One year on, Fukushima is still spinning

[kristopher]

One year on, Fukushima is still spinning
Jim Green

The first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster is fast approaching and it promises to be another silly-season for Australia's pro-nuclear zealots.

They have form. While the crisis was unfolding in March last year, Ziggy Switkowski advised that "the best place to be whenever there's an earthquake is at the perimeter of a nuclear plant because they are designed so well."

Switkowski wants dozens of nuclear power plants built in Australia - dozens of places to shelter from earthquakes.

Even as nuclear fuel meltdown was in full swing at Fukushima, Adelaide University's Professor Barry Brook reassured us that:
"There is no credible risk of a serious accident... Those spreading FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] at the moment will be the ones left with egg on their faces. I am happy to be quoted forever after on the above if I am wrong ... but I won't be."

...

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3832080.html

[bananas]

1. LOL - Barry Brook: "I am happy to be quoted forever after on the above if I am wrong ... but I won't be."

[joshcryer]

2. He owned up to it, sad that others haven't or diminish the problem.

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/17/fukushima-17-march-summary/

[kristopher]

3. "I am happy to be quoted forever after on the above if I am wrong"

His reprehensible attempt to minimize the Fukushima disaster on behalf of the industrial interests he represents deserves to be a permanent part of his legacy.

That said the article in the OP is far wider than Brook, he is just one minor example.

[joshcryer]

4. He drank the coolaid. Many, even DUers I would've respected on the issue...

...thought it was no big deal. As I observed the catastrophe and understood the magnitude of the event, I began to realize that even I had similar biases, but I didn't reveal them because of the uncertainties in the situation. Every day it would get worse, every day the archaic nuclear squad would come out in defense of that highly archaic, highly risky technology. Every day I kept my mouth shut.

Let it not be said that the nuclear industry lobby was quite effective at creating a cheerleading squad that comes to the defense of archaic nuclear technology even while advocating better and safer technology.

[madokie]

5. This will be with us for a long long time

I just hope that the Japanese don't forget what splitting of atoms can do like they did the first time. Of all people who should never have embraced nuclear energy to begin with they did and did in it a relatively short time after big boy and fat man or whatever they were called

[kristopher]

6. They were pushed to adopt the technology by the US.

[madokie]

7. And pushed by the agency that in the beginning was created to protect us, watch out for us

The NRC is but a sounding board for the nuclear power industry and always was.