A Radio Active Ocean!!

        It seems odd that the UK is pushing ahead with its nuclear energy plans when other countries are moving away from that source of energy. We are still reeling from the Fukushima disaster, which to this day is still pouring radio-active waste into the Pacific, with no end in sight. Of course what drives these decisions is never the welfare of the people, but corporate greed and state power. The facts about nuclear power are that we can't fully estimate the cost of construction, we have no idea of the cost of, or a proper method of, decommissioning, we can't give any guarantee that we will be able to use that piece of land again. Even on economics, it doesn't make much sense. On this basis it seems irrational to pursue that path, but pursue it our lords and masters will, unless we do something about changing the system. 

Wikipedia:

      Hinkley Point C nuclear power station (HPC) is a project to construct a 3,200 MWe nuclear power station with two EPR reactors in Somerset, England.[4] The proposed site is one of eight announced by the British government in 2010,[5] and in November 2012 a nuclear site licence was granted.[6] On 28 July 2016 the EDF board approved the project,[7] and on 15 September 2016 the UK government approved the project with some safeguards for the investment.[8] The plant, which has a projected lifetime of sixty years, has an estimated construction cost of £18 billion, or £24.5 billion including financing costs.[1] The National Audit Office estimates the additional cost to consumers under the "strike price" will be £29.7 billion.[9]

 On Fukushima:

       The 7.4 magnitude quake hit on Tuesday, just off the coast of Fukushima, which was also the site of the 2011 9.0 scale earthquake.
The Japan Meteorological Agency have said that this new quake was actually an aftershock from the previous one, and have warned that further aftershocks could follow.
       The 2011 quake was catastrophic in it’s destruction, killing 15,891 people, with a further 2,584 missing. It destroyed countless homes and ruined people’s livelihoods.
       The fear that these quakes will cause a huge problem in the nuclear power sector is very real. About 30% of all Japan’s power comes from nuclear power stations, many of which are located on the coast where the earthquakes tend to strike.
       The 2011 earthquake catastrophically damaged 3 of 6 nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi facility, the extent of the fallout from this has never been fully identified.
       One repercussion of this has been the pollution of radioactive waste into the sea. It is thought that hundreds of tons of radioactive waste has been pumped into the sea every day ever since. The nuclear waste has penetrated the Japanese food chain and has been detected in food over 200 miles away.
       In 2015 Akira Ono the chief of the Fukushima power station said that there was no known way of decommissioning the power station and stopping the waste leakage.
      Officials have claimed that while there is a definite leakage, they say it is not doing any actual harm to the environment, but the stats claim another story.
        American scientists have been studying what is effectively the ‘death’ of the pacific, where marine life is dying off at an alarming rate. Krill, one of the key players in the sea-life food chain has been found washed up in vast numbers, and bodies of seals and sea lions are repeatedly washed up on shores.
        USA Today ran a story of starfish being washed up that had seemingly turned to ‘mush’, the reason to which they said left them ‘baffled’. It has also been reported that a staggering 98% of the sea floor is covered with dead sea life.
        It’s time people woke up to the reality of what is happening. In our lifetime we have already seen so many species become extinct on land, and now humans are destroying the sea, too.

Germany:

      Within days of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, large anti-nuclear protests occurred in Germany. Protests continued and, on 29 May 2011, Merkel's government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022.[5][6] Eight of the seventeen operating reactors in Germany were permanently shut down following Fukushima.

      In September 2011, German engineering giant Siemens announced a complete withdrawal from the nuclear industry, as a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.[8][9]

America:

 -------however the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was passed in 2005 which aimed to jump start the nuclear industry through financial loan-guarantees for expansion and re-outfitting of nuclear plants. The success of this legislation is still undetermined, since all 17 companies that applied for funding are still in the planning phases on their 26 proposed building applications. Some of the proposed sites have even scrapped their building plans, and many think the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

further dampen the success of expansion of nuclear energy in the United States.

Italy:

      However, following the 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents, the Italian government put a one-year moratorium on plans to revive nuclear power.[3] On 11—12 June 2011, Italian voters passed a referendum to cancel plans for new reactors. Over 94% of the electorate voted in favor of the construction ban, with 55% of the eligible voters participating, making the vote binding.[4]

And Australia, the world's third largest producer of uranium, has no nuclear power plants.

Australia currently has no nuclear facilities generating electricity. Australia has 33% of the world's uranium deposits and is the world's third largest producer of uranium after Kazakhstan and Canada.

  

The Fukushima Anniversary.

         It is five years since Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster, and still the horror is there. As the man said, nuclear is forever. What do you do with all that radioactive material you have taken from the disaster area? This is a disaster that we will hand to our children and our grandchildren.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Spaceship Earth Has No Escape Capsule.

         April 26 1986, marks the 28th. anniversary of what was probably the world's worst man made disasters, to date, namely Chernobyl, we are still measuring Fukushima. Though that babbling brook of bullshit the mainstream media, has long since dropped it as a subject worth reporting, the disaster lingers on. Neighbouring towns and cities within a 30km exclusion zone were abandoned, and residents have still not been allowed to return. Within 36 hours approximately 50,000 residents were evacuated. Most scientist agree that it will not be safe to inhabit for thousands of years. Radiation from the explosion contaminated soil, water and solid matter, across large swaths of Europe and Western USSR. Deaths from cancers etc. are put in the 100's of thousands and we are still counting.

      Although the disaster was at Chernobyl, the workers lived in a nearby town specially built for them called Pripyat. A once new town with grand buildings, schools and shops, it is now an eerie ghost town hardly recognisable as nature slowly takes over. The town's concrete square is now broken with trees and shrubs pushing up and slowly turning it to rubble. Once fine buildings stand with trees and other vegetation sprouting from balconies, floors and window frames. The surrounding forest is slowly taking back the town. Standing as a symbol of the disaster is the towns new amusement park, with its giant yellow ferris wheel, meant to open for May Day 1986, was used for a couple of hours to amuse the residents on the 27 April, before they were ordered to evacuate.It now stands trees, shrubs and other vegetation, slowly but surely strangling it, as nature wants its territory back.

       Capitalism being what it is, can't miss an opportunity to make a buck, so there are tour companies that will arrange guided tours around this eerie ghost town. Though it is illegal to take items in or out of Pripyat for fear of spreading the radioactive contamination. The town's inhabitants are now wild boar, wolves and stray dogs, of course there will be the usual smaller life, rabbits etc. though I doubt if any of it is worth hunting. A handful of individuals have returned to their contaminated towns and villages and live there without official permission, they are known as “self-settlers”.

         This is a large slice of the planet that we probably can never use again, and with the ongoing saga of Fukushima, spilling into the ocean, it looks like we are about to repeat the disaster on a larger scale, on both land and sea. This is contamination on a permanent scale, a poisoned heritage for our grandchildren, yet the babbling brook of bullshit, spews out information of football managers losing their job, privileged parasites prancing about with their kid, and the latest scandal from some soap. We should remember, Spaceship Earth has no escape capsule.

An extract from a more detailed article from Nautilus Blog:

        Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink. Long after bleeding from the core, this unique piece of waste continues to be a testament to the potential dangers of nuclear power. The Elephant’s Foot will be there for centuries, sitting in the dark basement of a concrete and steel sarcophagus, a symbol of one of humankind’s most powerful tools gone awry.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk