To those of us of a certain age, Chesley Bonestell is an evocative name. In the early days of the space program, he was the chosen illustrator for the future, painting spaceships and landscapes on the moons of Saturn and all those wild imaginary cities with flying cars and buildings wreathed with fins and arcing silvery ramps. There was a time when I’d lock in to magazine racks with a Chesley Bonestell cover somewhere on it, and my parents would have to drag me away.
But he also painted less enchanting illustrations. Here’s New York getting nuked in 1950.
If that isn’t horrifying enough, here’s the aftermath:
It looks like something Hieronymus Bosch would have painted.
What I find disturbing, though, is that American magazines were commissioning illustrations of American cities getting bombed, 5 years after America nuked two Japanese cities. What, reality wasn’t enough for you and you needed to fantasize about it happening at home to get people to care? The horror of this imagining didn’t stop the US from continuing nuclear testing. In 1954, the US would test the hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll, ‘accidentally’ irradiating a Japanese fishing boat, Lucky Dragon #5, killing one crewman and sending the others to the hospital, and inspiring protests in Japan and the invention of Godzilla.
Isn’t it nice that war can inspire interesting art?
I have always considered the coloration between the nuclear bombs that hit Japan and Godzilla (the original) an extremely eerie interpretation.
The 1954 Godzilla is terrifying. People think it’s going to be goofy kitsch and silly fun. Then they realize this is actually a freaking horror movie that happens to be an allegory about nuclear war.
The original Godzilla has a scene with a crying child watching her dead mother being dug out of the ruins.
The accident was building a hydrogen bomb that was 2.5 times more powerful than predicted.
They assumed the lithium-7 in the bomb was inert.
Instead, the lithium-7 greatly aided the fusion reaction.
Love Bonestell’s art. Even though it was scientifically 30-40 years out of date when I first came upon it as a child, it’s still beautiful and evocative.
Americans have never really faced the reality of the nuclear bombing of two Japanese cities. From the first announcement that the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, which was referred to as “an important Japanese army base,” to the official narrative that still holds sway nearly 80 years later (it was necessary to avoid an invasion that would have cost a million American lives), the gruesome truth of what happened in August of 1945 has been swept under the rug.
You might remember Elon Musk’s interview with Donald Trump, during which Musk said, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re like full cities again.” Yeah, no harm, no foul, I guess.
The reality is that, while it was estimated that there were 40,000 or so Japanese soldiers stationed in Hiroshima, that first bomb was aimed at the center of a city of 350,000 people. The original announcement also talked in terms of the equivalent of tons of TNT, huge numbers which were difficult to grasp, and didn’t mention the main difference between nuclear bombs and conventional explosives: radiation.
Military planners before the bombs were dropped were estimating up to 63,000 casualties would result from an invasion of the Japanese islands; in the years that followed, this number was inflated as high as two million. And really, the idea that it was justified because it “saved American lives” is problematic at best; what sort of atrocity could you not justify with that excuse?
Fifty years later, an exhibit was planned at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. The Enola Gay, the plane that carried the first bomb, would be displayed, as well as photographs of the aftermath. The justifications for the use of the bomb, as well as the doubts, would have been included.
Almost immediately, veterans’ groups claimed that the exhibit was pro-Japanese and dishonored U.S. servicemen. There were accusations that the Smithsonian was practicing “political correctness.” George Will called it anti-American. Resolutions were passed in both houses of Congress condemning the exhibit.
In the end, the exhibit consisted of the plane, a plaque, and a tape of the flight crew recounting the mission. And the myths endured.
Paintings of American cities going up in a mushroom cloud are just another level of justification, saying, well, “someone could do it to us.” Yeah, someone could, but 80 years later it still hasn’t happened. And Americans still haven’t faced the reality of what was done on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945.
It’s hard to rationalize the murder of civilians in any context, but then again this was a brutal war where all sides were willing to inflict heavy civilian losses on the opposition (and even their own people). The firebombing of Tokyo killed around 100’000 people, comparable to the losses in Hiroshima. So destruction on that level wasn’t entirely new.
As for saving lives it’s impossible to know what would have happened during a full scale invasion. Don’t forget that the battle of Okinawa cost around 200’000 lives. And the Soviet Union was preparing to join the party, god knows how that would have turned out.
In the 1950’s, the Mosler safe company used in an ad a safe of theirs housed at the bank of Japan that survived the blast at Hiroshima
Those pictures would make excellent album covers in the same vein as Midnight Oil’s Red Sails to Sunset.
