More thoughts on the insanity of investing in nuclear power

Since the Japanese tsunami damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant earlier this year, I’ve posted several times at Katalusis on the dangers of nuclear power: here, here, and here.

And yes, I noted Germany’s wise decision to shut down its nuclear plants.

So it’s gratifying this morning to read Lester R. Brown and Yul Choi’s  “global viewpoint” at the Christian Science Monitor titled, “Fukushima fallout: time to quit nuclear power altogether.”

In a nutshell:

Experience in northern Japan illustrates that even incremental investment in nuclear power threatens human civilization. The Fukushima disaster should once and for all drive global society away from nuclear power, and toward renewable energy.

Brown and Choi effectively summon rational people around the globe to come together in an all out effort to ban any further proliferation of nuclear plants and close the existing monstrosities as soon as possible. Let’s heed their wise counsel:

In August, just months following the tsunami-induced crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, the 2011 World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs gathered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two Japanese cities destroyed in 1945 by atom bombs, becoming forever linked to the birth of nuclear weapons and the nuclear age. The world conference was formed in 1995 to work toward a nuclear-weapon ban and foster solidarity and support for A-bomb survivors and victims of nuclear disasters.

A few of the 70,000 victims of the Fukushima disaster joined us at the August meeting, riveting the attendees with first-hand accounts of the devastating effects of radioactive contamination. According to the reports delivered by these eyewitnesses, nearly 300,000 Fukushima children continue to live in wretched conditions, continuously exposed to the dangers of radioactivity. The health hazards of radioactivity are far deadlier to children than the effects of radiation on adults. Annual blood tests are now a life-preserving necessity to track the potential onset of disease.

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