Monday~Choices
Yes, Many Choices. None That are Good.
“Q: Asked by Eve, the host of the fictional TV show, Tonight, with Eve; “Why write this book?”
A: By Elizabeth Keller, the protagonist of the movie, “Incident in a Ghostland”,(2018) Netflix; “To keep me from going insane.””
“Today’s feast features many awful choices which point to our own self-destruction, which, for all it’s worth, is making people of Earth go mad. I write to postpone the inevitable. Maybe it will give someone else a bit of relief from the growing insanity gripping the power-hungry psychos just itching to start troubles with nuclear armed states. If I could, I’d move the hands on the Doomsday Clock up 25 more seconds, or a minute and fifteen seconds before doom. It’s at 100 seconds before doom now. The lowest it’s ever been. The January 6th, 2021, ‘event’, ‘riot’, ‘insurrection’, or ‘coup’, should go down the memory hole, so other, more important matters can get some serious considerations, to maybe kick the proverbial can down the road a bit further. So I’ll be dead & gone when the SHTF. Washington may beat the overshoot collapse. I don’t gamble, I’ll let others give odds.”
J Allen—10th, January, 2022
Going Nuclear~Today’s Tasty Choice
I’ll write about the tensions that Washington is provoking with nuclear armed China and Russia at a later date. Today I’ll focus on one nuclear accident that will be the peoples’, and Earth’s, problems for millennia. Set the wayback machine to 20th, March, 2011, Japan. That’s when an enormous earthquake set a tsunami in motion that breached the seawall protecting the nuclear power plant’s backup generators thereby braking the systems that were supposed to avert a disaster. The tsunami’s wave was larger than the walls that were designed to protect such occurrences. Such is the folly of humankind. Three of the four reactors melted down. Fukushima is now a bigger disaster than 1986’s Chernobyl disaster. These two incidences will be ongoing for many years.
For just a few of the items at the plant that pose imminent problems are the storage tanks for the high-level nuclear waste from the cleanup. The tanks are deteriorating rapidly and need to be replaced by 2025. Then there’s the storage of low-level nuclear cooling water that is now being allowed to poison the Northern Pacific Ocean. They’ve run out of storage capacity for the nuclear waste. And don’t forget if the people stop the ongoing oversight of the project—like dying, Earth may be poisoned enough the be Jimi Hendrix’s, now glowing, Third Stone from the Sun. She will , in all likelihood, be dead. Now… we look into the near future—still in our mythical wayback machine—and we are reminded that there are over 450 active nuclear reactors that need constant human attention or they will explode and melt down as well. My suggestion; start decommissioning them all, ASAP. Yep, the news just keeps getting shittier every day.
I withdrew from an online debate about nuclear reactors and the imminent danger they all pose last year. With another doomster. An impasse on the danger they all pose to beautiful Earth. The danger is real. I believe what I write about them to be true. So do the nuclear scientists that wrote the articles I’ve been reading over the years.
Oh, and by the way, the Washington Post has banned me from posting there just like Medium that has now cancelled me. Freedom of speech? Only if the corporations that operate the servers allow one to write freely. I’ve seen a mass migration of many good, real, journalists to subscriptions on Substack. I write so as to keep from losing my damn mind, like the author in the aforementioned film.
Perhaps old offset presses in back alleys will crank up and start printing pamphlets with the subversive material again because MSM and corporations refuse to acknowledge our dilemma. Like when I was in school in the early 70’s. I did the hippy thing and dropped out of college when the ‘Nam seemed to be winding down in ‘74. I cooked professionally for 35 years.
Now: The cleanup crew at Fukushima are scurrying to find a way to contain the high-level nuclear waste that destroys the containers holding the viscous liquid waste in short fashion. Last year was its(Fukushima) 10th anniversary. How far into the future will we have to set the wayback machine to see clean earth where these nuclear nightmares spewed radioactive waste into Earth’s environment? What about the other 450+ active reactors still operating today? Many of today’s reactors have already been pushed into operation well beyond the original design parameters. [And folks keep having children.]
How many other disasters are hanging over our collective heads? Too many to name, for sure. I just touched upon the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan. Chernobyl is still spewing nuclear waste which is being contained by ever larger concrete sarcophaguses which do require humans to perform the work. Fukushima has destroyed many robots sent in for surveillance of the inner cores. So containment means human interaction.
I’ve read a few reports of whales in the North Pacific that have festering anomalies on their skin, presumably from radiation. On a human scale this is many generations into the future. Philosopher Timothy Morton has coined a term, ‘hyperobject’, to better understand how a large scale nuclear poisoning, or, global warming, and climate instability, is projected far into the future. May I suggest reading his, “Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World”, 2013, for the philosophically inclined. It’s one of my three favorite books of all time.
For a quick example. The weather may be fine at your locale. However New Orleans may be being destroyed by cat. 5, hurricane, Katrina. It might be dry in Las Vegas and Huston is being flooded by a thousand year Biblical deluge from cat. 4, hurricane, Harvey. Global warming is a hyperobject. Nuclear disasters are hyperobjects. Positive reinforcing feedback loops, like melting polar ice caps, could be considered part of global warming’s hyperobject. It’s hard to wrap one’s mind around the magnitude of futuristic events.
Perhaps folks don’t want to know about these many decidedly terrible problems. So we have what the ancient Romans had, in modern form now, many ways to avert our attention away from reality. For just a few items; consider professional sports, like NASCAR races, or football—just like chariot races and gladiators with less blood. We have an endless supply of digital delights to keep us mildly amused, all while Earth goes up in flames along with its irradiated oceans. I like reading philosophy and watching streaming TV in the late evenings, to wash the day’s dreck from my tired lobes. Did I mention I’m a pessimist?
Just keep some things in the back of the ol’ noggin so you won’t be too astonished when it all goes south. Perhaps, for all humankind, I’m wrong. My spot of hopium for today.
I doubt that nuclear reactor decommissioning, conserving various resources, like wasted fossil fuels for the military, for example, or mining ocean floors for materials to make the, now trendy, electric cars, will ever be drawn down. Because Earth is a beautiful planet worth saving. And is being ruined by Corporations which are run by people which now run them. Maybe shades of Neitzsche’s eternal recurrence is being displayed in all its Technicolor brilliance. How about working together to save Earth? Savoring and loving one’s immediate loved ones. Being kind. Enjoying today for all it’s worth. I really wish I had better news. Be safe all.
Peace, The Ol’ Hippy \/ see below
For further examination see CounterPunch for Robert Hunziker’s report. \/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/10/fukushima-takes-a-turn-for-the-worse/
P.S. I figured out how to use the spell checker. It’s not automatic like Medium’s. I was always a horrific speller in school.