Anyway, isn’t there a resident nuclear apologist here? I remember arguing with them awhile ago. They were actually defending what was done to Bikini Atoll.
Erlend: Actually, it was “the Soviet Union preparing to join the party” that forced the Japanese to surrender, NOT our atom-bombs. I read a rather long and detailed article, in Foreign Policy IIRC, that set out both dates and casualty figures to show that: a) the losses inflicted by our atom-bombs weren’t really that impressive because other conventional and firebombing raids had killed more people and done more damage; and b) the Japanese didn’t surrender very soon after the (SECOND) nuke was dropped, but immediately after they got word that the USSR was about to join an invasion of their Home Islands.
Evan after being nuked twice, the Japanese still figured they could keep fighting the USA, but only as long as the USSR didn’t join in. Also, the Japanese did not want to be invaded or partitioned, Germany-style, by the USSR. This is why Japanese and American leaders agreed to pretend the former were forced to surrender ONLY by our “most cruel bomb,” so there’d be no pretext for Soviet troops to enter Japan.
My organization created a video with a clip or Edwin Starr singing, “War, UGH, what is it good for . . Absolutely Nothin'”
Anything to do with nuclear power and nuclear weapons is a horrible blight on the world.
“Say it again, Y’all . . War, UGH, what is it good for . . Absolutely Nothin'”
Don’t say that!!!
Old European saying. “If you mention the devil, he will come.”
We all know who you mean and no, I’m not performing a summonings by even hinting at it.
He is apparently immune to containment grids anyway so don’t even bother with a Pentagon.
Besides, Herman Kahn did it before him and did it better.
He was one of the people that Dr. Strangelove was based on.
feralboy12 @6
The irony here is that America and Japan have much in common in that neither group has faced the reality what they did during WWII and before.
Japan has been very reluctant, to say the least, to admit to the atrocities it committed against Korea and China.
raven @12
My apologies! It wasn’t my intention to try and summon him. I was just wondering if anyone else remembered him and you answered my question.
Ah yes I do love me some C.Bonestell, he was really a good painter, even if most of his planetscapes and spaceships were romantic dreams rather than reality-based. Still superb tho.
And about Japan and the bombs well, one could discuss such things forever and never find a good answer, such horrors cannot be framed easily.
The Japanese would have resisted an invasion with fanaticism, remember those were the military who made Okinawans kill their own children with sticks so they would not be taken prisoners by Americans (as mentioned in Kenzaburo Oe’s “Okinawa notes”, if memory serves). Also, there was a standing order to kill all POWs on Japanese soil the moment the invasion started (mentioned in Fosco Maraini’s memories, himself a POW in Japan with his family back then). And on the opponent’s part, mass bombings were by then so routine that one more flattened city did not even register.
Curiously, there was one thing that could maybe have been done to convince the Japanese gov to stand down, or at least to show some American interest in lowering civilian casualties. It was a suggestion from Edward Teller (not a dove that one): a pre-announced night launch in the middle of Tokyo bay, with a warning that the other shots were going to fall on their heads after a week or so. I wonder if that would have been of some use.
Anyway the suggestion was not accepted, and we know how the story ended.
The galaxy brains in Washington plotting for war with Russia and China have forgotten the horrors of nuclear war. We are doomed to repeat it with them in charge.
@11 shermanj
I’m with you on your assessment of nuclear weapons. Nuclear power, no. We need way more of it.
Anthropogenic global warming is a horrible blight on the world, and if you aren’t prepared to mitigate the worst of it with a huge push for nuclear power, you aren’t taking it seriously.
@Raging Bee, re: USSR. Makes sense. However I don’t think anything happens for a single reason. Japan was desperate to keep their emperor, I’m sure this weighed in as well.
One thing to remember is that our understanding of nuclear weapons is quite different from what they would have had at the time. They had already delivered comparable levels of destruction to other cities, and no understanding of the additional damages caused by radiation. Nor had they lived under the threat of global thermonuclear war for decades.
@16 beholder wrote: I’m with you on your assessment of nuclear weapons. Nuclear power, no. We need way more of it.
I reply: The facts I see mean I can’t agree with you on nuclear power. As a retired engineer I have studied energy sources for decades. I have dozens of in depth articles on energy systems. Here are just a few of the reasons nuclear power is highly impractical and highly dangerous.
1) New storage technologies for wind and photovoltaic are now very reliable and available with months of lead time instead of the 10-20 years required by nuclear power plants. (The mine-reactors are still a myth and do you want one in your backyard with all the cost, toxic emissions and potential danger?)
