“Google news”of March 13 reports the quote that incident suffered by the Fukushima nuclear power plant is already suggesting improvements to designers of nuclear facilities. It was the third day after the devastating tsunami early Japanese misadventure. Still technical and policy related that there were no health hazards, that there would be no leakage of radiation and reassured recklessly, perhaps blatantly, that nothing of the desolation that television dished up 24 hours was comparable to Chernobyl. Then the situation has plunged day after day, even hour by hour, with a relentless and merciless pace, through the media system information always under the eyes of the world, which followed emotionally involved, because now more or less all we know, by instinct or science, that failures of nuclear power are not limited to the territory that they never generated.
When listening or reading the various items of official government and technical policy, I had the impression that they were experiencing it as if it were a laboratory experiment: trying to capture the information necessary to develop the deadly toy, driven by the enthusiasm and sagacity of the challenge to make it better each time. In their speeches seemed to imply that any future power plants were built would have been better than those made so far, certainly safer and more efficient, able to tackle more resilient the next terrible natural disaster, or the next uncontrolled inefficiency. Impression fully confirmed by the declarations of the first members of the majority of the Italian Parliament, which with great complacency declared that he must not get caught up by emotions, that we must "go forward", that the planned nuclear energy plan was not changed.
Within three days this irritating ostentatious security of intent then began to fade, until the contradictory decision that the Italian power plant would be made only if they were not opposed by regions. Since virtually no region wants them, could be a false decision, a proposal to comically and absurdly get out of any rational plan of location of future sites. An ambiguous and incert to declare that you want, but you can not do it. Funny and absurd attempt to save both ways, expressing a position so blatantly inconsistent. Two days later the Minister of Economic Development Romano officially declared that it needed a serious reflection on the atom, while the Environment Minister Prestigiacomo was caught in a Fuorionda to worry about, so to speak, of political credibility, "... we can not lose the election for the nuclear ... "(News," The Fact Daily "on 19 March). Then, twelve days after the disaster the council of ministers approved the one-year moratorium for the return of Italy to nuclear power. Such a move almost certainly designed to scuttle the upcoming referendum.
cultural backwardness
Leaving aside the disturbing amateur clown of our house, which unfortunately we can not help but mention that concerns us directly, at international level a number of important and heavy revisions are recorded that began to seriously debate on the energy policy so far conducted globally. First, Merkel has announced the temporary closure of seven old nuclear reactor, within a short time followed by several states for decades to promote intense nuclear energy policy, including Switzerland, Russia and the U.S., announced that after some hesitation with Obama review a series of updated energy plan. China has decided to suspend construction of its new power plants while India, although emphasized the special security of its facilities, said the need for control of security in nuclear plants. Even Australia, a country with 31% of world reserves of uranium, in a few days has taken a negative position towards the atom.
While discussing the various governments and the Japanese authorities, led by the TEPCO, the company that operates the plant, always trying to minimize what was going on, the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, particularly in the four reactors, is consumed every day the disaster of the radiation leak and the continuing danger of meltdown. But the leaders behaved very irresponsibly, saying and not saying, implying, in essence continually telling lies. The Japanese population, already prostrated from the effects of the devastating earthquake and tsunami, was further collapsed by misinformation and the inability to know their real condition. The U.S. itself after a week in the world who have denounced the Japanese authorities did not tell the truth about what was going on. Moreover, the TEPCO had already distinguished in disseminating false information in connection with previous incidents, and for over twenty years had delivered to authorized control hundreds of falsified data. No coincidence that the Japanese population, widely used to not believe their statements, in interviews showed compact journalistic skepticism and their own non-confidence in the authorities and responsible TEPCO..
