Japan’s Near Miss Shows It’s Time to Say “No” Nukes
By Thom Hartmann A...
Japan narrowly missed another nuclear disaster. Today, the island nation of 126 million people is anxiously awaiting the arrival of Typhoon Neoguri, a storm that was once so strong that meteorologists called it a “once in a decade” storm. Neoguri will be a lot weaker once it hits the Japanese mainland, and it was actually downgraded from a Super Typhoon to just a plain old tropical storm earlier today, but that doesn’t mean it should be taken lightly.
Far from it - When Neoguri makes landfall on the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu, it will still be strong enough to take down trees, rip up power lines, and cause a whole of destruction. It will also bring along torrential downpours and flooding. The weather is going to be a mess in Japan over the next few days, but the people of that country can be thankful about one thing: Typhoon Neoguri probably won’t be causing any huge problems for the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
There was some concern a few days ago that Typhoon Neoguri could hit the plant, which is still having a lot of problems with leaks, and cause more parts of it to melt down. However, now that the storm has weakened, those fears have subsided. But what if Neoguri didn’t weaken? What if it was heading full force towards the Japanese mainland with Fukushima power plant in its sights?
Give or take a few changes in air temperature, and we could be talking about how a “once-in-a-decade” Super Typhoon was about to cause another nuclear crisis in Japan. You know that feeling you get after almost getting into a car accident? That’s the way the world should feel right now about Typhoon Neoguri and Fukushima.
If it wasn’t already obvious, after what already happened at Fukushima in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, it should be obvious now: Every country that uses nuclear power is flirting with disaster.
Nuclear power never has been and never will be safe, and the only way for us to guarantee that there won’t be any more disasters in both Japan and around the world is abandon nuclear power once-and-for-all.
It’s time to just say “no” to nukes.
Comments
#2
I believe that people should only vote for the politicians who receive the least bribes (ie: contributions from big business) because big business will obviously "own" them and the politicians will turn their backs toward the people who voted for them...eventually. Let's see now...just how much was it that Obama received compared to the other candidates? Obama raised more. Although one could argue that more funds for Romney came from the wealthier donors but both Dem and Repub candidates still got lots of money from the wealthier donors compared to what the other candidates got. So both Dem/Repub candidates got huge donations from the wealthiest donors (ie: they are both owned by the wealthiest donors). And that is obvious when you see how Obama (the betrayer) acted after he took office...even after the first time. Vote for the little guy/gal who isn't heavily funded. If you really want to make an impact and show that money will no longer buy candidates...vote for them instead of the heavily funded candidates. That would be the simplest and least risky...certainly a lot less risky and dangerous than an all out revolution....which I believe may one day happen if things don't change.
You don't need to have a "movement" to take the money out of politics if everyone simply voted for the candidate who received the least amount of money from big business. Let them waste their money!
I'm all for supporting a "movement to take money out of politics but if you can't get voters to see the futility of voting for the candidate that gets large contributions from big business then I doubt anything else will work. Worth a try, though.
#3
I think we're living in a Nevil Shute novel in one way or another - or in all ways combined, gathering to a "perfect storm", as it were.
#4
Pro-nuclear and/or fossil fuel dirty energy advocates are living examples of S**t Canned Ethics for Short Term Profits!
"Release of the International Surface Temperature Initiative’s (ISTI’s) Global Land Surface Databank, an expanded set of fundamental surface temperature records "
Calling GW deniers everywhere. Go crawling to your Koch dirty energy funded mendacity for profit-over-planet mindfork propaganda "think"(septic) tanks for your "talking points". The liars are going to have to come up with some world class bull***t verbal gymnastics to find ANY questionable data in this COMPREHENSIVE, PEER REVIEWED DATA SET.
"Guest post by Jared Rennie, Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, North Carolina on behalf of the databank working group of the International Surface Temperature Initiative.
In the 21st Century, when multi-billion dollar decisions are being made to mitigate and adapt to climate change, society rightly expects openness and transparency in climate science to enable a greater understanding of how climate has changed and how it will continue to change. Arguably the very foundation of our understanding is the observational record. Today a new set of fundamental holdings of land surface air temperature records stretching back deep into the 19th Century has been released as a result of several years of effort by a multinational group of scientists.
