SEPTEMBER 2007
It is obviously going to become necessary to refresh our instincts about Nuclear Energy. In England, Tony Blair having unloaded government responsibilities by selling off Sellafield and other compartments of the Nuclear Energy Field began, in the last months of his political term, to push the NECESSITY of new energy facilities to replace the aging facilities already in place. In Ireland we note from letters to the Irish Times that there is a strong lobby now for Nuclear resurrection against our laws that presently ban nuclear sites from developing here.
When the new organisatioon took over at Sellafield inspection weaknesses were overlooked which resulted in a serious accident, leakage of radio-active fluids from pipes entirely filling a cavernous room there.The problem rectified but details of dealing with this have ofcourse not been fully explained to the public and this omission follows the usual run of half-cocked media stories that "problem solving means Closure". The newspapers write about all the subjects we must be concerned about but are never forthcoming with details. Thus serious situations recede into the doomed dusk of our memories from which basis we shrug our shoulders and continue in our several ways to ignore the dangerous historical traps waiting for our children in the future.
Now a days it is in
books alone where we can read to inform our selves in
more detail and thus Handstand refers constantly to books
of this nature. However in relation to the Nuclear Cycles
of doom there are many articles and significant
individual protests that must be recorded if our history
is going to have any veracity or accountability. In
November I hope to do a strong issue on this subject.
Meanwhile Ace Hoffman, in this issue, has written on the
death of Professor John W. Gofman who worked for a period
at the Lawrence Laboratory in Berkeley California where
one of the facilities of the Laboratory was in a
dangerous condition and intense study into low level
radiation was undertaken in the interests of both
students and the public.Jocelyn Braddell editor
