power plant] demand another plant in place of the one being closed today Spain is closing its first nuclear power plant at 23.30 today in a programmed way. The José Cabrera plant, better known as Zorita, opened 38 years ago in what was then a destitute comarca [county], ends its life two years ahead of schedule. he closure, decided in 2001 by the PP government , comes in the midst of a debate on the future of atomic power. Sheltered by climate changge, defenders of nuclear [power plants] have launched a worldwide offensive as Oil prices set new records. Among them [defenders] is the majority of the 800 inhabitants of Almonacid de Zorita, a village depending almost exclusively on the plant. They demand anoter power plant. Conclusion: NIMBY is bullshit, people get used to whatever they live with, be it wind farms or nuclear plants.
The mayor and a majority of residents of Almonacid [de Zorita, site of the Zorita nuclear power plant] demand another plant in place of the one being closed today Spain is closing its first nuclear power plant at 23.30 today in a programmed way. The José Cabrera plant, better known as Zorita, opened 38 years ago in what was then a destitute comarca [county], ends its life two years ahead of schedule. he closure, decided in 2001 by the PP government , comes in the midst of a debate on the future of atomic power. Sheltered by climate changge, defenders of nuclear [power plants] have launched a worldwide offensive as Oil prices set new records. Among them [defenders] is the majority of the 800 inhabitants of Almonacid de Zorita, a village depending almost exclusively on the plant. They demand anoter power plant.
Spain is closing its first nuclear power plant at 23.30 today in a programmed way. The José Cabrera plant, better known as Zorita, opened 38 years ago in what was then a destitute comarca [county], ends its life two years ahead of schedule. he closure, decided in 2001 by the PP government , comes in the midst of a debate on the future of atomic power. Sheltered by climate changge, defenders of nuclear [power plants] have launched a worldwide offensive as Oil prices set new records. Among them [defenders] is the majority of the 800 inhabitants of Almonacid de Zorita, a village depending almost exclusively on the plant. They demand anoter power plant.
Conclusion: NIMBY is bullshit, people get used to whatever they live with, be it wind farms or nuclear plants.
Neither the government, nor the industry, nor them have planned or adapted to the reality of "change". That is not about democracy. Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
You know, from what I know about nuclear physics I don't see any reason why secrecy is needed.
well.... that's reassuring!
i'd be more receptive if you had experience in evacuating millions at short notice, providing emergency supplies, and calming public panic in the wake of another chernobyl.
oh yeah, and since we were talking externalities and quantification, i bet no-one spends more analysing and crunching demographics and geography than insurance companies....you know where i'm going with this... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Assuming for a moment that we can have non-privately-run nuclear plants without any military (or other hierarchical security organisation) involvement, what about a for-continued-self-existence state company/bureaucracy? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
