Possibly the biggest problem America has regarding the nuclear industry and the energy derived from nuclear energy is a lack of honest information as to what its benefits and dangers actually are. That would be the responsibility of those who build these plants. What if they didn’t tell us the truth? What if they gave us misinformation? And that would be also be our government’s fault, and that would be deliberate. The Nuclear regulatory Commission is supposed to keep an eye on these things. Inform us of the facts. So what has happened? What are the facts? The closest and most accurate comparison would be how the tobaccoo industry regarded the public’s need to know as that group set about making trillions over the years by knowingly killing folks in the name of profit. And how our government taxed them instead of prodded them to tell the truth. Well, all things evolve. Just what is it that nuclear energy causes that is so enormously, monstrously terrible? And the true human jeopardy answer is, “What is lots of things.”
Isaac Asmimov, scientist and science fiction author, wrote the extremely short story “Hell-Fire” in May of 1956, and it seems the nuclear industry has set about proving it with a determined mindset ever since. In 1956 we only dreamed of what nuclear science might provide us, and in Asimov’s concise short tale its a ball of fire that turns into Satan laughing it up at man’s stupidity. Of course, we only thought mostly weapons back then were what we might do with it, even though Einstein hoped we could toss the newspaper in a reactor converter and light the whole block for weeks. What went wrong with that idea?
For openers, the benefits are minimal at best. It isn’t cheap. It isn’t inexpensive. That is lie number one. Our electric bills have soared to cover the accelerated cost of this energy, and we have swapped out dirty energy, under the guise this is clean energy (lie number two), for extremely costly lethal energy. In fact, it is the only way to turn on a light bulb that can kill you, unless you count standing in a bathtub filled with water and trying it. The provision of its cost has raised our electric bills by five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times or higher. No one really knows; no actual published studies are available for that kind of thing. Which is odd, since that the first thing industry and most everyone else look at before doing something; cost. But you can compare a $17-35 bill in the seventies to a $170-350 bill today and see that national inflation isn’t responsible. And, extremely conservatively, it has killed tens of thousands of humans worldwide in bringing it to us, and that figure realistically is probably in the tens of millions. A spokesperson on a comment board for USAToday online claimed during the Fukushima meltdown flurry of news that there wasn’t a single death that could be related to the advent of nuclear energy. Probably a GE employee. We aren’t going to call this lie number three, because it is so preposterous that its beyond lying; its delusional, so we’ll call it Mental Breakdown Number One. Folks in Chernobyl, and even Three Mile Island, might question that claim. Or Cincinnati, where rabbits and squirrels set off Geiger counters that are in an area used by Boy Scouts to camp, and where the water supply they used came from ground seeped by leakage from the nuclear plant there. The area is now off limits. No known deaths? Karen Silkwood might want to argue the fact. But let’s not be picky, even as we are leaving nuclear weaponry out of the discussion.
The waste is the issue. It is one of the most poisonous substances manufactured by, and known to man, and Cesium 137 is an element in that waste we want to avoid at all costs, because its basically a human pesticide. These toxic radioactive substances are killers by being carcinogenic. That simply means they are cancer producing for human and other life forms. So probably the next question would be why, why do they cause cancer? Why not cause our teeth to fall out, or our hair, instead. Well, it probably does, but in answering the cancer question in a non-technological language that hopefully even young students can comprehend, we will use the same lessons taught by a wonderful human being, Lao Russell, who was the head of the The University of Science and Philosophy, a leading voice in the movement to deter mankind from pursuing the unworkable and unusable industries of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy based on fission, a production format that produces these toxic wastes unavoidably. They proposed a dual exploration of nuclear fusion, a process that eliminates the deadly waste factor, and tidal energies through tidal generators, producing clean energy endlessly through the movement of tides, just as most cities had used rivers for the exact same type source to drive generators at the advent of our nation’s development. As time progressed, the University evolved these recommended methods to include solar and wind developments for energy provision. Our mixing of all of these in a worldwide effort could provide enough energy to light and move the entire world, literally, forever. If the tide, sun and wind ever stopped, we wouldn’t really need to be concerned, anyway, because we would already be long gone. And its a fairly good bet they aren’t slowing, or worse, coming to a standstill, anytime soon. Fusion, on the other hand, is a developmental industry that requires private and government investment and profound scientific research. You know, the thing we humans are actually pretty good at. We have the resources, so why we selected fission over fusion is simply because one of them is explosive, therefore highly desirable for weapons of mass destruction use — if one ignores the fact that you kill yourself along with the enemy by pulling the trigger — and the other only benefits mankind and community through clean energy. Who needs that? Now that we have invested so heavily in WMDs and great big nuclear waste refineries, we don’t want to have to “back up”, but is it backing up if you go forward in saving the planet and mankind from self-destruction?
