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We can’t do a thing about earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, cyclones, and other natural disaster events except prepare for them. We can do some prevention related to forest fires, floods, and other similar natural disasters. We can do a lot about nuclear meltdowns---we can wake up and stop using nuclear energy.
An obscene amount of money has been spent on the development of nuclear power in an effort to end our dependence on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are political and have always carried a depletion factor. There’s just so much of the stuff and we aren’t making more. When it’s gone, it’s gone. So we have turned to nuclear energy.
Powerful foreign people have control over the production of fossil fuels and treat us little folks like puppets on a string. This includes coal, which is plant-based and over great periods of time hardens into rock/coal. There’s lots of coal but its extraction gets more and more difficult and is not as cost effective as it once was. “Peak” coal theorists predict we have about 120 years left of known reserves. “Peak” oil theorists say many major oil fields are already at their peak and others will be there in 10 years.
Nuclear power plants do not depend on fossil fuels and the cost of nuclear power also isn't affected by fluctuations in oil and gas prices. It is efficient and when properly operating is clean and dependable (properly operating being key), but it does have---and always has had---operational problems. Mining and purifying uranium and other materials isn’t a clean process. Transporting nuclear related materials to and from plants poses a huge risk to populations on the routes to and from the plants. Once the fuel is spent, we can’t throw it in the trash. It continues to live its deadly radioactive life for almost eternity. It’s ripe for use by terrorist groups and dictator led governments as horrifically simple weapons---just open the spent fuel container, spread it around, thousands die.
Spent nuclear fuel will decay to safe radioactive levels---but it takes tens of thousands of years. Low-level radioactive waste requires centuries to reach acceptable levels. An accidental or deliberate spread of such waste is possible, probable, and predictable. It’s predictable because: what geniuses considered building nuclear power plants on earthquake fault lines? I’m not a scientist but had they asked me I would have suggested a different location. In fact, no location in Japan is safe since it is practically the earthquake capital of the world. But that’s just me.
There are around 440 commercial nuclear power reactors operating in about 30 countries. They produce about 14% of the world's electricity. That figure varies depending on who is pushing a particular agenda. One would think that with that many reactors they would already be running the world’s energy. It’s depressing to think we need hundreds more to run the entire planet’s needs. And there are many being constructed as I type and many more on the drawing tables around the world. Thousands of nuclear reactors. The most are being built in China. When is the last time you purchased a product from China that worked properly?
In addition to energy producing reactors we have hundreds of “research” [shiver] reactors and reactors on ships and submarines. In fact, we have a tidy number of disasters just waiting to spill and spread around the world. Enough to kill every living creature on the planet and keep the planet dead until the supernova.
Some of these little annihilation bombs are in the hands of unstable people and unstable countries that we should be terrified about. Some countries are careful about waste storage, others not so much. If the highly technologically savvy Japanese have containment problems what hope is there for less enlightened countries? Or countries not known for quality production? [China]
Chernobyl didn’t have a “special” containment building, just a regular building. That’s like storing nuclear waste in my garage. Some are operated by evil regimes and shouldn’t have reactors period. Some are located in geographical nightmare regions like Japan and California. Some are frighteningly close to terrorist groups. Some are not currently active but retain the guts of their former operation along with the waste. Reactors produce TONS of waste that is stored forever around the world. We ordinary folk are scolded if we use plastic drinking bottles. There’s a major disconnect somewhere.
Many years ago the very smart citizens of Sacramento, California, voted to close their nuclear facility (Rancho Seco) 25 miles southeast of the city. It’s now a lovely park but I have no desire to frolic in that park. When I drive by the towers on my way to visit family and friends in the area I instinctively speed up.
Chernobyl, the king of nuclear disasters to date (but might move to number 2 if things continue to fail in Japan), was poorly designed and poorly operated. The plant required constant frenetic human attention to keep the reactor from malfunctioning right from the beginning of its operation and it didn’t help. I looked at all the countries currently operating nuclear power plants and discovered there is no safe place to live in the entire world if we end up with thousands of these plants. Not the Amazon, not Iceland, nowhere. We have too many already in play and we’re getting more.
