Look up in my neighborhood and you’ll see an interesting and in some opinions, scary sight: a nuclear tower. Yeah I’m sure you’re thinking, how can PammyPam, the germ queen live near a nuclear power plant? Well, I guess it’s because I have a little bit of knowledge. Yeah sure, I grew up in the 80s and (vaguely) remember the Three Mile Island (TMI) and the Chernobyl accidents. I grew up in Pittsburgh, so the TMI accident was a big deal: within the same state, and all. And of course, the Chernobyl accident was a big deal because of the scope of the damage, I’m sure some people are still suffering today. So, given that little bit of information, naturally you would think that nuclear power plants are bad. Just bad. Yeah, I did too.
Ok now that we’ve gotten that straight I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m a gung-ho nuclear power supporter. But having spent some time overseas and seeing the number of nuclear plants there, you start to rethink. Or at least I did. According to the European Nuclear Society (http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm) there are over 400 nuclear power plants in the world. THE WORLD. Over 100 of those are in the United States alone! So, if there are so so many of them (and there’s probably one in your backyard) there has to be something good (translation: safe) about them, right? Nuclear power is supposed to be safe (not talking about disposing of the radioactive waste here).Yeah ok, whatever. I’m not here to convince you.
One summer many moons ago I had the opportunity to spend some time in the Czech Republic. Beautiful place. They have 6 nuclear plants there. There are 4 in neighboring Slovakia. I visited a nuclear plant in the Czech Republic. The place is called Temelin and is located near the “big” city České Budějovice (I’ve shopped there) and uses water from the famous Vltava River (seen it). To trigger my memory, this information was gleaned from http://www.cez.cz/en/power-plants-and-environment/nuclear-power-plants/temelin.html. The cool thing about this country is that despite its many nuclear power plants the country is very rural with lots of beautiful trees, mountains, waters, animal and plant life etc. There wasn’t a lot of beef at the time I visited due to the mad cow disease scare, but that sounds like another blog post, doesn’t it? The point I’m trying to make (yeah I know, get to it) is that the nuclear waste hasn’t seemed to befoul the country’s natural resources. To be sure, there are advocates against nuclear energy in Europe. I hafta add that the Vltava River is famous because the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana included the Vltava (also known as the Moldau) in his beautiful piece Ma Vlast or My Country. It is one of my go to relaxation pieces on my ipod.
Wait, where was I? Ok, so…I live near a nuclear power plant. Yes, there are evacuation orders in place. But I figure 2 things: #1 if the time comes, well then I guess I just round up my kids and we all die together. Did you believe that? Awww crap, are you kidding me? I will load up my car with my emergency supplies (yes I have them) and I will grab anyone who wants to roll and I will get the *%#@!! outta Dodge! <ahem> and #2 these things hafta be safe, right, because if there are so many of them around and if they were that bad, we’d have more nuclear disasters, right?
So…next time you’re driving around, look up. You might just might have a nuclear power station in your back yard.
Regarding Queen of Everything
Her highness is still queen of planet blortnick and also a MODEL.
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My friend Matt is a project engineer for a company that designs/builds nuclear power plants… every day, he posts a dilbert comic about how stupid people are in his office, and comments that he doesn’t know how they haven’t killed a great number of people yet. Just sayin’