The Atomic Church of the Last Gasp

Plutonium Pie in the Sky: the Dangerous Delusion of New Nukes CounterPunch by JAMES HEDDLE MARCH 22, 2016 “….. The Atomic Church of the Last Gasp New Nuclearists avoid coming to terms with the risks and failures of the existing world fleet of aging, ill-designed reactors. Some even advocate re-licensing embrittled reactors from the 1960s to extend their operation decades beyond their 40-year design life.)

NeoNuclearists believe – without operational proof-of-concept – in a pie-in-the-sky, perpetually not-yet-but-soon-to-be-born generation of ‘new, small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).’ They will consume and eliminate existing nuclear waste and be so ‘inherently safe’ you can bury them in your back yard. Any day now……..

The blind faith with which latter-day nuclear advocates approach the issues of human, ecological and economic risk associated with nuclear technologies, reminds one of the Melanesian millenarian movement called ‘cargo cults,’ in which indigenous tribes, following charismatic figures, built wooden aircraft replicas on mountain tops in the vain hopes – despite repeated failures – to lure down the western cargo planes loaded with commodities they saw flying overhead as portrayed in the 1962 film Mondo Cane.

Or, if the definition of ‘insanity’ is: ‘persisting in behavior which consistently fails,’ neo-nuclearism is clearly a form of collective insanity – atomic psychosis……….

Recovering from Nuclear Delusion The facts of the failure of the nuclear dream are there, for any who are not blinded by ideology or self-interest to see: in addition to its history of totalitarianism, incompetence and global disasters, nuclear energy deployment is plagued by public opposition, investor disinterest, consistently mounting cost and schedule over-runs and dependence on contiminating dwindling water supplies. Energy consultant Amory Lovins sees nuclear energy “dying a slow death from an overdose of market forces.” Futurist Jeremy Rifkin agrees, “From a business perspective, its dead.” Expert witness and nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen puts it succinctly, “nuclear energy is just too expensive and too slow to have an impact on climate change.”

The 20^th century ‘nuclear dream’ of global full-spectrum dominance and energy too cheap to meter has become a 21^st century nightmare. It is time to wake up. As retired top U.S. energy administrator S. David Freeman puts it, “We have to kill nuclear power before it kills us.”

NeoNuclearists are entitled to their own opinions…but not to their own facts.http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/22/plutonium-pie-in-the-sky-the-dangerous-delusion-of-new-nukes/