It's in the air for you and me

[lovingboth]

I know there's plenty of other news today, including the junior doctors strike, the Tories honouring the memory of the kindertransport by... denying admission to three thousand child refugees, and the verdict of the second inquest for the Hillsborough disaster, but I'm surprised to see so little coverage of the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

The consequences still continue today. Even though Western Europe got over a third of the radioactive fallout, it's Ukraine, Belarus and Russia where about five million people are still living in highly contaminated areas. The replacement cover for the remains of the reactor, originally intended to be finished by 2005, isn't in place yet...

Perhaps they're waiting for the 28th, which is when - prompted by the Swedes going 'there's been a major nuclear incident upwind of us, i.e. in the Soviet Union' - the Soviets admitted that it had happened.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

And yet, still nuclear is promoted by some as a holy grail of CO2-neutral power generation. Arg. Certainly, if it were possible to bring new nuclear fission stations online within a couple years, there would be a valid proposal - but they're far from simple (or cheap), and take quite a long time to build, all toward a method that has.. certain risks in operation, not to mention afterwards, or indeed, where the fuel comes from.

I don't insist existing Western reactors should be closed, but we need to accept that running such reactors does contain some very difficult risks - very low occurrence, and quite severe outcomes. Meanwhile, solar and wind keep becoming cheaper and cheaper, with no fuel supply lines to disrupt, and should the internal systems be compromised (yay USB sticks getting plugged in anywhere), there's not exactly a terrible outcome ensuing with either.