So why is the wasteful product from any nuclear fission endeavor, exploding weapons or energy producing plants, so doggone horrible to start with? The answer is that they are radioactive. Yes, that’s the stuff. Kills you quickly or slowly, depending on how close you get to it. The obvious next question is why is radioactive stuff such a bad thing, and in this response, what Lao Russell had to say, who’s husband, Dr. Walter Russell, discovered the last seven trans-uranium elements known to man (radioactive elements), and whose treatise book Albert Einstein paid a small fortune for once upon a time, is the perfect response. Radioactive elements are in a specific ratio to other cellular elements in Nature as a method of being essential in the process of decay. Incredible, and, yes, just that simple. Things like leaves deteriorate on the ground because the ground has radioactive elements in it. They turn brown, they fall apart, they mix in a basic essential process with other elements, and they go away. Fairly simple. What is cancer, which is an effect of these toxic materials from explosive weapons and energy producing nuclear plants? It is that decay process in action while we are still in our bodies. Its also that simple. Like leaves decaying on the lawn, we are decaying from what is in the air and the rain, the food and milk, the water we drink, and an entire array of toxic infection that is caused by nuclear proliferation. We just happen to still be in our bodies. For awhile. Amazingly, there is a lot we can do about it to stave off the absoluteness of death by cancer caused by our selected dependence on this horrifying toxic industry, but not for everyone. Those in Japan are going to be the living and dying examples of what a triple meltdown actually entails, and what the ramifications of radioactive waste really are. This isn’t even guesswork. It has already begun, and is terrifyingly unavoidable. There is a reason why Japan will reimburse you for your flight upon arrival and offer nearly free hotels should you care to go look for yourself. You’ll probably die for the effort, but you have to sustain tourism somehow in today’s world. Why Japan didn’t become the island laboratory for fusion, wind, solar and especially tidal energy is the saddest aspect of all in this unfortunate reality. They are an island, and perfectly suited for just those industries in energy, since they are surrounded by the tides, get plenty of sunshine, and enjoy winds on a constant basis. Added to these, they could have inserted fusion just as a scientifally fun and profitable method of supplying the world with something more than just useful, but revolutionary. Or we could have. But something, probably General Electric and our own governmental foolishness in nuclear fission energy production for WMDs, convinced us to go the only route that could kill them all of us, and everything else living on the planet. And now, it possibly has. Oh, they aren’t going to start dropping like flies on an insecticide soaked pad in Japan, but, in effect, that is what they have turned themselves into with GE’s and our help. They are going to be like those leaves on the lawn; they’ll just be walking leaves decaying away until they are gone. And it was all so unnecessary. And it could have been such another story besides this tragic one. And aliens may be saying this about us one day, all of us on earth, if we don’t get it into our heads that you can’t stuff toxic nuclear fission waste into the Rocky mountains forever, and that is what we are doing with what we are manufacturing from today’s 450 some plants. We think that’s a solution. Or that, before something really bad happens, someone else will come up with a better one. Its the same thinking that has Japan dumping hundreds of tons of toxic water into the ocean. Yes, it dissipates. But that doesn’t means it goes away; it means it spreads out. Its still lethal, one tiny bit smaller than the size of the point of a needle; a very thin needle point. It takes a microscope to see one. And has that alerted us to anything stupid we may be doing? No. We have six more nuclear plants planned for the near future, and GE can’t wait to explain to you why these are absolutely necessary and totally harmless. They are lying on both counts. What they are, for the company that has paid not a penny in income profit taxes for the past umpteen years, and received a rebate on their tax from you last year, is a real moneymaker. Very, very profitable. You can even add a few very’s and still be extremely accurate. And the very person they are killing, the taxpayer, is paying them for the right to die from it. Would it stun or bother you to know that they, who took your rebate and cashed the check, made billions last year? $14.2 billion dollars in profits, to be pretty much exact. $2.3 billion in tax benefit rebates after taxes that they didn’t pay any of. That’s $2.3 billion of your taxpayer dollars to them directly.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558
