Riding the Ring of Fire

My condolences to all Japan, most particularly Sendai.  Let us also not forget Christchurch New Zealand.  Let us prepare our minds for Anchorage, San Francisco, Los Angles and all the other cities and towns riding the ring of fire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ring_of_Fire)!

Man has lived in volcanic and earthquake regions for millennia and has enjoyed the benefits of arable land and bountiful seas.  Earthquakes and tsunamis are not tragedies.  They are just the price to be paid for riding the rings of fire!

However, now we have added a new passenger.   Consider these reports:

 http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/14/6268123-is-japans-quake-part-of-a-cluster

http://abcnews.go.com/International/japan-earthquake-radiation-leaking-fukushima-nuclear-plant-explodes/story?id=13131123

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#42080660

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#42081049

Our krapitalists (just as the Japanese’) are going to lie about the safety of our nukes just like they’ve lied about the decade long folly of George W. Bush, the Greenspan economic fraud, and the effects of the nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean since the 1950s.  There is no way either the government or the corporations (let’s just call them GOVCORP for short, since they are really just one thing) will ever be ‘straight’ with us about the state of their reactors or how they would fare in a Sendai scenario.

We, the general public, are on our own!  

Nuclear reactors are INHERENTLY dangerous and I assure you, amerikan reactors are no better than their Japanese counterparts, no matter what anybody in GOVCORP has to say about it!  If they want to make such an assertion, let them PROVE it, as opposed to just asking us to trust them (again). 

I highly recommend that everyone that can, leave the areas around nuclear reactors on the west coast if not leave the west coast altogether.  Fallout from the Japanese reactors will reach the west coast of amerika and GOVCORP will never give you a straight assessment of the dangers associated with this.  Now, I am not suggesting a mass stampede off the coast, but an orderly movement out.  (I have no real estate interest on the w. coast.) 

Information is key!  Make social connections with researchers and workers in the various university geology and nuclear engineering departments.  Hold community meetings with these people on a regular basis and discuss evacuation plans and various earthquake damage and meltdown scenarios.  Cancel any long-term financial commitments that would tie you to the west coast.

I am also calling for a ban on any further nuclear reactor contracts or construction in the U.S. without stringent license approval procedures.  In the future, any organization that would seek a license to construct a reactor must first construct a full scale working reactor based on the design they wish to implement and then MELT IT DOWN so that its meltdown characteristics can be observed and the meltdown containment methods studied.  For this, GOVCORP (as if it would) should set aside a ‘nuclear reactor test range’ in the desert just like they did for nuclear weapons testing in the 50s and the 60s.  The testing should be performed underground just like all future nuclear reactors should be constructed.

That’s it gentle readers.  We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when…as:

I fell in to a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
and the flames went higher.
And it burns, burns, burns
the ring of fire
the ring of fire.

Johnny (Cash) Borrow