For the past few weeks I’ve been helping Greenpeace put together a new blog, recording and commenting on the various incompetencies, radioactive leaks, cover-ups, accidents, spin, radioactive leaks, empty promises, contamination, massive cost overruns, radioactive leaks, substandard reactor construction, and radioactive leaks that dribble and gush from the nuclear energy industry.
The blog is now officially live and can be found here at Nuclear Reaction. The nice people at Greenpeace have let me take some of the Chicken Yoghurt snark over there with me.
With nuclear, not a day goes by without a jaw-dropping news item. The industry news is chock full of ‘NO WAY!’ moments. Much of it is darkly, surreally comedic. If you were to write a sitcom that involved some of the nuclear incidents I’ve blogged in the last few weeks, the show would bomb as too far-fetched.
The nuclear power plant that is actively contributing to global warming. The Japanese nuclear recycling plant which will release a collective dose of radiation in the next 40 years equivalent to half of that released during the Chernobyl disaster. The Canadian nuclear plant where they lost a piece of the reactor radioactive enough to give you a year’s worth of radiation exposure in a few minutes.
The American nuclear waste storage facility with the $32 billion cost overrun. The French rivers that had ‘only’ 18,000 litres of uranium solution poured into them this month. The 100 workers at the same plant who were ’slightly’ contaminated this month. The other French nuclear leak this month, from a pipe that had been faulty for ’several years’.
The Philippine nuclear reactor which took eight years and $2.3 billion to build, took 32 years to pay off and never produced a single watt of electricity. The nuclear insider who says it’s ‘difficult to have an intelligent conversation about costs’. The state of the art French reactor with substandard welding in its steel lining and cracks in its concrete foundations.
The Japanese plant built in an earthquake zone and then closed when there was an earthquake. The miraculous Indian nuclear deal that made the bedridden walk and set the imprisoned free. The taxpayers who’ll bail out the nuclear industry in the event of an accident.
And that’s just for starters. All this and more are at Nuclear Reaction. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll wish we were making it up.