Fukushima nuclear catastrophe forces world to rethink future of nuclear power

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: Fukushima, nuclear power plant, health news

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(NaturalNews) With one massive lurch, planet Earth has put an end to the nuclear power "renaissance" that was gaining momentum around the world as a safe, clean energy source. For the last few decades, nuclear power looked quite good compared to the dirty coal industry which fuels most of the world's power plants. Except for the Chernobyl accident which was considered an aberration stemming from truly moronic nuclear plant design (no containment structure? Who cares!), the nuclear power industry had a relatively clean safety record. Even the famous Three Mile Island incident seemed tiny in the current scope of world events.

But in mere moments, Mother Nature showed the world how vulnerable nuclear power plants really are to the whims of the unexpected. Today, Japan continues to battle the potential meltdown of several nuclear reactors (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific...). A "partial meltdown" has already occurred, and nuclear fuel rods have reportedly been exposed to the open air in at least one case, causing a noticeable radiation leak that has potentially impacted thousands of Japanese citizens (http://www.suntimes.com/4317306-417/harmful-...). Even several U.S. military personnel have already been exposed to the radiation. (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/...)

The damaged nuclear reactors were made by General Electric, and there are nearly two dozen of the same reactors operating right now in the United States. France currently supplies roughly 80 percent of its own power from nuclear sources. Japan had 55 nuclear power plants before the tsunami. It is not yet known how many will be operational after this disaster.

Northeast Japan turned into a "war zone"

Meanwhile, radiation levels around the damaged nuclear power plants are already rising, reports Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/ja...). The evacuation zone current extends to a 20km radius around the damaged Fukushima power plant.

The sudden loss of nuclear power -- combined with the devastating effects of the tsunami flood -- have turned much of northeast Japan into a "war zone" (http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDi...) where grocery store shelves have been stripped bare of food while other critical supplies are long gone (fuel, clean water, emergency medicine, etc.).

Radiation levels are rising to alarming levels, causing the government to warn its citizens to "stay indoors" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japan-fa...). "Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health. These are readings taken near the area where we believe the releases are happening," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.

I'm one of the people who has been warning readers about coming events that will rock our world, by the way. While I don't even attempt to predict specific earthquakes or industrial disasters, in January of this year, I wrote, "I believe the changes that will occur in the next two years will rock the foundations of our economies, governments and belief systems. In the end, after considerable turmoil, I see a great expansion of human consciousness and a maturing of the human race." (https://www.naturalnews.com/030903_prediction...)

The end of nuclear power in Japan

In looking beyond the current crisis, perhaps the bigger question is "How will Japan be able to restore its power infrastructure after this event?" The public, now utterly horrified by the fear and the threat of death posed by existing nuclear power plants, will have no appetite whatsoever for restoring their function. Existing nuclear plants may even be shuttered by politicians looking to win favor from terrified voters. Japan is now facing a post-nuclear era in which it must find a new power source to replace many gigawatts (GW) of power.

Electricity is the lifeblood of Japan's economy. Without an abundance of affordable electricity, Japan's entire manufacturing base collapses (and with it, millions of jobs for Japanese citizens). Even right now, Toyota will lose its output capacity for 40,000 automobiles, reports Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-14/toy...). Sony, Toshiba, Nissan and Honda are also being fiercely impacted by the loss of power there.

This puts an impossible squeeze on Japan's political leaders: On one hand, they need cheap, scalable power (nuclear power plants) in order to feed the factories that employ much of the workforce there. On the other hand, the renewed fear in nuclear power will mean that any politician backing the continued use of nuclear power plants in Japan will be committing political suicide.

So what's the solution? Japan must now seek a breakthrough clean, safe energy source that doesn't require burning coal or radioactive fuel rods. That's what must now occur in the aftermath of this combination earthquake / tsunami / nuclear power plant disaster in Japan: The human race must discard old belief systems about energy sources and begin to seriously explore alternative science and the promise of cleaner, cheaper and far safer energy sources through technologies such as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions -- a technology that was once called "cold fusion" and widely ridiculed by all the usual suspects: Conventional physicists, skeptics, government scientists and the like. Today's it's alive and well, even being used by the U.S. Navy. (https://www.naturalnews.com/025925_cold_fusio...)

Solar and wind just won't cut it

In searching for clean, renewable power solutions, don't leap to the conclusion that solar power or wind power can somehow restore all these lost gigawatts of electricity. Japan doesn't have the physical land mass to install all the solar panels needed for such an ambitious project... even if it could magically materialize all the solar panels out of thin air!

Wind power is limited on several fronts: It's ugly, noisy, dangerous to birds and required a very long supply chain of engineering, construction and installation. It interferes with ships and relies on huge quantities of rare earth metals that have to be exported from China -- the very country that recently threatened to block all exports of those metals in order to settle a political dispute with Japan (https://www.naturalnews.com/028028_rare_earth...).

Japan needs to get serious about researching free energy technologies that actually aren't "free" energy devices but rather energy channeling devices that only seem to generate free energy. As any physicists knows, even the empty vacuum of space is teeming with vast quantities of energy woven into the fabric of spacetime itself. In fact, famous physicists such as Stephen Hawking argue that our entire universe (and everything in it, including all the dark matter) suddenly and spontaneously appeared out of exactly nothing. "Bodies such as stars and black holes cannot just appear out of nothing," Hawking explains in his recent book The Grand Design. "But a whole universe can."

If a whole universe can appear from out of nothing, teasing out a few gigawatts of seemingly "free" power potential from the vacuum of empty space seems like child's play in comparison. Of course, Japanese scientists are not God, but we're not asking them to create the entire universe -- just to find a clever way to extract some power potential from the fabric of reality and channel it into the power grid.

The suppression of free energy technologies must now end

By the way, here's the real secret in all this -- the truth that virtually no one dares talk about: Such free energy technologies already exist and have existed for decades. They have all been unilaterally suppressed by oil barons, governments and powerful corporations because the profits to be had from other, more costly sources of power were just too tempting to pass up. The list of assassinated free energy inventors is a long one, indeed. I interviewed Dr. Brian O'Leary on this very subject in 2009. You can hear this interview in Health Ranger Show #59 at this link: https://www.naturalnews.com/Index-Podcasts.ht...

Japan is now faced with a situation where they suddenly need a practical, scalable "free" energy technology that doesn't go nuclear following a tsunami. And perhaps that's the good news in all this, if there's any to be found: From desperation and disaster, humanity must mature and evolve into a race of beings with greater humility and a deeper appreciation of the raw power of Mother Nature. To play God with nuclear fuel rods -- or GE seeds for that matter -- is to risk being shrugged off the planetary lifescape in the blink of an eye. With nuclear power, and GMOs, and pharmaceutical chemicals, we are playing God with the future of life on our planet, and that is a risky, fragile proposition that should give us all pause to reconsider our actions.

Humanity has so far failed the test of life

To move forward as a civilization on planet Earth, we must first master the basic skills of not destroying ourselves while simultaneously not destroying the planet at the same time. As of the year 2011, humanity has mastered neither (and failed at both). In the great test of respecting life on our planet, humanity currently earns a big ugly "F".

The human suffering, loss of life, and property damage in Japan is, after all, wholly the consequence of humanity's own lack of foresight or respect for the awesome power of Mother Nature. After all, earthquakes and tsunamis have been occurring on our planet for literally billions of years. But it was only recently that modern man decided to build nuclear power plants on the shores of land masses, exposing them to the inevitable tsunami wave assaults that recently struck Japan. It's almost as if we're begging to be destroyed... and we're tempting Mother Nature at every opportunity.

You cannot blame this disaster on Mother Nature. Ultimately, for anyone who observes this situation with wisdom, you must point the finger at the short-sightedness of human beings and the egoistic, arrogant belief in "science" that thinks clever technology can somehow overcome the laws of inevitability.

With these nuclear power plants, science has failed us yet again by creating a situation that now threatens virtually an entire nation with the very real possibility of mass radiation poisoning via a nuclear power plant meltdown.

Let us hope this devastating situation can somehow be avoided. More importantly, let us pray that humanity can be humbled by this experience and learn to operate with greater respect for Mother Nature and less misplaced faith in "scientific technology" that has been misrepresented and sold to us as "safe" and "clean" when, in reality, it threatens the very future of life on our planet.