Why now?

     Several years ago, when I wrote Everyone Can be a herO, (fiction from the future) I didn't know what was going to happen at Fukushima.  In my book I guessed that the English government would be sparing when it came to the truth about the amount of radioactive contamination left and that there would still be people around wanting to make money out of nuclear power. There would also be a majority of people who didn't want it and just wanted a healthy and fairer life for the future generations, although they knew that, because of the accident, their future would be blighted by increased disease and mutations.  In my book, however, no one speaks about it. The kids don't know much about nuclear waste, because they boycotted nuclear power lessons on principle.
     Society has learned to cope without oil and it hasn't been as hard as people expected, but when a nuclear accident happens, this is something that can't just be a forgotten event. The aftermath is there for millions of years.
     It takes people power and a deal of bravery to protest and stand up against the hidden lobby who want to make money out of the situation and whereas the good guys play clean, the bad guys play dirty.  Plus ca change...

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It was an ordinary Sunday morning,... but radioactive water was seeping into the laundry room

Yes it was... One of the contractors working on the decommissioning of the Sizewell A nuclear power station in Suffolk in the U.K..decided to wash out some dirty clothes and while he was in the laundry room he spotted something out of the ordinary: radioactive cooling waster which was leaking out of the pond which holds the reactor's extremely radioactive spent nuclear fuel... No... none of the alarms had gone off and Yes..by the time the next patrol came round, the pond level would have gone down enough to expose the nuclear fuel rods. Potentially, they could have overheated, caught fire and sent a plume of radioactive contamination along the coastline.. or which ever way the wind blew.  Does the scenario sound horribly familiar?
This is very well reported in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/11/nuclear-waste-nuclearpower  but the episode took place on January 7, 2007 and when was it reported? June 11, 2009.  Why the gap, when it was so significant?
     This report  from the HM Nuclear Installation Inspectorate was obtained under the freedom of information act by John Large, when he was compiling a dossier for the local "Shutdown Sizewell Campaign, otherwise would we have found out?
     The U.K is ringed with nuclear power plants and this government would still like more.  This is a link to a dynamic map, to show what would happen if there was an accident at a nuclear power plant in Britain, it's from No 2 Nuclear Power and you can make the wind blow in different directions. http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/Chernobyl-UK.php
    I don't suppose the leaking water looked different to any other leaking water, but the contractor knew it was...what if he hadn't.  Would you know? Why did it take an independent nuclear consultant to ferret this out?  Luckily there are a few.
     Do you feel confident that we won't ever be in a similar situation to Japan?  We don't have earthquakes of that ferocity, but even if less people would develop cancer some years later, if that cancer is the one which affects you, it probably doesn't make too much difference how many other people are suffering in the same way, except for the NHS resources to treat you. 
     
 

World Water Day

Today is, was, or will be, according to your position on the planet, World Water Day. I have always thought that water should be free, by right, ... there to drink, wash, swim and play in.  Furthermore, it should be clean.  It should neither be contaminated with pesticides or disease, nor should it be dangerously radioactive over thousands of years either from uranium mining, tritium leaks from nuclear power plants, or radioactive contamination from  leaking storage pools.
We are told that it is one of our most precious commodities, that we have to save it.  But perhaps we should save it from ourselves.