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Thursday, April 7, 2011

Unlimited Contamination but only Limited Hope ?


The ocean around Fukushima,  Japan is contaminated with radioactivity levels almost unheard of,    at  5,000,000 times the legal limit,(read 5 MILLION times the legal limit)   and even 7,000,000 times the legal limit, the numbers,  which are unbelievable,   change daily depending upon the "engineer's solution to pollution, which is dilution".  
     Water, seaweed, fish,  the --whole works is contaminated, throwing a very large potential  wrench into the future of  the Japanese fishing and seafood industry for many years to come.  Countries are already banning Japanese sea products.
     Clearly fish that are contaminated to the point they are not fit for human consumption  will not only be unsafe for humans, but  unfit for the natural food chain, and in turn,  unfit  to produce and support  offspring, which may undergo mutation; the further up the food chain the contamination goes, the higher the concentrations shall be. 
    Realistically, at  this sad  point in history  there is  no predictable, safe end for this tragedy, there is literally no end in sight to this problem.  We shall undoubtedly  praise God when brave men risking life and limb  stop nuclear leaks, and the world flinches, but looks away as Japan dumps 15,000 tons of radioactive water into the ocean, and will do so again, repeatedly if necessary. Dumping contaminated water will make more room for more cooling water  required, which will in turn become contaminated, ad infinitum,  and we shall be reluctantly  obligated to turn face when they  have to dump THAT too. Humanity will clearly "look away" again and again.
    If such an occurrence happened in the middle of the United States of America, or for example, in Canada, along Lake Ontario, at Pickering, where would WE dump 15,000 tons of radioactive water?  Into Lake Ontario while nobody is looking?  How about at Darlington?  
     Let's face it, it might be a one in 20 MILLION chance of anything happening, but people DO win lotteries.  It therefore becomes a BET, a sickening gamble,  where the nuclear industry bets their safety record against the lives of MILLIONS of Canadians and Americans.   
     Can the the nuclear industry world-wide guarantee there will never be another nuclear incident? Clearly not, therefore they have no moral authority to put our lives on the betting table.  
End of story.
      It seems this should be the final death knell of the nuclear industry, three strikes, you're out;  the only logical, viable, and sensible strategy is to source  energy from clean, renewable sources, wind, solar, hydrogen, and other clean technologies, --but we will not do that, clean technology is not exciting enough or  daring enough to lure big money,  it is not challenging enough to revered, arrogant scientists who pride themselves in challenging, big scientific feats.     Being closer to fools,  sheep that follow  and lemmings that race to jump to their deaths over high cliffs, civilization  will likely continue to ALLOW the dirty nuclear industry to keep polluting, more, and more.    The question is why?  in the old west,  reckless, dangerous people were quickly dealt with by frontier justice.
     There is facing us,  therefore, unlimited contamination at this point, coupled with very limited hope. Why? A lesson has not been learned,  there is already grumbling "commentary" suggesting that a  return to coal and other technologies would "damage the environment" by contributing to global warming, the old 2 degree change in world temperature argument.  Such proponents of nuclear energy suggest shall exploit that myth and  conveniently "save us all"  and avoid that problem by keeping the nuclear industry "alive and well"  even if it is as dangerous as hell."  . 
     At Incoming Bytes we believe building any more nuclear reactors is not a reasonable option under any circumstance; it is not a reasonable option under any terms of reference, since all nations receive sunshine; all nations have winds. 
     Who would be  glaringly  foolish enough  to resurrect coal technology when SOLAR and WIND technology is so easily available?  Who can ignore the fact that Spain, as an example, gets the majority of it's power from solar sources?   
     We can complain endlessly that it takes large amounts of money to build wind generators and solar stations.  It costs money to build a  solar system on your roof  that will run your home and pump clean solar energy into the grid,  and it costs about a million dollars to build a very large wind generator. Shall we conveniently ignore the proven fact that it costs many $BILLIONS to build an unsafe nuclear reactor that is virtually guaranteed to fail at some point in the future? 
The NEW questions for the day are: 

" Where are WE going to dump OUR radioactive, contaminated water?"   Where are we going to dispose of spent fuel bundles?  
       Ans:    NOT in MY back yard, you're not.  
It is not a matter of  "if" we will have to dump some radioactive water, and dispose of thousands of highly radioactive fuel rods.   It's just a matter of WHEN.   
You'll have to figure it out.  The Japanese people have proven that to be the ultimate truth. 
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.



5 comments:

  1. having lived in the shadow of the Yucca mountain project, in Nevada, i relate to the not-in-my-backyard counter-idealism... the thought of rail and road transport of thousands of spent rods and medical or industrial radioactive material can keep me awake at night...
    several tribes like the Goshute of Utah may consider their land sacred ground for hazardous material disposal--in order to pull a few of them from poverty; how poor is that?
    temptation to build beyond full reasoning invariably ends up stacking dangerous items, somewhere, anywhere out of sight and oversight..

    forget fish friday, buy all the sardines and mackerel you want--and make peace with tuna..even the pulque and pollock are going to accumulate worse than the last mercury scare, ah, it' s OK, let the little ones have it, it can't be that bad, their scores are alright?
    cesium 137 with that?

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  2. Nadine, that is precisely what the nuclear industry will do, find some poverty-stricken community and peddle their "vision of economics", foisting contamination storage areas upon the poor.
    As far as fish goes,a primary concern is that health authorities will gradually raise "acceptable limits" to quell public concern--merely putting off the problem a few years when cancers begin. "Cesium 137 with that, on the side or on top"..is right.

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  3. It's a very sad and disturbing truth. I can't understand why countries continue to make nuclear power plants when they can't clean up the waste. They never think about tomorrow and the world we have to live in.

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  4. Perhaps there is hope and light at the end of the tunnel, Angelique, Germany is shutting down all nuclear reactors --which is a fine start. Germany is highly industrialized and is setting a fine example for the rest of the world.

    If NO other option to generate power existed, nuclear would be necessary--but why generate poisonous radiation that will last a hundred thousand years unnecessarily ? The power brokers must realize there is NO logic to maintaining nuclear; perhaps they choose to look foolish instead ?

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