Unsafe at Any Speed: I wrote an opinion the other day called “The Change.” It had to do with the change the disasters in Japan had created in me philosophically, politically, and even psychologically. The opinion appeared in my local newspaper. One blogger, most often less than complimentary toward me challenged and dared me to answer why it changed me politically. I responded:

I was softening about nuclear power and became convinced as to its general safety. I had changed my opinion to a more moderate stance. I believed the government and in particular the Obama administration's view, that because oil is so fraught with deadly ties to the Middle East, so imbued with the costly effects of pollution and its attendant global warming and, moreover, because oil is not without end, that nuclear power was more feasible despite my initial fear of the lack of proper waste facilities. I thought it, perhaps, good to advance on a clean burning fuel with the risks our technological age of expertise now could handle.

Then Fukushima happened. Japan has experienced the worst nuclear power disaster, perhaps, ever recorded on this planet. I believe it to be even worse than Chernobyl although one will never hear that from the mainstream media, nor the government or those corporate big wigs coping with the Herculean effort of clean up. Although the reports of nuclear leaks already are severe, the corporate powers that be and their government lackeys who have so much to lose if nuclear power is stopped cold in its tracks, are, even today, minimizing this nuclear cataclysm.

The catastrophe in Fukushima, Japan has made me return to what I initially thought was true and changed my opinion yet again. I returned to what I knew in my heart was true from the beginning. Nuclear power is UNSAFE at any speed and I believe over the coming years, if we all survive the military disasters around us, the world will see a huge spike, especially in Japan, but maybe even in other parts of North America as well, in the cases of thyroid, bone, leukemia and other cancers caused from this deadly leak.

This was not just one reactor at risk of meltdown like Three Mile Island but SIX reactors plus the leaks in the containment vessels of the spent fuel rods themselves. Radiation is now as you read and I write this showing up in various vegetables and in the milk of cows that eat the grass in Japan. The disaster happened only a little over a week ago. I believe we are all at risk. If you think we are not simply wait for time to pass. Maybe, and I fervently hope, I will be proven wrong. I would love to be wrong on this issue certainly more than I care about being right!