Nuclear Power

The other day, an RBB post indicated that some high level scientists in the United States felt that nuclear power development and usage could be safely undertaken.  "Blue", on RBB, has done yeoperson service in posting the long sequence of horror stories emanating from the colossal nuclear tragedy in Japan.

My own position is strongly against any significant manifestation of nuclear power.  Immediately below is a post that I wrote a couple of years or so ago.

Am I impressed with the pro-nuclear position of some ostensibly "top" scientists -- in any country?  Not a whit.  Coming of age in Northern Arizona at the end of the 1940s and into the 1950s, and then well beyond into the '70s, we were constantly bombarded by scientists, politicians, corporate bosses, and a wide range of sycophants -- all of whom assured us that uranium development was totally safe for all -- and that nuclear testing in Nevada posed no medical problems for anyone. (Uranium companies are still trying to sell us on "the yellow rock that kills".)

The still unfolding tragedies from that hideous complex are almost as numerous as Ponderosa pine needles in the Coconino National Forest.  

http://www.hunterbear.org/a_native_rights_sampling.htm

http://www.hunterbear.org/this_article_of_mine_appeared_in.htm

2011 / Hunter Bear:

It's long struck me that, since the Industrial Revolution, the intellectual and emotional maturity of humanity in that -- industrial -- context has lagged far behind tech developments in a very vast number of cases.  And it's too often those people devoid of balance and good sense, to say nothing of a lack of sensitivity for humanity, who wind up presiding over the directional management of the technological creations,  

They often remind me of children who play with firecrackers [usually fairly safe] but then go on to discover dynamite caps, and then dynamite itself -- all the while unaware of the full destructive potential -- and always impressed with their own abilities.  And sometimes they happen upon nitroglycerine. (I can say that, as an older pre-teen, I had an unusually sophisticated chemistry arrangement with the necessary chemicals for such exotic blends as hydrogen cyanide and nitro.  My not-always-aware parents were inclined to let me do as I wished -- but I had the good sense to avoid certain "experiments.")

Sam put it well on a Sycamore post earlier today on nuclear matters.: "These are just a few entries in the chamber of horrors that capitalism is brewing. And which mean that capitalism needs to be brought to an end and a democratic sustainable system built in its place".

I agree with that in the general sense and particularly appreciate the term, "democratic."  China has had horrendous coal mine disasters and the USSR produced the most profound civilian nuclear horror -- although events in Japan, as they proliferate, could come close to that.

But it's my opinion that, even under the "best" of humanist industrial systems, and with a reasonable level of human maturity, nuclear power and its uranium feed can never be safely handled.  Too many precarious variables in all of that -- to say nothing of Nature's oft-problematic behaviorisms.

H

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

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