What Caused the Fukushima Meltdowns


Do you perceive then, that errors in acting arise through this very ignorance, namely, in a person thinking he knows, when he does not know?
Socrates

To conceal ignorance is to increase it.
Mahatma Gandhi

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Ever had a mole, rash, or toothache, you ignored “til you could no longer? You found help—further ignorance was leading to greater harm.

Ignorance is, according to most dictionaries, a state of not knowing.

Perhaps; but all who visit dermatologists know it”s a state of ignoring, of looking away and trying to forget about something you don”t want to deal with, too.

Ignorance, as derived from ignoring, played the key role in Fukushima meltdowns.

The plant owners and “regulators overlooked the magnitude of the tsunami that would follow a 9.0-magnitude quake off the coast.” Their ignorance was not penalized, because the government that penalizes it, is the same government that makes it legal and profitable to run the plant.

Willful ignorance—the looking away from tsunamis because they would ruin every safety plan, and the gaudy lights of Shinjuku, and the oversprawling population of the nation”s best agricultural lands—caused the meltdowns.

To survive, the nuclear power industry creates, and relies on the government to enforce, a state of willful ignorance. Three generations have been told that nuclear power is cheap, safe and clean; and when it has proven to be none of these, the government steps in to double down on the willful ignorance.

For example, the government ignores the costs of every reactor, because , nuclear power becomes the most expensive way to boil water in human history. The only way they can get built is through “.” If an accident occurs, the Price-Anderson Act limits corporate liability to “$375 million for offsite liability coverage for each reactor unit.”

The Fukushima meltdowns are teaching us a lesson that we would not need to learn if the government did not enforce a state of willful ignorance.

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Ignorance is Strength.
George Orwell
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The full-life of plutonium 239, a by-product of uranium fission, is 48,000 years.

48,000 years ago our ancestors were engaged in their diaspora from Eastern Africa.

Imagine a corporation in business that long. Then imagine it with a perfect safety record.

Only the truly ignorant could believe in such a thing,

no?

where we come from, courtesy National Geographic
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