Curmudgeon's Corner

Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power

Posted by Al Campbell on July 11, 2009

Economy, Political, Quality of Life, U.S.

We should immediately proceed to build more nuclear power plants in the United States and, if we did that, we'd be better able to wean ourselves from the fossil fuels that most everyone seems to abhor these days.  Our nuclear power plants are safe and most efficient.  We apparently decided, due to a lack of political will and to an over-reaction about Three Mile Island, to blaspheme nuclear energy...to our detriment.

• Wind isn't going to do it for a good long time to come.
• Solar isn't going to do it for a good ling time.
• Carbon-derived energy will be the mainstay for many more years and we're now threatening to bankrupt our own society by "leading: the world in setting huge tax penalties on the use of carbon.

We should immediately move past this foolishness about scrapping our nuclear weapons.  President Obama extended his "olive branch" while in Russia and received their "assurances" that they, too, would enter into a good faith effort to eliminate their stockpiles if we'd do the same.  There are several problems with that:

• we can't trust the Russians to abide by their commitments, especially when the prime minister is still a KGB man in his heart of hearts.  Medvedev is a puppet president, and Putin remains the ruler behind the throne.  Russia has maintained its nuclear tests all along while we've unilaterally decided we'll show them by no longer testing.
• if we permit further decay in our nuclear weapons capabilities, we'll be the possessor of a greater number of weapons that we'll not know are still in working order, and we'll end up on the short end of the nuclear weapons stick.  Beyond this, we are already losing some of the great nuclear minds we have in our country and we're permitting that field to be dominated by other countries.
• the threat of the United States having nuclear weapons has served to keep us and the world safe to this point.  We know that many other nations have developed, or are about to develop their own capabilities.  Why in the world would we lead the way to our own ability to be held hostage by a third world nation or by the terrorists who almost certainly will obtain such weapons sooner or later?

We appear to have moved from a reality-based society to a fantasy-based society in the span of the past six or so months...to the detriment of each of us and of all of us, in spite of all the "feel good" rhetoric spewing forth from the politicians and the press.

Will we regain our senses or are we destined to move hurriedly to our demise as a world-leading economy?  Will we regain our senses or will we become subjects ruled by another power?  Will we regain our senses or are we destined to be a failed democracy?

We'll know that answer before long.

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The Curmudgeon Blog today is titled Card Check Is Back.