the fukushima challenge

This is a really great read.

Just in my email from the World Nuclear Association (WNA). Extract here only, full document in the links below.

Fairy stories and reality hitting them in the face!


The Fukushima Challenge: Shaping a Sound Response

"IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety
Vienna, 21 June 2011
John Ritch, Director General, World Nuclear Association

At the IAEA's post-Fukushima ministerial conference, the nuclear industry was represented by WANO Chairman Laurent Stricker and WNA Director General John Ritch. Stricker outlined WANO?s global safety agenda. Ritch spoke on Fukushima's larger significance.

Ladies and gentlemen:

Thirty-two years ago, an American movie called "The China Syndrome" popularized the image of a nuclear power plant as a catastrophe waiting to happen. The actor Jack Lemmon won an Academy Award as a whistle-blower saving the world from a dangerous technology controlled by a gang of moral and environmental thugs. Unfortunately, time and events have done too little to diminish that dire impression in the public mind.

The Real China Syndrome

Since then, our world has become increasingly aware of another China Syndrome that is both more real and far more serious. It can be seen in a satellite photo of the world's most populous nation and its burgeoning economy under a vast cloud of pollution.

That cloud and others like it - a symbol of the consequences of world economic development today - signify both severe health damage to citizens below and a dangerously thickening canopy of greenhouse gases above.

These clouds now hover over our planet's future.

The world's response to this menace has been slow. But in the past decade, we saw the beginnings of action as dozens of nations, representing much of humankind, reviewed their policies and came inexorably to the same conclusion.

For reasons of energy independence, human health and environmental responsibility, they determined that nuclear power must play a central role in their national energy strategies for the 21st Century."


Full Speech:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/john_ritch/Fukushima_Challenge_Shaping_Sound_Response.html

or download the full pdf here:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/John_Ritch_speeches/pdf/Ritch-IAEA%20Safety%20Ministerial-210611.pdf