With the world waiting to see if any of the four nuclear reactors go into meltdown phase, the right is using this as a reason to stress the importance and safety of nuclear energy. Over at Right Wing News, we see this:
Obviously, as one cruises around the Liberal-o-sphere, this means that all nuclear power is bad and that is should all be stopped, and, instead, we can go with wind and solar for all our power. If they left those methods get beyond the planning/implementation stages.
We hear constantly that nuclear energy is the “safest”. In most senses that is true, but one accident at a plant can have greater catastrophic repercussions than accidents at 1,000 coal or oil plants.
Another thing, which I mentioned yesterday, is the very high safety standards Japan enforces. Those standards are probably a big reason why we didn’t see a meltdown occur when the quake hit yesterday. Here in the United States, where one of the biggest agendas of the Republican Party is doing away with government regulation, you got to wonder if we would have seen the same outcome? I can hear the arguments now; “let’s build a reactor in Ohio. They only get minor earthquakes, so we don’t have to be as safe”. Of course that is until a big one hits.
Then in the same post at Right Wing News, we get to this example of pure rubbish:
Of course, I wonder how those methods would have stood up with an earthquake and tsunami knocking them down, breaking the wind turbines and solar panels, covering them with water, and flooding the storage batteries.
This makes me wonder if the author even knows what a nuclear meltdown means; the loss of life, deeming an area uninhabitable for generations and the environmental costs. A bunch of metal and glass covered with water doesn’t even begin to compare. Yes if a battery started leaking, that would be bad, but that can be easily dealt with. Loss of life would be a lot more minimal, if not obsolete, save a panel or tower falling on someone (the same risks are greater at a nuclear plant). Also, rebuilding these energy sites is a lot quicker than rebuilding a nuclear site. We are talking in magnitudes of weeks compared to years.
But don’t let the stop the right wing spin of trying to equate a disaster hitting a solar farm being the same as a nuclear meltdown.