Just Nuke it!

Melted fuel rods anyone?

I don’t know what you say, but in our house we say  “nuke it!” when it’s time to microwave something.  Speaking of getting nuked, what about those Fukushima Power Plants?  The Japanese, who —with good reason—are crazy about earthquakes drills, were kept in the dark about safety issues in the nuclear industry - maybe a fear hangover from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  After all, who really knows how many people perished from those horrible events.  In fact, the Japanese are calling this disaster “the slow motion Hiroshima.” 

I”m not being a fearmonger but am trying to illuminate the reality of nuclear power safety.  Just a few facts: 

• Tepco, the owner of the disabled reactors, has two nuke plants on the drawing board for Texas  —looks like they’ll be canceled, luckily.
• The #4 reactor at Fukishima was described as being “bombed from within” by evidence of the mini-mushroom cloud we all saw when that exploded.
• This is the worst nuclear accident in the industry because of the financial risks which are associated with nuclear energy and especially the spent fuel rods in pools on-site
• There is no end-game in sight; and the 7.1 quake that just happened which further damaged these reactors and also damaged an entirely different plant.
• American nuke plants are safe until they have an accident, just like in Japan.  And what are we going to do with all these spent fuel rods?   

In the face of this and all the other world calamities right now,  I still would counsel people to over come their fear, their fatalism, and passivity in the face of these insurmountable problems and be optimists of the future.  How?  By informing ourselves, demanding the truth from our leaders, and speaking truth to power and becoming what Ben Franklin said was the definition of a citizen:  Someone who is informed and engaged.