There Ought to Be a Law: Criminal Nuclear Recklessness

by Ralph J. Dolan / March 28th, 2011

Every nuclear power plant on earth ought to be designated as a crime scene of nuclear recklessness based upon the very threat of catastrophic consequences and upon the nuclear industry’s woeful lack of readiness to handle the most predictable mishaps.

There is a solution so simple and elegant of design. Bring the politicians and the businessmen who profit from the nuclear power industry before an International Criminal Court. Strip them of their recklessly acquired wealth. Allow them to subsist on entitlement programs alone – subsidized housing, food stamps and a modest stipend. Require them to ‘volunteer’ for Disaster Response Teams where they would be trained in all the state-of-the-art protocols of first responders for any nuclear crisis anywhere in the world. Be sent into the plant spewing radioactive poison and do what must be done and be involved in the wide-ranging clean-up. With such a consequence hanging over the heads of those who are profiting from this madness we would see swift reform.

This would never happen, of course, because the very people charged with overseeing the nuclear industry for safety are the ones who like it the way it is and profit from it handsomely.

It has been said of Tokyo that it is a city waiting to die because of Japan’s location atop volatile tectonic plate activity. So it has been common knowledge. We knew. Books have been written about the insanity of building nuclear power plants in this active earthquake zone. And now the nightmare unfolds before our eyes.

Where is the international body of wise, far-sighted men and women empowered to say “No! There will be no nuclear power plants here! Too dangerous!” Why do we proceed in such dangerous terrain from recklessness and not from the highest standards of human enlightenment?

We have given over the leadership of this world, Starship Earth, to slick con-artists, addicted to gambling for high stakes. They work together, make the rules, build the structures, make off with the profits and let the people pay the terrible price when the containment walls burst.

Is there an echo? It sounds so familiar.

The crux of the matter is this: Our leaders look out for themselves. They’ll shovel the pretty rhetoric at us about freedom, equality and the sacredness of human life. But their words lie. Only their actions tell the truth. And the truth is that all of our leaders are in it only for the money and the people be damned. One cannot make it to the highest levels of government/corporate structures without a willingness to play this money-game.

Our leaders ought to be made to wear patches on their clothing, like race-car drivers, revealing the names of the organizations that are bank-rolling all of their initiatives. The masses of human beings upon this earth are the fodder of the rich to be manipulated and exploited in the work place and in the market place and to pay with their flesh and blood, their homes and their families, their loves and their dreams when the debts come due.

What folly!

Ralph J. Dolan is a retired family therapist living in western Massachusetts. He can be reached at bodhibananaman@aol.com Read other articles by Ralph J..

This article was posted on Monday, March 28th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Disasters, Japan.