There's a reason we have regulations in place for various industries: Accidents can kill lots of people and render entire communities uninhabitable. But as the world learned during the Japanese Fukushima nuclear crisis, those regs only work as intended when they are enforced: In a blistering assessment, authors described how regulators and nuclear operators went to painstaking lengths to either ignore safety risks at the plant or cover them up. It accused Tepco and government officials of slow and faulty communication after the disaster, which, the report said hampered the emergency response.I am probably more open to nuclear power than most progressives. But in my opinion, the GOP's ongoing jihad against regulation and government oversight, combined with the new and improved corrupt influence of corporate cash in a post Citizens United world, is a recipe for disaster.
- BREAKING NEWS FROM NOAA: Mermaids ... not real!
- Trying to pin one heat wave on climate change is like trying to pin one bad roll on loaded dice. But we've been rolling a lot of snake-eyes lately.
- Maybe Google Glasses will be a flop or turn out to be a mere curiousity. But the visual-sensorial enhancement technology they represent could change the world as much as the internet and smart phones combined.
- Starts With a Bang uses an excellent layman's analogy to explain why the Higgs Boson is so important to particle physics:
The Higgs field is like rain, and there is no place you can go to keep dry. Just like there's no way to shield yourself from gravitation, there's no way to hide from the rain that is the Higgs field. If there were no Higgs field, all the fundamental particles would be like dried-out sponges. Massless, dried-out sponges.
No comments:
Post a Comment