A very reasonable, measured analysis of the crisis and its likely effects on future regulation.
Impressive.
James Pilant
Recent events have put a spotlight on the World’s nuclear engineering board and the safety mechanisms that have been instituted since the incident at Chernobyl. There seems to be one missing piece to the puzzle. There are world standards that demand all nuclear facilities to have multiple safety mechanisms in place. Such as in Japan’s case with the first mechanism being shock sensors that immediately pushed steel rods in-between the enriched uran … Read More
I have discussed before the nuclear industries fascination with actual death tolls. When it comes to the actual death rate, nuclear power wins the debate over what is the best means of producing electricity.
Unfortunately, there are 10,800 square miles of land near Chernobyl no one can visit for more than some few hours and the families near the Fukushima plant will probably never be able to go home. You cannot measure the safety of one form of energy over another based purely on directly cause deaths. It is only one factor.
It is the difference between one sided, intellectually bankrupt propaganda and intelligent understanding.
James Pilant
I knew the nuclear apologists would get around to making this argument sooner or later, and sure enough, The Washington Post published a thoughtful and well-researched article by David Brown on April 2, 2011, entitled, “Nuclear power is the safest way to make electricity, according to study.” Brown made a good case for the overall safety of nuclear power plants as far as the workers are concerned. Coal-fired plants are responsible for five times … Read More
A good take on yesterday’s news about the continuing massive leak at the Japanese nuclear facility. I wish these current events could be followed by more Americans.
It’s a nice blog. It would pay to look at some of the other posts there.
James Pilant
Even bearing this data on radiation exposure in mind, it’s hard to see how today’s news isn’t pretty terrifying. We don’t seem to know exactly what’s going on in these reactors, much less how to stop it, or where the dangerous material is going. The operator of Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it had found radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and governmen … Read More
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?
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.
A very reasonable, measured analysis of the crisis and its likely effects on future regulation.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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