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Showing posts from March, 2011

Wave goodbye to fission

I've spent a lot of time mulling over nuclear power, specifically the Japanese plants. Why would anyone want to expose a population, and the environment to inherently harmful and dangerous chemical reactions? How is it justified, and what glitzy marketing scheme actually convinced people to OK it? In all my mulling and weighing, I've realized that nuclear power is in fact imperative to Japan. A curse indeed, Japan doesn't have fossil fuels to utilize as an energy source, and it does not want to be dependent on imports. As it seems, Japan's adopted nuclear fission as its home brewed fossil fuel. To address the fuel rod proponents, yes, I can see how meltdowns could be paralleled in harm and distress to coal mine disasters and oil spills. (Though do you think there could ever be a glorious Chilean miners-type rescue in a nuclear meltdown? EDIT: see Fukushima 50: WSJ - 3-24-2011 ) I agree that across the board, all sectors of the energy market exhibit regulatory ne