America in 'huge trouble,' says nuclear expert

[Peace Patriot]

69. The chances of the "unsinkable Titanic" going down were also improbable.

"...chances of another earthquake and tidal wave hitting the exact same spot in a short time frame are very slim but indeed possible though improbable. Lets hope they finish the clean up before that happens!"

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"...hitting the exact same spot in a short time frame."

Your lifetime, are you thinking? The lifetimes of everybody currently alive? Do you know how long some of the nuclear materials in these fuel rods can kill?

"Lets hope they finish the clean up before that happens!"

The clean up. Right. How do you clean this up? They don't know. And they still have one reactor in danger of more fires and explosions. If the fuel rods remain in the worst earthquake/tsunami zone on earth (their present location), another 9.0 can easily occur within the "life" of these materials. If they are moved--aside from, say, shooting them to Mars (or even that)--what happens along the way? How do you handle such "hot" materials--and, even more important, who wants them? Moving them is probably as absurd as anything else, in this situation, so most likely these immensely lethal, exposed fuel rods are going to stay there, in the most active earthquake zone in the world. The next 9.0 may not happen soon and may not happen in your lifetime, but it will happen. What then, for those alive in the future?

This is an on-going disaster for which there are really no solutions.

We need to do A LOT more than a "clean up" of that site, if that is even possible. That site could release enough nuclear material to kill millions if not billions of people, as well as poisoning masses of land and sea and other critters, even without another earthquake.

The bigger problem is this massive, immensely lethal danger in so many places on earth, including other earthquake and tsunami zones. There is NO safety system commensurate with the potential danger. To be commensurate with the potential danger, a safety system would have to GUARANTEE that certain things will NEVER happen. And we cannot rely on the nuclear industry or its shills in government to tell the truth about this. They have not done so up to now and they never will.

How do you think it came to pass that not just one but a complex of nuclear power plants, all packed closely together, were installed in the worst earthquake/tsunami zone on earth?

The nuclear industry is a "Mobius Strip" of immense private profit, which starts with billions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars to build these immensely lethally dangerous plants, makes a few people immensely rich, and ends with the same or related transglobal corporations raking in billions from taxpayers and ratepayers for cleaning up the immense messes they make and also LYING that they can store spent fuel rods and other lethal products SAFELY. One end of this twisted loop connects with the other (as a poster upthread pointed out) and the public interest is nowhere to be found in that loop. We don't count. We pay for it. And we get to die from it, when the inevitable happens, like Fukushima--built to withstand a certain level of earthquake/tsunami but not the one that happened.

Nuclear power must be ENDED (along with nuclear weapons). It is TOO DANGEROUS. It can, with only a few mistakes or only a few unlucky events, end all life on earth. The gamble is too great. Individuals may want to gamble their lives, in various ways, for gain or for glory. NO ONE has the right to gamble with the entire human race and the fragile ecosystem on which the human race and all life depends.

The Titanic probably went down, according to recent research, because the iceberg scraped its side rather than the ship running into it, head on. If it had been hit head on, it probably would have stayed afloat. Instead, the iceberg scraped the side and caused the collapse of a series of bulkheads. There were then other mishaps. One nearby ship didn't get the "SOS." There weren't enough lifeboats and life jackets, etc.

So how much bad luck can happen at once--to sink an "unsinkable" ship and kill the majority of its passengers? Enough bad luck can happen, for that to happen.

We, as the human race, and our planet, are not immune to a run of bad luck, like that which sank the Titanic and killed most of its people. One more nuclear plant failure. Two more. Three more. And will we be saying, "What a weird coincidence?" or will we be crying lamentably, "Why didn't we stop this when we could?" The San Andreas Fault blows, the San Onofre nuclear plant blows and California and parts of Mexico become a waste land; meanwhile, Fukushima blows again, and swaths of the Pacific become a wasteland and radiation starts spreading across the U.S. Or, an accidental nuclear missile launch. Two of them. Three. The Pentagon shoots down one of the accidentally launched nuclear missiles, but, oops, there is a computer glitch caused by solar flare activity and they can't find the other two. Some other nuclear power thinks they are under attack and launch their own nukes. How many things can go wrong at once--from human error, mechanical failure and fate?

Nuclear materials are basically forever--so "probabilities" are not the right way to think about them. And you really can't trust even the most iron-clad, highly regulated, open and aboveboard safety guarantees because the consequences of failure are too great. We don't have any such iron-clad system--not even close--but even if we did, it wouldn't be enough. THAT is the problem--not how to "clean up" one on-going nuclear disaster that "only" affects Japan (jeez) and a few other unfortunate random individuals along that radiation path. The problem is that these materials are too dangerous for failure.

It is insanity that we even have to talk about this. But that is what we have done to ourselves--allowed our democracy to become so corrupt, and, indeed, in many respects, so non-existent, that our rulers blithely gamble with the fate of all life on earth for the profit of a few--not even to "defend" us against fancied "enemies," but merely for profit. They have inured us--with non-stop and very intense propaganda--to live with the threat of nuclear weapons and have meanwhile added this second nuclear threat, also amidst intense lies and propaganda.

One other thing: Even if a nuclear disaster "only" destroys Japan or the Pacific Ocean or the West Coast, and "only" kills a million people, or ten million, or 2 billion, what are we doing this for? We have a choice (if we restore our democracy). WHY put so many people and such swaths of the earth at such risk? (--not to mention how the rest of the planet may fair if widespread radiation poisons a big portion of it). This is NOT as difficult a problem as global warming. This is ONE industry and ONE set of profiteers. And it is by far the most lethal industry on earth because of the persistence of the materials and their impact on the web of life that sustains us all. Why do it?

We have a choice. Why choose to write off a million people, or even a thousand, or the grey whales, for profit? Frankly, I think the Bush Junta has made us all so crazy that we can think in these terms--that maybe a "small" nuclear disaster, now and then, ain't so bad. We are choosing this. It WILL happen. It HAS happened! And, believe me, this one is not "small" and it is not over.