2) Nuclear power in total costs 5-10 times more than wind and photovoltaic even including battery storage cost.
3) Can we put the tons of toxic radioactive waste (deadly for hundreds of years) in your backyard?
4) even the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission concludes it is a losing proposition: https://theconversation.com/nuclear-energy-isnt-a-safe-bet-in-a-warming-world-heres-why-163371
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission concludes the vast majority of its nuclear sites were never designed to withstand the future climate impacts they face, and many have already experienced some flooding. A recent US Army War College report also states that nuclear power facilities are at high risk of temporary or permanent closure due to climate threats – with 60% of US nuclear capacity at risk from future sea-level rise, severe storms, and cooling water shortages. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1713/ML17138A169.pdf
@18 shermanj
(4) is addressed by modern reactor designs. You didn’t think I was talking about building reactors designed in the 1940s, did you?
(1) and (2) are a matter of existing infrastructure and the political will over years to roll that out. It can just as easily be in favor of nuclear power with the right policies, and, for that matter, it can go against solar and wind energy with the wrong policies. The best option we have available is to make a push for nuclear power now instead of coming up with more excuses not to.
As for (3), sure, you can put it in my backyard. Well-contained, it’s not much more dangerous than the byproducts fossil fuels and natural gas spew into the air. Or you can put it in a nearby salt deposit mined out for that very purpose.
But I wonder, if it’s so radioactive, why not put it in a breeder reactor to generate more power? That seems like the frugal solution where you ultimately end up with less waste which is safer to handle.
Are you talking about SMRs? Hell yes I want one. Sure, put that in my backyard too.
SMRs have bad economics:
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/30/what-drives-this-madness-on-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/
Nuclear is probably best kept for use where it belongs: in outer space, especially beyond Mars orbit, where you need the energy and power density, where you have to deal with nasty radiation anyway, and where there are unlimited opportunities to jettison spent fuel onto trajectories where it will not pass close to anyone until long after its radioactivity has died down to background levels.
Funny timing. I got home from work less than an hour ago. Today was also the day that I finished the book ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’ by Annie Jacobsen during one of my work breaks. It made the idea of nuclear bombs hitting major US cities scarier than the illustrations, and more real than the comments here convey.
And that’s a major problem. The US is bombing half the world to pieces while not being officially at war with anyone and nobody cares. The not-so-cold war between the US and the USSR costed the lives of millions, and a little counterattack was retaliated with illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, costing some hundreds of thousands more.
yes I think the the people of the US needed to see those kinds of pictures even with un-natural idealized aspects of illustrations. Many who advocate for war have no experience of what it is truly like it is an abomination that sometimes is unavoidable by some. Any thing that emphasizes that horror and down plays any glory from it is a good thing. Sherman said the “war is all hell”. When you are attacked you have few good choices surrender to subjugation and or death or fight and kill and die that maybe some will live.
I think that with what we know now and the realities that the time for Nuclear Power is fading for its use on the planet the long term costs seem to be going in the wrong direction.
@18 3) Can we put the tons of toxic radioactive waste (deadly for hundreds of years) in your backyard?
Newer plants, where people are allowed to bloody build them, reuse a significant amount of “waste” material, either via re-enrichment, or through adding it to existing new fuel. Even without that, expended fuel goes through a two step process. 1) water pool storage, onsite, which allows it to decay further to a point where it is storable by other means – unless you literally drain the freaking water out, exposing the material, the water insolates from radiation so effectively you could swim in it and not receive a measurable dose, as long as you didn’t literally dive down to the spent fuel and physically handle it. Said water, if it has to be cycled out, is “less” radioactive than normal sea water (ironically), which already contains natural levels of isotopes. 2) once “cool enough”, it is, depending on how new the system is, either partly cycled back into the fuel for the reactor, via reprocessing it, or stored in dry casks. These are explicitly designed to survive someone setting off a freaking bomb next to them (never mind a transportation accident), and trap radiation so effectively that you will get skin cancer from the sun you are standing under, while next to them, long before you receive enough of a dose from the casks to qualify as a dental X-ray.
