Category: Environment

What the heck is wrong with these people who keep campaigning against nuclear power? Don’t they realise I need to use my sunbed?

The UK has signed a deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% of the 1990 baseline figure by 2030, and their plans to revive nuclear power to help achieve it is fantastic news for all of us.

Nuclear power currently provides a whopping six percent of our electricity and makes a loss of about two billion per year, and this is just how we want to keep it. It’s unthinkable that the low-life common bastards might ever get to keep a penny for themselves, how on Earth would that force the cogs that maintain the status quo? Nuclear is the perfect way to winnow millions out of UK worker-bees and keep those Downing Street expresso machines serving cappuccinos all day long. We need to impress Brussels now, and we are going to do it in style. No ugly wind turbines gunna spoil our rep.

After all, nuclear is our heritage. The world’s first commercial nuclear power station in the world was built in Britain and what a tragedy it would be to break tradition. We should be proud of Sellafield- it’s the most hazardous industrial building in Western Europe and the people who live there are still alive. We’ve also managed to amass the biggest stockpile of civil plutonium- the most dangerous substance on Earth- in the entire world and for that we should receive some serious street cred.

There’s no point pulling the old ‘it’s dangerous’ cord on me. There was never any risk to those exposed to fallout from the Fukushima plant because the Japanese government just raised the safe recommended dosages. And as for all those hundreds of cases of thyroid cancer in Belarus after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, well, they were obviously just looking for it. Paranoid mothers across the country must have just got together and decided it was time to start checking their children’s necks for lumps.

Never mind all the pathetic scare-mongering stories from Russia, we need power. It’s our God-given right. Who gives a toss about all those kids with thyroid cancer anyway? And those families in Fukushima who were given one day to pack their valuables, leave their animals and homes behind in an exclusion zone they knew they could never return to- well, they can go bloody suffer, I want to watch Eastenders.

Besides, it will never happen to us. In Britain, we are the nuclear experts. We are so damned proud of our nuclear legacy that we are still showcasing an obsolete vintage Magnox reactor that was built in 1963. We’re the only country in the world that has avidly stuck by our original and best Gas-Cooled Reactors. As with all British products, they were built to last, and we are showing the world just how sturdy they are- in fact, seven out of the nine of our current operating power stations are still going strong as much as ten years past their retirement date.

We are the masters of engineering. We are just so bloody clever we’ve chosen to site five of the twelve past and present nuclear power stations on sites listed as ‘at risk from erosion and/or inundation’ because we have the sea defences and machinery designed to defy nature’s worst. It’s called ‘hoping for the best’ and it’s so far done us Brits proud.

Besides, we are not as stupid as the Japanese. Yeah, we let a fire burn away inside Windscale reactor for three whole days before anyone noticed, but we’d never let such a stupid thing as a tsunami happen. Clearly they’re idiots.

Another thing those dumb campaigners need to get over is this ‘nowhere to put the waste’ rubbish. Nuclear waste is inherently safe. It’s far safer than most industrial pollutants because after a few years it decays and becomes completely harmless. And 250,000 is a few, in the scheme of things- the Earth is 4.2 billion years old for Goodness sake.

As for what to do with it while we wait for those 250,000 years to pass, we have all our options sorted. We can either close our eyes and lob it into the ocean in leaking containers; continue to store the 100,000 and growing tons of it on site and spend millions per year of tax payers’ money stopping terrorists from bombing it while we deliberate for another fifty years what to do with it; or, being the ingenious Englishmen that we are, we could just find a massive great crack in some Scottish cliff and pour it down there, and hope the Irish don’t notice their fish are glowing in the dark.

Failing all of that, we could do like the Americans. They have a nifty idea, something I admit is smarter than anything even we’d thought of-  stick it onto the back of lorries, drive them up the freeway and stash the entire country’s hoard of it in the side of Ben Nevis. A kiss and a prayer will suffice to stop any of the lorries from having a crash on the motorway and a dab of silicone sealant should be enough keep all the water out, because if it was to flood, it’d make Chernobyl look like an explosion from a 1950’s toy reactor and that wouldn’t be ideal.

So what if things do go wrong? Well, let’s not worry our little heads about that right now. As Dr Richard Smith said “cancer is the best way to die” so we should welcome nuclear power to keep our electric kettles boiling and dishwashers whirring away. We can pay over the odds for our retro space-age electricity, flex our atomic muscles to the world and if one of them does blow up we can just abandon Great Britain and enjoy a slow and painful death in whichever country will have us. It’s a win-win situation.

Mitsubishi are up to something fishy. And it’s nothing to do with cars.

You might normally associate the Japanese giant with shiny four-wheel-drive vehicles and sponsors of Badminton Horse Trails, but behind the scenes they’re up to something far more sinister.

Mitsubishi have cornered over 40 percent of the world’s Bluefin Tuna market and don’t plan to stop there. They have a plot to wipe the oceans clean of Bluefin – then sell the meat for millions. It’s simple economics- fewer fish in the ocean, more money in their pocket.

As stocks pile up and plans are agreed for expansion, they are currently hoarding over 20,000 tonnes of Bluefin Tuna per year in freezers the size of warehouses.  Kept at minus 40 degrees centigrade, they can safely store the fish for up to 40 years- plenty of time to plunge the species into extinction.

And some say they haven’t got long to wait- studies suggest that our oceans will be almost totally devoid of fish by 2048.

While British retailers refuse to stock the fish, our up-and-coming wealthy Asian counter-parts are falling for it hook line and sinker, paying up to £1.8 million for a chunk of this ghastly rampage.

The legal Bluefin catch is limited to 22,000 tonnes per year but conservationists estimate that the reality is closer to 60,000- three times greater than officials recommend. It is believed that around 60% of Bluefin Tuna catch is illegal.

But let’s not underestimate the scale of the problem: the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, the body responsible for numbers is also to blame- setting the limit 10,000 tons higher than its own marine scientists recommend. It is no wonder that it’s gained the affectionate nickname: the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna.

While they green-wash us with their new atmosphere-saving car, let’s not be fooled that they give a damn. In fact, Mitsubishi Corporation have even won an award for their efforts in painting their businesses green; some of which are the most destructive on Earth.

Mitsubishi claim that they need to stockpile fish for ‘temporary shortages in supply’. Sure, it makes good business sense to stock up for Christmas. But we’re not talking plastic toys here, we’re talking keystone species.

Bluefin Tuna is an endangered as many other critical species such as Rhinos and Tigers- but you don’t see the Japanese tucking into a slab of Panda on a wholesale basis.

Bluefin are a beautiful fish- they are rare in that they are warm-blooded, and can accelerate faster than a Porsche. They are incredible endurance swimmers- they can make it from West Africa to South America in just 60 days.

Atlantic Bluefin Tuna larvae have only a 1 in 40 million chance of reaching adulthood. But the lucky few are amongst the ocean’s top predators- and are the fastest fish in the ocean. But sadly, there is just one thing this spectacle of nature is speeding towards: extinction.