Not so long ago, before the Nuclear incident in Fukushima, you could still hear the more pragmatic of environmentalists; such as the French icon Nicholas Hulot, defend nuclear power as a necessary evil. Before Fukushima’s alleged nuclear tragedy, the French Socialist Party would not even have considered giving in to the Green party’s grotesque demand to replace France’s huge nuclear park. Currently, nuclear energy accounts for 3/4 of France’s power supply. If there was ever a country capable of demonstrating the usefulness of nuclear power, it was France. Next time you take a train in France, remember that it is hooked up to the nuclear power grid and therefore not generating the substantial carbon footprint it would in other countries where coal is more commonplace.
Since Fukushima, everyone has been talking about rolling back on nuclear because it’s now considered just too dangerous. Why? On the face of it, Fukushima might look like a disaster, partly because it’s inevitably associated with the real tragedy that was the preceding tsunami and also because it reminds us all of Chernobyl. But is that a fair assessment? People keep talking about the Fukushima tragedy. Catastrophe maybe, but tragedy? Tragedy implies heavy loss of life. So far, there are scarcely any reports of lives directly lost from radiation poisoning at Fukushima. It took an 8.9 earthquake/tsunami to lead to a reactor meltdown that has yet to claim lives. While there are many lessons to be learned from this incident, there is also a fact that needs to be finally accepted: Nuclear energy is not nearly as dangerous as people purport it to be.
Maruko said,
November 26, 2011 at 17:13
Nice to read your comment about the Nuclear incident in Fukushima.
I’m a university student in Japan currently studying economics and will graduate from uni next year : )! I’ve just found your blog for reading English and your writing is such worth reading.
I leave my comment to show you my feeling as one of Japanese people.(Sorry, I will probably make some mistakes in English! )
Japanese people have been frightened with radiation poisoning since 3.11 as well as foreigners though most people are trying not to show their real confusion and anxious about radiation poisoning for people still live in Fukushima, I guess.
Well, I agree with your opinion at some point, however, “Japan” shouldn’t rely on or I ought to say “accept” Nuclear anymore.
I believe that those huge earthquakes and horrible tsunami were natural disasters but the explosion of Fukushima’s atomic power plants were caused by human. Unfortunately, Japan has many earthquake plates and we used to think we were ready for another big earth quakes as we’d learnt a lot from last huge earthquake in Hanshin area. But the reality is that we were so arrogant towards nature.Setting the atomic power plants at that place was totally mistake and all Japanese people have responsibility for it as nobody had pointed it out loudly before the tsunami swallowed stop button.I can’t say same thing for foreign countries use nuclear but Japan CAN’T rely on nuclear energy anymore in many reasons…: (
I hope you would read this comment carelessly : )haha
Anyway, thank you for you are still thinking about this topic seriously.
Take care!