Article

2004-08-07 Russia

Environmentalists lash out at Russia on anniversary of Hiroshima bomb

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Posted by Zenster 2004-08-07 5:37:28 PM|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Google "Three Mile Island Catastrophe" and compare the returns to those for any of the above incidents.
What would be the response if American industries dumped over a thousand tons of uranium, and twice that much thorium, into the environment every year?
Exactly that is really happening, year in and year out, but it remains unknown because it is not the nuclear industry that is involved.

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2004-08-07 7:55:05 PM|| 2004-08-07 7:55:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 The Soviets spent a lot of time and energy rerouting rivers to irrigate their farmland. Why didn't they build dams and hydroeletric projects in the process? I know they probably loved the idea of nukes and nuclear knowledge and all of that but perhaps some dam building practice would have helped them win projects in the third world (aka Egypt).

Posted by yank 2004-08-07 8:45:01 PM|| [politicaljunky.blogspot.com] 2004-08-07 8:45:01 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 The Soviets spent a lot of time and energy rerouting rivers to irrigate their farmland. Why didn't they build dams and hydroeletric projects in the process?

Great question, yank. I'd wager it had something to do with the cost ratio of labor and materials. The labor was probably much cheaper. Here's an old Soviet joke:

Aparatchik: Comrade Commander, the canal excavation is off schedule!

Commander: Well then, arrest another thousand people!

There was an overabundance of strong backs in the Soviet Union, just not strong ~~rational~~ minds or wills. The materiel needed to construct a hydroelectric dam far outweighed the cost of arresting a~~nother~~ thousand or two more people to divert the course of an entire river.

This reminds me very little of how (paraphrasing) Gorbachev told off an audience that was grilling him over shortages of government supplied bread. He replied, "So, how many of you should I arrest in order to bake the bread on time?"

Anecdotes like that sketch out the current form of ~~theological~~ facism even though it still embodies the almost incomprehensible mentality of viewing human life as an entirely disposable asset. It's not as if Europeans weren't also adept at same, merely that it rarely matched in scale (if one disregards the Nazis).

The disregard for human life that fascism breeds (let's face it, Nazism, Communism, Theocracy, [Non-Democratic] Socialism, Dictatorship, Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism are all essentially facism and nothing else), and therefore self-defeating.

Atomic Conspiracy, most excellent article! Your link is precisely the sort of information I come to Rantburg for. No better proof of why America needs to shift towards high reliability (safety + security) nuclear power generation. While fusion is more desirable, we need to go with slightly-upgraded conventional technology to begin weaning ourselves off the oil teat.

Posted by Zenster 2004-08-07 10:22:48 PM|| 2004-08-07 10:22:48 PM|| Front Page Top

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