Even if we stopped operating all reactors this afternoon, it would take hundreds of years for us to tear them down and process their parts and their waste. Then thousands of years after that for the waste to diminish its harmful properties. And we aren’t turning them off this afternoon. [Note: but many cities are demanding we no longer use plastic grocery bags for our groceries because they take so long to break down at the dump. Really? That's what we should be worried about? Is that some sort of malevolent misdirection?]
There are other sources of energy. Some yet to be fully investigated but that are quite promising. There’s also interest in more localized energy production rather than trying to illuminate an entire region. Small areas can generate their own power needs according to local resources available to them such as thermal energy, wind energy, etc. And here’s a novel idea. We can actually use less. In fact, reduced use should be mandated. I would be happy to have a black out at my house every day if it meant saving energy for everyone. Those with special needs would be exempt from blackouts. Most of us do not need energy while we’re sleeping or at work. Why not have meters that we can operate and turn our energy sources off when we’re gone or sitting by a window reading a book? Each person responsible for their own energy use. Astonishing!
I live close to San Francisco. What a magnificent beauty. At night as we cross the Golden Gate Bridge the view takes our breath away. Yet why are all those buildings lit up like Christmas trees? Shouldn’t they be turning off those lights when they leave each day? Yes, cleaning crews need lights but can’t they turn them off and on as they work through the building?
When researching on the Internet I found many alternate sources of energy in the form of fuels for vehicles as well as industry and homes. There are too many to list here but most of us know the various ideas being tested and researched. Some are very promising but expensive. Nuclear power plants are also very expensive---in oh-so-many scary ways.
But don't take my humble word for it. Take a peek at the Internet sometime to determine if nuclear power plants are still a safe option for living creatures. If still convinced they are the way to go, chat with someone from Japan. Better yet, someone from Chernobyl. I think there may still be a few alive to discuss the pros and cons of nuclear reactors.
To put all of this in perspective for those of us living our daily lives, I heard this alarming analogy on TV. It is said that every computer will crash. It is not “if” they crash but that they “will” crash. They have a shelf life and can be affected by use and all sorts of evil things including those pesky viruses. We should all have our files backed up on a regular basis. I didn’t do that for years and one day my computer died and I lost everything including photos, documents, addresses, applications and programs, and it was just awful. Years later it happened again but I had a backup external drive so I got a new computer and transferred my “stuff” back without missing a single thing.
That scenario was likened to nuclear reactors. It isn’t “if” it will happen, it’s “when” it will happen. The backup safety measures are not as reliable as computer external backup drives for our home computers. Nuclear backups fail almost the moment they are used and not all containment units are created equal. All reactors have procedures and buildings in place for when they do fail because---they will all fail given the right circumstances. Hence, they have containment buildings. We know how well that worked in Japan and Chernobyl.
On another note, here are some insomnia figures on Nuclear missiles. And don't for a minute think the creation of nuclear reactors doesn’t hold a secret path to nuclear missiles. Ask North Korea.
· Russia 13,000
·
United States 9,400
· France 300
· China 240
· United Kingdom 185
· Israel 80
· Pakistan 70-90 [Yikes!]
· India 60-80
· North Korea 10 [Double Yikes!]
· Estimated Total: 23,375
That’s an estimate and there are those who believe more are hidden and secretly manufactured that we don't know about. Some scientists believe it would only take 1,000 nukes to kill every living thing on the planet. We have over 23,000. When the 440 nuclear reactors go offline because all their operators die from the missiles, then the reactors will all meltdown. If there are any humans or animals left from the missiles, which is unlikely, they would soon die when all the reactors fail. The missile list doesn’t include dirty bombs loaded with radioactive materials, which can be carried in a backpack and detonated with ordinary explosives, say, in a shopping mall.
If you’re falling asleep at your desk in the afternoons, take a peek at this list. It’s better than strong coffee or high-energy drinks:
Note: The title of this post was inspired by Countdown to Zero, a documentary about nukes and our unstable political world. Stop worrying about whether to toss your coffee grounds or compost them. We have bigger disposal issues at hand.
“The nuclear age is over.” Dave Kraft, director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service.
I hope he’s right.
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Blog series began in March 2009.]
