SHUT THE REACTORS!

Growing up in the hills of County Wicklow in Ireland we had no electricity and relied on candles and oil lamps.  To us it seemed to be the norm and was no problem.  Eventually we got a telephone - the type that you wound up and was attached to the wall, but was only working for the six hours a day that the Post Mistress was working in the Post Office.  Our number was Enniskerry 5 - and there were only five telephones in the area.

After some time the Electricity Board announced that they would be bringing the electric to our house which was just over a mile from the nearest neighbour.  My mother who was an actress - and in those days actors in Ireland earned very little - decided that we couldn't afford the cost.  Instead she found someone who would sell what was called a dynamo that could be attached to a windmill thing and that would generate electricity. Mother bought this dynamo and had it fixed at the top of a fir tree complete with a windmill.  This little contraption provided free electricity not only to our house, but it also lit up the cow house, the hen house and the garage.  This was my first introduction to wind power.

When I tell people about that first electricity that we had and how we got it, they laugh as they think it sounds so primitive.  That is probably because we have apparently progressed so much with technology, a simple little thing like a small dynamo sounds almost prehistoric.  But it worked for many years.

Since then we have come into the atomic age and only now are we beginning to think how much damage this technology is causing around the world.  The horrors of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never be forgotten.  Those in themselves should have been enough to make the world stop, look and learn from that lesson.  But no.  Tests of atom bombs continued - especially by the French and the Americans - on Christmas Island, in the deserts and wherever else wreaking havoc with the welfare and the health of so many people.

Then came the use of nuclear power to generate electricity in place of the coal fueled generators. It sounded like a good idea at the time.  It was clean unlike the coal burners that spewed out black smoke and polluted the atmosphere.   Nuclear generators were built all over the place with great gusto, but then what happened? Accidents began to happen.  In India, in Chernobyl, and other smaller ones along the way. Now we are dealing with the massive disaster caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan where the sum total of the effect of the radiation leaks from there will not be known for some time.   Since then we have been told that seven nuclear reactors generating electricity are built on a fault line just 47 miles north of New York city.  Unbelievable!  Commentators, analysts and "people who know" have been on TV talk shows saying they didn't think there was anything to worry about.  Of course not.  Nobody thought there was anything to worry about at Fukushima, Chernobyl or the plant in India - - that is until it happened!  The mind boggles at what would happen if there was a disaster at any of those New York based reactors.

The German Chancellor - Mrs. Angela Merkel - following the Fukushima disaster put a stop to all nuclear power plants in Germany.  Why have not other leaders followed suit?  Thailand is also considering going no further with its former plans for nuclear energy.  My mother was no scientist or mathematician but she had the brains to know way back then, that the most economic method of providing electric power to our home was by wind power - hence the little dynamo and windmill at the top of the pine tree.  The United States has acknowledged that wind power can provide a huge percentage of the necessary power needed, yet there is so much dithering going on. Congressional Committees galore to "look into it" and then subsequent Senate Committees to investigate the findings of the Congressional Committees. Do these so-called leaders not have the ability to understand the dangers that these nuclear reactors pose to ordinary people.  Wind power is cheap, it is easy and it is always there. 

The powers that be should stop the talk and start shutting down these dangerous nuclear reactors that can cause total havoc around the place as we have seen and begin the task of harnessing the wind.  We all know that these reactors could not be closed in a day. We also know that before they go, the alternative has to be in place otherwise industry and other things will be disrupted.  So stop the talk and start the task.  The argument that it will cost money is not valid, because you cannot put a dollar price on people's lives.  In this case - both the lives and livelihood of all of us are affected.  Let us hear the voices call out for action now before another disaster takes place somewhere.