Every year I hear this same bullshit and it never irritates me less:
Via NPR:
Nuclear Power Criticized On Hiroshima Anniversary
On Saturday, Japan commemorated the 66th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, but the ceremony was different this year.
In March, a massive earthquake triggered a meltdown at the Japanese nuclear plant in Fukushima. The plant continues to leak radiation in the worst atomic accident since Chernobyl. Saturday’s ceremony focused on the nuclear attack on Japan in 1945, but the country’s ongoing nuclear disaster loomed large.
The atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m., killing 70,000 people instantly. As the bell tolled Saturday, most people froze, closed their eyes and put their hands together to pray.
Cicadas roared in the trees overhead.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan remembered the dead from long ago, then he spoke of Japan’s most recent atomic tragedy.
“I deeply regret believing in the security myth of nuclear power and will carry out a thorough verification on the cause of this incident,” he said.
The “security myth” was the Japanese government’s pledge that it could control the atom. Officials said the same forces that leveled Hiroshima could be harnessed to power this resource-poor nation. Most Japanese believed it for years.
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, a poll showed that 70 percent of Japanese now want nuclear power phased out.
After Saturday’s ceremony, anti-nuclear activists took their cause to the streets of Hiroshima. They drew a direct line between the two atomic events separated by more than six decades.
One group of activists peeled off and headed to the Chugoku Electric Power Co. The company has been trying to build a plant 50 miles from Hiroshima for the past three decades. Local resident have been fighting the whole time. Saturday, they shook their fists at the granite walls of the company’s headquarters.
Toshiyasu Shimizu, a member of the Kaminoseki town council, says fighting the plant has felt lonely at times.
“People, including those in the neighboring town, were not interested. But now they see nuclear power as their own problem, so there has been a dramatic difference,” he says.
After all these years, Shimizu says, he feels like most of the country is beginning to agree with him
They’re not the same:
Lets get something straight: Nuclear weapons are not nuclear power reactors and nuclear power reactors are not nuclear weapons. Power reactors don’t produce the kind of material usable for weapons and are operated by different entities for different purposes. Many nation states have nuclear power programs but do not have nuclear weapons. Conversely, a nuclear power program is not necessary to produce nuclear weapons. The US, for example, amassed hundreds of weapons in the 1940’s and early 1950’s, yet the first electricity producing commercial reactor was not operational until 1956, long after the weapons program was well established.
Both nuclear weapons and nuclear power reactors use nuclear fission. That is the extent of their similarities. Yet not even this is quite the same, since weapons use fast fission of a supercritical mass of material without a moderator, while reactors use a continuous thermal-spectrum reaction in low enrichment material. Fission is a fundamental source of energy as broad and natural as fire and nuclear energy is as broad a category of energy as chemical energy and even more fundamental to nature.
On Ionizing Radiation:
Nuclear weapons produce radioactive fallout. Nuclear power plants also produce radioactive material, although except in the case of catastrophic failure, it is contained and sequestered. None the less, it would be a mistake to see radiation as some kind of evil entity unique to artificial nuclear reactions or uniquely dangerous. ANY kind of energy can be deadly if it is not contained and exists in sufficient quantity. People have been killed by the loss of containment of high pressure steam or heat. Others have died when insulation breakdown exposed them to electricity or when a machine flew apart and the mechanical energy bashed their skull in. Historically, if you actually look at how many lives are lost, the failure of proper containment of radioactivity is quite low in deaths per gigawatt hour.
Ionizing radiation is also a fundamental force of nature, just as other forms of energy are. It is part of the electromagnetic spectrum and exists with or without human activity. It’s produced by stars, lightning bolts, natural radioisotopes and other sources. It is also produced by humans, in many cases intentionally to produce medical images or destroy tumors. Medical radiation has saved countless lives. Its dangers exist only as a product of its missus. Just as a medical laser or scalpel can heal or harm.
Finally, most of the deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nothing to do with ionizing radiation. Most died as a result of heat, overpressure or trauma falling debris.
Why is it, we that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the focus of so many memorials, so many demonstrations and such intense media attention when much greater loss of life has gone largely forgotten?
This is photograph shows a Japanese city that has been completely destroyed. Only a handfull of scattered concrete or stone buildings stand and they are gutted and empty. However, this is not Hiroshima. This is not Nagasaki. This is Tokyo. Tokyo, which was never subjected to nuclear attack was largely reduced to cinders and rubble. More than 50% of the enormous city was completely destroyed. The total number killed during the Second World War in Tokyo is unknown. The official counts top 100,000, but in reality, it was probably far more.
Tokyo was destroyed by a combination of conventional high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs. It was the incendiary bombs that caused the most damage. The destruction of Tokyo was accomplished by several B-29 bomber raids, with each attack involving dozens or hundreds of aircraft, up to 520 bombers in some cases. During the Second World War, the US developed highly effective tactics for the use of incendiary bombs. These included the use of high explosive bombs to blow open roofs and break apart buildings followed by wave after wave of incendiary bombs, packed with super hot burning white phosphorus and sticky napalm, which would splatter onto structures and anything else in the area and create a nearly unstoppable inferno.
Especially effective against cities with many wood structures, firebombing produced a man-made firestorm, a massive city-wide blaze that firefighters could do little to stop. The flames would become so violent they would form tornado-like vortexes of flames that engulfed whole structures. The heat could melt glass and crack concrete. All organic material in the area became fuel. For those unfortunate enough to be caught in the flames, there was no escape. In most fires, victims die of smoke inhalation, but in these firestorms, people could be burned to death before they could take many breaths. Some bodies were cremated on the spot, others were burned beyond recognition. A few managed to escape the heat and flames in cellars or other sheltered areas, only to suffocate due to the flames consuming all available oxygen.
