by Crazy Horse
Mon Nov 4th, 2013 at 12:32:46 PM EST
We're seeing a new propaganda push from the nuclear advocates worldwide. Fitting nicely with both the strong attack against renewables, and the push for austerity. Almost pathetic in the professionalism of triviality, even laughable, except of course it's working.
But of course there's also this issue about Fukushima itself: how can anyone be promoting nuclear power when we've got that plant leaking radiation all over the place? Well, as I've pointed out not entirely seriously here the radiation leakage from Fukushima is of the order of the amount of radiation that humans get from eating bananas. We don't get very excited about the risks of eating bananas so we probably shouldn't get all that excited about the risks from Fukushima. Absolutely certainly there's no risk to anyone at all outside the plant itself: all these stories of the Pacific Ocean turning into a radioactive wasteland that will kill us all are just that, stories. And remarkably ill informed ones as well.
of course, that's from that bastion of intelligence, FORBES.
And here's the point:
By contrast with renewables, nuclear power is scalable, controllable and potentially well able to keep the lights on for centuries or millennia. It is also safe compared to all other methods of power generation (in its three "disasters" so far - Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima - the scientifically verified death tolls from all causes have been and will be zero, 56 and zero: a record which other power industries including renewables can only envy).
The latest version of the circus centers around global warming (it's not climate change) hero Hansen. You've seen the articles, where he attacks renewables for not being able to scale up in time, discounting that we've already scaled up in Europe and China, which could be a lesson for Amurkans, if they weren't surrounded by profi propaganda 24/7.
Which allows the rest of the media to enter advanced marketing.
The point being that Fukushima went through absolutely the worst natural disaster that the world could throw at a nuclear plant: and yes, that plant was wrecked but wrecking the plant hasn't killed anyone and won't do. The amazing thing about nuclear power is not how dangerous it is but how safe it is. And given that we do indeed need to have some power if we're to keep this civilisation thing on the road, given that renewables simply cannot scale up in time, we're going to have to replace some of our fossil fuel fired generating capacity with more nuclear. Which is exactly what Hansen et al are pointing out.
Nuclear safe? Renewables can't scale? Do you think there will be civil war within GE?