For more than 50 years, the US Navy has operated nuclear vessels, hundreds of them. In fact they can boast over 5,400 reactor years of service without incident.
I don’t recall even Greenpeace ever spouting off about a carrier lighting up some remote region of the world with its toxic sludge, or its radioactive byproducts. Oh, quite the contrary, heaven forbid one of their smelly diesel burning activist transporters ever breaks down or is accosted by the Japanese whaling fleet in international waters. It’s the very same Navy with their mobile nuclear reactors that they would call on to save them from their predicament.
Now coal power plants kill people all the time. They pollute, blow up, burn (one for 52 years) and just destroy every piece of the planet they come in contact with. But we haven’t stopped using them or building them. But 3 major incidents from 3 nuclear reactors in 60 years, and “whoa there” we better stop building and operating these. Hey don’t get me wrong, I would no more want Russia to provide me with a nuclear reactor than I would want a pilot from Aeroflot, but we can all agree that our navy has done a great job for 60 years. Maybe they can teach the nuclear industry a few things.
I, for one, am okay with my family living under the umbrella of nuclear power until we can have something better, that is. Is there a chance something could go wrong? …Yes, it could. There is a chance that the very nuclear plant my family and I live under may go bang or drill a hole all the way to china or something, … yes, but only a chance. There is, however, not much doubt a coal plant will. It will, …it has, and they do all the time. I am happier to live under a potential danger than an actual guaranteed one.
Now, I am ready to hear what you have to say. But… I want more than rhetoric. I don’t want to hear something you plagiarized from a Greenpeace brochure or dragged from some obscure website that still believes aliens landed in Roswell. It’s time for a serious debate on nuclear and its real impact and not its perceived ones. I look forward to seeing some common sense and rational thought on the matter and not simply fear mongering by those with an axe to grind.
As the Editor of Earth911.com, it is not only my duty to discuss the environment; its my responsibility to ensure we only publish the truth in an un-biased and unfettered fashion, so you, our readers can see the whole truth and nothing but. Then you have the medium to share your thoughts, and have your say.
Let the conversation begin…