Okay, I borrowed the title from Fountains of Wayne – quite like that song, actually. Here’s what’s on my tiny little mind this week…
Japan is glowing. The story keeps shifting on the crippled nuclear reactor in Japan. One day there’s a pressure problem in reactor 1, the next it’s #3 that’s spewing deadly isotopes. This feels a lot like the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe in that bland assurances are followed by new threats and, later, more bland assurances. The troubling part is that all six of these reactors have had problems – with both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, it was a single reactor. Add to that the multiple caches of spent fuel rods, the presence of plutonium in reactor #3, and the evident contamination of food, water, and soil, and this is, as Colbert has said, a “Disas-Turducken”.
Of course, we have similar reactors here, ludicrously close to major population centers, whose operating permits are based on equally ludicrous 50-mile perimeter population evacuation plans – eerily similar to the old Civil Defense evacuation plans that were on hand during the Cold War, when the entire population of, say, Utica, NY was instructed to head to shelters in nearby Frankfort, NY, and stop by a McDonald’s on the way for refreshment (I am not making this up). I’m glad that NY Governor Andrew Cuomo is at least looking at the Indian Point plant a bit more closely. There is no realistic evacuation scenario for this, nor is there one for the Diablo Canyon plant, conveniently located on two fault lines in southern California. Some people talk like we’re married to nuclear power. ‘Til death do us part? Really?
Another War. This action against Gaddafi forces in Libya is no doubt partly the brainchild of humanitarian interventionists like Samantha Power and others. I can understand the rationale, but again – our military is an extremely blunt instrument. Once commenced, these operations create a life of their own. It probably is worth reminding people that the Afghan War is in its tenth year, and Iraq in its ninth. Our fearless leaders have found the formula for perpetual war – no conscription, borrowed funding, and a lot of bloviating. My hope is that, in this case, Obama is as good as his word that he will back away from the fighting quickly… because lord knows, the American people seem unmotivated to stop even those conflicts they no longer support.
luv u,
jp
Clearly no reactor is designed to withstand 9.0 earthquakes and colossal, history-making tsunamis – this one least of all, which at last look appeared from above like an ashtray at the end of an all-night poker game. One can only guess at what the long-term effects of this disaster will be. As one commentator recently put it, we all (those here since 1986, at least) have a piece of Chernobyl in us. Likely we will soon have some Fukushima Daiichi alongside it. (The knowledge that structurally similar plants are operating all over the U.S. is particularly sobering, as well.)