The problem with “engineers” giving expert opinions is like a damn lot of other things in science – engineer in what exactly? Because, if it is not their specific specialty they may be working from both out dated information, bad assumptions, that an actual nuclear engineer wouldn’t make, or “publicly sourced” information that is incomplete, inaccurate, and only “sounds” plausible, until/unless you talk to someone actually in the field in question. Do I have to remind you how many “engineers” fall for stupid shit like Intelligent Design, because their “engineering” tells them, “All things must be made by something.”, while having to freaking comprehension of basic biology? Same problem with a non-nuclear engineer pontificating about the supposed “dangers” of new reactor designs and the hazards of waste from them. They need to actual listen to people in the field, not their own “intuition” on it, because they can, and sometimes are, utterly wrong, when its a subject they don’t actually freaking work with, at all.
@6. feralboy12 :
That seems an uncharitable interpretation of the artworks here. I don’t know if that was the intent (as magic as that isn’t!) but I doubt it – seems more more like an alternative of “imagine how it would be if it happens to us so let’s NOT ever let it happen to others or use them again ourselves” perhaps? Looking at Bonestell’s wikipage ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Bonestell ) doesn’t really help in deciding between these alternatives, sadly, so I don’t know which if either of those motives were behind these paintings. More research (at least by me) required i guess..
@12. raven : I know who you mean – didn’t they get banned or anounce they were quitting here? C-l-n-g-8- certainly didn’t suceed in convincing anyone of their pro-nuke views – indeed quite the opposite. Claiming Greens were in league w the Fossil Fool lobby did NOT help their credibility, surprise, surprise!
I grew up in the Cold War (80’s-90’s), remember it well and was powerfully moved by the prospect of Nuclear Armageddon. Recall reading Louise Lawrence’s Children of the Dust (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1030207.Children_of_the_Dust ) as a kid among many other fictional acounts and SF stories about nuclear war and its aftermath. As an adult I visited Hiroshima and its Peace Memorial Museum ( https://hpmmuseum.jp/?lang=eng ) which was incredibly emotive and informative. Highly recommend but very confronting.
No, I do NOT support nuclear in any guise except maybe hydrogen fusion reactors a la not developed yet SF & just possibly thorium / molten salt reactors if they can actually be made as advertised by some. Fission reactors that use plutonum and uranium and create copious deadly waste? Hell no!
None of the alternatives the Allies would have been likely to pursue would have led to a “happy” ending. We know what happened with the use of the A bombs. An invasion of Japan in October of ’45 would probably have seen the bombs used anyway, and there would have been more than 2 available. A blockade to force a surrender would have led to mass starvation in Japan. The latter two scenarios would also have seen Japanese forces continue to fight in China and elsewhere on the Asian mainland.
@9. Walter Solomon : “Those pictures would make excellent album covers in the same vein as Midnight Oil’s Red Sails to Sunset.”
Yes.
Like this cover shown on clip for Midnight Oil – Minutes to Midnight
Plus :
Midnight Oil – Harrisburg
Then there’s :
Maralinga by Midnight Oil
Huge fan of theirs for decades.
Pity about Peter Garrett’s political ALP career. Sigh. He started with the Nuclear Disarmament Party..
And of course nuclear engineers have absolutely no stake in promoting nuclear power, do they?
The record of the nuclear industry does not give great confidence that they can build nuclear power plants on time or within budget; or operate them safely (because of the temptation to cut corners). Moreover, despite beholder’s apparent belief (and we all know beholder has some very odd beliefs), it is not possible to separate nuclear power and nuclear weapons: the materials, technologies and skills overlap to too great an extent. India was supposedly developing civil nuclear power only – until it wasn’t. There is concern about Iran’s nuclear program* because of the huge extent of overlap between the materials, technologies and skills needed for nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The more states have nuclear weapons, the higher the probability they will be used; the more states have nuclear power, the more have the opportunity to develop nuclear weapons.
*Iran would have better excuse for developing nuclear weapons than most states, but it would still increase the risk such weapons would be used.
Well that assumes Japan would not have surrendered before mass starvation occurred. But as Raging Bee@10 points out, the Soviet declaration of war on Japan (which occurred on 8th August, i.e. between the two A-bombings) was key to the Japanese decision to surrender. Japanese leaders had in fact been trying to get Stalin to mediate and were (incredible as it may seem) shocked when he instead declared war on them. It’s also simple fact that Japan could not have continued to run an industrial economy, let alone a war, for more than a few months: having lost the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) it had no source of oil, tin, or rubber.
@beholder
hurf blurf evil usa readying to nuke china n russia becuz we dont know that nuclear bombs r bad
hey, when does ww3 start o mysterious sage? i just want to set a reminder on my phone!
Dwight D. Eisenhower:
@19. beholder :
They mined salt domes to store radioactive nuclear watse? Really? When? Cites & example cases please.
