Nuclear power is the worst form of energy production to ever exist. It has always been bad, always caused cancers and high unnecessary risks. And it needs to end, now.

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Some of us learned some lessons thirty plus years ago, after Three Mile Island.   One of the lessons we learned was that the disaster is spun throughout the media in order to minimize its effects to the gullible, non-technical public.

The default position is to downplay the severity of the crisis and its potential catastrophic loss of life.  

Let's have a bit of reality, for a change.   Nuclear power could not exist without the governments forcing "liability caps" onto the public and shielding operators and manufacturers from paying the real costs of a meltdown.   Their costs are capped at a set amount, far below the actual damage that would result from a total failure.   This is government interference in the economy, and something the so-called "conservatives" are supposedly against, but yet, in this case, they are mind-numbingly in favor of it.   As are most liberal ideologues.   Strange bedfellows.

How it works is: if your house is nuked and you wind up in one of those "uninhabitable areas," then oh well.   That's your problem.   Your insurance won't cover it.   The nuclear industry will not compensate you.   Go elsewhere, and good luck.

If nuclear power was forced to compete on a level playing field, it would not exist, and we would not be in such a great amount of danger as we currently are.  

Back in the 1970s it was the paradigm of the day that alternative energy sources: solar, wind, tide, geothermal, hydrogen, and others would be the next phase of human development.   President Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House.  

Then Reagan and company took over.   Alternative energy development was killed in the cradle.    Oil became the central focus.   The solar panels were taken down.

The reason that we do not have a larger alternative energy sector and a greater amount of our energy produced that way today is political, not technical.   It is a limitation of our political system, not our technology.  

Centralized energy production and distribution produces billionaires, oligarchs and corrupt politicians.  

Decentralized energy production (solar panels on your own house for example) produces happy people who sell clean, non-polluting energy back to the grid.

Which model do you think has been championed in the halls of government?

Which model does nuclear energy fall under?

Today photovoltaic cells are cheaper, more efficient, cleaner and safer than nuclear.   They do not require liability caps, radioactive containment, cancer, corpses, military responses, mass hysteria or terror.  

Of course there are alternatives.   But is that what your television is talking about?   Is that the discussion on talk radio?   Are corporate news sites comparing our real world options as a society?   As a species?  

Force the issue.

Nuclear power was always an insane idea forced upon the public.   Talk about your unnecessary risks, your risk assessment and your cost-benefit analyses gone awry.  

Now that nuclear energy generation is the status-quo, new generations of "useful idiots" repeat the half-truths and blatant lies about it that sold it in the first place.   I do not waste my time arguing with deluded, misinformed people.

Some knowledgeable people who understand what's really at stake, what's really going on are Bob Wasserman, Dr. Helen Caldicott and former US energy official Robert Alvarez.

Get the other side of the nuclear debate.   Then do the right thing.   Demand that government get rid of these unnecessary and insane monuments to centralized power and control.

If Three Mile Island taught some people nothing at all, then Chernobyl?   Are some minds so impervious to logic, reason, facts, evidence, rationality -- that sort of thing -- that they would willingly choose to place themselves, their families, and countless others at higher risk of cancer, just because?   What kind of rational arguments can be made that the most dangerous and toxic form of energy production ever created, which everyone fears and that centralizes control of energy production in the hands of a few, is better than its polar opposites?   Small minds, I suppose.   Small minds.

A nod to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel who demonstrated outstanding leadership and common sense this week.   I'm unfamiliar with any of Merkel's other policies, but this one is nearly jaw-dropping in its rarity, appropriateness, and morality.

America still awaits moral, rational leadership.   Perhaps in 2012?   (Not bloody likely")

PS.

Update from Japan, as of this morning:

 "Japanese officials suspended helicopter flights spraying water over Japan's troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant due to high radiation levels"

 "In addition, 11 water cannon trucks arrived at the Fukushima Daiichi plant though they were too far from the plant to be effective...

 "America's top nuclear official told Congress Wednesday that the pool cooling spent fuel rods at the crippled Japanese nuclear plant had lost most or all of its water, a potentially catastrophic situation."

--ABC News 

Authors Website: http://politicalfilm.wordpress.com/

Authors Bio:

Joe Giambrone is an American author, freelance writer and filmmaker. Non-fiction works appear at International Policy Digest, WhoWhatWhy, Foreign Policy Journal, Counterpunch, Globalresearch, , OpedNews, High Times and other online outlets. His science fiction thriller Transfixion and his Hollywood satire Hell of a Deal are available through Amazon, B&N, Smashwords and Createspace.