Ticking Time Bomb

According to the LA Times,

More than 50,000 people were evacuated Saturday after an explosion at a Japanese nuclear plant hurled plumes of smoke over the Pacific Ocean and sent officials scrambling to calm residents already shattered by the largest earthquake in the nation's recorded history...

Of course, government officials are telling their citizens that there is no danger of a meltdown of the plant's nuclear core. Isn't that what governments ALWAYS say in an effort to avoid chaos and to protect their own arses?

Japan's NHK television reported that at least three residents among 90 tested at random showed excess exposure to radiation. The people had apparently been exposed as they waited outside a school for evacuation by helicopter, the network said, citing local officials...

Can you imagine what the pundits on Faux Nooz would be saying if this situation unfolded in the US? I'm guessing they would decry the media report of contamination as some sort of socialist left-wing plot to "politicize" nuclear power!! In short order, their crack news investigators would go all out to demonize the 3 individuals with radiation exposure as well as the team testing them.

I totally agree with what Keith Olbermann posted yesterday at the FOK News Channel.

Time to shut down this nation’s nuclear energy program. For good. Already, nuclear energy apologists are formulating their “yeahbuts” – yeah but… it’s not like we’ll ever have an 8.9 earthquake in the U.S. (check your U.S. Geological Survey and CalTech data for earthquake probabilities in Southern California, The Bay Area, and elsewhere, and you’ll realize the proverbial “Big One” in each area is overdue, in some cases by decades). Yeah but… the real damage here was from the tsunami and we don’t have tsunamis in this country (that’s why Hawaii and Northern California were on alert this morning – after an earthquake halfway around the world). Yeah but… our American safety technology is so much superior and there’s American Exceptionalism and let’s wave the flag and it’s for the economy and and and…

Nuclear energy is a ticking time bomb. Nuclear power plants always are one climatic event or terrorist attack away from the potential to do great harm to the planet and the beings who live on it. Even if this were not so, the byproducts of the nuclear process remain incredibly toxic for thousands of years and we still haven't developed a safe method for disposing of them!!!