All existing nuclear energy plants, waste and weapons are accidents waiting to happen - vile deadly toxins to be dealt with for millenium. Japan is facing the worst nuclear crisis since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Multiple explosions have hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, several reactors have lost their cooling systems, raising fears of meltdown(s). Radiation levels have been detected as far as 100 miles away. Many people have tested positive for radiation exposure, and hundreds of thousands of have been evacuated, with the number expected to rise.
In the United States there are nuclear reactors all across the nation that are quite old, some of which are virtually identical to Fukushima 1. Many have recently had their licenses extended past their planned engineering, and others are now up for license extensions. These reactors are at or approaching 40 years old, and their owners are asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval to extend their lives. These older reactors must be taken off line immediately and inspected given recent happenings in Japan, as is being done in European countries. On-site waste storage has also been an issue of some concern with recent events.
It is presumptuous for the federal government to be planning to provide for $36 billion in loan guarantees to build still more nuclear plants, when we do not yet have a permanent waste repository. The price of nuclear fission is potentially enormous when even one accident happens, must less several as now with our Japanese brothers and sisters. We are dooming civilizations for hundreds of thousands of years to having to protect and maintain enclosure upon our nuclear waste. The Roman empire lasted far shorter as will apparently China and America for failing to develop an ecologically sustainable energy policy.
Time for humanity as a family to choose which technologies they allow based upon full preponderance of the evidence. Nuclear fission has been shown to be deadly in the field of battle, along the coastal plains, unsecured wastes are growing, and through terrorist and militaristic rhetoric regarding their use. Time to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. This alert starts by demanding a closure of old U.S. nuclear plants whose lives have been extended, some virtually identical to Fukishima in design, and notes the importance of not expanding nuclear energy until/if find way to securely store waste without any leakage for millennium.
