The shutdown of Japan’s nuclear fleet because of the casualty-free Fukushima meltdown will produce more scenes like this:
That was the Cosmo oil Chiba refinery, east of Tokyo, after it exploded during the March 11, 2011 earthquake. It only took a couple of weeks to put that fire out.
Who knows how many people were burned to death when the refinery exploded during the quake. Lucky for those who prefer fossil fuels to nuclear, the world’s media, encouraged by multinationals like Greenpeace, couldn’t have cared less about that particular consequence of the quake. They were fixated on the Fukushima nuclear plant—which, 4400 days after the meltdowns, still hasn’t killed a single soul.
I’m guessing an LNG terminal would behave similarly during a quake of similar magnitude. Only the fire would be bigger.
Which brings me to Greenpeace’s position on nuclear and natural gas. A senior Greenpeacer recently published an article in the Huffington Post Canada encouraging South Korea to get off nuclear. As per the Greenpeace standard operating procedure, he trotted out the usual PR line about using renewables and efficiency to cover the billions of kilowatt-hours that would be lost from the grid if the South Koreans were to follow his advice.
He knows full well that renewables and efficiency cannot cover the gap left by a nuclear phaseout. He knows full well that it will be gas that covers it. And I guess he’s comfortable with that.
Well, I’m not comfortable with more scenes like the one in the video above.
See also “Greenpeace’s pork-fueled Brave New World”
Really, what’s Greenpeace’s REAL beef against nuclear energy? It can’t be its safety record or civilian lives lost if they bothered to check the history. And meltdowns just haven’t proved the Doomsday that antinukes whined they would be. I hear a lot that they’re mostly on a guilt trip out to avenge Hiroshima for what the nuclear energy did there by banishing it. I thought that was a crazy idea but when they want fossil fuels to keep on affecting our health over nuclear energy which hasn’t, you got to wonder.
They wouldn’t continue to get uncharitable donations from affluent persons on public payrolls if they stopped opposing it. (Typical royalties on natural gas exceed the whole price of uranium.)
In almost any protection racket, the threat that one is being “protected” from comes from the racketeers themselves. It could be argued that Greenpeace is contributing to the global warming threat by fighting against nuclear power.
If nuclear power replaced fossil fuels for electricity generation, they’d find it much harder to rake in the donations by scaring people with stories of climate catastrophe.
Thanks for your regular contributions. I wish I could say the same about mine. This is a very good post and glad someone has noticed the Greenpeace hypocritical stance. As an organization I really don’t give them as much credit for knowing things as you do but they have chosen their path and stick to it unfortunately. I see them as being motivated by a vigilante mentality with a touch of Luddite added to the mix.