REBUTTAL: Peter Roche on nuclear power (Sunday Herald, UK)

[jpak]

http://www.sundayherald.com/oped/opinion/display.var.2140441.0.rebuttal_peter_roche_on_nuclear_power.php

YESTERDAY IT was revealed that Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy will sign an agreement this week to export nuclear technology around the world. Brown hopes Britain can create a skilled labour force working in partnership with France to sell reactors around the globe, supposedly to help combat climate change. But the two leaders will be opening a Pandora's box, which is more likely to damage the solutions to global warming.

Only last Wednesday, the prime minister warned us about rogue states obtaining nuclear weapons and terrorist groups unleashing "dirty bombs". Promoting nuclear power as a global solution to climate change is rather a schizophrenic thing to be doing days later.

Nuclear power and weapons are like Siamese twins. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) already embodies an inherent contradiction - seeking to promote "peaceful" nuclear power while trying to restrict the spread of nuclear weapons. Yet, since the treaty was signed, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea have all obtained nuclear weapons.

Spreading reactors around the globe will create new terror targets. Most reactors use uranium as a fuel and produce plutonium. A small-scale plutonium separation plant can be built in four to six months, so any country with an ordinary reactor can produce nuclear weapons.

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[NNadir]

1. Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons are twins?

I have always been terrified of a nuclear attack by Belgium, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Argentina...

Like most of the increasingly pathetic representations of the anti-nuke cult, this one ignores the question of whether dangerous fossil fuel technology can 1) cause war, or 2) be used for war.

I note with my normal contempt for the anti-nuke cult's religious dogma that there is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke on this planet who can count. If they could, they could count the number of nuclear wars and compare them to the number of dangerous fossil fuel wars.

I note that it was the anti-nuke religion's faith in (everything nuclear = war) that caused the current dangerous fossil fuel war in Iraq. Cheney said "Uranium" and the lifetime of anti-nuke ignoramus bullshit jumped up and down in the usual illiterate paroxysm of blood lust based on ignorance. One hundred of the people on this website who know shit from shinola about nuclear technology - and 100% of the people in the world nuclear community, including El Baradei - knew that Cheney was lying.

On the other hand, little whimpy radiation paranoids who think that huge stretches of the periodic table, including the entire part at the bottom are trying to kill their little paranoid asses, got excited and started yelling "Kill! Kill!"

NOT ONE of these shitheads discovered they were being manipulated for war, because it is easy to manipulate an ass, harder to manipulate those with education and intellect.

In fact, the anti-nuke cult doesn't give a rat's ass how many people die from dangerous fossil fuels, not dangerous fossil fuel terrorism (WTC, Oklahoma City, etc, etc), dangerous fossil fuel war (World War II, Iraq I, Iraq II, Biafran war, Algerian War...). dangerous fossil fuel waste (climate change and other air pollution, or other dangerous fossil fuel waste (mercury, lead, etc, etc...)

In fact, missed entirely by the fundie cult is the fact that nuclear power cannot be viewed in isolation from its alternatives, all of which are coal. Nuclear power doesn't have to be risk free to be better than everything else. It merely needs to be better than everything else, and it is.

[jpak]

2. Twins? Yup - inoperable conjoined twins...

The US nuclear fuel cycle was built during the Manhattan Project - that same uranium enrichment facilities that produced HEU for atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima were that same enrichment facilities that produced enriched uranium for US civilian reactors.

The world's first nuclear power reactor was derived entirely from technology developed in the Naval Propulsion Reactor program - the one that produced the reactor for the Nautilus and subsequent ballistic missile submarines.

TVA "civilian" nuclear reactors produce tritium for the US nuclear weapons program today.

India used Canadian "civilian" nuclear technology to produce it's nuclear weapons.

Pakistan used European "civilian" uranium enrichment centrifuge technology to produce it's nuclear weapons.

North Korea used a "civilian" nuclear power reactor (and yes, it produced electricity) to produce plutonium for it's nuclear weapons.

North Korea used the same (PUREX) extraction process to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons that is used in the EU to produce MOX reactor fuel - this process was developed during the Manhattan Project to extract plutonium for the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki.

Israel uses a French "civilian research" reactor to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons program.

Iran can use its "civilian" uranium enrichment technology to produce bomb grade uranium.

Even a 5th Grade drop-out can see these connections...

[NNadir]

3. Really, even a 5th grade dropout cowers under the table worrying about Swedish nuclear attacks?

I don't buy it.

I confess that some of our schools in this country suck, but I'm going to be that almost every fifth grader knows enough history to recognize that there have been zero nuclear wars since 1945 and that the only instance of nuclear war ever experienced was conducted by a country that had no commercial nuclear power.

Shit, my son's in the third grade, and he knows that.

Now.

It happens that there are many adults - plastered adults mostly - who hallucinate another kind of "history," but mostly these people are functionally illiterate, and mostly express these hallucinations as part of a cultish dogmatic alternate reality. In general, cult dogma is - at least in the minds of the cultists - immune to any kind of objective information. You will no more be able to convince a fundie anti-nuke that the link between nuclear war and nuclear power is extraordinarily weak, especially when compared to the link between dangerous fossil fuel war and dangerous fossil fuels, than you will be able to convince Tom Cruise that Thetans released by Xenu are not controlling our minds.

Anyone who has dealt with a cult - and it is my misfortune to have dealt with several, one notably here - knows this.

[jpak]

4. History is **REALITY**

some of us have a grip

some don't