The Price of Progress

There are some people who you see almost every day but they can still surprise you when they open their mouths to speak.  It could be the mildly inane, a sublime non sequitur or comment that leaves "your brain hanging upside down".

I like that expression, it comes from a Ramones song commemorating a bit of bad history. In 1985 to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of World War 2 in Europe Ronald Reagan placed a wreath at Kolmeshohe Cemetery which was a German military cemetery. Critics pointed out that some of the dead there were members of the Waffen SS -truly the most fanatical portion of the Nazi war machine.

 

Reagan being Reagan refused to back down even when over 80 Republican Congressmen asked him to change his plans. Be it stubborn pride or a real lack of understand history what should have been a display of US - German unity turned into a public relations debacle. The whole event left everyone's brain hanging upside down long before WTF was popular.

Back to yesterday, Harrison is somebody I see regularly several time a week.  Not far from my home and visible for many miles is the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant.  Harrison stares off at the 300 foot tall cooling towers and says "you know today is Superman's 75th birthday and tomorrow is the 27th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident -where the hell was Superman on April 26th 1986?"

It felt it a little strange reminding Harrison that Superman is fiction but he assured me that he wasn't losing his grip on reality and that asking the question as a metaphor.  The nuclear accident at Chernobyl didn't happen by itself and there were actions both before and after the accident that shaped the final outcome.

The real Supermen where the 28 Soviet firemen who when on the roof so they could fight the fire after the explosion. They had to realize fighting the fire would mean certain death from radiation poisoning, they also knew if they didn't fight the fire  millions of people could be sicken and brought to an early death.

It's difficult not to be overwhelmed by that kind of courage.

The whole concept of a "superman" is a mainstay of mythology, comic books, fantasy fiction, philosophy and propaganda .  And yes, supermen are also in art. Art is the mirror that can get to reflect everything else that goes on in the world. 

So far there have been three major nuclear accidents; the Mile Island meltdown on March 28th 1979, Chernobyl and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster on March 11th 2011. There have been at least 30 other serious events since 1952.

The long term promise of nuclear energy being "safe, clean, too cheap to meter" has never come to pass. Potentially nuclear energy can be cheaper if you only compare the price of the day to day production of kilowatts.  If you have to add in the projected cost of dealing with the nuclear waste the price goes up. Since the current projections are only a WAG (a wild ass guess) and the real costs could easily outstrip the more convention ways to produce electricity.

As bad as nuclear energy might become, keep in mind there is no free lunch. Every way of producing energy has an environmental cost. Most of our electricity is produced by burning coal -to make steam -to turn turbines. Coal is filled with all kinds of impurities -like mercury. Even the cleanest smokestack using the best "clean coal" technology still spews out a mist of mercury that eventually gets in our water and food.

But coal's biggest threat is environmentalists  but instead other capitalists who are fracking cheaper natural gas.  But here again fracking has it environmental costs and many of those costs are going to be long term and not fully apparent until someday after the drilling companies have left.

Pennsylvania is one of the epicenters of the fracking boom. Pennsylvania was twice the home of earlier energy booms in the 1800's. The state had the nation's first commercial oil field in the far northwest corner.  And Pennsylvania is dotted with both active and abandon coal mines.  Many of the abandoned coal mines and oil wells are over a century old and they still leak all kinds of toxic pollutants into the environment. The state government of Pennsylvania  (which here really means the taxpayers in this case) spends millions of dollars every year to clean up or at least reduce the damage left behind. They may have to spend millions more for many years to come to pay for the cheap energy of a former generation.

Art is one way ordinary people can voice their resentment over the bad decisions of powerful people and institutions. Art can be a powerful tool of protest. Governments have always be fearful of artists  because they can create an image that becomes a lightning rod for change. It's difficult to argue with an image but on some level it can quickly make a truth apparent. A work of art can make a point better than a thousand, or even ten thousand well thought out words  

Now the rich and the powerful often prove themselves to be real Philistines when it comes to art but they do have the tools of propaganda and advertising.  They can try to make nuclear power look environmentally friendly by saying "no greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere when they make power" but that's the kind of truth that used to mask the real environmental harm they create.

The overall cleanest way to produce energy is with renewable resources. Solar and wind energy are still discouraged because the powers behind short term profits are more politically active than the people who would benefit from the long term results. 

Last week someone was attempting to shout me down on my view points over solar energy.  Their claim was solar energy was still too expensive, too idealistic, too impractical to work.  It's funny how many critics demand that solar energy has to compete  economically to be considered viable  -and yet coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy all get billions in government subsidies that renewable energies could never even hope to receive.

I thought about this. I thought of how expensive a nuclear accident at the nearby Limerick power plant would be.  Though I was assured an accident could never happen here.

Satirically I thought how there's never been a meltdown of solar panels. Then I had to ask the other party if Limerick had a special security team and tactical plan to protect the plant against terrorism?

Immediately I was told "of course they did, it would criminal negligent if they didn't".

I thought about why those rods of uranium had to be protected by armed guards and then had to ask "do you think terrorists will every come here to steal solar panels?"

I felt a little Harrison asking that question but the other party understood exactly what I meant. Like Ronald Reagan at Bitburg, right or wrong -his heels were dug in. He would not concede that the world would be a safer place with more solar panels and less nuclear power plants.