One year on, Fukushima is still spinning

The first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster is fast approaching and it promises to be another silly-season for Australia’s pro-nuclear zealots.

They have form. While the crisis was unfolding in March last year, Ziggy Switkowski advised that “the best place to be whenever there’s an earthquake is at the perimeter of a nuclear plant because they are designed so well.”

Switkowski wants dozens of nuclear power plants built in Australia – dozens of places to shelter from earthquakes.

Even as nuclear fuel meltdown was in full swing at Fukushima, Adelaide University’s Professor Barry Brook reassured us that:

“There is no credible risk of a serious accident… Those spreading FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] at the moment will be the ones left with egg on their faces. I am happy to be quoted forever after on the above if I am wrong … but I won’t be.”

Eggs, anyone?

John Borshoff, CEO of uranium miner Paladin, described the Fukushima crisis as a “sideshow”. A Fukushima farmer was equally succinct in his suicide note: “I wish there wasn’t a nuclear plant.”

Here are some of the arguments we will likely hear from nuclear boosters in the lead-up to the March 11 Fukushima anniversary.

Expect a barrage of personal attacks since the boosters will want to avoid discussion about the horrendous impacts of the nuclear disaster – and how the disaster could so easily have been prevented if plant operator TEPCO had taken straight-forward measures to properly protect back-up power generators from flooding.

Cameron England said in the week following the Fukushima meltdowns, fires and explosions that “some parts of the environmental movement will be quietly high-fiving each other this week”. There’s a nod in the direction of that offensive drivel in Barry Brook’s claim that I was “delighted” to hold him to account for his asinine statements as the nuclear disaster unfolded. Academic Allan Patience said “it appears that the opponents of nuclear energy are almost beside themselves with delight at the tragedy that is happening in Fukushima”.

No evidence for any of those claims, of course.

Read the rest here:  http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3832080.html