Oh & did you ask your neighbours & local community about that or is it all about just you and what you, personally, (for emphasis tautology) are willing to risk and do? Them, their kids, their great great great greater, greater, grater grandkids..
Here in Oz our sad, racist excuse foran opposition leader Dutton the Gestapotato has farted out a “thought”bubble of nuclear power for our future – pushed very likely by our Fossil Fool and miniung lobby as a distraction. It’s been heavily mocked and rightly criticised :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-21/what-happens-nuclear-waste-coalition-plan-/104003454
In addition note here :
Source : https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2111833119
Whilst from a while ago, Climate experts looked at the nuclear option and dismissed it :
Source : https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/nuclear-power-stations-are-not-appropriate-for-australia-and-probably-never-will-be/
Oz-centric but still.. Probly much still applies elsewhere too.
@feralboy
one idea that i had that i think makes the most sense: when the american left are discussing the strategic bombing campaigns of WW2, i dont think we’re really evaluating those specific campaigns so much as the strategic bombing machine that was built by the war and subsequently used in less-justified conflicts like Korea and Vietnam. because so many of the concepts, tactics, and even some of the personnel remained the same.
i mean, i dont agree with the idea that hiroshima was an invalid target. not only was it a center of industry, it was an important military headquarters that would have played a major role in coordinating the defense of japan against invasion. in the context of a total war, neither it or other targets like tokyo, dresden, etc. were any more atrocious than a million other things in an atrocious war.
the real ethical issue of these is first that there was a lot of flip-flopping on and controversy over how effective the campaigns were and it still goes on today, esp considering the enormous cost of creating huge fleets of strategic bombers and their support networks combined with a big pr push by the air force folks that resulted in a lot of gross behavior and lies. the second is that these institutions didnt go away at the end of the war. its one thing to say that ww2 bombings were justified as a part of total war against aggressive and powerful nations that were doing the same thing themselves, but quite another to say that bombing north vietnamese agriculture wasn’t an atrocity.
@feralboy
one idea that i had that i think makes the most sense: when the american left are discussing the strategic bombing campaigns of WW2, i dont think we’re really evaluating those specific campaigns so much as the strategic bombing machine that was built by the war and subsequently used in less-justified conflicts like Korea and Vietnam. because so many of the concepts, tactics, and even some of the personnel remained the same.
i mean, i dont agree with the idea that hiroshima was an invalid target. not only was it a center of industry, it was an important military headquarters that would have played a major role in coordinating the defense of japan against invasion. in the context of a total war, neither it or other targets like tokyo, dresden, etc. were any more atrocious than a million other things in an atrocious war.
the real ethical issue of these is first that there was a lot of flip-flopping on and controversy over how effective the campaigns were and it still goes on today, esp considering the enormous cost of creating huge fleets of strategic bombers and their support networks combined with a big pr push by the air force folks that resulted in a lot of gross behavior and lies. the second is that these institutions didnt go away at the end of the war. its one thing to say that ww2 bombings were justified as a part of total war against aggressive and powerful nations that were doing the same thing themselves, but quite another to say that bombing north vietnamese agriculture wasn’t an atrocity.
dang, sorry about the double post. is there a way to delete this?
I appreciate all the well reasoned comments above.
I always focus on substantiated factual information (except when I get silly*). I read the responses to my comment thoughtfully, carefully and found that they sounded mostly purely emotional. Our Imperative Precepts ask, “Do you control your emotions, or, do your emotions control you?”
• @19 beholder didn’t address the 7-10year+ lead time or cost overrun disasters, both of which make nuclear power completely impractical. Including the billions of dollars needlessly foisted on consumers is not responsible or ethical. (substantiation is readily available)
• If nuclear power plants are so safe:
1)Why won’t any insurance company even talk to them?
2)Why is there a warning sign in every motel room within miles of San Luis Obispo?
3)Why are they testing all the nuclear disaster warning sirens near Phoenix this week?
4)And, beholder’s comments on nuclear waste being ‘well contained’ and safe is, according to many factual articles, opined fiction.
@24 Kagehi wrote: The problem with “engineers” giving expert opinions is like a damn lot of other things in science – engineer in what exactly?
I reply: my comments are not opinion, they are all substantiated factual articles by those knowledgeable about nuclear power.
• It would not be appropriate for me to put all those articles here.
• And, one of our organization members was an engineer who worked on a nuclear reactor in the 1970’s and helped with our research recently. (It’s still classified, so, I’d tell you more, but he would have to kill you. *yes, I’m being silly here.)
