Turning tides?

Time to get serious.

So nuclear is in the news! Hoorah!
It’s good to see the issues out in public domain again, particularly as the Government has seemed so keen to push its pro-nuke agenda without fair consultation or debate.
It took me about 4 hours yesterday to trawl through the stuff surrounding this one news story, so I’ll try be a bit briefer in summing up my own stance.

It all started in The Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/nuclear-power-yes-please-1629327.html

Would it be wrong to make a joke about taking ‘Green Living’ a little too literally?
Probably.

The article caused such a stir because four of the ‘country’s leading environmentalists’ have come out in favour of nuclear power.
I’ll do a post specifically about the four guys, and others that have crossed over, soon, for now though here’s some summation and analysis. Deep Breath!
The fact that it’s being classed as front page material simply because these guys have done a U-turn seems a bit odd, as the paper acknowledged afterwards –

“Is it a big deal that the Green have changed?
Yes and no. Symbolically it is hugely important. Plans for new reactors are still expected to raise hackles but the Green movement’s acknowledgement of nuclear as the lesser of two evils will take away some of the sting. Ironically, it is the environmental agenda that made the economics of commercial nuclear expansion work.”

This little paragraph speaks volumes.
Firstly, please don’t equate these four to an entire movement; there are loads of people who have examined the facts and feel that nuclear is no more required than it ever was, probably even less. And in a pedantic sense, who the fuck is ‘the Green’… and what are ‘hackles’? You’d hope for a slighter higher degree of journalism when questioning issues as complicated as nuclear power.

Now, as Alanis Morisette failed to teach us, irony is a strange beast-

‘Like rain on your wedding day?’

That’s not irony guys! It’s just a damn shame.
So is the fact that four men can spend there lives trying to convince people about the dangers of global warming, staring at C02 figures that fill them with such fear, such desperation, that they feel propelled to a middle ground of doing something, anything, in order to see some kind of change.

Economics is essentially the study of confidence and fear- as we enter a period of fear after 10 years of confidence; people are more malleable to change. And so the environmental movement’s biggest weakness becomes clear-
We’ve distilled a fear of global warming, without sufficiently offering hopeful alternatives… I mean how much of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was about the future?
So there is fear- environmental and economic.
Nuclear science deals in the ‘future’, it sells itself as hope, clearly these four bought into that.

‘A free ride when you’re already late?’

Strangely, this other nugget of Morrisette explains pretty well how the four environmentalists are selling nuclear.
Essentially their main argument seems to be that Britain should be including nuclear power in plans for our future, along with renewables.
At first this seems almost reasonable. Diversity can only be a good thing right?
Well, perhaps not.
These guys know all too well that this has not been a level playing field.
Nuclear power has had such huge swathes of funding over the years, completely dwarfing money put into renewables. It aint free, that’s for sure. There is also no doubt that the two are competing for a similar sector, that for most of the big businesses it’s a choice between them, rather than investment in both, which with money stretched would no doubt equate to less energy per £ of research and development. So why should we continue to believe in something that can only provide 4% emission cuts by 2025, and in no way deal with the 85% of fossil fuel usage which is NOT energy based. Why should we let these companies and politicians sideline renewables into nothing more than a nice photo on a website, a token gesture?
Well, it seems to me that we shouldn’t.

Nuclear will not solve climate change.

Yet this is the argument these guys have found themselves behind, whether purposely or not.

Beyond that, I’d argue that nuclear can’t even compete regardless of our warming atmosphere. Put simply, the economics of commercial nuclear expansion have never worked and will never work.
The current EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) model being built in Finland is at least £1 Billion over budget and around 3 years behind schedule- Areva, the designers of the EPR, have seen a loss in profit of over 20% due to the plant in Finland.
Meanwhile EDF announced a 20% increase in costs for its third generation EPRs at Flamanville, France. The company is pushing flat out to have this flagship reactor online by 2012, so the increase reflects higher investment after the ASN (French Nuclear Safety Authority) temporarily shut the site down last year, after just 6 months building, due to safety worries.
These are the companies, the French-state backed companies, which will be building our new generation of nuclear power plants.

