Hot Stuff

Expect more reports like this at a power station near you:

A leak of highly radioactive nuclear fuel dissolved in concentrated nitric acid, enough to half fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, has forced the closure of Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant.

The highly dangerous mixture, containing about 20 tonnes of uranium and plutonium fuel, has leaked through a fractured pipe into a huge stainless steel chamber which is so radioactive that it is impossible to enter.

Recovering the liquids and fixing the pipes will take months and may require special robots...

Although most of the material is uranium, the fuel contains about 200kg (440lb) of plutonium, enough to make 20 nuclear weapons, and must be recovered and accounted for to conform to international safeguards aimed at preventing nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands. The liquid will have to be siphoned off and stored until the works can be repaired, but a method of doing this has yet to be devised.

Nuclear power is dirty. It's principal advantage to our government is that it enriches the people who promote our politicians. Oh yeah, and nuclear weapons keep the uppity third world in line.

But not for much longer. Corporations like General Electric and ABB are simply too greedy. Even if they won't risk openly selling their technology to nations like North Korea, they find intermediates who will. As has been posted at this site before, men like Donald Rumsfeld are quite willing to make a tidy profit privately selling nuclear toys to the same nations they rattle their sabers at in public.

Industrial societies need power. I'm a technophile. Technology has a tremendous potential to liberate humanity.

I also recognize the main reason green technologies and alternative energy sources haven't been developed is that they don't have a tremendous profit margin for the energy corporations.

The other factor is this: any inexpensive alternative energy process makes it very difficult for any single nation to lord its superpower status over the rest of the world.

When everyone can make their own, where's the profit in trying to sell it?

Especially if you can't make a buck propagating Endless War at the same time.