But Tokyo was not alone in being leveled by firebombs. There were many more. At least 25,000 died in the firebombing attacks on Dresden alone. Hundreds of thousands more, mostly civilians died due to explosive and firebombing of Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Milan, Kobe and elsewhere. In Japan alone, more than 50 cities were destroyed or heavily damaged by bombing. Of course, such raids were not limited to the Allied side of the war effort. The Luftaffa laid waste to Rotterdam, Stalingrad and Warsaw. Bombing of London, Belfast and other British cities was intended to destroy the cities and kill hundreds of thousands or millions. It was only due to advanced radar and highly effective air defense, combined with the limited bomb loads of German aircraft that saved the British Isles from similar destruction, though thousands of lives were still lost. The Japanese also engaged in massive aerial bombardment in China, the Philippines and elsewhere in the Pacific.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be understood not as isolated events but within this greater context of strategic bombing of World War II.
The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed large portions of the cities and killed tens of thousands. This is really no different than the other air raids of the era, except that it was done with only one aircraft and one bomb. It took a fraction of a second and not days. It used a different technology. Otherwise, it was no more deadly or devastating than conventional bombing.
Of course, the ethics and effectiveness of citywide bombing can be debated. At the time, precision bombing was not available in any large scale and the destruction of urban areas was considered the most effective way of both forcing an enemy to consider surrender and destroy their ability to make war. The Second World War was the last true example of total war, where the entire economies and industries of world powers are shifted completely to making war and as such, are considered targets in their own right.
So perhaps we should ban fire, since that has proven to be a much more horrific weapon. It’s killed scores more than nuclear weapons. It’s easier to acquire, nations are more prone to using it, it is just as indiscriminate, perhaps more so, it kills in a mercilessly painful manner, it’s environmentally destructive and it can easily get out of control and cause more damage than had been planned.
Of course, fire also powers everything from automobiles to candles and even the cells in our body use a form of low temperature, enzyme-catalyzed combustion in cellular respiration.
Finally, why I like nuclear explosions:
(Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)
To most the image of a nuclear explosion is one of horror and destruction. There’s certainly good reason for this. The idea of such a device being used against humanity, to destroy cities and end lives is a horrific one. Nobody would want to see a modern nuclear weapon used in anger. The consequences would be a nightmare.
Yet a nuclear explosion is also something else. It is a release of energy, a huge release of energy. That’s really all that an explosion is. Explosions can be used for fighting wars or for fireworks, mining, seismic sounding, explosive welding and any other number of purposes. Nuclear explosions are huge because of the density of the energy source they tap. They use the most fundamental type of energy in the universe and do so with very high efficiency.
Nuclear bombs are by far, the most energetic devices humans have ever created. And unless there is a source of antimatter in large quantities for the taking, they will be the most energetic devices humans have ever created. The largest bombs produce more energy than all humanity produced for thousands of years yet they could fit in your garage. When set off, they are the greatest expression of humanity’s ability to harness the forces of the universe to produce energy – so much energy they transform huge areas of the atmosphere into plasma and create shockwaves that travel around the earth. Large nuclear explosions can create their own weather systems, move mountains or carve enormous chambers under the earth’s crust.
It’s a nearly cosmic level of energy. It has no upper bounds, as explosives can be built using the Teller-Ulam design to any size. This is humanity’s great step toward something almost unimaginable.
While fallout concerns have greatly limited peaceful nuclear explosions on earth, the potential is even greater beyond this planet. Nuclear explosives could potentially change the orbit of asteroids, mine asteroids and comets and propel spacecraft to a significant portion of the speed of light.
On earth, nuclear explosions have proven as awe-inspiring as they are destructive. They are the only example of humanity seeing the effects of unrestrained thermal fusion up close. The elements einsteinium and fermium were first observed in the fallout of a nuclear blast. The power of nuclear explosions has helped unlike the secrets of the ionosphere, the earth’s crust and fundamental properties of matter.
It is simply energy: A huge amount of energy. Whether it is destructive depends on how it is used. Like all forms of energy, it has dangers and can be a weapon. It also has much greater potential.
With the recent death of Kevorkian, there has been a lot of talk about his life and accomplishments. A large number of individuals who identify with atheism, humanism, libertarianism and other related movements have been quick to praise Kevorkian. Those who believe that a person should have the right to die often cast him as a hero, fighting for a basic human liberty and for the merciful release from pain and suffering. This is not new. During his life, Kevorkian was portrayed as a hero by a number of groups and activists. In 2010, Al Pacino portrayed Kevorkian in the television movie “You Don’t Know Jack,” which showed Kevorkian as a compassionate activist fighting to legalize dying by choice. Kurt Vonnegut’s collection of short stories published under the title “God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian,” was more of a spoof than a tribute, but Kevorkian seems to have enjoyed the attention anyway.
Her sentiment seems to have been touched off in part by the state of Texas adding the HPV vaccine to the required immunizations for school admission for girls. This was done by another Republican presidential candidate, Rick Perry. Some have accused Perry of taking pharmaceutical money for this policy, it really does not change the fact that it’s a good idea to have girls vaccinated. If he did do so because he was paid off, then all he can be accused of is doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
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