Between the Fault Lines

As has been the case with virtually every nuclear power plant incident in the last 50 years, the operators at the Tokyo Electric Plant admitted after the fact that damage to the reactor was worse than initially reported last week and, in a small, barely reported side note stated that the earthquake force had exceeded the design limits of the reactors at the site. In a CommonDreams.org article, Harvey Wasserman surveyed some of the other catastrophes waiting to happen, plants located on or near fault lines, where a severe temblor could contaminate a region the size of a state. In the article summary, Harvey says:

To this list we must now add additional tangible evidence that reactors allegedly built to withstand “worst case” earthquakes in fact cannot. And when they go down, the investment is lost, and power shortages arise (as is now happening in Japan) that are filled by the burning of fossil fuels.

It costs up to ten times as much to produce energy from a nuke as to save it with efficiency. Advances in wind, solar and other green “Solartopian” technologies mean atomic energy simply cannot compete without massive subsidies, loan guarantees and government insurance to protect it from catastrophes to come.

This latest “impossible” earthquake has not merely shattered the alleged safeguards of Japan’s reactor fleet. It has blown apart—yet again—any possible argument for building more reactors anywhere on this beleaguered Earth.

Earthquakes and nuclear reactors are a volatile combination and one we definitely don't need if we want to balance safety and energy efficiency.

A Nuclear Reactor Outside Fresno?

Like those third-rate horror movie monsters that get killed three or four times and still keep coming back, the nuclear power promoters are working overtime in California to try to get a new reactor constructed just outside Fresno.

To do it, and open the pathway for a business cartel hoping to fund the enterprise, they will first have to overturn a law passed in 1976 that requires an appropriate solution to nuclear waste storage before any new plants are built. Republican state assemblyman Chuck DeVore wants to put the issue to a statewide vote.

In a CommonDreams.org article, California's New Nukes War, Harvey Wasserman says,

The irony is that we stand at the brink of the greatest technological revolution in human history. But we’re being dragged away from it by Big Money’s push for a technology with fifty years of proven ecological disaster and financial failure.

Green energy is poised to remake our world.

Wind power is the cheapest form of new generation now available. There are sufficient wind resources between the Mississippi and the Rockies to generate, with available technology, 300% of the electricity we use. There’s enough in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to do 100%.

Solar technologies ranging from green architectural design to desert power towers to photovoltaic cells that go on every rooftop are booming toward a multi-billion-dollar mainstay of our electric supply. Bio-fuels based on sustainable, organic practices can transform our transportation sector. Tidal, wave, geothermal, ocean thermal and a wide range of other green production processes stand at the brink of epic profitability.

Meanwhile, increased efficiency and revived mass transit are the cheapest, cleanest ways to salvage the energy we waste. In concert, these revolutionary green technologies are poised to bring us to Solartopia, a post-pollution planet powered totally by energy harvested in harmony with our Mother Earth. They promise an abundance of efficient supply with the power to boom our economies and save our ability to survive on this planet.

But here’s the hitch: renewable energy has the “flaw” of tending toward community control. In the long run, a true Solartopian revolution must involve re-shaping our corporate culture into one based on sustainability, accountability and grassroots democracy. Though some astute corporations are cashing in, in the long run green technologies are the door to decentralization…and economic democracy. A green-powered Solartopia will own its energy supply at the grassroots. Wind, solar, bio-fuels—they hold the keys to community control.

Against all that, new nukes are the ultimate weapon of mass distraction. There have been numerous rationales put forth for building more reactors. Except to an entrenched corporate power elite, none of them make any sense.

The struggle goes on and at times it seems as though the voices for sanity and common sense are winning. But, as soon as the lights go out, that made-up movie beast is at the window, scratching and clawing, looking for some innocent flesh to devour.