Like with companies proudly jacking up prices for desperately-needed medication, the Fukushima disaster shows some things ought not be left to corporations. Companies like TEPCO exist as cut-outs to channel profits into private hands, and will disappear as quickly as those profits; meanwhile the risks and the consequences of those risks will be left behind for tens and hundreds of thousands of years. It was bad enough when the world economy crashed — all the profits had already been privatized, all the losses were socialized. The near future had worse in store. When the tsunami left behind runaway meltdowns — all the profits had already been privatized, all the survivors were ionized. Standard nuclear power advocates avoid counting real costs, happy to pretend governments, survivors and the future will somehow metabolize their waste. Waste that can be much more readily hidden on their profit and loss statements than on the power plant grounds, or under some subterranean federal rug.
Like with companies proudly jacking up prices for desperately-needed medication, the Fukushima disaster shows some things ought not be left to corporations. Companies like TEPCO exist as cut-outs to channel profits into private hands, and will disappear as quickly as those profits; meanwhile the risks and the consequences of those risks will be left behind for tens and hundreds of thousands of years. It was bad enough when the world economy crashed — all the profits had already been privatized, all the losses were socialized. The near future had worse in store. When the tsunami left behind runaway meltdowns — all the profits had already been privatized, all the survivors were ionized. Standard nuclear power advocates avoid counting real costs, happy to pretend governments, survivors and the future will somehow metabolize their waste. Waste that can be much more readily hidden on their profit and loss statements than on the power plant grounds, or under some subterranean federal rug.