[A-List] Pro-Nuclear Energy Forces ...

[Bill Totten]

... Barely Pause to Rubberneck at Fukushima

by Russ Wellen

Foreign Policy in Focus (March 16 2011)

Fukushima (how convenient that it shares the same last five letters as
Hiroshima) doesn't seem to have fazed another Rim of Fire country in the
least. The Associated Press reports:

    Indonesia says four nuclear reactors it plans to build near a volatile
fault will be safe and more modern than the Japanese plant critically
damaged by an earthquake and tsunami ... The four reactors will be built
on Bangka island by 2022. Bangka is near Sumatra, the heavily populated
island where a 2004 earthquake caused the massive tsunami that killed
230,000 people in a dozen nations. {1}

While Indonesia may be struggling to meets its nation's energy needs, the
country with the most developed energy infrastructure doesn't seem to have
budged much either. Dave Weigel reports in "Full Steam Ahead" at Slate:

    In Japan, there is a race against time to stop meltdowns at reactors
at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. In Washington, no one wants to
overreact. There is near unanimity on the idea that the United States
needs to keep building those plants, as President Obama requested in his
budget and as Republicans request every day ... the pro-nuke ranks were
swelled by liberals, who ... are more worried about climate change than
about the risk of freak accidents. {2}

Also at Slate, Nouriel Roubini makes it more explicit why the age of
nuclear energy isn't winding down anytime soon:

    Severe unrest in the Middle East has historically been a source of
oil-price spikes, which in turn have triggered three of the last five
global recessions. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 caused a sharp increase in
oil prices, leading to the global stagflation of 1974 and 1975. The
Iranian revolution in 1979 led to a similar stagflationary increase in oil
prices, which culminated in the recession of 1980 an 1981. And Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 led to a spike in oil prices at a time
when a US banking crisis was already tipping America into recession. Oil
prices also played a role in the recent finance-driven global recession.
By the summer of 2008, just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, oil
prices had doubled over the previous twelve months, reaching a peak of
$148 a barrel - and delivering the coup de grace to an already frail and
struggling global economy buffeted by financial shocks. {3}

Middle-East instability, along with looming Peak Oil and global warming
(dictating the need for carbon-free energy), seems to guarantee as steep
an uphill fight as ever for those of us opposed to nuclear energy. Not to
mention - bearing in mind how heavily subsidized the industry is - all the
money to be made from it.

Fukushima's lack of the silver lining that backlash against the nuclear
industry should, in a sane world, constitute only adds insult to injury.

Links:

{1}
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20110316/as-indonesia-nuclear-plants/

{2} http://www.slate.com/id/2288241/

{3} http://www.slate.com/id/2288392/

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