Our last build in Britain came ten years ago after Margaret Thatcher outlined a similarly pro-nuke plan to Brown’s; for 10 new plants. Of course only one was built, at twice the estimated cost.
If (as is so often woefully, falsely, portrayed) the argument here is Coal VS Nuclear, you’d expect Thatcher of all people to plough on into a nuclear dawn! But it didn’t make economic sense, the costs were too high, the delivery of results too late.

Yet, as The Independent states- ‘Symbolically’ coming out in favour of nuclear power looks decisive, never mind if such statements never reach fruition.

If you can name me one nuclear power build in the history of the planet that hasn’t gone over budget or over deadline I’ll be mightily impressed.
They always have, they still are, they always will.

Things haven’t changed.

Proliferation of weapons, huge decommissioning and construction costs, unfair tax-payer subsidies, potential accidents, uranium mining, transportation, terrorism, cancer…

these are the eternal problems of nuclear power.
Nuclear had its chance, renewables deserve a real one.

To let fear over global warming transport us all into a catastrophic reliance on both uranium and oil would be a massive mistake.
To miss this opportunity to put our faith in tested, diverse means of renewable energy, rather than another generation of generators which do not live up to their hyperbole but do swallow enormous amounts of much needed cash, would be to undermine decades of hard work by the environmental movement.

The future doesn’t have to be nuclear and there are still plenty of environmentalists who stand by this, not out of dogmatic ‘faith’, but out of hope in far cleaner, local, accountable and renewable energy.

D:Ream's on the Horizon.

'You can walk my path
You can wear my shoes
Let her talk like me
And be an angel too
But maybe You ain't never gonna feel this way
You ain't never gonna know me
But I know you...
Teach you now that
Things can only get better
Can only get, can only get
They get on from here
You know, I know that

Things can only get better'

D:Ream- Things can only get better.

‘The dream of a short-cut to clean unlimited energy forever must remain just that, a dream.’

-BBC2 Horizon program outro.

SO! One post down and I havnt been snaffled by a wave of angry physicists just yet...

come on guys?! I expected a far swifter onslaught of 'HARD COLD FACTS' from people with 'DECADES OF EXPERIENCE IN THE NUCLEAR SECTOR' (I.e 19 year old undergraduates who enjoy copy-pasting yesterday's AWESOME lecture over the internet and don't watch 'The Simpsons' because IT'S TOO CHUFFIN BIASED).

I realise there are some nice people involved in nuclear science though, like cuddly Brian Cox, who spent an hour last week on BBC2 wandering around various restricted nuclear sites looking- one part HUNK, forty parts exuberant child in an atomic ball pool.

Seriously- why do TV scientists think that the more they behave like children on a sugar rush the more that we, the lowly public, will buy their bullshit?

To be fair, Coxy did explain the science of fusion pretty well, and spent his first 15 minutes basically having an aural wank over 'our glorious sun' which did make one feel rather fuzzy with awe.

Only to say that... no... we shouldnt be harnessing this incredible power... we should be creating it!

I was so pissed off at the whole thing that I wrote a ridiculously long letter to the Guardian which they didnt print... the fuckers. Can anyone smell a CONSPIRACY? Jokes... The Guardian are about the only mainstream paper not firmly fellating the cold green rod of the nuclear power lobby...

here it is anyway, its a bit less reliant on crass sex references and CAPITAL LETTERS than my usual output. I've inserted some actions for you to follow at home.

