Ever since Fukushima, the supporters of nuclear have been at pains to insist that the disaster had been contained, without any evidence, just accepting the government statements. Pro-nuclear environmentalists were insistent that there was nothing to worry about. What will they say now?
What is "highly toxic water". When I read this at least a week ago, it was radioactive waste. Just where are we supposed to get some accurate information about this? This should be front page news, as it will affect us all. Unfortunately, the west coast of the US and the north coast of Australia will get the effects well before we do. But there's no escaping the effects. What a tragedy. Is this an acceptable result of nuclear energy for those who support it?...This just goes to show that even a highly-industrialized country like Japan cannot handle the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown. When will people realize that nuclear is not the future but the death of this planet. There are a number of solutions out there that need to be combined to give us the electricity we need but big industry and short-memory politicians make sure that we keep on consuming and consuming. The first step is to make the price of electricity reflect the real cost of maintenance and decommissioning of the power stations. The people will realize just how much they can reduce their energy consumption (like insulating houses)....
Yes, the switch from intensely radioactive to "toxic" is clearly an attempt on someone's part, probably an industry PR man, to make it sound like a more manageable chemical hazard, conveniently overlooking those tedious details like radioactive half-life, and the increasing difficulty of getting men and even machinery into close enough proximity to effect repairs.
As for those defenders of nuclear energy who pop up on web forums, one in particular was almost certainly a top man in the UK nuclear industry, perhaps recently retired and kept busy. Back in March 2011 we had such a person on a different MSM site, not dissimilar to this one, telling us hourly that TEPCO had the technology to deal with what was an entirely manageable and containable spill, that normal background radiation was routinely blasting our DNA every minute of the day so what were we worried about, that suggesting parents try getting hold of some iodine pills to protect their children's thyroid glands was the height of criminal irresponsibility bla bla. I'm half expecting him to turn up here shortly. Let's hope the Report button works better here than it did there, back in March 2011.
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