FOLLOWING THE AWFUL events in Japan, the whole debate over nuclear energy will begin again. Our politicians, who, after years of sitting on the fence over the issue, had finally decided to go ahead with a new generation of nuclear reactors; but will no doubt once more waste precious time reconsidering the option. Always followers and rarely leaders of public opinion, more time will now be spent rehearsing all of the old arguments for and against nuclear energy.
Those who have always opposed and managed to delay the next generation of nuclear power stations will deploy the events at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant to further their argument, hoping that after the Fukushima catastrophe, the upshot of the next opinion poll will be to rally the public to their cause, and create an anti-nuclear momentum that will drench the politicians in righteous public anger and force to the surface their instinct for self-preservation.
The environmental groups have gained a second wind over this issue and will, along with Three Mile Island, Windscale and Chernobyl, add Fukushima to their ‘roll call of death’ from this technology.
EACH GENERATION of nuclear power station surpasses its predecessor in terms of its safety. According to media reports the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant was forty years old and was due to be retired within the next two weeks. As far as we know it spent forty untroubled years helping to build the Japanese economy into the world’s third richest and most productive.
Nuclear power has been and still is Japan’s life line: from its use the Japanese people have not only improved their own lives, but also the lives of all of us in the West through the use of technology empowered by nuclear energy. There are over 50 nuclear plants in Japan, and the country has been criticised in the past for relying too heavily upon its use.
So far, the Fukushima Dai-ichi incident is said to have been less harmful than Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It may turn out that other reactors in Fukushima will prove prophetically more to the environmentalist’s taste in terms of the threat nuclear energy poses to mankind. But even if this proves to be the case and there are other incidents waiting to happen on a vastly more impressive scale due to the tsunami; the Japanese will not only have been right to use this energy source, but hopefully will continue to do so for the sake of its people once this terrible period ends.
The environmentalists look to an anti-pragmatic world constructed upon idealism. A world which will have no truck with anything with the prefix nuclear attached to it; a world where rusticity and cottage crafts replaces mass production, with its environmental leprosy.
If northern Japan had, instead of nuclear power stations some 500,000 windmills planted off its shores, would the earthquake and the consequent tsunami have ignored this environmental technology?
The trouble with the environmentalists, is that they think some six billion people (and forever growing) on this planet can survive using their green technologies whose output falls well short of what is needed for humanity.
Of course, and this is where we come to the crux of the matter, the environmentalists agree that their solutions require changes to our lifestyles in order for their ‘solutions’ to work. They know that green energy falls well short of the wants and needs of six billion people, and will therefore require us to sacrifice much of the comfort that it has taken a millennium to secure. This, however, is not spelt out in much detail by environmentalists whose sole purpose in the light of the events in Japan, is to gather support for their cause.
OVER THE GENERATIONS, humanity has advanced in numbers, and those numbers have been helped in doing so by an equal advancement in science, medicine and technology. All of which require an advanced and cheap form of energy to allow such a development to happen.
Because of the numbers of people living on this planet, we have to come up with ever more workable solutions to an intractable problem – the problem of catering for such numbers without resorting to ‘Nazi-like’ solutions for half the population.
We can only do this by putting our trust in science which can deliver on its promises as nuclear energy has done. Nuclear energy is cheap and efficient in terms of delivery. Wind farms and other environmental ‘solutions’ are inadequate for the planets population.
The human race, if it is to survive in such large and ever increasing numbers, has to take its cue from science; and no matter what the doubts about nuclear energy are, an equally productive and efficient green system for six billion people is not yet available. In the meantime, until such an efficient and risk free source of energy becomes available, we have to work with what we have if humanity is to avoid such drastic steps that haunted the late 20th century in Europe under Hitler.
We, as a species, can only survive in such numbers if we harbour science and technology. And if that science and technology carries some kind of health warning which has yet to prove itself disastrous to mankind, then, in the interests of ever greater numbers of people, we must embrace it.
THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS are asking us to take a step backwards, to a time when technology was in its pre-steam stage, for was it not this technology that started the evolutionary progress toward nuclear technology? If you think I exaggerate the environmentalist intent, then just look, for instance, at their ‘natural’ method of disposing of sewage.
Alright, this is a cheap shot, but one which, if after the events in Japan causes people to reconsider nuclear energy, then I do not apologise for making it.
Environmentalist measures are three hundred years beyond its sell-by date. For a world population of six billion people to fully put themselves at the mercy of such remedies will only lead to disaster after disaster on an African famine scale.
Idealists can be tolerated on the fringes of civil society. Most of us have trodden such a path. But there is an old saying, “if you are not a socialist at twenty, then you have no heart. But if you are still one at forty, you have no brain.”
Just replace socialist with Green and you have the same analogy. Environmentalism seeks to retard through turning to the past, rather than allow mankind their progress. For it is indeed advancement and improvement that is at stake in this battle between modern technology and the impeding technology of the environmental movement.
So Japan, in spite of the criticism it will attract from some quarters within its own country and the West for its reliance upon nuclear energy; she should persist with this technology, improving upon its safety. Remember, it was an earthquake followed by a tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant; and if worse is to follow it will be from the same source.
We simply have no choice but to rely upon nuclear technology for at least part of our energy needs. To pretend we can meet our future needs with wave or wind, or any other form of none nuclear energy, is to bring false hope and tragedy if we turn our backs fully on the nuclear option.
Now is the time for pragmatism not idealism. The events in Japan will no doubt set back the cause of nuclear power at a time when we have to act quickly. Whether you believe in manmade global warming or not, our future energy needs demand the greatest variety of ways in which to manufacture energy; and the sooner the Greens and other environmental pressure groups come round to accepting this reality, then the sooner we will be able to meet mankind’s needs.
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