Zheng, Yi: Environmental Disaster Faced by Human Beings
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Date: 4/28/2011 1:19:00 PM
Sender: Zheng, Yi
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郑义 Zheng, Yi: Environmental Disaster Faced by Human Beings
The earth we inherited is a beautiful and wealthy planet. Till my generation, as a teenager I never heard of any environmental disasters that could change our life, such as HIV, poisonous meat, produce fertilized by excess pesticides, contaminated underground water, etc. Simply put, we cannot blame our ancestors for anything. They not only raised us, but also passed along poems to praise the nature.
Now let us assume a prophecy: what if the reality is the opposite - we inherited from our ancestors a planet on which the water cannot be drunk, the soil cannot be plowed, there are no trees on mountains, the fish is not eatable, the air cannot be breathed; how will we feel?
And we will have a new course teaching us how to deal with environmental disasters and the society will add a special department to keep the monsters in the cage; the world map will mark all the monsters locked up in sea, underground and in caves and we cannot approach them or be relaxed; we will have to enforce patrol to avoid these long-living monsters escape to destroy human nature.
If it is not a prophecy, but the reality we and our children will have to face, how would we feel? Especially when we know these monsters are not created by God, but by our ancestors. We will blame them: how could you leave us this horrible heritage?
Maybe everybody understands now, I am talking about nuclear waste and the places the waste is buried all over the world. Why do we say nuclear waster is a long-living monster? Because the radioactive materials used as fuel are too stable and they cannot be resolved by nature.
The plutonium used by Fukushima Nuclear Plant’s half life is 24,000 years; its radiation will be diminished by half after 24,000 years. The uranium used by Chinese nuclear plants have a half life of 710 million years. In another word, it will take 1,200 generations for plutonium to diminish by half and 3,500 generations for uranium to diminish by half.
The normal statement of Chinese civilized history is 5,000 years and it is only 250 generations if we count 1 generation as 20 years. It took us couple hundred years to develop nuclear plants, but the nuclear waste left will harm thousands even tens of thousands of generation. What a horribly and immorally self-destructing development!
Even if we stop generating electricity with nuclear power, the nuclear waste is still way too much for our descendants. Nuclear leak is still hard to prevent even if we can leave our descendants detailed nuclear map and comprehensive monitoring technology. There is no such a thing as perfectly safe. Didn’t we say every nuclear plant was perfectly safe when we built it? What happened at Former Soviet’s Chernobyl plant? What about Three-Miles Island, U.S? What about Fukushima, Japan?
In addition, monitoring and managing nuclear waste will also consume electricity and gasoline. The total consumption of power in millions and billions of years will be more than the nuclear power we can get now.
Nuclear electricity is an amazing ATM, through which we accrue our descendants’ wealth, happiness. Even the perfect modern democracy has no mechanism to represent our descendants’ interest. They are the majority being silent, deprived and harmed. It is such a cruel thing of us couple of generations to deprive thousands of generations!
We call it a peaceful application of nuclear power. Yes, compared with throwing nuclear bombs at each other, it seems peaceful; but our descendants will live under nuclear shadow forever and continuously watch over the nuclear monsters. This is not peace, but a permanent war.
Let us confess for our greed. Happiness doesn’t come from energy and wealth, but from love.
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