Japanese Pride vs Reality

“Why are we risking our loved ones for this?...Why did we not say no?”

Japanese resident of the Olympic Games scheduled for late July

There has been a travel warning from the U.S. Department of State against Americans visiting Japan, by reason of yet another local surge of COVID-19. Japan’s horrifically bureaucratic approval process has left this wealthy and developed nation virtually unvaccinated. Vaccine trials continue in Japan even as most of the rest of the world has at least overcome that threshold. 

If fans are permitted at all, even Olympic officials in Japan are attempting to limit attendees to the various competitions to those who already are in Japan. Most Japanese, already fearful of further surges of the pandemic, are dead set against the entire event, which to them represents both a colossal waste of government money and a profoundly dangerous risk both as to athletes and others perhaps introducing new strains of the virus, but, more importantly, providing heavy contact among the athletes and potentially crowded venues where no level of precaution can sufficiently mitigate the transmission of the disease.

Japan, with vast crowded cities – particularly greater Tokyo area with over 30 million people (out of about 130 million total population) – are tempting hotspots where pandemic risks are high. To put it mildly, holding the Olympics – an international gathering and celebration – in the summer of 2021 in a country with virtually no one vaccinated as the virus surges again is absurd, a foreseeable disaster without justification. The devastating economic consequences alone are already ascertainable. The vast majority of Japanese agree. They would like to see the event cancelled or postponed. But stubbornly, the Japanese government and the Olympic bureaucracy refuse to pull the plug. The show, they say, must go on… largely as a televised event, perhaps with local fans in defined and limited attendance.

To so many Japanese, already financially strained by the ravages of an uncontained pandemic, “forging ahead with the Tokyo Olympics is an unreasonable risk that will leave the Japanese public shouldering the regret and consequences after the athletes and the world’s spotlight have come and gone… More than 80% of Japanese residents said in recent polls that they want the Games canceled or again postponed.

“Doctors’ and nurses’ groups say hospitals could not handle another increase in COVID-19 cases or the threat of virus variants coming in from around the world. Japan’s richest man, a beloved tennis star and a top politician have all questioned the wisdom of hosting the Games in the throes of a pandemic. And dozens of towns have scrapped plans to host training camps or other Olympic-related events out of coronavirus concerns.

“It is a troubling backdrop for an Olympics that was supposed to signal Japan’s recovery from a devastating earthquake and tsunami. The Games, which were postponed last year, also have been held up as the world’s triumph over the virus. But many in Japan — where just over 2% of the population is fully vaccinated, and infection and death rates are still high — see the prospect of opening the country’s doors to the planet’s largest sporting event as premature, if not dangerously misguided.” Los Angeles Times, May 26th.

Construction of additional competition venues continued throughout the pandemic as Japan prepared, hopefully, but the Japanese arrogant approach to the vaccine combined with the reality of a fourth wave made a bad situation virtually untenable. The event was already postponed from 2020. Gone are the massive tourist dollars to be spent on hotels, restaurants, souvenir purchases and general tourism which could have offset the massive construction costs and the very necessary governmental subsidies. Instead, Japan remains a country that continues to experience lockdowns and the other profound impacts of attempts to contain a disease that remains very much out of control locally and in much of the rest of the world.

Stubbornness persists: “The number of athletes, support staff and others entering the country has been scaled back to about 78,000, compared with the 180,000 expected before the pandemic. Visitors will be tested daily for three days after arrival, and their movements will be restricted, said Seiko Hashimoto, president of Japan’s Olympic organizing committee. About 60% of the athletes have already been vaccinated, and more than 80% are expected to have been vaccinated before the Games begin.

“No overseas spectators will be allowed, though officials have yet to announce whether locals will be permitted to attend… International Olympic Committee Vice President John Coates said last week that the Games would ‘absolutely’ go forward, even if Tokyo remains in a state of emergency at the time of the opening ceremony July 23.” LA Times. Pfizer-BionTech is donating vaccines, but the horribles loom. Local newspapers and telecasters continue to escalate editorials in favor of cancellation or another postponement. Medical professionals continue to issue warnings. Nothing seems to be able to stop government and Olympic officials hell-bent on continuing.

Will US athletes attend? Is our level of vaccination sufficient to attenuate the risk for our competitors? What about those athletes who have not been vaccinated? Is the risk to them worth it? To the locals who, despite precautions, are likely to have sufficient contact with incoming staff and athletes to exacerbate any potential risk to themselves and their families? 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the one thing that this pandemic has taught us all is how bad governmental reactions and policies to this pandemic have helped this disease achieve highly preventable levels of infection and death.

Boom, Boom, Bang… Again and Again and Again

    

There’s so much news about weapons, civilian shootings and military ultra-violence. Is the 21st century reflective of the transition from the information age to the era of total weaponization? Has social media simply evolved into a “death of a thousand cuts,” repositioning the use of money and power into sub-rosa nation and society killers? Are hacking, ransomware, fomenters of super-destructive conspiracy theories the new tools of the unscrupulous governments and political parties? Are these amoral perpetrators using our constitutional guarantees to undermine and subvert our constitutional democracy? First Amendment free speech? Second Amendment gun rights?

