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Please ! We Want No Nuclear!!

Edited March 17, 201114 yr by ஜெகுமார்

Why Japan embraced nuclear power after suffering the atomic bomb

Why did a country that suffered the utter horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki so willingly give itself over to nuclear power?

- Japan’s 55 reactors produce nearly 30 per cent of the country’s electricity, and the long-term strategy before the Fukushima disaster was to push that figure to 50 per cent by 2030.

- Almost alone among its political allies, whose ambitions were reined in by the catastrophes at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the land that experienced the atomic bomb has chosen to expand its network of nuclear plants, many of them knowingly built in seismic zones.

- The turning point was the international oil crisis of 1973, an Arab oil embargo that shocked an emerging superpower dependent on imported energy to fuel its 10-per-cent annual growth rate. Unlike other major powers, Japan doesn’t have oil or natural gas.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/why-japan-embraced-nuclear-power-after-suffering-the-atomic-bomb/article1945020/

If not nuclear, then what?

Nuclear power has always been a scary proposition. The chance of something going wrong is low, but when it does, it can be awful. Nuclear advocates like to point out that next to coal or gas, nuclear power is about as safe as it gets. But words like “meltdown” and “contamination” don’t exactly inspire confidence. And nuclear technology is so complex that no mere mortal can understand how it works. Even experts disagree about how safe nuclear reactors are, or ought to be.

“The Japanese weren’t expecting a magnitude 9.0 earthquake or a 33-foot tsunami, and they are the most experienced earthquake watchers in the world,” says Norm Rubin, director of research at Energy Probe. “We are neophytes at this.” (Disclosure: I sit on the advisory board, and am a nuclear agnostic.)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/if-not-nuclear-then-what/article1944827/

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