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exploring the strong nuclear bond
Mar. 20th, 2011 08:25 am One of the things that makes me shake my head about the data-free histrionics about the Fukushima reactors isn't the constant invocation of Chernobyl, which is not remotely applicable to this situation, because we don't build unshielded reactors in sheds out here in the rest of the world. It's the repetition of phrase "The Three Mile Island Disaster" or the "The Three Mile Island Catastrophe," or whatever other Hollywood film title the media source wants to tag on to rile people up about the nuclear cause célèbre of the swingin' seventies.
The trouble with that oft-mentioned "catastrophe" is that no one died. Seriously—no one. Not then, not since, not in any study performed by anyone using actual science. There's no increase in cancers or in any other health indicator in the region among the people there, or in the animals, the plant life, or anything, but the crowd that won't be swayed from their religious faith that all nuclear is all bad all the time just don't care, and stay stuck in this weird middle-of-the-cold-war pattern of fixations even though the rest of the world has moved on. Even worse, even suggesting that science may not support their view just tells them that you've been duped, or that you've bought into bad ideas. Sometimes, they won't even bother to debate with you, because you're just not worth the effort.
In this, I feel a little repentant about all the years I was too damned snobbish and sure of myself to have discussions with people who held ideas and beliefs with which I didn't agree. Aside from faith, which is essentially inarguable because it's not grounded in the empirical, everything should be up for discussion, assuming people have the time and the energy to do so. You live and you learn, though.
I remember going to bed in the early eighties with my stomach in knots because I was afraid that the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant was going to melt down or blow up or leak, and I'd daydream about ways to escape, but then I was a good little soldier of the bad side of the environmental movement, the people who would say things like "it'd be better if the human race died out," or "nothing people do is any good," and who don't think that we're as amazing and natural as all the rest of the biosphere. I'd lay in bed, up late and jittery, wondering if we'd be able to get away if the sirens started blaring, except, well, they never did.
"Well, we just dodged a bullet," the anti-nukes all say. "It's only a matter of luck that we didn't all get radiated."
They say that, but it wasn't luck that saved us from "catastrophe" at Three Mile Island—it was skilled people, doing their jobs, dealing with a stuck valve and some procedural issues, and the world did not end. The anti-nukes are scoffing at the successes at Fukushima, too, saying that it's only luck that they haven't blown, and doubting every bit of news, science, or information.
Meanwhile, they've all succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. When the artists all descended on Three Mile Island, saving the world with live triple albums and an organization of musicians for "safe energy" like coal, natural gas, and habitat-destroying hydroelectricity, they beat the message into us. We've got The Simpsons and their oh-so-comical nuclear plant spreading the word that nukes are evil, run by evil people, and in terrible conditions excused only by bribery of the officials involved. Heck, when we put something in the microwave, we "nuke" it. Of all the things the hippies were able to pull off, it seems like the only lasting one has been maintaining this nearly-global panic about nuclear energy.
The trouble with that oft-mentioned "catastrophe" is that no one died. Seriously—no one. Not then, not since, not in any study performed by anyone using actual science. There's no increase in cancers or in any other health indicator in the region among the people there, or in the animals, the plant life, or anything, but the crowd that won't be swayed from their religious faith that all nuclear is all bad all the time just don't care, and stay stuck in this weird middle-of-the-cold-war pattern of fixations even though the rest of the world has moved on. Even worse, even suggesting that science may not support their view just tells them that you've been duped, or that you've bought into bad ideas. Sometimes, they won't even bother to debate with you, because you're just not worth the effort.
In this, I feel a little repentant about all the years I was too damned snobbish and sure of myself to have discussions with people who held ideas and beliefs with which I didn't agree. Aside from faith, which is essentially inarguable because it's not grounded in the empirical, everything should be up for discussion, assuming people have the time and the energy to do so. You live and you learn, though.
I remember going to bed in the early eighties with my stomach in knots because I was afraid that the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant was going to melt down or blow up or leak, and I'd daydream about ways to escape, but then I was a good little soldier of the bad side of the environmental movement, the people who would say things like "it'd be better if the human race died out," or "nothing people do is any good," and who don't think that we're as amazing and natural as all the rest of the biosphere. I'd lay in bed, up late and jittery, wondering if we'd be able to get away if the sirens started blaring, except, well, they never did.
"Well, we just dodged a bullet," the anti-nukes all say. "It's only a matter of luck that we didn't all get radiated."
They say that, but it wasn't luck that saved us from "catastrophe" at Three Mile Island—it was skilled people, doing their jobs, dealing with a stuck valve and some procedural issues, and the world did not end. The anti-nukes are scoffing at the successes at Fukushima, too, saying that it's only luck that they haven't blown, and doubting every bit of news, science, or information.
Meanwhile, they've all succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. When the artists all descended on Three Mile Island, saving the world with live triple albums and an organization of musicians for "safe energy" like coal, natural gas, and habitat-destroying hydroelectricity, they beat the message into us. We've got The Simpsons and their oh-so-comical nuclear plant spreading the word that nukes are evil, run by evil people, and in terrible conditions excused only by bribery of the officials involved. Heck, when we put something in the microwave, we "nuke" it. Of all the things the hippies were able to pull off, it seems like the only lasting one has been maintaining this nearly-global panic about nuclear energy.
