Inside the Ikata Nuclear Power Plant's station unit Number 3, which was idled after the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, in the Ehime prefecture of Japan, January 23, 2014. (Photo: Ko Sasaki/The New York Times)
Japan
has restarted its first nuclear reactor to generate power since 2013.
And that's really bad news.
Remember what happened in
2013? Why Japan closed all of its reactors abruptly and why we're still tracing
the spread of radioactive material across our Pacific Coast and into the
atmosphere?
First there was an earthquake
that did significant damage to that island country - and then a tsunami quickly
followed.
And what happened next was
the largest nuclear meltdown in the history of the world and the evacuation of
160,000 locals who lived in the area of the Fukushima power plant.
We know now that TEPCO - the
owner of the Fukushima plant - had been warned years earlier about the dangers
of an earthquake and a tsunami hitting the plant.
No one did anything about it
then - but even if they had - do we have any reason to believe it would have
been enough?
Because that's the gamble
that the Japanese nuclear industry is making with all of our futures right now.
The simple fact about nuclear
power generation is that the risks and the costs dramatically outweigh any
benefit.
We've seen some of the risks
- in Chernobyl we saw how human error can cause a meltdown.
In the Three Mile Island
incident we saw how the private corporations aren't afraid to cut corners to
pad their bottom line - even if that risks a partial nuclear meltdown.
And in Fukushima we saw what
happens when corporate negligence meets a natural disaster.
Considering nuclear power's
track record and the staggering risks involved, it's amazing that anyone will
insure the projects. The simple fact is that without government backing, like
the Price-Anderson Act here in the US, nuclear power would be impossible,
because no private insurance company will cover it.
And to add insult to injury,
nuclear power is actually NOT an "alternative energy" source - it's
an incredibly fossil-fuel-intensive process.
Please continue this article
here: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/32314-fukushima-selling-out-the-next-generation
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