On Nuclear Power in the age of climate change

News from Fukushima continues to be frightening and serious-http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/169950/20110627/fukushima-daiichi-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant-radiation-fukushim.htm - flooding in the mid-US may have already caused serious radiation releases in Nebraska- http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/International/18-Jun-2011/US-orders-news-blackout-over-crippled-Nebraska-Nuclear-Plant-report - and threatens a plant in North Dakota- http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/us/28nuke.html- while wildfire draws very near a waste storage facility in New Mexico - http://www.nukewatch.org/watchblog/?p=845. Meanwhile, President Obama remains committed to an energy policy dependent on expanding the US's fleet of nuclear power plants- http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jgiaE_5ppTcesB5xXUKD-vwOn_Ww?docId=CNG.39ef49be1634ed845f0c41c75995807b.c1.

While it's clear that politicians' response to the no-longer-looming but now-here and very real threats of climate change and peak oil is to run back to the psuedo science of yesteryear that tells us that nuclear power is "clean" and safe, it is even more clear to me that it is less safe than ever. Nuclear energy has never been controllable; we can barely comprehend it. At best, under idealized and perfectly controlled circumstances, it is temporarily manageable. The fact that such conditions are unrealistic and it is never possible to guarantee them is elided by the industries and those who don't want to know. Also glossed over is the issue of waste storage and "disposal"- a PR euphemism if there ever was one, when it refers to matter which there is no way to dispose of, not in our lifetimes, or our children's, or their grand-children's lifetimes. Current plants in the US alone produce more than 3000 tons per year. There are plenty more numbers, all mind boggling; unfortunately, mind-boggling in the very real sense of being beyond our comprehension and therefore dulling our response to the real threat posed by these numbers.

Our culture has spent decades, centuries, working to establish ourselves so that we are not at the mercy of instability, of the petty year to year shifts and vagaries of nature. We have reservoirs and dams to water our crops in deserts and drought years; heating systems to sustain us through winters that would otherwise kill us; and so on, and so on. But we have been caught in the trap of our attempt to escape nature-- our interventions have increased the environment's instability exponentially. And now everything has changed-- or rather, we find ourselves back where we started. At the mercy of natural forces.

As unsafe and foolhardy as it was to build nuclear power plants in the first place, to continue to operate them now-- let alone build more!-- is insane. Do we need to see Hiroshima-like images again, in our own generation, for the magnitude of the lie of clean energy to be understood? We aren't likely to. We are much more likely to experience a number of accidents like Fukushima-- initially scary, but when no devastation is immediately visible, forgettable. Forgettable even to the immediate survivors, as they look over still-green fields, eat healthy looking and tasting crops-- until they find the first lumps in their throats and breasts and lymph nodes. Until their grandchildren start developing childhood leukemia. Until someone questions the disappearance of the wildlife they remember growing up.

It will be too late by then.

The Obama administration is set on nuclear and coal power (oh don't get me started on coal. For now- http://mountainjustice.org/facts/steps.php) as a way to avoid the real changes that we must make to end our dependency on oil. It isn't too late to have an effect on this plan. Do you think it's hopeless? That we can't change this? Two last links.... one from March 26th of this year-- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/26/germany-nuclear-power-protest_n_841023.html -- and a follow up from May 30th- http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/germany-to-be-the-first-major-industrialised-power-to-shut-down-all-its-nuclear-power-plants/story-e6frg6so-1226065685 .

Edited to add- yes I know that Fukushima-Daichi had nothing to do with climate change. I wrote this really fast and off the cuff. The point, I believe, is valid- Fukushima is a good reference point as an example of what can happen when things go horribly wrong. And as an example of why we shouldn't have these plants.