But, again, I bought it. I feared it, feared nuclear war and nuclear power and I read stories about the Goiânia accident with a juvenile mix of titillation and horror that left me tossing and turning at night. I bought the faith of it, the suspicion of science and scientists and "the industry," as they call it, and that was fine with me for a long, long time.
That is, until Greenpeace and everyone in "the movement" started to flip out about the Cassini-Huygens mission that was getting ready to launch in 1997. People I'd previously accepted as hip advocates for "my" side, like Jello Biafra, started railing and shrieking about the "inexcusable" threat to the human race of the plutonium-based RTG that powered the probe, claiming that it would poison the whole world. Insane, screeching websites, resplendent in their 1997 HTML, warned that the end was nigh. It's apparently still nigh, but nigh is such a vague thing, you know?
This time around, though, I had an inside track. I was an alumnus of the Goddard Spaceflight Center's Explorer Post 1275 (of the late, lamented Explorer Scout program), and Goddard is where they build these things. If you're on the outside, you see spooky skunkworks filled with scary scientists. Inside, it's just folks—physicists, engineers, scientists, planners, and other smart people, and I knew about how an RTG worked, and what would happen if the rocket blew up, or the probe only made a low orbit and reentered the atmosphere. The anti-nukes all claimed to know better, but they'd quote lies, made-up worst case scenarios, and outright fruit loop tinfoil hat theories, and I started getting into arguments where I'd be branded a "right-winger."
That is, until Greenpeace and everyone in "the movement" started to flip out about the Cassini-Huygens mission that was getting ready to launch in 1997. People I'd previously accepted as hip advocates for "my" side, like Jello Biafra, started railing and shrieking about the "inexcusable" threat to the human race of the plutonium-based RTG that powered the probe, claiming that it would poison the whole world. Insane, screeching websites, resplendent in their 1997 HTML, warned that the end was nigh. It's apparently still nigh, but nigh is such a vague thing, you know?
This time around, though, I had an inside track. I was an alumnus of the Goddard Spaceflight Center's Explorer Post 1275 (of the late, lamented Explorer Scout program), and Goddard is where they build these things. If you're on the outside, you see spooky skunkworks filled with scary scientists. Inside, it's just folks—physicists, engineers, scientists, planners, and other smart people, and I knew about how an RTG worked, and what would happen if the rocket blew up, or the probe only made a low orbit and reentered the atmosphere. The anti-nukes all claimed to know better, but they'd quote lies, made-up worst case scenarios, and outright fruit loop tinfoil hat theories, and I started getting into arguments where I'd be branded a "right-winger."
Me—a right-winger. Really? Because I know science?
Of course, Cassini-Huygens didn't destroy the world. The anti-nukes I knew didn't ever take my suggestion to protest nuclear weapons, which are actually a danger to the human race, other than to add more snide bumper stickers to their cars.
Huygens discovered wonderful things. Nuclear power chokes off the clouds of coal smoke and the pollutant-filled boreholes of hydraulic fracturing gas mining, and saves the birds from windpower Cuisinarts, and powers electric cars so they actually have no emissions, but no, it's all bad. We need safe energy, right, like the "clean coal" that's leveling my adopted second state, or the trickle of solar electric that's unaffordable for all but the wealthiest celebrities. It's all bad because of nuclear waste, even though the waste from all the other "safe" energy sources either just rain down on us, pile up in mountain valleys, or drain into the sea.
We could be clear and see nuclear power as a step as we transition from the Victorian coal smoke world to one powered by renewables and sustained with efficiency and good engineering, but we're just going to dig in, take our factless hysteria to heart, and preserve that void, that yawning gap between the coal mine and solar panels on every roof, more or less guaranteeing that we'll never make that step. Fortunately, we're not the only country in the world, so someone else will lead the way.
In the meantime, I'll be arguing. People will call me "right-winger" in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and I'll just be what I've learned to be after falsely trusting one "wing" to keep me safe against the other "wing." The thing is, you can only fly when you employ both, but arguing that gets me nothing but grief. It's a knee-jerk world out there, and I've jerked my share, so I know.
At night, though, with 20% of the light I use to read coming from the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, I can tuck in my bookmark, set my book aside, curl up in the blankets with the dogs at my feet, and sleep an untroubled sleep.
We could be clear and see nuclear power as a step as we transition from the Victorian coal smoke world to one powered by renewables and sustained with efficiency and good engineering, but we're just going to dig in, take our factless hysteria to heart, and preserve that void, that yawning gap between the coal mine and solar panels on every roof, more or less guaranteeing that we'll never make that step. Fortunately, we're not the only country in the world, so someone else will lead the way.
In the meantime, I'll be arguing. People will call me "right-winger" in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and I'll just be what I've learned to be after falsely trusting one "wing" to keep me safe against the other "wing." The thing is, you can only fly when you employ both, but arguing that gets me nothing but grief. It's a knee-jerk world out there, and I've jerked my share, so I know.
At night, though, with 20% of the light I use to read coming from the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, I can tuck in my bookmark, set my book aside, curl up in the blankets with the dogs at my feet, and sleep an untroubled sleep.