'Monday night’s Horizon programme, with its ‘Top Gear’ style camera shots and boy-band physicist, Brian Cox, was a depressingly biased plea for a ‘Manhattan Project’ style drive for fusion power. APPLAUSE. This follows Horizon’s investigation into Rusi Taleyarkhan’s BOO claims that collapsing bubbles could be harnessed for power, an hour long celebration of fusion, similar to Cox’s, which then spent the last five minutes of broadcast proving the results as a scam (last year Taleyarkhan was charged with two counts of misconduct). If the BBC wishes to put fantasy on at primetime, I suggest they stick to DR Who. RAUCUS LAUGHTER Neither program gave any voice to the sizeable number of scientists who believe fusion will take more than 30 years, offering no solution to imminent climate chaos, let alone those who say it will never work. Nor did they compare the billions of pounds spent on this scientific wet dream compared to proven renewable technologies. MURMURS OF AGREEMENT The USA alone has spent around $20 Billion on Fusion, as it did on the bomb, and where has that got it in the past 50 years? I would like to make it clear that while we might not be bending the ears’ of the BBC science team, there are a growing number of young people who are determined to not let false promises of ‘free, limitless energy’ take precedence as they have done in the past. And that while HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant seemingly attempt their own callous ‘fusion’ in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, we are very aware of the serious dangers posed by Nuclear technology. Cox’s past life as a keyboard player with D:Ream, whose biggest hit ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ became a New Labour anthem, seems to have tarnished him with an overt optimism in science’s biggest ‘If’. There are plenty of young people in Britain who realise that we need to choose scientific solutions due to their applicable effect, not their exciting nature or potential for esteem. Cox’s song and its ethos are a symbol of the past. We have to adapt, and propaganda like this program only serve to blind us from the reality. There is no ‘get out of jail free card’ Brian, and science like this is what incarcerated us in the first place. We won’t let it happen again.

STANDING OVATION'



So yeh, you can sit back down now... and enjoy some videos.

You can watch the program yourself on the BBCI player and make your own judgement-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hr6bk/Horizon_20082009_Can_We_Make_a_Star_on_Earth/

Here's a great video from Greenpeace that shows the other side of the argument-

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/the-convenient-solution-20070718

and here's the one you've been waiting for...

I've started so I'll finish.

"the one true resolve of the flame and the bullet is a pile of flesh like an unmanned puppet;
a set of bones gone suddenly still.
and in a lab under every flag right now,
someone's splitting atoms,
and inventing new breakfast cereals in the shape of their nation's borders and drawing brand new maps, discreetly expanding their nation's borders.

it's root root root for the home team.
shout like your dad at the tv screen.
tie a dollar bill around a circus flea,
the fee to flee what you can't see.
(yo, i agree with glee with me).

somebody told me when the bomb hits everybody in a two mile radius will be instantly sublimated,
but if you lay face down on the ground for some time,
avoiding the residual ripples of heat,
you might survive,
permanently fucked up and twisted like you're always underwater refracted.
oh but if you do go gas,
there's nothing you can do if the air that was once you is mingled and mashed with the kicked up molecules of the enemy's former body.
big-kid-tested, motherfucker approved. "

-Hymie's Basement - 21st Century Pop Song

Hi.
I'm Joel.
This is a blog I've decided to create.
That song does a very good job of summing up the indignation that bubbles through my stomach whenever I think of the fantastical flirtations with disaster being perpetrated in the name of 'science' all over the world right now.

I'm not going to spend ages dryly discussing the physics behind nuclear technology.
I wouldnt want to bore you.

I am however going to try do my best to keep an up to date overview of developments within the worlds of nuclear power and weapons, offering my opinions as a young (well... 19) person who will have to inherit these fucking atrocious legacies.

It seems that now is a very good time indeed to start caring about nuclear weapons and power- both are being renewed without democratic consultation by a government which colludes callously with the nuclear lobby- a strange, huge, dangerous entity which for so long seemed dormant.

I feel it's important to show that there are a new generation of anti-nuclear campaigners forming right now, determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to build on the achievements of people like CND, The Druridge Bay Campaign and Trident Ploughshares.

BUT ANYWHO, It won't all be that serious. Honest.
There's hillarity lurking in the depths of nuclear politics- in the dodgy deals and hillarious direct actions, in the Sellafield seaguls with radioactive shit and the weird 'environmentalists' who want to bury plutonium in their gardens.
Plus, I'll try get some friends in to write things too... whilst throwing music in every so often too,
Speaking of which-

Here's a exuberant 'slice' of brass band crunk from a sweet free mix I got off http://www.modiba.net/ which sounds like Zach De La Rocha (but better) literally spitting with rage over some antibalas...

I wish my school brass band had sounded like this... rather than an the Wizard of Oz tinman with flatulence and asthma.

Youngblood Brass Band- Nuclear Summer
Right click save as tecnophobes!
SEE- caring is FUNKY.

up and atom kids,
x
(I promise to never use that phrase, or the word funky ever again- thought I should get them out of the way early... but realised there is no HTML which translates irony... i?!)