This saddens me…

This is also going to show the kind of nerd I am.

Just read that there is now a plan for Japan to do away with nuclear power by the year 2030. However, this might not happen for odd political reasons. (When the plan may actually become law, there may be a new party in power, which could vote differently.) It still saddens me though because this decision, and similar decisions made in other countries, I believe are not in the best interest of the country but just what people are told they should think they want. Really it seems like everything to do with energy is like that, which probably isn't surprising. People don't care enough about where the electricity comes from, provided it comes every time they turn on their TV, computer, and microwave, so they don't actually understand what is involved, which makes them susceptible to propaganda that is not about energy, but about control.

Nuclear power is clean, it is safe, and the only time it isn't, it's because someone is not doing their job and fulfilling their responsibilities. But so long as the public excepts energy as a 'black-box', this won't change. (Black-box, for this situation, means you do not know what happens inside of it but just that it works when you give it the proper input.) Anyway, rant coming up, so read on, only if you dare!

Nuclear power is quite clean and could actually be made cleaner, if the engineers and scientists were allowed to do so. The waste products from a power plant are steam, some damaged shielding, and waste fuel rods. Well, steam is clean, I'm not sure what exactly can be done about the shielding, but I'll bet it can be recycled just like the fuel rods can be, but, at least in the US, there is no facility designed to do so. Why is there no facility to recycle the still radioactive fuel that has to sit on site or get buried under a mountain? Because Congress will not approve the plan and the funding to build the thing. Why won't they do something that is so obviously a good thing for this nation? My bet is the environmentalists won't let them because it involves anything with the word 'nuclear' in it and it's a way to force the issue to grow in the future, when the environmentalists can say, "See! We told you it was a bad idea." Don't forget, it was the thinking of an environmentalist that had a Canadian nuclear power plant shut down, which threw the entire world into a panic, because that one plant supplied the world with much of its nuclear medicine. Fortunately it was later reactivated, and the person responsible was fired/resigned.

Here's another story that shows more the ignorance of the people as it concerns 'nuclear,' than environmentalism. The original name of MRI technology was not Magnet Resonance Imaging. Instead it was Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. In fact, in science labs you will find NMR machines which work the same way, by rotating the nucleus of atoms. Why the difference between the public and science lab? Because when the technology was still being developed, the facility had a sign that said 'Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Research Lab,' or something similar on it, and just because it had the word 'nuclear' on it, the community it was in erupted with anger, thinking it would give them cancer. (Ironically that technology is now used to help treat cancer.) The people at the facility managed to solve the problem not by changing anything about the technology, but by changing the sign on the building. Apparently ignorance works both ways. It gets you upset and emotional when you don't know what's going on, and calms you down when you still don't know what's going on, but it looks like things are fine.

It is very much worth mentioning though that the NMR/MRI story is set during the Cold War, so the source of the irrational fear for anything with the word 'nuclear' in it is understandable. It's still an irrational fear evidenced by the fact that science labs, which employee people who understand the technology at a basic level at least, use the original name without any issue.

Of course, an NMR machine is completely different from a nuclear reactor. I only told that story to demonstrate how the knowledge of the technology alleviates much of the fear of it. Of course many people don't understand how planes fly, but plane flight is a decent analogy to nuclear power, as it concerns safety.

When something goes wrong on a plane, it can lead to a great many deaths, whether it be accidental or not. However, the actual number of such accidents on a plane are quite low. Statistically and technologically, it is safer to fly than to drive. A car accident however has a lower potential to kill people, because there are fewer people involved, typically, but is more likely to happen. Likewise nuclear power has the potential to affect hundreds and even thousands when there is an accident, but there have been very, very few accidents in its history. Personally I can only name three nuclear reactor incidents, and one of them didn't even kill anyone. Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three-Mile Island. Chernobyl and Fukushima are the two that did kill people but they have another similarity. If the safety policies were actually adhered to, the incidents either would not have happened or would not have been as serious. The technology was not the problem, it was the people who did not fulfill their responsibilities to maintain it that were.

But, that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that they were the failings of people because so long as people get their electricity, they don't care. Shut down all air travel though, and they'll complain because they see air travel. The plane may operate as a black box, as the passengers do not necessarily know how it flies, but they know it is a plane and it is because of the plane they can get to their destination as quickly as they do. Electricity is electricity, no matter where it comes from. Cut out a source of power and drive prices up and people will complain, but they won't go off the grid. They'll just frown and pay it.

I could go into a rant here about how "green" energy sucks, but I think this is long enough of a rant already. I'll just sum it up like this: the technology isn't ready yet for market. It should still be in the labs being developed to bring down costs and improve efficiency. Until then, keep using what is clean and works, like nuclear power.