The Unsustainable World. Nuclear Waste.

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." (A. Einstein)

Radiation hazard sign

Just as I suspected, nuclear fusion took place in at least two Fukushima reactors in the first few days after the earthquake. Tons of highly contaminated heavy water have been dumped into the ocean ever since, but surprisingly nobody seems to care. The entire zone has been rendered uninhabitable for thousands of years, and as heavy water spreads over an increasingly larger area marine life will probably gradually die out or mutate, consequently causing health problems in humans.

The latest news is that now they are reopening the previously sealed 1st reactor in order to try to cool it and thus prevent the explosion, meaning that nuclear fusion is actually under way.

‘Continuous exposure of cells to radiation can lead to all sorts of serious diseases, including, but not limited to, gene mutations, birth defects, cancer etc.
There are standards for the maximum amount of caesium-137 that nuclear facilities may release to the air, and maximum levels for caesium-137 in drinking water. EPA also sets risk-based criteria for clean up of soil and groundwater at sites contaminated with caesium-137 that must be met before the site can be approved for public use.’

These "standards" are calculated and established at the levels that make it impossible to link people’s deaths caused by the toxins thirty years later to the contamination in question.

The Unsustainable World. Fukushima, Japan: An Announced Disaster.

The truth most people prefer not to hear.

"The world began without man, and it will end without him." (Claude Lévi-Strauss Tristes Tropiques)

Fukushima nuclear power plant after the tsunami. (by Digital Globe)

There’s a whole host of reasons why this world has become unsustainable. Japanese nuclear disaster is a shining example of apocalyptic events that loom large over our future thanks to deep-rooted stupidity most modern human beings display. Let’s face it, we had it coming.

I’m at a loss to understand what kind of thinking process led Japanese luminaries to come up with the bright idea of constructing nuclear power plants in the most seismically active part of the planet. It was British and US companies who raised them, and they didn’t understand (or much more likely didn't give a damn about) the INSANITY of their decision, either. Why anyone in his right mind would slap the most destructive bomb on this planet to date right on the seashore that is at the highest risk to suffer from tsunamis and earthquakes flies in the face of common sense. Unless they (the boffins) aren’t, as I’ve always suspected, in their right mind.

What are the dangers of genetically modified viruses?

A virus

Most people never stop to consider the dangers of genetic engineering technique, they just expect it to make pretty babies, correct genetic diseases or create little-eating and fast growing cattle, but men in the street hardly ever take time to look into the technology itself.

The bottom line is that external genetic material is introduced into the host cells (say, GM corn grain) by means of either specially crafted viruses, called viral vector, or bacteria like E-coli that assimilate well foreign DNA, carrying the genes in question precisely because virus has the ability to reproduce and invade other organisms (and bacteria multiply exponentially) — otherwise viruses would be useless.
The increased virulence of E-coli epidemics (and infections in general) in the 20th century could have been caused by such specially crafted bacteria.

What are the dangers of nanotechnology?

"Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers"  — Arthur Eddington.

Most scientists will harangue us about the highly acclaimed newfangled panacea — “nanotech”, that is basically controlling matter or building machines which could re-order matter on a molecular and atomic scale. It usually deals with 1 to 100 nanometre structures. The concept was first used by Richard Feynman to describe the possibility of manipulating individual atoms and molecules using a set of precise tools, which in plain language means we could take the building blocks of matter and create literally anything. That of course after we had got around certain problems, such as gravity losing ground to surface tension and van der Waals attraction, etc.