With the recent nuclear disaster in Japan the question is again
raised about nuclear power. Is it safe enough? Should we stop
building nuclear plants? Should we shut down the plants we
have?
Dear Editor,
With the recent nuclear disaster in Japan the question is again raised about nuclear power. Is it safe enough? Should we stop building nuclear plants? Should we shut down the plants we have?
I think that it is theoretically possible to have safe nuclear power, that we have the technology to do it right if we choose to do so. But I don’t think that humanity has the discipline to actually do what it takes to run nuclear plants safely. And for that reason I think we should at least stop building new plants and we should aggressively upgrade existing plants to a far higher safety standard.
The question is – how safe is safe enough? The answer is, with nuclear, you have to get to 100 percent. We can’t be running plants that might some day require that major cities be abandoned for thousands of years. We can’t have plants that can spew radiation into the food chain that everyone on the planet has to eat. The problem today is that plant operators take safety shortcuts to save money. Safety inspectors are bribed, corrupt politicians want deregulation, standards are too weak and are not followed. As we saw in the Gulf Oil Spill, companies routinely ignore what they are supposed to do just to save a buck. But look at the costs in the long run. When safety is ignored, bad things happen.
We cannot continue to fool ourselves and merely choose to believe we can run nuclear safely when we can’t.
Marc Perkel, Gilroy
