vildemose

Scientists.

""The lessons of Fukushima in which Hugh Gusterson observes the politics of who is pro, con, and middle ground on the future of nuclear reactors. He recalls the nuclear meltdown for which Britain hid the details for half a century and for which a longer discussion is here: BBC documentary reveals government reckless in drive for nuclear weapons

Windscale was the public face of Britain's drive to produce an atom bomb and the BBC documentary about it was released only four years ago because the British government hid the information about what happened at Windscale.

Fifty years since fire spread through the core of the Windscale nuclear reactor in Cumbria, tape recordings of the inquiry are finally made public.

Some of the men who risked their lives to fight the blaze are still bitter as they explain how they were made scapegoats for the disaster.

Windscale was the public face of Britain's drive to produce an atom bomb and warnings of leaks and overheating were ignored in the rush to get the reactor running.

Cover-up is always a bad idea and a fifty-year cover-up is unspeakable.

Hugh Gusterson, author of the first in the series that appeared this week in The Bulletin is an anthropologist with expertise in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science. His fieldwork is in the US and Russia, where he studied the culture of nuclear weapon scientists and antinuclear activists. Two of his books capture this effort--Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex (University of Minnesota Press, 2004).

Gusterson addresses the present crisis in more detail than I am quoting:

The US government, including its regulatory agencies, has been largely captured by the corporate sector, which, by means of campaign donations, is able to secure compliant politicians and regulators. (In this context it is not entirely irrelevant that employees of the nuclear operator Exelon Corporation have been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and that Obama appointed Exelon's CEO to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Energy Future.)

We have examples from the not-so-distant American past of the government learning important lessons from big mistakes. After the Great Crash, the government reformed the banking system. After the near disaster of the Cuban Missile Crisis, US and Soviet presidents began signing arms control agreements. After the discovery of the Love Canal environmental contamination, Congress passed Superfund legislation.

But we now have a government captured by special interests, paralyzed by partisanship, and confused by astroturfing political groups and phony scientific experts for sale to the highest bidder. Our democracy and our regulatory agencies are husks of what they once were. It is unclear that such a system is capable of learning any lessons or indeed of doing anything much beyond generating speeches and passing the responsibility for failure back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball between our two yapping political parties. While we are distracted by the theater of Congress and the White House, our fate lies in other hands.

He's got more to say. Read it here.

The second article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in response to the crisis is by nuclear engineer and physicist Charles D. Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists and author of the forthcoming Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, April 2011). He outlines the next steps for Japan.

Japan's leadership has failed to enact effective policies for greater use of renewable energies. In particular, the renewable portfolio standard has been set too low so that the current low-level use has easily met the most recently passed standard. Lobbyists from large power utilities have opposed more ambitious renewable energy goals. Ten large utilities have monopoly control over Japan's major electricity-usage regions. Collectively, these utilities produce more than 85 percent of Japan's electricity. They have substantial influence at the local and national governmental levels.

Although it will be extremely hard to do because of Japan's dysfunctional political system, which has gone through five prime ministers in as many years, Japanese leaders should exert -- for the good of their country -- the courage and political power needed to form a more effective energy policy that is more resilient to natural disasters and that is not unduly influenced by monopolies. With a combination of safer nuclear plants and much greater use of renewable energy, Japan will significantly reduce its dependence on foreign fossil fuels and will serve as a global leader in shifting toward a sustainable pathway with renewable sources....more below:""

Reprinted entirely form //www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/17/957478/-The-Bulletin-of-Atomic-Scientists