Wrongly Wrong

I think we can all agree that the events in Japan are a tragedy of unimaginable scope and, were it not for the fact that 30 years of following Neoliberal claptrap has hollowed out the American economy, we would be able to provide more of the needed to help. But what with one war or another and endless rounds of tax cuts. One way to help get us moving in the right direction is to stop getting things wrongly wrong.

One of these news events that seems to demand note, but about which a humble political blogger can say little. Does the fact that an earthquake can serious damage a nuclear power plant without necessarily causing a radiation leak make us more or less sanguine about the idea of building additional nuclear facilities? I’m not sure whether this counts as “see, it’s risky!’ or “see, even in an earthquake it’s not that bad.”

No radiation leaks? How about we put this one in the jumping the gun to make an inapt point department.

And:

If we imagine a hundred years into the future of fossil fuels and a hundred of nuclear power, at the end of a century, how much damage do we imagine each will have caused? I suspect that if it's really an either/or, the nuclear route is likely much safer.


Again, I'm not wanting to say anything definitive. But even at these moments when we see the most frightening side of nuclear power, I think we should still draw back and look at the global -- meant both literally and figuratively -- costs of different fuels and consider the possibility that nuclear power is actually safer for our own health and that of the planet.

While were imagining things, we could imagine a world that uses less energy and relies on sustainable energy sources to supply it that would be yet even better and safer, which we should have done lo these many years ago. If we sketch our options as being bad or worse we are like Jason without the dove. The reason to use a neither nor as opposed to an either or is that neither fossil nor nuclear is ever going to be safe enough.