So there is a reason that GE is shoving plants down our throats at an unprecedented rate, just as they are stuffing the waste with a toxic afterlife (how long it is deadly to people) of 10,000. Not as bad, they might explain, as Strontium 90, that kills us for 90 million years. Think of it as progress. Cesium 137. 10,000 years. Strontium 90, 90 million years. which do you want? And they even have become leaders as counselors to Congress and our country in developing jobs and the financial difficulties we are in, we are told. Well, why not; they are experts on causing it. Think of the cost of what cancer and those deaths have penalized this nation, and while GE isn’t responsible by any means for ALL cancer deaths, they can’t claim its small or an unaccountable part, either. But we have had cancer deaths accelerating ever since Madam Curie developed x-ray technology from her own experimentation. There’s a reason doctors wear those heavy lead-lined aprons and you do, too–they have the advantage, though, of leaving the room. X-rays are a huge advance in medical science and technology; its just that they also are profitable. So what might have been a periodic use under medically dire circumstances of a discovery that is essentially helpful and lifesaving, may now be more of a standard experience for us all without regard to what they are really doing as we get x-ray after x-ray after x-ray. Just like GE. And all of it is reminiscent of the operations and attitudes of the tobacco industry in giving us an American smoking habit that is, at long last, finally fading. Too late for many, too soon for some, especially tobacco industry executives. Just like GE.
And someday, maybe someone will ask the military how they are disposing of all those nuclear reactors that powered all the ships and subs they thought it would be swell to load up with? But it will never be some one like GE. But that’s the subject for another day. I think we could all use a recess. Just like GE.
Hello Mark! As requested, here is a link to the ‘thorium energy’ page we were discussing. I think it’s worth a (re)view by your readers. Thorium is a rare earth element that is fissionable. It was a ‘runner up’ when we went into the nuclear age, (a trial reactor was built in Oak Ridge) but it could not be weaponized so it was scrapped in favor of more ‘dangerous’ fuels. The reactors are smaller, MUCH easier to control, and according to the engineers CANNOT melt down. Proponents say waste from our current reactors can be burned in these, reducing stockpiles, and the half life of the waste products is SIGNIFICANTLY smaller. Some of the byproducts have medical properties, and one is a rare (ie expensive) fuel usable by the space industry. Desalinization plants can be piggy-backed on thorium reactors and the icing on the cake is the US has enough thorium to last for something like 30k years or some such ridiculous amount of time. There are detractors (like everything), but it’s interesting, and gaining steam worldwide. I welcome everyone to please talk a look, do a little research and discuss. Here is URL to one popular site: http://energyfromthorium.com/
Thanks for the updated information, Mike, and especially the link.
http://energyfromthorium.com/ is a fascinating site, and it demonstrates the greed of the private industries involved in our nuclear industry, giant corporate monsters like GE who grab all they can while paying nothing, sleeping with the military side of the industrial complex. It also shows how the obsession with weapons and war is the only reason we are killing ourselves with plutonium rod energy that creates the human pesticide waste that is going to horrify us all with the decimation of Japan by toxic poisoning. Not that we didn’t get the ball rolling with bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The military and President Truman were told that there was a definable probability that an atomic chain reaction would actually destroy the Universe, and that the war was coming to a close in less than a year, realistically speaking, as Japan was hanging on by its fingernails. They did dropped the bombs, anyway. Never trust a druggist.
I personally think we are liable as a nation for this current tragedy, because we have conned the world into nuclear energy as it processes today, for the sake of our own Weapons of Mass Destruction. The furor and cold sweat caused by Pakistani, India, Israel, Iraq and Iran jumping into the WMD pool, along with most of Europe, would be totally eliminated and virtually nonexistent had we selected Thorium. And our security wouldn’t have been breached or threatened one iota, because we would have remained the greatest single military force on earth following World War II. Speaking of military influence and its morbid demands on us from a threatening standpoint, especially regarding nuclear use, here is an email i received from ex-navy man Dale Kemper, a friend and concerned American citizen sharing that concern on many of today’s true issues (and not the ones coming out of the mouths of any of the Presidential candidates, GOP or Democrats–all parties ignore the real issues of the day in their bobbing for your vote–someone needs to be asking how these folks regard the nuclear issue when they speak at the Town Meetings or at televised debates. They need to be asked lots of things that they aren’t addressing in our ability to determine new leadership. Like whether any of them could actually lead anyone anywhere or accomplish anything that might progressively address America’s profound problems).
