This New Zealand kapako bird is happy to live in a nuclear-free country!
Some countries (including the UK) now focus on nuclear energy as the answer to climate change. It most surely isn’t. For a start, we need walkable communities, simpler living and insulated homes (this would reduce pollution and need for energy from cars and heating/cooling bills), which would naturally lead to far less energy usee, rather than just ‘swapping one energy fuel for another’.
New Zealand is one of the few countries in the modern western world, that has no nuclear generators. Most of this beautiful country is powered by hydroelectric power. Although the government once considered nuclear energy, it decided against due to cost and mostly due to public opinion.
Simply put, these green-living kiwis didn’t want it. Remember, the awful nuclear testing in the Pacific happened quite near to them, so they saw first-hand the tragic results. Even now, residents near the islands have a higher risk of cancer, almost 100 years later.
But the main reason not to use nuclear energy is because it very dangerous. As well as decades and billions of pounds to build nuclear plants, they are linked to weapon use (see below), and produce a meltdown risk (1.5% of all nuclear power plants have done so).
Uranium mining is known to cause lung cancer, and nuclear waste remains radiactive and dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Already some nuclear countries are sending radioactive waste to ‘get rid of it’ on their own soil.
Nuclear power costs 5 times more than wind power (new bladeless turbines and painting the turbines and one blade black can greatly reduce bird strike), and we can also use solar panels and other types of clean energy in England.
Should We Scrap Nuclear Trident?
For many of us, that is a 100% yes. To replace Trident would cost over £100 billion (enough to build 180 brand new hospitals or fund 150,000 nurses, or 1.5 million affordable homes). We currently have 225 bombs that are 8 times more powerful than the one that dropped on Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people and severely burned two-year old Sadako Sasaki, who survived 10 years before finally dying of her injuries.
Any accident from the lorries that carry up to 8kg of plutonium from Berkshire to Scotland could cause the same kind of explosion, poisoning the area for thousands of years. Read more on how to create world peace and how to help animals in war zones.
We’ve all seen the infamous photo of Phan Thị Kim Phúc (who ran from the scene in Vietnam after being burned from a napalm attack). After spending 14 months in hospital, she now lives with her husband and mother in Canada, where she runs an organisation to help child victims of war. The other children in the photo were all relatives (the boy on the left was her brother who lost an eye in the attack).
The photographer Nick Ut (pictured above 40 years later with Kim) remembers the day only too well. Before he took the iconic photo, he found a grandmother carrying a baby who ‘died in front of my camera’.
Then he saw the naked girl running, the clothes burned off her body screaming out ‘I’m dying, I’m dying!’ He put down his camera and took her to hospital. They remain friends and until her brother died – he had a photo of Nick on his noodle shop wall.
If somebody invaded us with nuclear weapons, we would not have time to react anyway. It’s just a huge white elephant deterrent that costs a fortune, and is also a risk of an accident that would wipe us all out anyway.
CND argues that when we have so many other issues facing us, this old-style ‘we are under threat’ mentality needs to end (Switzerland doesn’t need Trident, so why do we?) In fact, the more countries that deploy nuclear weapons, just encourages other countries to buy more.
