Technology and Gaia

Olympic Deal with the Devil

The Olympic Committee has just awarded Tokyo, Japan with the 2020 Summer Olympics -- the 3^rd Olympics to go to Japan while Istanbul and Turkey are still waiting for their first ‘act-of-acceptance’ by the great Western powers, and Spain’s  hopes to revive its moribund, 25% unemployment ‘economy’  are dashed with its failed bid for a second Olympics in Madrid.

Whatever the rationales for preferring Japan, the current and, in all likelihood, ongoing, nuclear power plant crisis, should have dissuaded the great Olympics heads, but hope and Japanese ‘connections’ probably won the day.

Now, some 2½ years after the original earthquake-tsunami disaster triggered the meltdown of     3 separate reactors at the Fukushima plant, the special storage tanks have been found to be leaking their toxic, radiation-filled water underground, threatening humans in the area and contaminating the nearby sea.

According to published reports – with illustrations no less – (see G&M, Sept.5/13, A10-11) --   Japan has come up with a novel solution; it is planning to build a 1.4 kilometer and 30 meters deep ‘ice wall’ all around the disabled and leaking plant  – a super ‘refrigeration’ unit on a scale never attempted before in human history, so it is untested, and, of course, susceptible to breakdown due to human error, mechanical failure or another act of nature.

Boy, do I feel reassured my 2020 Olympic tickets will be worth the mega-buckets. After all, I’m sure they would be refunded if another massive and more widespread nuclear disaster resulted, or I could be part of the ‘experience’ on a nice, summer day!

 

PS:  To Margaret Wente et al. who have  recently become nuclear power plant fans and see it as the real and only ‘viable’ alternative for ‘carbon free’ cheap energy  -- to save us from Global Warming:  wake up!!!

The costs of nuclear breakdowns are not just in the immediate dead bodies – well under 100 in both Chernobyl and Fukushima – and disruption in energy output.   Any disabled and radioactive chambers or water tanks are lifelong, century long hazards – just waiting to be accidentally uncorked!!!

Put simply, nuclear power is a pact with the devil, and he always gets his due -- sooner or later!

 

PS 2: Both the 3 Mile Island nuclear disaster and Chernobyl were ‘stopped’ with less than 30 minutes to total meltdown and the dreaded China Syndrome.

Look it up, and if you use Wikipedia under “Nuclear Meltdown”, ignore the optimism at the start and go to the last part of the History section, where leading nuclear physicists Ralph Lapp and W. K. Ergen are far, far, far less hopeful.