That’s a false analogy. There are materially significant differences in the situation, which I’ll address below, but even then the same logic would be to ban deepwater drilling for oil, not to ban it’s use. It’s not the utilization of the particular product – either electricity or oil – but the production of the product which is at question.
Fortunately, the number of direct fatalities has been low, but the degree of environmental contamination is still unknown, and is ongoing. Critics are charging that there is groundwater contamination and the Japanese government is refusing to allow monitoring for radioactive contamination in the nearby ocean. Cite:
This leads directly to my answer for your next statement.
I did not make the change from being pronuclear lightly. I have not called for the end of nuclear power world-wide, but in Japan, as I am most aware of what is happening here in this country. I’ll let someone else take on the rest of the world.
The problem that I see, is the question if suitable checks and balances (could) be put in place to prevent such failures occurring again. Even now, in the middle of what has become the second worst nuclear accident, and the obfuscation from the government and Tepco are mind boggling. Nothing I’ve seen has gone anywhere to helping restore any trust in either of the institutions.
Japanese regulators are traditionally much weaker than in the US, and much closer to the particular industry. They have repeatedly shown an unwillingness to actually take on unsafe practices.
In my post above, I quoted an article which showed that Tepco has falsified data for 16 years to avoid repairs. The agency was forced to act when a whistle blower brought it out into the open, but even then the oversight as been criminally lacking.
In one of my linked articles, it was charged that the inspection of the Fukushima plants were far too brief for a facility of that complicity. So you have a company with a real history of cheating, and you don’t take sufficient steps to ensure its honesty.
If it were simply one incident with really bad luck, then I would not take this stance. It is the ongoing history of the recklessness of the companies, the incompetence of the agencies, the failure of the government to protect its citizens and the environment and now the deliberate withholding of information.
We’ve had 40 years to learn how to make things better. To glance up from our cereal bowls and notice that a couple of nuclear accidents were occurring in other places, and to strengthen our own.
There have been accidents here, including damage from earthquakes and a processing plant going critical. The response has been to falsify data and screw their eyes shut.
If you are married to a serial cheater, at some point you have to throw your hands up in the air and say that their nature isn’t going to change and call it quits.
That’s where I’m at.