.I love Japan but your insight holds true. Did you know that the USS ENTERPRISE ( the FIRST nuclear surface combat ship) has been kept in service ten years longer than planned because they simply don’t have a safe way to scrap her or her eight old fashioned ’60’s reactors?. That’s why the crew call her the “Ghettoprise”. I’ve been aboard & she is a bit nasty. But at 51 years old it’s not her fault.
In Puget Sound there is a huge area where there are 50-60 hundred foot sections of scrapped submarine hulls lined up. These are the reactor areas of the ships that can’t be scrapped for safety reason. So they store them.
I could go on but you get the point. This is the Sad Century for humanity. Maybe 2012 isn’t too far off, one way or another.
Yours in Total Despondency and Despair,
Dale
Dale has also pointed out in another email that ironically Fukushima means “lucky island”. Not any more. Kind of like Chernobyl meaning Wormwood, as the ironic cosmos laughs at our own stupidity and self-destruction-without- protest, at least not in large enough numbers to change the steady course we human lemmings are on.
Who knows, Mike; maybe Thorium can alter that path
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Here is the latest news that our own media have refused to let us know about. The blackout on this information is doubly frustrating since the plans for 5 new plants in our southern sector of the United States continues uninterrupted.
Fukushima 45 tonne radioactive leak ‘reaches ocean’
Experts warn Japan faces more danger from radioactive particles in consumer food, after reports of a new toxic water leak from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
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Frozen Fukushima leaking water
Up to 8.5 tons of radioactive water have leaked from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. TEPCO, the plant’s operator, failed to winterize the reactor’s cooling system, leading to fractures in its pipes due to frozen water inside.
There also are two other smaller and less substantial articles by importance. The first was that human error, just as the bursting pipers are, since plant recovery workers warned TEPCO the pipes would burst in the winter if not replaced, led to the meltdown in the first place. That falls under the old news is no news category. The other is the “opportunity” scientists have discovered to study wild monkeys in that area to discover the effects of radiation from the leaking plant. The might want to focus on studying the human beings on the entire island.
A good link for update information on this continuing tragic accident is:
http://rt.com/trends/fukushima-nuclear-disaster/?gclid=CL3qkp7th64CFU6MtgodwQKw4A
Wow, very interesting read, Mark! Do you suppose storing nuclear waste in the Rockies has contributed to contamination found in the Ogallala Aquifier?
Absolutely. The information can never be honest, because we wouldn’t have allowed a single plant to be built if they were. It is sheer death, and a book that is available online, Atomic Suicide, by Walter and Lao Russell, explains why in both scientific and layman’s terms. Walter Russell discovered the last seven radioactive elements known to man. Skin cancer and the holes in our ozone that develops those cancers, are directly linked to above ground testing, just as increased earthquake reaction relates to below surface testing. But with the ozone, government claimed us to be the cause, and linked that delicate balance loss to hair sprays, refrigerators, and air conditioning. Lies. Just that simple. When it comes to nuclear energy, there isn’t a good thing about it, and, as the Russell’s explain, radioactive elements cause decay naturally, and all cancers are us decaying while still living in our bodies, Science understands this, but is a corporate-like entity where human life holds no value to profit consideration. Prior to our use of radioactive elements, from x-rays to bombs, mankind didn’t suffer from terminal cancers. Fact.
There has been a student produced technological breakthrough regarding both the ability to build nearly 100% safe nuclear reactors, and to also create plants that generate additional energy from the use (and disposal) of prior developed nuclear waste. If we demand that our own government pursue this breakthrough, we can lead the world in the technology, and insure tremendous economic development due to its implementation.
The latest update on the CONTINUING poisoning of our ecological systems by Japan in its efforts after the meltdowns at Fukushima:
So far, the developments created by students in the above youtube presentation are also being ignored by the current Administration, technology in use by major nuclear corporations, and in the planning and building of new plants worldwide.