The International Surface Temperature Initiative (ISTI) was launched by an international and multi-disciplinary group of scientists in 2010 to improve understanding of the Earth’s climate from the global to local scale. The Databank Working Group, under the leadership of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), has produced an innovative data holding that largely leverages off existing data sources, but also incorporates many previously unavailable sources of surface air temperature.
This data holding provides users a way to better track the origin of the data from its collection through its integration. By providing the data in various stages that lead to the integrated product, by including data origin tracking flags with information on each observation, and by providing the software used to process all observations, the processes involved in creating the observed fundamental climate record are completely open and transparent to the extent humanly possible. - "
Full READ IT AND WEEP (for fossil fuelers ) fact filled article at link below:
Demand an END to DIRTY ENERGY NOW!
"Approximately 13 percent of the U.S. electricity supply was powered by renewables as of the end of 2013, roughly half of Germany’s rate."
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/08/3456934/renewable-one-third-germany/
The USA, a historic leader in new technology, is getting left behind because of the profit-over-planet biosphere degrading fossil fuel industry that buys our politicians with the profits from pollution producing fuels while said politicians keep fossil fuel and nuclear power plant "subsides" (taxpayer theft!) to tilt the energy playing field against renewable energy.
We need to ELIMINATE DIRTY ENERGY SUBSIDIES and start the FULL TRANSITION to CLEAN ENERGY NOW!
America DOES NOT have to play second fiddle to being the first country to win the Climate Victory because of idiot greedball, war loving fossil fuelers. As part of being responsible, caring human beings, we have to pressure our government to take major action to stop the degradation of the biosphere from climate change. This is causing death and disease to both domestic animals and wildlife, all of which have done nothing to deserve such a horrible fate at our hands. It's time to eliminate the excuse our fossil fuel loving oligarchy uses for "resources" wars for oil that bring nothing but misery to us and profits for them.
I started a petition on Care2: Demand Liberty From Fossil Fuels Through 100% Renewable Energy WWII Style Effort. I'm hoping that if enough people sign my petition, we can make a difference. Will you help me collect more by adding your name?
Here's a link to the petition: http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb
Thank you and please pass it on. The biosphere you save may be your own.
#5
7 of nevil shute's books: (go down to shuten)
http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/
The Town Like Alice was once (1960?) banned in Britain. It didn't take much to ban books back then.
#6
I mean On the Beach (the only one I've read).
#7
I read the cliff notes on On the Beach. That's really nothing compared to reading the whole story though. :-) What a sad ending! :-( Actually, the whole thing was sad. And scarey, of course.
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I wonder when "once a decade" will become "once a year"? It sure looks like that's where we're headed.
I think nuclear powered electrical generation plants could be a lot safer but it will never happen as long as there is profit to be made and without proper independent overseers that aren't bribable... which leaves out the politicians..they've proven their corruptibility. What politician, other than Bernie Sanders and a few others, will risk losing their next election by giving the finger to big business, big energy, big pharma, etc.?
Now if there was an enforceable law banning "revolving doors" between government and private sectors whereby no politician could ever benefit from the private sector, ever, and that they could never receive any kind of compensation in or out of office by their position in the government then they might be to regulate the nuclear power plants safely.
The capitalists will cut corners and cheat on safety...that's just what they do... They'll locate nuclear plants in unsafe locations like on or near earthquake fault zones, rivers that have been known to flood, and near ocean/land boundaries that are subject to hurricanes and tidal waves....all because it serves their profit motives.
I know it takes a lot of water to properly control nuclear power plants, and it would cost a lot to not locate plants near bodies of water...so, large bodies of water need to be created and located in locations that would be able to isolate and contain leakages into the aquifers and natural ground level bodies of water. It would be very expensive, but if we are going to use nuclear electrical power generation, it has to be made as safe as possible and make the profit motive take a backseat to safety.
I'd much prefer the safer forms of energy conversion like wind, solar, wave, and geothermal all of which are far safer than nuclear.