Ex-NRC head: NO nuke plants are safe in US - what next?

Wow, I somehow missed this one.

Gregory Jaczko, former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in early April that all 104 US nuclear power plants are flawed, namely that they have unfixable safety problems and (if we're going to continue to keep nuclear power as part of our mix) they should not have their lifespans extended and should be replaced with newer-technology plants.

Asked why he did not make these points when he was chairman, Dr. Jaczko said in an interview after his remarks, “I didn’t really come to it until recently.” 

“I was just thinking about the issues more, and watching as the industry and the regulators and the whole nuclear safety community continues to try to figure out how to address these very, very difficult problems,” which were made more evident by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, he said. “Continuing to put Band-Aid on Band-Aid is not going to fix the problem.” 

This is a serious issue. 

The solution? He recommends making new plants smaller sized, for one thing.

Now, Jaczko's time at the NRC was contentious, as the story notes. But, there too, it was in the issue of safety. And anti-nuclear activists have long charged the NRC with being an industry lapdog.

That said, I'm one of those climate change worriers who says nuclear power needs to be part of the picture in our energy future. It needs to be safer, yes. It also could become even more efficient, ie, some sort of breeder reactor. Or maybe thorium-fueled reactors will turn out to be the real deal.

Renewables can't be all of the mix, unless you want to get rid of utility companies, period, or unless you're ready to start investing in storage. Nuclear power helps us transition further away from coal, and not rely almost solely on natural gas. Plus, as the western United States dries out more and more with climate change, there's going to be less and less hydropower available.

We should not see this as a chance to junk nuclear power once and for all.

Germany (vaunted by many American non-skeptical-thinking green types) did just that after Fukushima. Result? Despite its rooftop solar, it's greatly increased the amount of coal it burns, so that it's now the second largest importer of US coal, after China.

Rather, this is a call to do nuclear better and safer. If that means, to prevent private lobbying, the nuclear power industry in the US gets nationalized, that's fine by me.

Peak Oil raising its head again

The continuing high oil prices are in part due to continuing political uncertainty in Libya. But that's not the only reason.

Shell, as in Royal Dutch Shell, the oil giant, has admitted to more uncertainty about the future of oil supply. By 2050, if current trends continue, it says the supply-demand gap could be as great as the entire industry of 2000.

Of course, on the supply side, the biggest "pusher" is China.

Even if China is the Potemkim village Nouriel Roubini predicts, there's too much of the West invested in it for it to remain permanently that way. U.S fat cat CEOs simply have to have their supply source of cheaply made cheap products and they know it.

So, it will continue to be a driver. So will India.

That said, the Guardian also notes that Japan, post-Fukushima, gives us an image, even a laboratory, of what Peak Oil may be like.

Karma — as offensive as hell

This extended CNN blog, with broadly multifaith comments on "why suffering" in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear worries, following the Japanese tsunami and eaerthquake, makes the case well for me.

Is it any worse for a fundamentalist Christian to say:
1. God is inscrutable;
2. Original sin brought on this disaster for you;
3. It's God's prerogative to damn some people to hell.

Or a hardcore Buddhist to say:
1. Karma is inscrutable;
2. Your past life that you can't even remember brought on this disaster for you;
3. It's a cyclical universe's "prerogative" to damn some people to recurring rounds of bad karma.
(The Buddhist version is more offensive than the Hindu version because it claims that not even a person or personality, but just a "life force" is reincarnated and the "self" [nonexistent as it allegedly is] is STILL punished in a new life.)

I know of people who are skeptics, and atheists, even, in the sense of not believing in a western monotheist divinity, that still believe in the metaphysics of karma. Well, sorry, but, karma's as offensive as the heaven-hell of western monotheism.

Beyond that, both western and eastern religion offer the same pablum when confronted with the problem of evil.

And, a "shout out" to "it's not a religion" Buddhist Sam Harris — what say you now?