@24 Kagehi wrote: Newer plants, where people are allowed to bloody build them, reuse a significant amount of “waste” material, either via re-enrichment, or through adding it to existing new fuel.
I reply: the danger of transporting and cost of reprocessing that waste is astronomical. REF.: https://whatisnuclear.com/factoids.html The type of reactors needed would be breeder reactors, which do exist, but have not been deployed commercially anywhere in the world on a large scale. We would also need to build reprocessing plants capable of processing all 47,000 tonnes of waste we have lying around.
And, when you ‘add it to existing new fuel’ that increases the waste heat of the massive amounts of water dumped into rivers and significantly reduces the efficiency of the reactor.
And, breeder reactors are not viable: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-fast-breeder-react/ The U.S. constructed two experimental breeder reactors, neither of which produced power commercially.
I don’t want to get into a ‘precision dispensing of waste fluid contest’ here, so I’ll end my remarks now.
@30. whatmannerofloaf : “when does ww3 start o mysterious sage?”
I
thinkhope the idea is that the answer to that is never. WW III never does start.Unless you count the Cold War as WW III and already over coz no more USSR & all but anyhow.
Can the world de-escalate and work together and y’know, not destroy the world as we know it for everybody and make everything horrifically probly beyond imagination horrifically worse for us all? Too much to ask?
@37 stevoR wrote about nuclear war: Can the world de-escalate and work together and y’know, not destroy the world as we know it for everybody and make everything horrifically probly beyond imagination horrifically worse for us all? Too much to ask?
I reply: stevoR, I really appreciate your decent, sane approach to topics. However, I do fear that reading all the current articles about the u.s. building up its nuclear weapons arsenal that de-escalation is never on their minds.
As we were taught: sit down, bend over, tuck your head between your knees and KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE! (yes, I’m being partly silly here, too)
As War Gamesobserved when it comes to WW 3 :
WarGames (11/11) Movie CLIP – The Only Winning Move (1983) HD
is NOT to play.
WW III starts. We all lose. Everyone loses. Nobody wins.
Capt’n We Really Still Haven’t figured THAT Fucking Well out Yet?!!?! Seriously!?! For Fucks Sakes really!?
@StevoR
going off on a tangent i guess, but i wouldnt call the cold war ww3. i mean, there were wars fought as part of the cold war but overall it was a global competition, not an armed conflict fought across continents that was killing tens of thousands every day.
i think there’s always going to be differences and competition and other unpleasantness due to human nature. id say the trick is putting together a global order where these can be worked out in the least-harmful ways.
I hope nobody minds my reminding us all : My organization created a video of Edwin Starr singing, “War, UGH, what is it good for . . Absolutely Nothin’” . . . “Say it again, Y’all . . War, UGH, what is it good for . . Absolutely Nothin’” And, yes that does pop into my mind time and again.
shermanj @36: Also, • If nuclear power plants are so safe: why did the Soviet regime undertake a wartime-level mobilization of people and resources to contain the spill at Chernobyl, despite insisting everything was totally safe there and only 39 people ever died as a result of that accident?
I asked that question to a pro-nuclear crank on this blog — who had explicitly said he believed the Soviets’ propaganda number above — and he admitted he didn’t know.
@32 StevoR
Look up deep geological repositories. I’m not doing your homework for you.
And if they all jumped off a bridge, I would jump off a bridge with them, right? These are the same neighbors who want to protect their kids from Big Trans and who won’t vaccinate their kids. I don’t value their risk assessment.
Diplomacy, foreign policy, and war are all, in the end, just various ways for oligarchs to re-negotiate the division amongst themselves of the spoils of exploitation. Egalitarian societies would have no use for any of it, save self-defense if forced to still coexist with oligarchic ones.
Yeah, well, whatever egalitarian societies exist or get created in the foreseeable future will indeed have to coexist with oligarchic ones, as well as with oligarchs on their own turf. So unfortunately, we still have use for all that stuff. At least until the egalitarian societies finally manage to eliminate all those oligarchs from the face of the Earth…
@29 KG
Eh.. Maybe. But, I would argue that its real hard, unless you have a ton of money to buy a lot of specialized equipment, or an entirely chem lab, to “tell” if someone is dumping stuff in your yard, or the nearby stream, and just how bad that is. But nuclear engineers literally walk around with does badges and dosimeters all the freaking time, the risks from it are actually pretty well understood, and it costs less than 30 freaking bucks to buy a basic meter (though more if you give a damn whether you are just looking at how much radiation it is, or what type – which actually matters, since some can’t penetrate clothing or even skin).
