Stopping the nuclear dinosaur

THANK YOU, Chris Williams, for the excellent response to the unfolding nuclear nightmare in Japan ("The risks of nuclear roulette").

As you touch on here--and as you describe in depth in your book, Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis--with the exception of extremely far-off technologies, nukes are a deeply irrational choice for electricity generation, given the technological feasibility of a world run entirely on the power impinging on the earth from the sun (a nuclear reactor, of course, but millions of miles away!)

Unlike even fossil fuels, and certainly different from a solar panel or wind turbine, the nuclear fission process is inherently unstable. The entire infrastructure of a reactor is designed to stabilize a runaway process. It should be no surprise that when a disaster occurs, such infrastructure can be overwhelmed, and the process can lapse out of engineers' control.

These scenarios are unthinkable in solar, wind, geothermal and hydro-electricity generation. Solar panel spills in the Gulf of Mexico? An earthquake that causes a wind turbine to explosively melt down? Certainly, structural problems may arise when disasters occur--in large dams, perhaps--but the poisoning of an entire nation is impossible.

This irrational energy production method is the hallmark of an irrational system that has driven our ecosystem to the brink. Such a system cannot be patched up; it can only be replaced by a system based on meeting our collective needs, chief among them being the need for a sustainable relationship with our planet.

Shame on the eco-activists who have taken up big industry's call for a nuclear future. It is more apparent now than ever that the nuclear dinosaurs must be stopped.

Craig Johnson, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia