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| Expect More Fukushimas |
 The
gung-ho nuclear industry is in deep shock. Just as it and its
cheerleader, the International Atomic Energy Agency, were preparing
to mark next month´s 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl
accident with a series of self-congratulatory statements about
the dawning of a safe age of clean atomic power, a series of
catastrophic but entirely avoidable accidents take place in
not one but three reactors in one of the richest countries of
the world. Fukushima is not a rotting old power plant in a failed
state manned by half-trained kids, but supposedly one of the
safest stations in one of the most safety-conscious countries
with the best engineers and technologists in the world. Chernobyl
blew up not because the reactor... |
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| THE IKE PHASE |
| ON January 20, 1961, John Kennedy delivered
his rousing Inaugural Address. But this speech was preceded,
as William Galston of the Brookings Institution has reminded
us, by an equally important speech: Dwight Eisenhower´s
farewell address. Kennedy´s speech was an idealistic call
to action. Eisenhower´s speech was a calm warning against
hubris. Kennedy celebrated courage; Eisenhower celebrated prudence.
Kennedy asked the country to venture forth. Eisenhower asked
the country to maintain its basic sense of balance. While Kennedy
gloried in the current moment, Eisenhower warned the country
to "avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering,
for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of
tomorrow... |
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EU to discuss N-safety in Brussels next week
DPA
BRUSSELS EUROPEAN Union leaders have added nuclear safety to the agenda of their summit in Brussels next week, the bloc’s top energy official said on Wednesday.
The gathering on March 24-25 was originally to have focused on eurozone reforms.
But in light of the reactor incidents in Japan it will also discuss “energy policy, safety and the consequences of the catastrophe in Japan,” EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told a committee of the European Parliament in Brussels.
On Tuesday, Oettinger said that “stress tests” on how nuclear plants in the EU could withstand a Japaneselike disaster would be conducted “in the second half of the year.” In Japan, the tsunami provoked by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake has crippled reactors at the Fukushima plant, dispersing high levels of radiation in the atmosphere and provoking a partial meltdown.
The event has reopened a debate in Europe about the merits of nuclear energy, especially after Germany decided to temporarily halt production at its older nuclear plants and run safety checks on the remaining ones.
Poland and Italy, which currently do not use nuclear energy, said on the other hand that they will still go ahead with plans to adopt it.
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