26 Years Ago

I hate the idea of nuclear power.  Slap some lipstick on it all you want and try me how safe it is and I will not be convinced.  I can't say I like coal generated power either, but I will take it any day over the evil that is nuclear. I was told that nowadays they are doing it much better, it's much safer.  After all the Japanese are certainly more advanced than the Russians were years ago.  O really?  From what I hear the recent nuclear disasters in Japan have also been devastating and the Japanese were no smarter when it came to placing these reactors right in the path of inevitable Seismic zones.

I am reminded of all of this because in the Edmonton Journal today there was an article saying that today the Ukraine launched the construction of a new containment shelter to permanently secure the stricken Chernobyl plant.  Today marked the 26th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster. 

Other countries contributed money for the project which is expected to cost 2 billion dollars.  Basically they will build a new permanent covering to slide over the current concrete and steel shelter that was erected and is now starting to crack.  The new 257 meter arched structure is expected to last for a century and will contain high-tech equipment to carry out safe de-contamination work inside the ruined reactor.  This will protect the surrounding land and make it impossible for radiation to reach the atmosphere.  They say to date that about 25,000 of the disaster cleanup workers known as "liquidators" have died. No mention of how many others are sick of cancer as a result.

Imagine how volatile this shit is when you have to go to build a 2 billion dollar containment structure 26 years later!  I have no doubt that we will see numbers far higher than 25,000 people when all the dust settles from Fukushima.   Throw all the arguments you want at me to tell me that many have run safely for years.  The bottom line is this technology produced volatile waste that has no real good way to get rid of.  No matter how good the technology there is still human error that can occur and inevitably natural impacts that we can't control at all.

So if we are so damn smart we should use our brains to advance greener/safer options and stop listening to the rhetoric from people who only have dollar signs in their eyes.  The only good thing that happened from Fukushima is that Bruce Power took their nuclear power plant idea packing out of Alberta.  Let's not forget these terrible incidents when they inevitably come knocking again!