''Great nations don't leave the lifeblood of their economy in the hands of foreign cartels or bet their future on a commodity located in countries where authoritarians repress their people and terrorists find their main support.'' -John McCainNuclear power is the redheaded stepchild of the energy crisis. Fear of nuclear power has been fueled by movies and comic books and real-life events that are not well understood. (For example, the name 'Three Mile Island' conjures up images of death and evil radiation, even though it harmed about as many people as Y2K. None.)
In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots...[t]hirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change. Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace
Nuclear power is an easily misunderstood thing. On television, if it is not exploding it is giving people super powers. (It's important to note that in the event of a nuclear meltdown an explosion will not occur, the core will simply sink into the Earth.)
Let's look at how dangerous this stuff is. France is currently getting 75% of their energy from nuclear power and no harm seems to be coming of it. On nuclear submarines, sailors sleep with their heads a few feet from a nuclear reactor and suffer no ill effects for it. This stuff is pretty safe.
But, given the current climate of fear concerning nuclear power, which politician can be bold enough to recommend using more nuclear power? Hardly any, except for an independent maverick like John McCain who is proposing 45 new nuclear reactors. This is clean and dependable energy that will reduce our dependency on oil and clean up our environment. I've been waiting for a president who would do something like this. Maybe, now, we can have one.
3 comments:
EXACTLY!!!
Fear of nuclear power is based almost exclusively on ignorance.
I love your blog by the way.
The problem with nuclear energy is that nearly all plants use uranium. No one argues that mining for this stuff is one of the most damaging things we can do to the environment. Secondly, over half of the uranium we use is extracted from indigenous people's land. Look at the Navajo, for example. In the 1930's, the U.S. government hired them to mine for uranium. To this day, their soil has over 300 times the "safe" amount of radium, and the people unsurprisingly have a high percentage of cancer. The Western Shoshone nation have been bombed 900 times by us and 20 times by Britain with nuclear detonations. Now the plan is to dump the nation's radioactive waste on Yucca Mountain, an area that's not even ours. I could give you dozens of reasons why this is a bad idea, but I think I've bothered you enough.
~Bridellwyn
It's amazing how often people tend to say "I could give you dozens of reasons," or, "I could go on and on," but for some reason never do.
Could it be that these people actually can't go on and on, and don't have any reasoning other than that of the misinformed opinions that they formed by reading popular, yet false, internet pedias?
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