I have always been one of the most ardent backers of nuclear energy. I was one of the many to point out that the entire human damage done throughout the world by Chernobyl from the time of that accident, until now, did not equal the human damage done by one year’s burning of coal in this country alone. This is still true but the catastrophe at Fukashima made me stop and think about my position and the potential for a second catastrophe at the San Onofre plant in San Clemente, California. Southern California Edison’s cavalier handling of a severe problem and their plans to put the plant back on line with a jury rigged solution lead me to believe that all nuclear power should be closed down immediately. Why? Because it is in the hands of people, and people are fallible, greedy and lazy and we can’t put such a dangerous toy in the hands of children so ill equipped to handle it.
With San Onofre, the real problem, like the plants in Japan, is not so much engineering, sloppy repair or putting profit before safety, it’s the stupidity of putting a nuclear plant on top of a major fault line, thereby creating a disaster waiting to happen. The location of this plant may be the most horrendously stupid decision ever made in the nuclear industry. It’s like begging for a meltdown.
Reactor 4 in Fukashima, another example of dumb positioning, is on the brink of a meltdown and the stored fuel rods are too much for the ponds in which they rest, or for the cooling apparatus currently in operation. Those in the know say, unanimously, that if the rods aren’t removed immediately the whole thing will go up causing the end of Japan and in fact, a worldwide catastrophe. That may be an exaggeration but if it is, it’s not too far off, and more importantly, no one is doing anything about it. No one in the company or the government will even address the problem. They are all frozen in terror. They are reacting to it much the same as they have reacted to their financial meltdown. If you don’t admit it exists maybe it will go away. Listen you cowardly clowns, this one may go away but when it does it is going to take the nation of Japan with it.
Let me be quite clear about this. The problem with nuclear power is not the engineering, the planning or any inherent weakness with the system. On paper the system works, unless, of course, you build one of these things over an earthquake fault line the way they did in Japan and California. The problem with nuclear power like the problem with so much else in our crumbling world is greed. If the construction is done correctly and according to all the specifications, and the plant is run accordingly to all the safely rules and any repairs are done with safety as the first principal of consideration, the process will work. The problem is that none of these strictures are adhered to because they cost money, and after all, aren’t these companies in business to make money.
It seems that the only way to make nuclear power work is to make it illegal for those who own and run the plants to live, with their families, outside the shadows of the plants themselves. Maybe if these greedy pigs and their families stand to be the first to die, they will be more interested in the safety of their plants and a little less interested in their company’s bottom line. Until then, the whole damn industry is just too dangerous to be allowed to continue. No one in it seems to care if they kill their neighbor, maybe they will learn to care if they stand to kill themselves.