EW: Archive

America's Obama Hysteria (March 2009)

I looked through the Drudge Report pages the other day and came across a report by a Russian journalist published at UK's Reuters. The reporter talks about the economic unrests in Russia and how the Putin's ruling party--I call it the KGB party--is handling it. There is nothing new in that report for me as I am a Russian-American who escaped the KGB state at the first opportunity and came to America only to see how the history repeats itself. Speaking at a meeting with leaders of Russia's KGB party, Putin said that criticism of the Russian government during a crisis was allowed (that is, by the KGB), but only within the "laws". That is, within the KGB laws that make the KGB rule forever and as long as such criticism does not hurt Putin and his KGB party. Does it not remind you, America, of the so called "fairness doctrine" that the socialists and communists of all kinds who are now in power here are trying to impose and end free speech once and for all?

Putin then follows to say: "If opposition actions go outside the law, it means they are not pursuing the goals of improving people's lives, but their own selfish goals and the state has the right to defend itself properly".

How nice for the KGB to care about the people, the same KGB responsible for millions of Russian deaths in the 20th century! And of course, those who do not follow the KGB laws and go to the streets to protest are enemies of the people. How familiar is all this! How easy for the KGB to declare those who openly protest as enemies of the people. We all know what the KGB does with the enemies. America, your obamamania is the direct road to what is now going on in Russia. America, you need to educate yourself, you need to teach your kids patriotism and love for your country, not hatred, not how America is bad and all other kinds of garbage that your kids are indoctrinated with at schools and universities. It is due to lack of average American education that socialist revolutionaries like Barack Hussein Obama are bred and get elected. The same has already happened in poor and undeveloped Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Lenin and his gang of communists took the opportunity promising the impoverished and mostly uneducated population all kinds of free benefits. After taking power, there was nothing they could do but to invent all kinds of brutal and deceptive means to continue holding that power. The result was unimaginable crimes against humanity, ones that dwarf even Hitler's crimes. And all starts from small "nice" steps like taking from the rich and just giving the poor!

Nuclear-phobia by Nick Jr. (March 2009)

Nuclear-phobia is irrational fears and dangerous delay in expansion of nuclear energy. The word ‘nuclear’ conjures images of alien green ooze seeping into the ground, giant gray clouds pouring out of enormous towers, crippled and deformed children in hospitals. It calls to mind incinerated cities and sterile landscapes, death and destruction. It is a signal of danger, assumed threatening and unsafe. There is good reason for all these ominous associations with the word. The terrible destruction reeked in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II continues to weigh on American consciousness. The dark cloud of the Cold War and its fears of “nuclear winter” have not quite left the public psyche. The Chernobyl disaster and its horrific aftermath have become inseparable from the images of nuclear power plants. And every day there seems another report from Iran or North Korea, warning of uranium enrichment and the development of nuclear weapons.

But at the same time we are engulfed with cries for energy independence and “green” energy. We are told this is a national security issue, that we should stop our reliance on fuels controlled by our enemies. We are told that it is only a matter of time before we run out of these same fuels. We are even told that the survival of mankind rests on our ability to stop the carbon emissions created by the burning of these fuels. While there have been many alternatives suggested – solar, wind, geothermal, biodiesel, hydroelectric, among others – only one is efficient and reliable and green. Nuclear energy is the obvious solution to our energy demands, at least for the near future. It means less oil consumption and it means less green house gases. In one giant swoop it treats worries of energy dependence, oil scarcity, and yes, even global warming. It is a solution that should be embraced by any rational person, those worried about national security as well as those worried about the environment, liberals and conservatives alike.

And yet when the issue came up during the Democratic primaries, the candidates were either straight-out against expanding nuclear power plants or exceedingly cautious about it. Hillary Clinton called herself “agnostic” on the issue, while Barack Obama said nuclear energy should be merely part of the “energy mix.” Later Obama would declare that he is “not a proponent” of nuclear power (though not completely against it either). Despite its potential to address some of the central problems facing the United States, nuclear power seems to be drowning in the tides of public fears and political pressures. And this is by no means a new trend. The last power plant to be built in the United States was began in 1977 and came online in 1996; there has been no new construction since that time.

Why this nuclear freeze? Why this careless neglect of such an efficient energy source? I’ve already mentioned the sources of the pressure against nuclear power – the popular stigma against all things nuclear. But to really understand the opposition, it is worth considering the specific objections to expanded nuclear energy. Perhaps the most visceral objection, most important to the average American, is the perceived danger of nuclear power plants to their surrounding areas. After all, besides the horror at the Soviet plant in Chernobyl – an accident in 1986 whose aftermath is still felt by children born under the intense nuclear fallout – there was the 1979 Three Mile Island (TMI) accident much closer to home in Pennsylvania.

These two incidents are essentially the only two serious nuclear power accidents to have been documented. Now in both cases the major fault was with the operators, a mixture of inexperience and incompetence. Thanks to the effective design of the TMI plant, and in particular the plant’s containment building, not a single person was harmed as a result of the TMI accident. On the other hand, the terrible aftermath of Chernobyl was mostly due to the Soviets’ choice of a cheaper, inherently unstable design for their reactors, exacerbated by the lack of containment building. Without the latter safety structure, nuclear radiation was spewed into the atmosphere and surrounding lands, reaching far across Eastern and even into Western Europe. To paint all nuclear plants as too dangerous and discard nuclear energy as an alternative fuel because of these two isolated, human-caused accidents is irrational. Rather than reflecting the danger of nuclear power plants as a whole, Chernobyl and TMI were wakeup calls. They were wakeup calls to complacent operators and plant designers, a reminder of the potential for disaster – a useful mindset to keep for any complex and powerful technology.

There is still the persistent worry about nuclear waste produced by nuclear reactors. For although nuclear power plants do not have the carbon byproducts of say coal power plants, they inevitably leave radioactive byproducts from nuclear reactions. These byproducts decay very slowly overtime, some taking hundreds of thousands or even millions of years to reach safe levels. But this is not an insurmountable obstacle. It only means that unlike normal waste, nuclear waste must be insulated from the environment and stored extra safely. Indeed, there are plans to use deep geological reservoirs for this very purpose. And if this solution seems like a perilous quick-fix, a dangerous road to making our planet a nuclear waste dump, there are also methods of reusing and transmuting the nuclear byproducts to safer material. The only stumbling block is that all these techniques are expensive and economically infeasible at present – partly due to the political pressure that has stymied investment and research in the field.

In fact, cost is as much of an obstacle in the production of nuclear power plants as it is in the storage and disposal of nuclear waste. Up to now I’ve addressed the central fears associated with nuclear power, the fear of disastrous accidents and radioactive pollution. But just as important of a barrier to expansion of nuclear power as an alternative energy source is the enormous price of new plants. Not only do they cost billions of dollars, but they take nearly 20 years to build. While this is certainly an enormous commitment, the fact is this is a worthwhile commitment that will prove its worth in future generations.

As oil supplies dwindle and the infrastructure for new, untested alternative fuels is developed, there will need to be a sure, reliable, and efficient energy source to make the transition away from fossil fuels. With so many technical and efficiency limitations to other alternative fuels, it would be truly negligent for America to continue to ignore nuclear energy. The longer we delay, the more vulnerable we grow to a future energy crisis. It is neither an ideological nor a partisan issue; it is an American and a human issue. We must take off our political visors and dispel our unfounded fears and embrace the bounties of science and technology in the form of nuclear energy.