Nuclear Power Facebook Post

From the now-defunct Nuclear Power Group on Facebook:

Karl Simanonok

Jesse it is pointless to be splitting hairs over reactor designs, because while some reactors might be a little safer than others they ALL have the potential to leak, to be the object of terrorist attacks, to be built in stupid places like by the ocean or on top of earthquake faults, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM leaves behind radwaste not only from their operation but from the entire nuclear fuel cycle that starts with mining and at some point ends with finding some terrible place to put the radwaste. So there are MOUNTAINS of old uranium tailings piles in the American Southwest for example that are STILL causing leukemias and other cancers, and they will be doing so for CENTURIES because it’s not in anybody’s economic interest to rebury the stuff safely underground and that’s because the nuclear industries DON’T PAY THE FULL COSTS OF NUCLEAR POWER but instead they do massively stupid and irresponsible things to push those costs onto future generations. The criminally psychopathic nuclear industry knows this full well, that is why they lobbied the American government to take over responsibility for dealing with and PAYING FOR nuclear waste disposal — which so far hasn’t worked out very well, has it? Wastes from solar panel and wind turbine manufacturing are ALMOST NOTHING compared to the MILLIONS OF TONS of radwaste produced annually by the criminally psychopathic nuclear power industries. It is true that medical radioisotopes are made in reactors BUT they are not typically made in power reactors either military or civilian, they are made in small reactors specialized for that purpose. It would only require one or two such specialized reactors to provide medical radioisotopes to the ENTIRE WORLD, so medical radioisotopes are NO JUSTIFICATION for the proliferation of nuclear power AND nuclear weapons all over the world. Because nuclear power and nuclear weapons are INTIMATELY RELATED THROUGH THEIR TECHNOLOGIES, growing nuclear power only grows the risks from nuclear weapons in the world. This is not a new revelation or something surprising, because SANE and SMART people have been attempting to warn the world about this fact for over 50 years now — and here we are today with their advice not taken and the proliferation of nuclear weapons so bad that we have unstable and irresponsible countries like Israel and North Korea in possession of nuclear weapons and Iran on the verge of having them, WHICH DIDN’T HAVE TO HAPPEN if the advice of sane and smart people had been adopted by ENDING NUCLEAR POWER AND WEAPONS long ago. It is long past time we took their advice.