by B. R. GOWANI
Dangerous mission: the helicopters dropped four loads on the reactor as pilots were restricted to 40 minutes flying time over the Fukushima plant. PHOTO/AP/Yomiuri Shimbun/Daily Mail
In Japan, the workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant are on a suicide mission to cool down the reactors and to control the radiation emissions. It’s an international crisis and has made people world over worried about the use of nuclear energy.
But if you visit the World Nuclear Association website, the picture there is absolutely different; it’s cool, that is, there is no heat of the Fukushima reactors, and the pictures on the site have no relation to the Japanese crisis. The site proudly announces:
“As of Today: 14424 Reactor-Years of Worldwide Experience in Producing Civil Nuclear Power”
Out of the six (World Nuclear News) WNN Latest Headlines, only one is Japan related: “Progress by on-site workers.” Even the name of Japan is missing from the headline. This is how the article begins:
“The high levels of radiation braved by workers at the scene in Fukushima Daiichi appear to have reduced after the expansion of the workforce and announcements of infrastructure improvements to come.”
The people with power and greed (of any kind) lives in a windowless world and develops an immunity power from the real things happening around them.
Nonnuclear world
It was a different world when the United States used the atomic weapons on Japanese cities in 1945. The weapons allowed the US to establish its nuclear hegemony, at least, till 1949 when the Soviet Union became an atomic power. Today, China, India, Britain, Israel, France, North Korea, and Pakistan are also nuclear powers and the possibility cannot be ruled out for other countries to become the new members of the atomic club.
India is a nuclear power but it was helpless against a 2008 terror attack by the Pakistan based Islamic militant groups because Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons too; any misjudgment from either country could have produced a tragedy of an unimaginable scale.
So the nuclear weapons have lost the edge it used to have.
The US introduced the nuclear weapons to proclaim itself a Super Power and it succeeded with “shock and awe”, the words the US used for its 2003 war against Iraq. Since 1945, the world has changed a great deal and currently it is heading towards a multi-power world, where the US is bound to lose its world hegemony–the process is already underway. In this situation, it will be befitting for the US to initiate the nuclear-weapons-free world, this would not only earn the US immense goodwill from most of the world, but would also make it safer for the US and the rest of the world.
As far as the energy and electricity related nuclear power is concerned, about 6% of the world’s energy and approximately 14% of the electricity is derived from the nuclear power. The percentages are not that high that if the reliance on nuclear power is discontinued, the world would drown into total darkness. Of course, there are many people in the world who live in darkness. But the existing and the resulting (due to discontinuation of nuclear power) darkness came be overcome through cut down in consumption and changing of life style. And it is possible.
The changed life style and less consumption will be much better than the current nuclear nightmare the people of Japan are going through.
Imagine for a moment: If some crazy person were to fly a plane into the Fukushima Plant, how much damage it would do.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com