Nuclear Fantasies, a delusion of omnipotence

Cognitive Dissonance – Choosing today, tomorrow doesn't exist

Convincing the American public because of global warming, we need nuclear energy; how they go about doing this, borders on madness. The polar ice caps are melting, glaciers are melting, the bees are dying, seasons are changing, weather is becoming more violent, hurricanes are becoming more and more destructive, and the ocean temperature is rising, droughts, famine, crop failures and even wars: they have embraced all of these as their own philosophy; their own personal belief. Without a doubt these natural events are sometimes catastrophic, causing human suffering beyond measure, beyond grief, yet in hypocrisy, the nuclear industry regularly takes our suffering, using it as a stepping stone on towards their greater glory. They have also stepped on the environmentalists whom have been saying that pollution is the cause of our planet's climate change for years and years; they weren't listened to then and they aren't heard now.

The nuclear renaissance, as a publicity campaign for providing more electricity without adding to the CO2 emissions to our atmosphere, is a sham; it is an outright lie and goes against nature, goes against what people would consider as living in a safe, contaminant-free environment. Everyday this sham is being exposed by the environmentalists and the anti-nuclear movement, the costs are examined and balanced against the benefits, and are found to be environmentally unsafe and the lie becomes more and more apparent to even the ardent nuclear energy supporter. Yet rather than recant their belief and accept the truth of their fallacy, they cling to it tighter until it causes them to withdraw to some corner hoping to be forgotten and overlooked in their guilt, their backs striped with their complacency in promoting the dangerous nuclear industry against the human rights of the future.

The aftershocks are still continuing in Japan, soon more suffering from the lack of electricity will come to them; this unfortunate accident at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear reactors must be considered by our government as more reason to re-evaluate our nuclear energy policy, to see if catastrophes such as what happened to the Japanese can be avoided in our country. All it will take is one major accident and the game is over. If one looks at the history of the nuclear energy industry, it is strewn with minor accidents and leaks of radiological materials into the air, water and land.

And to look with an unbiased perspective at the uranium mining, milling, enrichment and waste disposal phases of the nuclear fuels and weapons cycle, one can seen it as causing the deaths of many Native Americans, creating an unseen, overlooked health crises on many reservations. Is this the price Native Americans must pay for having our land illegally taken, then having the natural resources such as uranium and other minerals used to promote the greater prosperity of the mainstream American society without just compensation being paid for these thefts? These profits, then, should be just considered blood money being paid by the Native Americans to rent our poverty-stricken reservations and their blighted economies. Is this why our genocide is kept hidden from mainstream society; to hide the fact that the history of the Nuclear Renaissance is written with our blood!

Now where are the pro-nuclear factions and groups, clearly it is apparent to me that they are only promoting their support for nuclear energy because they are being paid to do so. They never consider the mining or waste issues in the nuclear renaissance hyperbole and this is wrong.

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

By declaring that nuclear energy is safe since there haven't been very many catastrophic failures is following this fallacy; nuclear energy is relatively new to humanity, and not enough data has been collected to make this judgment. Yet this position is a major selling point offered by the nuclear energy industry. As our nuclear reactor fleet ages, many maintenance have been appearing with extreme regularity, becoming an almost daily occurrences at some nuclear reactor sites. Rather than believing their one-sided opinions we should consider that most safety records collected by the NRC of the nuclear reactors clearly shows that there are many minor problems with leaking radionuclides into the surrounding environment. And that there have been several major catastrophic failures, Chernobyl, Three Miles Island, and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa , should be consider as reasons to state that nuclear energy is dangerous when it does decide to fail. Based on this, we should really not jump right onto the nuclear renaissance bandwagon without more unbiased qualitative research data; then factoring this information into the nuclear energy equation, we must also consider the distance to nearby communities, emergency preparedness action plans, locations to emergency support services and fire departments skilled in handling nuclear accidents, transport and logistics problems involving nuclear waste and fuel storage. Using the results from this equation, we can then say that sites such as Indian Point is a clear candidate for decommissioning.

And how this applies to the mining and waste issues is that most of the anti-nuclear and anti-mining community groups in the Midwest where the nuclear renaissance is quixotically called the uranium boom. The in situ leach/recovery uranium mining companies are taking advantage of the local communities' lack of informed consent and decision making. Very few communities have, as consultants, scientists or lawyers that can impartially provide sound scientific data that can be used by community leaders to make these important decisions. This too follows the Texas sharpshooter fallacy; not enough unbiased data on uranium issues is being given to the community leaders and without this data they usually accept the uranium mining companies into their communities, often because the uranium mining company pours money into local community coffers as a pseudo-bribe to improve the streets, roads, water supply and infrastructure. Then the uranium mining company goes to the next community and tells community leaders there that the other community accepts their actions and therefore they should also.

All across the Midwest are examples of these glowing lies, there are more than a 1,000 abandoned uranium mines and prospects in Colorado, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming, and several abandoned toxic uranium mills. Communities nearby these sites have experienced extremely high cancer rates, health-related deaths and other illnesses such as diabetes, a key indicator of low-dose radiation exposure. Does this matter to the proponents to the nuclear renaissance? It is an issue that they know crumbles their nuclear cookie, and wastes into dust their fallacies that nuclear energy is safe.

Conclusion

I must emphasize this even further; I was born and raised in one of the radiologically contaminated Indian reservations in South Dakota, I have seen my parents die young, I have seen our elders die young, I have seen our children with strange illnesses. After telling the federal agencies this many times I was told by one of them that the reason we are dying is that "we drink alcohol, we smoke cigarettes, and we eat a bad diet." This statement strikes me as the most racist statement I have ever heard since they didn't even consider that I have experienced the deaths and illnesses first hand; they are my parents, my relatives and my community. Asking my elders about the cancers before they passed on, they said that before the 60's they had never heard of diabetes or cancer, that many of the elders were also veterans of the Custer Battle. And now in this day, they are gone, our community is dying from diabetes and cancer; and what can the federal agencies offer a response to this, except the words, "Don't worry about it, we have scientists that say there isn't a problem." Where are our scientists, our lawyers?

I don't support nuclear energy and weapons, I never will! The nuclear renaissance is a myth, an outright lie; nuclear energy has absolutely nothing to do with global warming.


For more information
Defenders of the Black Hills
http://www.defendblackhills.org
The Silkwood Project
http://www.silkwoodproject.com
Environmental Nightmares
http://environmentalnightmares.blogspot.com