Talking to the deaf

An article from the Ovi magazine

It has been a long time since I wrote anything about Iran and that’s not because we are lacking news from Teheran or quotes from its president but because the man so often crosses the line so much that I’m speechless and cannot think of anything to write except… Man, shut your mouth, you are dangerous! The problem is that when I think of that I then read the new threats by an American politician and that makes me think that this is a totally idiotic situation.

When Ahmadinejad, Iran’s puppet president, demands the destruction of Israel you think that the man is not only an idiot but a dangerous idiot, but what can you call the US presidency hopeful Hillary Clinton when she’s warning that if Iran continues with nuclear plants she will bomb the country; she will start another war in the area? You might say that Hillary says things like this for internal use trying to attract voters who want a US international supreme police, judge and executioner. Yet, then again, how many of these people can drive a foreign policy by threatening a war that will definitely push the Middle East even further into the dark? How strong these few voters are? And if there are so many to influence foreign policy then Obama has bigger problem than he thought!

My position for this issue has been very clear from the very beginning. I’m strongly against using nuclear power for energy and that is not because I’m blinded by the dark side of the nuclear power; I have the logic to understand the need of energy in the modern world and I do understand that nuclear is one option but I'm against the use of it because there are three unsolved factors. First of all the cost is not lower, especially now we are talking about new generation nuclear plants. When governments talk about cheaper energy they mean the cost of energy after the plant is fully working but nuclear plants don’t just grow in the field one spring day, they need a huge amount of money and effort to be built and naturally all the costs lay on the consumers in the end. The use of electricity hasn’t become cheaper in Finland because there are four nuclear plants and definitely will not become cheaper after building the fifth and sixth.

The second worrying factor is the nuclear waste. Most of the countries that use nuclear power for energy have problems with nuclear waste and after poisoning oceans and African countries now they have to store this waste in their own country without been able to calculate the damage they do. Finland is using an old cave to store the nuclear waste in north western Finland but the damage which most of the scientists describe it is to be seen after two or three generations. To understand how dangerous that is you just need to look the mistakes two or three generations did in the last decades and the damage they have done to the earth today. How different things would have been if back in sixties and seventies we had done some simple things to protect environment, things we were aware back then anyway. How different would have been for metropolis like Los Angeles, London, Tokyo or even Athens cities that have become environmental monsters with their pollution and citizens with constant asthma problems.

And then it is the third factor, the human factor! All the accidents happened in nuclear plants from the Three Miles Island to Chernobyl a human error was what started the disaster and whatever they do, however much robotics develop, concrete on the cell becomes stronger and heavy water purer a human will press the right or the …wrong button in the end. Please don’t tell me that the people who work in these places are experts and fully aware of their work because the same responsible experts a few years ago sent the Challenger spacecraft to death by using cheaper material due to budgets and costs; and I’m taking the official excuse avoiding all the theories for enriching bank accounts and corrupted directors. The human error can happen in any level of the nuclear reactor and the result …well nobody knows for how long the area and the people who lived around Chernobyl when the accident happened will have to deal with and pay the cost often with their own lives. Sorry for been dramatic or cynic but nobody knows how many generations, especially young kids will have to deal with leukaemia because of a …human error.

This has nothing to do with Iranians capability to handle a project like a nuclear plant, first of all if you check all the scientific centres you will be surprised how many Iranian scientists you will find and Three Miles Island was not in Teheran or in any Third World country!

But human error is the choice to turn an otherwise for peaceful use nuclear reactor into a nuclear bomb - this is not literal but I know you understand what you mean. I do understand the logic behind this balance of horror, actually my generation in Europe lived it, and we were learning naively how to cover ourselves behind concrete walls in a case of nuclear war like there was any chance to be saved from the invisible power. And it did work but why do we have to continue a mistake just because it didn’t prove lethal the first and the second time? It needs only one time to destroy us all and there is no trial period in that.

The US and Russia are not the only ones living in this balance of terror, Pakistan and India do the same, Pakistan a country proved corrupt at every level from the ones we call terrorists, the Taliban. But then neither the Indians who have nuclear bombs nor the Pakistani people are worrying. Neither leader ever said that they are planning to eliminate the other country and both even in the worst of times when there were minor conflicts in Nepal tried to find ways through diplomacy.

Ahmadinejad on his side has called provocatively for the elimination of Israel; he has used the most prejudice often racist language for the people who are his neighbours damaging in the end every single right the Palestinians might have in their conflict with Israel since they are Ahmadinejad’s excuse to show his haters against Israel. The people who ruling Iran are dangerous and they are in an dangerous are where people blinded of their cause can become suicide bombers without caring how many innocent they are going to take with them. This is the human element that makes Iran a dangerous country to have a nuclear plant and in extent the ability to have nuclear weapons, the word weapons of mash distraction takes a different meaning in the hands of the Iranian cleric dictators and fanatics.

And when you feel that you made your argument and that there was logic in it Hillary comes and threatens with a war and you feel like talking to deaf for so long!