Basically, and damn fool, if they actually cared to do so, could double check what the actual local risks are to themselves, based on the nearby power plant.
Also… every single “major” problem that has ever happened has been a result of errors in “early” reactors, or ones that where made using older designs, or where the people doing it cut corners – Chernobyl being the biggest example of this – bad design, which everyone else had abandoned as unsafe, bad maintenance of certain equipment, no containment building, to handle actual problems, if they did happen, and badly trained operators, who literally didn’t know what they where doing with that type of reactor. Three Mile Island was barely a hiccup, and generated almost no outside radiation (which is barely a blip by comparison to every other event). Fukashima is, still, argued to have had almost zero impact, at all, in terms of released radiation, and the economic impact of the evacuation is generally considered worse than the risk from the plant. And, yeah, things when wrong there, but everything designed to shut it down due to those failures worked – and its “also” an older design, with far fewer backups, designs that have been improved on, etc.
Literally the worst, in terms of actual deaths and long term impact, from nuclear products have been a) an abandoned tube, used for medical imaging, which people who didn’t know better brake open, and then handed the powdered contents out to people from, b) literally medical equipment malfunctions, like the Therac-25. And… as I think someone pointed out, you bloody get radiation, and often “more” of it, from coal plants, over their life time, than any power plant “other” than Chernobyl has ever released.
You don’t have to “believe the engineers” – you can literally buy the equipment to check if they are telling the truth from freaking Amazon.
Oh, and why the F does it make sense to assume that the worst possible disasters, made on, or over, some budget, in terms of the nuclear plant, is any “more” likely to be a serious, massive, disastrous problem (especially with new designs being less likely to have those even be possible, without multiple failures, compared to older designs, still in operation), than the practically yearly example of someone in the oil industry, or any other energy industry, seems to have, which releases real, non-imaginary, toxic substances, or even freaking stupid BS like Texas’, “Our fertilizer plants don’t need no damn fire suppressant systems, even if they could literally blow up half a city if they catch fire.”
Me, I prefer someone that knows they are dealing with things that could, if they F up, kill them, far more likely than it will kill anyone outside the plant even, and take it seriously, than trust idiots from the rest of our “energy industry”, who all know they produce toxic byproducts, but all if it is going to be in someone “else’s” back yard, so its not actually their problem.
@40. whatmannerofloaf
Yes. I agree with that and wouldn’t call the Cold War WW III either but I think there are some historians who do? Could be wrong.
Yup. The United nations wa ssuppsoed to be that wasn’t it? A body that sorted international disputes out and ended war. So too before it was the League of Nations. Seems those haven’t (yet?) worked.
@43. beholder
(Italics and quote marks added for clarity.)
Burden of proof. How does it work again? You are the one making the claim so its your job to back your assertions up with evidence.
You have this backwards here. You are the one putting in the risk that will affect others i.e. in the metaphor here it is you jumping off the cliff and calling for others to do likewise.
You are talking about creating a potential hazard affecting your neighbours and a threat that will long outlast you and selfishly claiming that becuase you are happy to take that risk others should be too or their views to the contrary shoudl be ignored. That was my point there.
PS. Whether or not you trust their asessment, it seems unfair and unethical to ignore their right to be consulted and have their veiws heard on something that affects them.
Well, I’m sure the pro-nuclear power folks will be the first to tell us that the Schacht Asse II salt mine in Germany is a prime example of how to deal with long-term storage of nuclear waste by storing it in barrels prone to rust, randomly dumped in a salt mine now prone to flooding, with little to no recorded documentation of which parts of the mine were being used for low-level versus medium-level waste that was often simply dropped on a pile of barrels, and due to be decommissioned at a vastly greater cost than the original outlay. Nobody would be so cavalier to pretend that long-term management of risk has been completely solved and dealt with in a responsible manner both economically and environmentally, would they? Oh, wait …
Consulting and having someone’s views heard, sure. When those views are based on bullshit, you try to educate. When they refuse to believe you, then what? Just not do it because it could hurt their feelings? Lets be honest here StevoR, the US nuclear industry has had relatively few accidents, assessment by more than just engineers, but actual doctors, and a f-ton of studies have shown that the testing the freaking military did way back then has been more of a hazard than anything done since, and, again, as I said previously, its fairly trivial to buy a tester to tell if you, “OMG radiation increased near me after they built something!” By contrast, outside solar plants, and wind farms (both useful, but with their own issues, and the later of which has had far more cases of something failing), the track record of literally EVERY OTHER energy production source, both in terms of the danger from what it produces, to how often, and egregiously, their CEOs lie about everything, including how “clean” they make things (spreading out pollution for hundreds of miles, instead of over the city the plant is, is ‘cleaner’, right? There solution to acid rain…), doesn’t make me trust a single damn thing they endorse as a viable alternative.
