on nuclear power

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last week, you know about the crisis in Japan.

The aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, alone, are horrific. Bodies wash up on the shores of Fukushima, limp and still like ocean debris. Houses crumble. Whole lives are overturned. Natural catastrophe in and of itself is terrible, but even though the seas have calmed, the danger isn't over.

And that's all thanks to us.

Nuclear power is a hotly debated subject, it always has been. I, personally, am not comfortable with something that leaves waste we are unable to safely dispose of. Even a minute amount of exposure to radiation is harmful, as evidenced by the mass evacuations occuring around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant (a 20km zone, so says this article). It's dangerous to be around unprotected, it's complicated, uraniam mining is harmful to both people and the environment, and when something goes wrong, the after affects can be disasterous.

Chernobyl is, while not the most recent nuclear disaster, certainly the most famous. On April 26, 1986 a systems test led to an explosion that unleashed enough radiation to displace over 336, 000 people, and leave the nuclear plant's surrounding city of Pripyat abandoned to this day. The effects on people and the environment were terrible: 203 people were immidietely hospitalized, of whom 31 died. Radiation drifted through the air to settle as far as Canada. Food produced near the area was adversely affected. The affects are still felt today, from higher cancer rates among survivers and those within the area, to food still being under threat of contamination due to the wind-blown radiation. One of the most noticible environmental affects is the Red Forest, whose pine trees were destroyed by settling radioactive particles, making it one of the most contaminated areas in the world.

Why nuclear power is still used after such an incident both puzzles and enrages me. You would think, given the accident's after affects, that people would think that it was far too dangerous to keep using, that the risks outweigh the gains, and that people and the planet deserve better than the threat of nuclear disaster.

You would think.

Now, 24 years later, another nuclear plant is under threat, making a natural disaster a million time worse. It's not nature's fault; earthquakes and tsunamis happen. But we have to be smart enough to either not put things liable to explode out of nature's line of fire, or not put them there at all. I vote not at all. We are doing our planet and ourselves a huge disservice by using nuclear power, because for all that it can be "clean", if something happens, we put everything at risk. Our homes. Our families. Our health. Our Earth. Escaped radiation leaves traces in trees and soil and in our skin, and long after the rubble has been cleared and normality resumed, the consequences still grow. Like a cancer. As cancer.

So lets not let it.



To help with disaster relief, please make a donation to the Red Cross. And/or head to help_japan, a fandom auction wherein the proceeds go towards charities that give aid to Japan.

(Images borrowed from here and here.)