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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Fill In The Blank Protests

Doh...

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?

The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.

"Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny," Smith said.

The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.


Sounds like more of a Freudian slip than a joke to me.

Comments

Avatar for Robert Perry

Given all of the legitimate fears about nuclear power (refining into weapons, storage of waste, etc..), it’s really funny that people were stumped for an objection.  I’m all for nuclear power, but I’m not unaware of the challenges it poses.

Robert Perry on May 31, 2006 at 01:16 pm
Avatar for Wickedpinto

Most of the problems with Nuclear energy are legislative.  Storage wouldn’t be a problem, after all there are a LOT of radioactive materiels that exist in nature, they quickly decay, but naturaly released radon is still a problem in many city’s and towns, and burying the mass of radio active material in the deapest mass storage facility the planet has ever created, would never reach the surface again, except in cataclysmic release by the power of the Earth itself.  Not to mention much of the research in reclamation of operative materials, from “depleted” materials is being opposed, because all research sites are getting more and more regulated and protested, and shut down for political correctness.

We should invest trillions into a silly hope of the perpetual motion machine of fuel cells, but not a few hundred million into the safe reclamation of an already safe energy source.

Sorry, not a scientist, but I’m confident in being right about everything I just said.

And that flier is classic.

Wickedpinto on May 31, 2006 at 01:28 pm
Avatar for Gene Redlin

Doc,

Now that’s a great idea.

The downside is ???

Gene Redlin on May 31, 2006 at 03:41 pm
Avatar for Robert Perry

Downside is “what happens if the shuttle it’s on blows up like Challenger?”

Anyone want to argue that NASA or other space agencies can be trusted to reliably deliver these payloads into space?  I’m not quite ready to try.

Long & short of it is that, while wastes can be stored for a very long time, it is a technical challenge that probably ought not be left to government alone.

Robert Perry on June 1, 2006 at 06:31 am
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