I know next to nothing about nuclear energy and the use of nuclear power, about what most of the rest of the world knows. We have written numerous blogs about the catastrophe in Japan that comes on the heels of the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the catastrophe in Indonesia the catastrophe of katrina etc. etc.
This is a very powerful condemnation of nuclear power by Helen Cauldecott but it does lack any class analysis or explanation of how society works, how we arrive at this point. We are all to blame equally as human beings. This is a weakness that tends to leave us in despair and demoralized. This is not to say that we can reach a point of no return, we can.
We have pointed out that the catastrophic consequences of what may be acts of nature are not the result of acts of nature but of capitalism, of an economic system that determines how, what and when something is built or developed by how much profit is made. This is a simple but critical thing. As Helen Caldicott says in this video, the reactors in Japan were built on an earthquake fault.
We would add that they were not only built on an earthquake fault but in an area they call a "Ring of Fire" due to the massive amount of activity there and in addition, they were built next to the ocean in a country whose dominant language produced the word "Tsunami". This is not an accident, someone made this decision and it was not the workers who built it, those who live by it or anyone other sector of the working class. It was made in the boardrooms of corporations.
For those of us on this blog though, we believe that the working class will struggle to change society, and we believe that a world federation of democratic socialist states is what can offer humanity a future. The workers of the world must take control of the resources of the world. We must become collective managers of a new society. But like anything else, there are no guarantees.
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