Could nuclear power be used safely? I’m not sure. But it is clear that the humans managing those reactors cannot be trusted. Corporate PR, governmental incompetence and lies have encompassed the industry from the beginning. It hasn’t gotten any better.

Over and over again we are assured that everything is okay. They can’t melt down. The safety mechanisms are foolproof. The containment vessel cannot be breached. Multiple backup systems insure safety. And then the impossible happens. We are of course immediately assured that this was an unusual event, unprecedented and could never happen here.

It is incredible how many pundits and agencies have rushed to out to defend the nuclear industry in the last few hours.

They come right back. They are already back. It doesn’t matter what happens. It doesn’t matter the warnings ignored, the stupid decisions made or even the scope of the disaster, the nuclear power industry keeps right on going.

Is this it?

Do we live in a nation where business gets its way, no matter what the risk?

From The Guardian (UK):

The timing of the near nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi could not have been more appropriate. In only a few weeks the world will mark the 25th anniversary of the worst nuclear plant disaster ever to affect our planet – at Chernobyl in Ukraine. A major core meltdown released a deadly cloud of radioactive material over Europe and gave the name Chernobyl a terrible resonance.

This weekend it is clear that the name Fukushima came perilously close to achieving a similar notoriety. However, the real embarrassment for the Japanese government is not so much the nature of the accident but the fact it was warned long ago about the risks it faced in building nuclear plants in areas of intense seismic activity. Several years ago, the seismologist Ishibashi Katsuhiko stated, specifically, that such an accident was highly likely to occur. Nuclear power plants in Japan have a “fundamental vulnerability” to major earthquakes, Katsuhiko said in 2007. The government, the power industry and the academic community had seriously underestimated the potential risks posed by major quakes.

The financialization of our society has become so intense, so pervasive, that profit outweighs all other consideration.

I have serious doubts whether a full scale melt down with thousands of dead and a thousands of square miles of land radioactive for generations will stop the industry from building plants in the United States.

In the pursuit of profit, human intelligence and judgment have largely ceased to exist.

Let me explain this once and then I’ll quit. If there is a nuclear melt down, depending on its location there will a lot of deaths or few deaths, a large area will be permanently contaminated (Chernobyl was 10,800 square miles) and useless for any human activity, and lastly, the radiation will spread causing damage to the genetic code of those it touches. The damage to the genetic code will probably be trans generational working its way through all of humanity as we reproduce.

Compare these risks to the power generated and ask yourself if they balance out.

James Pilant