Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings…..

Kathrine Mangu-Ward, writing at Reason Magazine, notes a new campaign by Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Harvey Wasserman to denounce "50 years of catastrophic failure" in the nuclear power industry.

I must have missed the first radioactive dead end for the planet–perhaps it happened before I was born and my parents survived in one of those backyard bunkers? Chernobyl was horrific, to be sure, but I think you need a few more catastrophic failures to get a gen-u-ine "track record" going. Anyway, we should take this warning seriously–it comes from TV's Most Trusted News Source.

The article she links from CNN is a remarkable only in that it uses the same, old techniques of misdirection.

Meanwhile, a cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee reactor has simply collapsed, spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of hot water into the Earth. The reactor was recently allowed to upgrade its power level, and the collapse may have been caused by improper supports, rotted wood beams and an "insufficient" inspection program. Twenty-one other towers there are at similar risk.

That one is classic - the cooling towers have absolute bupkis to do with the nuclear side of the plant. When they talk about "significant damage" and "significant radioactive releases" they are, again, using misdirection. Quantify that and maybe we'll have a basis for discussion. But this is nothing more than another "Pepsi Syndrome" series of breathless dire warnings.

UPDATE: Others: QandO: "On the "brink" of technology and on the "brink" of a "green-powered planet". Seems to have been on these "brinks" for about 30 years now. Why is it we're always on the "brink" when these things are talked about but for some reason never seem able to move past that?"

Ed Driscoll: "Indeed, and it's brave of the "Troubadour-American Community", as James Lileks dubbed them on Thursday's Hugh Hewitt show, to admit their own shortcomings. (Audio here, which foreshadows the geriatric rockers' CNN piece rather well.)"

Heh. Troubadour-American Community. I love that one.