Huge atomic bomb
What strikes us greatly in this international debate is the cultural backwardness that acts as a substrate for the arguments, making the actual quality of the debate completely inadequate to support the emergence of true and profound act in question. It should be the vision of things and the world that allows you to make the reference light to be able to choose with wisdom and knowledge of the facts, not the calculations and interests that are protected from the many approximations which justifies the ambiguity of the choices , if not actual criminal errors. To see things in the world and I mean a clarity of ideas that arises mainly from the clarity given by the knowledge of things as they are, in order to be able to be a comprehensive and coherent to be false. Only then we can be able to make choices far-sighted and focused, able to meet the needs without causing irreparable damage.
When that happens while it is in place to analyze the impending disaster, among other things, the immense scope that we have seen, the designers of nuclear plants interpret it as a suggestion for improvements, as if instead of facing a tragedy of Biblical scope we were in an experimental laboratory, obviously there can be no clarity of ideas or vision of an overall coherent framework. Or do not affect neither the one nor the other because the choices are made for reasons entirely divorced from any view of things and the world. More simply, so to speak, still clinging to the wretched narrow-mindedness of personal or partisan, beyond and against all reason and any other issue or problem.
In particular, for a matter as fundamental as nuclear energy, obtained through fission, the same principle of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we can not remain at security probabilistic logic. Think in terms of security means high probability a priori intended to exposure to very high risk. This means that you accept a priori always devastating consequences (for humans, plants and all living species, as well as the environmental balance) of the out of control of nuclear fission, the illusion that it had calculated the exact probability of an accident is considered minimal. It is true that a nuclear accident is very rare, but it is equally true that it is thousands of times more dangerous than any other. As emphasized Tozzi, renowned geologist of the top experts in Italy, where the breaks to a central cooling system will be exactly like a huge atomic bomb.
Also unresolved is the question of nuclear waste, radioactive materials, i.e. materials that, being in or near the reactor, are subject to a continuous emission of radiation, from simple bolt on larger metal components (walls, containers, etc...) At the end of the life cycle of nuclear power, these objects should be treated as special waste to be treated with great care as highly radioactive and therefore dangerous. Since the radioactive decay over time, it is noted that the fission products are dangerous for about 300 years, to about 10,000 minor actinides, plutonium for about 250,000. Problem solved, and certainly not what has been done so far, the stocks can not be considered a solution. All storage facilities are of "temporary" to meet the criterion of reversibility of choices. Not knowing the exact consequences of storage of nuclear waste in time, enabling a future transfer to other places. In other words, creating very dangerous places, high-density radiation, we do not know exactly how they react and what can cause over time, especially because it must be buried, because of their high intrinsic hazard, can not be exposed.
I would say that in fact the nuclear bombs are grafted at the highest potential for destructive aggression. From the point of view, metaphors and symbols are a declaration of war in time of peace, not to any enemy, neither real nor potential, but to ourselves, by unscrupulous oligarchs and business that either are not aware of what they do (which does not make them any less dangerous), or flout the rest of humanity.
Who decides of our lives?
What has happened in these days in Japan to the central Fukushima is a clarity that can not leave room for doubt. Only hypocrites and liars can not and do not want to admit what is self-evident with evidence: emerges strongly from this tragedy a double failure of both a centralized and authoritarian worldview, is a model of society based on production of a devastating especially useful to support foolish energy consumption, in defiance of nature and humanity. The tragic events of Fukushima reveal the true intrinsic nature of the globalized world: a system that produces death, because it creates incentive conflicts and war to resolve, which is based on the systematic exploitation and plunder to enrich a predator elite, which is to maintain its trend of life has no scruples to poison the planet, destroy biodiversity, deplete natural context, enslave human beings.
To hope to achieve a vision of things and the world that allows us to shed light to be able to choose with wisdom and knowledge of the facts, it would be a good time to begin, finally, even if long overdue, to ask questions no longer be avoided and essential and radical and revolutionary responses to hazard. But not only nuclear or not nuclear. Since everything is intrinsically related and interconnected, we should ask what and how much to produce, how and how much and for whom and for what work. We should seriously ask ourselves who, apart from ourselves, has the right to decide our life and decides to take back the same.
year
41 n. 362
Andrea Papi