George Monbiot’s article, published in The Gaurdian and republished in The Hindustan Times provoked me to seek the truth, and look for scientific evidences for building factories for producing nuclear energy, called nuclear power plants. I posted the following as a comment at the latter’s site. For the record and possibly for a ensuring more eye balls, I am reproducing the comments here. The context may become clear if you could read the article linked above from either of the source.
Even if the anti-nuclear lobby took advantage of the Chernobyl incident and exaggerated the deaths to be 900,000, or even if Chernobyl did not occur, I still hold that factories for generating nuclear power should not to be touched by human beings on this earth. The reasons are scientific. So, I seek scientific evidence to the
following:
- Artificially accumulating radioactive substances is inviting trouble. Even if a group of people are capable of taking care of it in a nicely sealed containers, when it leaks due to an accident it does not specifically take only those who accumulated and took control of it. It takes the lives of innocent people. Even if radioactive leak selectively kills the responsible nuclear engineers and policy makers, it is not justified. Scientists cannot leave such a thing loose and say they are not responsible. Scientists have no scientific answer to repair this damage. A deadly poison (like cyanide) will have only local effects, it kills only those who take it. Even fire kills only those who got burnt. Nuclear material is not of this kind. Nuclear material causes non-local damage.Do we scientifically know how to repair this damage? I want a journal publication to show that this kind of damage is repairable. Could the pro-nuclear power lobby provide a scientific claim published in a journal that exposed accumulated radioactive material does not cause damage to lives. At least 300 people did die at Chernobyl. Did they die because they got crushed under the rubble of concrete? Was the death of 300 innocent people cheap? Are they martyrs for the crazy nationalistic patriotic nuclear scientists pursuit or the private factory that makes justifiable amount of money? I do not see any logic in the author’s argument. Just because some anti-nuclear activist’s figures are wrong, it does not follow that nuclear energy production problem is scientifically solved.
- All other kinds of furnaces and boilers that we use in factories and thermal power plants work at a possible temperatures allowed at this cooled environment of earth where nuclei are mostly stable. Radioactive nuclei are present on Earth, but at a density that allowed life to happen and flourish. Nuclear energy produces temperatures that are not suitable for this earth. None of us scientifically know how to live or repair the perturbations caused by that scale of energy. Even if we can produce with a lot of sophistication nuclear energy, as several nuclear power plants are doing now, there is no scientific evidence that another chernobyl or tsunami does not occur ever in the future. Is there any scientific reason published in any journal so far that gives pro-nuclear energy gang the confidence that the probability of nuclear accidents of this kind is so low that we can go ahead with the factories producing nuclear power.
I am still perplexed how scientists can scientifically justify and play with a factory of nuclear energy.
While I will not defend a factory of nuclear energy, I will defend a few nuclear plants for scientific research., since this is not let loose to companies and factory management.
Seeking scientific evidence for the two cases above.