Some, and I will say its just some, though we would obviously disagree on how much, of the anti-nuclear rhetoric smacks not just of ignorance, but the sort of ignorance you get out of an evangelical church, whose priest is busy petting choir boys, in between condemnations of the LGBTQ community – presumably on the theory that if he is sinning, but railing against sin, the people who are not constantly doing so at every single sermon must all be lying and doing worse. (And, so, so, so, much of the BS I see in a lot of anti-nuclear stuff is either utter gibberish, like assuming that the spent fuel is at all useful for literally any sort of bomb, or that, somehow, because stupid people existed 50 years ago, who did stupid things, with reactor designs that are 4 generations older, or more, or the waste from them, in some other country, we totally shouldn’t trust people in the US with it either.) But, if that is the criteria we are supposed to use for deciding risks… I am sorry, but I trust very nearly everyone else in the energy industry, all of whom are apposed to nuclear too, for their own selfish gains, a thousand times less, and we might as well shut all sources down, of ever kind, because we can’t trust any of them, and they are all dangerous. Heck, even dams fail (usually, again, purely due to having been designed badly, no one bothering to try to fix them, and the people involved just crossing their fingers and hoping it never happens, because “money”. And.. hmm. how many of those have happened in the US, compared to nuclear disasters, especially ones that are actually disasters?
Sometimes… no, often, as much as we might like to all think we are “stable geniuses” about what is actually a freaking risk, tends to think, and act, about things we have allowed people that know almost as little as we do, or less, convince us are “super big risks”, and we end up, in reality, looking exactly like the clown who used that two word phrase to describe himself. And.. funny enough, the “long term consequences”, of trying stupid shit, that doesn’t work, like carbon offsets, which just give companies ways to move the waste around, and lie about how they are “fixing” something, carbon sequestering, which basically amounts to, “Heh, we figured out a way to con people into letting us do fracking, while pretending we are not just making more fossil fuel to burn.”, and numerous other bull pucky, is definitely going to be nothing improving, and no where near fast enough.
I will note though, there is one huge things about the nuclear industry I don’t like. Its probably a lot freaking cheaper, and less costly in time, to produce the sort of pebble reactors, or “small scale, power for the town/neighborhood”, systems, and uses far less fuel, so is even less risk of someone taking it apart and doing more than killing themselves in the process (i.e., no bomb, just a dead idiot), than building giant freaking plants, which take years to complete, and are designed to dump power into a grid that covers dozens of states. So.. why are we not developing smaller systems, which are easier to deploy? Simple: Its still a freaking energy company, and they only thing they hate more than not having 50 million people paying them for power is someone installing solar on their house, and only paying them the difference between what they use at night, vs. make during the day – which is a non-sustainable system, and they know it, in which eventually they will be paying out, during summers, more than they get back in the winter, from selling power to back to all the people with panels, while they don’t make any.
There is a reason why they despise home solar, and would, if they had solar at all, prefer it to be a giant bunch of mirrors, which work just like a nuclear plant, but using sunlight, instead of a reactor chamber. Because, if they own the solar, you are still paying them. If you own it, they, eventually, go bankrupt, or, at least eventually only end up selling power to large manufacturing, who will still need more than your roof can give you. Of course they appose both “clean solutions” they don’t control, and.. lets be clear here, any solution that makes their existing systems obsolete, by literally producing, in a single plant, 1000 times more power than their gas/coal/whatever plant can, and dwarfs them all in comparison.
How much of the anti-nuclear hype do you honestly think “must be” coming from those companies too, since building just a half dozen would likely put them all out of business? And, yeah, I get the silly argument that, “Multiple sources are better, in case of failure.”, but multiple of the same source is basically the same thing, since I rather imagine if nuclear decay, or steam turbines inexplicably stopped working, due to some bizarre glitch in local physics, we wouldn’t be around either to worry about the fact that the last natural gas plant shut down for the final day of operation two days earlier. Scared crooks, err.. I mean, “businessmen”, are hardly trustworthy sources for “information on how safe out competition, who will end us, is!”