The first (known)
meltdown of a nuclear power generator in the U.S.A. occurred in July of 1959 at
the Santa Susana Field Laboratories in Simi Valley, CA. Since this accident pre-dated any regulation
of the nuclear industry, no one will ever know how much radioactivity was
strewn around as a result. Reasonable
people guess the released amount was comparable to what happened at Three Mile
Island or Chernobyl, but much less than the ongoing disaster at Fukushima.
The Simi Valley
reactor was an experimental "fast-breeder" type, bizarrely cooled by liquefied
metallic Sodium, a substance which will explode when doused with water, and
burst into flame when exposed to air.
Thousands of pounds of this laboratory curiosity remain
unaccounted-for. Obviously it has all
long since oxidized, and remains in the biosphere as Sodium ions, the familiar
Sodium part of Sodium Chloride, table salt.
Except, of course,
for such Sodium as absorbed a fast-moving neutron from the fast-breeder,
turning into radioactive Sodium 24, which in view of a half-life measured in
hours, has long since decayed to the radio stable Magnesium 24.
The point is, this was an experiment that
only a national government had sufficient resources to undertake, that has
already had disastrous results. And all
this is exemplary of the "atomic cowboy" culture of the Santa Susana
Laboratories, in which flammable materials, placed in barrels would be dropped
into a pit and then ignited by being shot with rifles, a practice which
continued, at least sporadically, into 1994.
The point is all commercial
nuclear industries are also experimental.
Whether it is nuclear power generation or nuclear detonation all nuclear
industry is experimental. I refuse to go
along with the status quo of painted euphemisms and call such a thing that can
kill all life on the planet, a plant. No
nuclear facility is a plant, they are all experiments.
Will top
management of utility companies, people whose focus seldom reaches beyond the
balance sheets of current quarter and perhaps one subsequent quarter, exercise
an appropriate level of control on wastes that will be dangerously radioactive
for dozens of thousands of years? Will
the American nucpublic remain gullible enough to allow this nuclear
experimentation, with all of us as subjects, and if so, for what fraction of
those dozens of thousands of years? It's
all part of the experiment.
For these reasons and myriad others, nuclear
power and the nuclear industry are hereinafter referenced as nuclear
experimentation and should be labeled nuclear experimentation by the scientific
community and any analytical minds who might think accurate language is good
and decent.
Every time a new
discovery is made concerning nuclear experimentation it is found that it is
even less sustainable business practice than ever portrayed. It becomes increasingly obvious that nuclear
experimentation is more dangerous, more insidious, than ever portrayed; that
the whole industry is based on lying about how costly it all is economically,
environmentally, and for that matter, ethically. With hindsight it is also undeniable that the
nuclear experimentation industry is based on lying about how costly it all is. If they can, they will obfuscate truth
entirely. The works at Santa Susana
laboratories didn't even tell their families downwind there might be something
problematic in the air. Major fires went
unreported as did the 1959 meltdown.
Only after a similar meltdown at Three Mile Island was the extent of the
Santa Susana experiment revealed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory#Sodium_reactor_experiment
Already nuclear
experimentation has resulted in the destruction of a significant portion of Japan
and a region in Europe through accidents alone at what is euphemistically
called "plants.' The Fukushima
inevitability of nuclear power generation has permanently altered the planet,
some areas drastically. There have been
two thousand nuclear detonations above and below ground, in the air and in the
water, nowhere on the planet is untainted some areas have been devastated than
others. You are in an experiment.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).