Class Introductions
Responses:
James Doran
I’ve chosen to discuss Germany’s energy policy. The Germans have recently moved away from nuclear power citing the catastrophe at Fukishima as the driving force. I feel this move is unwise. Without a doubt the situation in Japan was horrible, uncontrollable and will take years to recover from, but that does not mean that nuclear power is unsafe, quite the contrary. There has been a global movement since Japan’s disaster to analyze for the unexpected and unrealistic. These efforts have cost the nuclear industry billions of dollars, but the money is being invested exactly because nuclear power operators want to operate their equipment safely. When one considers the size of the world and the odds that a tsunami would hit at that precise locations, they’re astronomical, one in a million, but it happened and the nuclear industry must learn from it and impose even stricter requirements.
If we were to apply Germany’s nuclear reasoning to the field of medicine, we would be back in the days of leeches and witchcraft. The hard truth is that nuclear power is cost effective and given the fears of global warming, ecologically friendly, and it should be included in any nation’s energy mix.