The Nuclear Industry, particularly the South African sector have been using the terrible events of Fukushima in Japan as a vehicle to actually promote nuclear energy even more than before. Any normal person with half a brain cell can ask the question, did they even see what happened in Japan?
A nuclear forum is being held in South Africa on the 19th of May 2011 at Emperor’s Palace, Johannesburg, aimed at once again promoting nuclear energy in South Africa. As always these “forums” are not for free and are designed that way in order to keep out NGO’s and community driven organisations who simply do not have the funds to attend them. To give you an idea the cost of attending is R2850.00 per person which most NGO’s will not be able to afford, simple as that.
What happens with all these events is that 99% of the attendees are already pro nuclear so one wonders what’s the fricking point??
If the nuclear industry really wants to enter into debate with the South African public WHICH THEY DO NOT, they would make attendance for NGO’s and community driven organisations FREE but they DO NOT want to debate anything. They have an agenda and they will stick with it no matter what. In 5 years we have never been able to get anyone inside the highly secretive South African Nuclear Industry to debate anything, they cannot even answer the simplest of questions posed to them.
What is most annoying is an email promoting this event which was circulated by the company managing the event, namely Siyenza Managament (Pty) Ltd. In this email the author one Mabel Modipa spits out the biggest bunch of bogus unscientific garbage we’ve seen yet.
The email reads as follows:
Africa Needs Nuclear Power
In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear power plant incident, resulting from the recent massive Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and following the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in the former Soviet Union, there has been much public debate internationally concerning nuclear power.
Much of the information projected to the public is misguided and inaccurate which leads to a public fear which in turn affects the formulation of government policy internationally. This in turn affects the costs of construction of nuclear power stations because, at times, unrealistic requirements are put in place, which then tend to drive costs up. The mystique surrounding the subject of nuclear power tends to confuse matters further, in the public mind. A confused public cannot make informed energy decisions relating to nuclear power.
In Fukushima province the first person to die as a result of the Fukushima nuclear incident has just been reported. He was a 64 year old farmer from Sukagama, 65km from the reactor. He hanged himself because the authorities would not let him sell his produce. To receive any meaningful radiation dose from his spinage a person would have to eat many tons of it, which would be impossible. It is sad that misguided policy caused his death.
Issues of nuclear construction costs and public perceptions of nuclear power will be discussed at the forthcoming nuclear power conference; Nuclear Forum 3, on 19 May 2011 at Emperor’s Palace, Johannesburg.
The conference will be opened by the Minister of Energy, The Hon Dipuo Peters.
A lot of debate around the use of nuclear as an alternate energy source has been debated this week at the Africa World Economic Forum in Cape Town. South Africa will be taking the lead in Africa, with the proposed implementation of nuclear as a reliable source of power for the country. This will no doubt raise the nuclear debate in the rest of the African continent.
ENDS
5 May 2011
Issued by: Siyenza Management
+27 11 463 9184
Mike Kantey, the chairperson of the National Coalition Against Nuclear Energy duly responded to Miss Modipa with the following response.
Dear Mabel
As the National Chairperson of the Coalition Against Nuclear Energy (see www.cane.org.za) and on behalf of the African Uranium Alliance, I take the strongest objection to the unscientific and emotional language employed in your press release appended below.
If this is the quality of business “intelligence” that is sold at high expense to political, investment, and business leaders in Africa, may Heaven help us over the next century.
Not only does the recently Integrated Resource Plan (IRP2010) for South Africa make it abundantly clear at Table 18 on page 43 that a non-nuclear future is perfectly and affordably obtainable, but the respected International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA) declared the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident at its highest level of INES-7, equivalent to the worst accident ever at Chernobyl.
To trivialise and minimise this horrendous accident as your misguided “press release” appears to do makes a mockery of those Japanese citizens within a 20-km radius who have been forced to evacuate their lands and their homes, probably forever, and the risk to all those who are forced to consume foodstuffs and liquids with traces of Strontium-90 and Cesium-137. Unlike your ill-informed and disgraceful mockery of an old man’s death by suicide (an understandable response in Japanese society), as well as your simple ignorance of the basic rules of English spelling (“spinach” not “spinage”, which is what you appear to be practising), the smallest, micro-quantity of Cesium-137 or Strontium-90 will be sufficient to trigger a cancer or genetic defect, once it has been inhaled or swallowed.
I trust that your conference will not be another exercise in pulling radioactive wool over your monied classes, but an honest assessment of what really is in the best interests of the African masses.
Sincerely
Mike Kantey
National Chairperson
Coalition Against Nuclear Energy
www.cane.org.za
Source: http://www.environment.co.za
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