Even we are using the constitution to subvert ourselves. We really did not have a profoundly distorted view of unregulated personal guns – one that completely ignored the plain “well regulated militia” language of the Second Amendment – until the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Heller vs District of Columbia in 2008. Even with the latest mass shooting (the sixth this year alone) in San Jose on May 26th, Texas continues to believe that allowing anyone and everyone to carry concealed weapons is a good thing: “Supporters of the new rules [statute], often known as ‘constitutional carry’, say they would allow Texans to better defend themselves in public and abolish unnecessary limits on the constitutional right to bear arms.

“‘This is a simple restoration of Texans' constitutional right under the Second Amendment, a right of the people to keep and bear arms,’ state Senator Charles Schwertner, a Republican, said on Monday, the Texas Tribune reports... Critics say the bill puts lives at risk. Beverly Powell, a Democratic senator, raised safety concerns from some law enforcement groups that opposed the bill… ‘If I sit down at a restaurant with a gentleman or a woman who has a holster on their side and a gun in it, I want to know that person is well-trained in the use of that gun,’ she said.” BBC.com, May 25th. 

All predicated on the National Rifle Association’s mantra that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with gun.” Notwithstanding the very real statistic that for every thirty civilian gun homicides in the United States, on average only one meets the definition of “justifiable.” Without background checks and permits, how do you know that a gun carrying individual is a “good guy.” And if a “good guy” loses his/her temper? Or simply becomes a “bad guy” for mental health reasons?

This is hardly an anomaly. Indeed, according to the National Rifle Association, Texas will join the ranks of twenty other states to have some form of permitless concealed carry. Guns. Weapons. Individual and national. National? Oh yeah! We used to think that “mutually assured destruction” would prevent all-out nuclear war. We’re not so sure anymore. And we have so many explosive realities on earth that risks from weapons, old and new, are simply multiplying.

Conflicts. Civil wars. Brinksmanship. Gaza. Myanmar. Syria. Yemen. Somalia. Hong Kong. What is particularly threatening is the increasing ability to take soldiers, sailors and airmen and women out of harm’s way by using either remotely controlled or autonomous weapon systems. You can inflict death and destruction of all forms of targets – civilian, military, strategic – without an “at risk on a battlefield” individual decision. Does that make starting a war that much easier?

For quite some time, cruise missiles have been able to be programmed to have a list of prioritized “targets” so that if for some reason the primary target cannot be found, a deployed missile will not be wasted. We are witnessing US Airforce drone pilots in Arizona, controlling Hellfire missiles thousands of miles away, experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder as their targets are vaporized. We spend 41% of the entire global military budget all by ourselves. The arms race is accelerating. Russia, China and the United States are now developing, building and testing the next generation of weapon systems: autonomous weapons, not under any individual’s decision-making control, being sent out to battle with the ability to decide who lives… and who dies.

“One of the Pentagon’s primary jobs is anticipating what the wars of the future will look like so that it can allocate the resources necessary to make sure the U.S. has the edge in those battles. When people in the defense industry talk about the tools of future war, they usually mention applications of AI, autonomous weaponry, and a very different role for warm-blooded human beings during battle.

“These technologies are in their early stages of maturity; defense forces don’t yet understand the best ways to deploy them in battle. Military leaders in other wealthy countries, including China and Russia, are also talking about such matters, though we don’t know where they’re placing their bets.

“For a number of reasons—some old, some new—the U.S. could easily get pulled into a race to develop and use autonomous weapons before it understands how to use them predictably, effectively, and ethically.

“‘There’s an AI arms race where I’m worried about your development of this technology and you’re worried about my development of this technology, and neither of us communicates that we’re aware of the limitations,’ said Chris Meserole, director of research and policy for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution. He spoke during a Defense One/Nextgov panel discussion on AI ethics and policy.

“‘It turns into this self-fulfilling prophecy . . . you enter this spiral where each one assumes the other has the advantage,’ Meserol explained. ‘You can end up in a situation where you’re already fighting, when neither party originally wanted to.’” Mark Sullivan for the May 27th FastCompany.com. Is this nature’s way of supplementing pandemics with yet another way to address Malthusian overpopulation? Are human beings programmed to kill each other even more when there are simply too many people on the planet. Are there moral alternatives that we need to prioritize? One would hope so, but there is little evidence that mankind is taking those alternatives into serious consideration.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while experiencing death and destruction on a personal basis is horrific, given our lackadaisical commitment to earth’s sustainability, we are pushing nature to accelerate mass annihilation as its increasingly necessary tool.

Nothing to Sneeze at

“I think the problem is that some people have a couple of weeks when they are miserable, and then the rest of the year they are fine, so they think they’ll just grin and bear it… But there is a better way. You can take steps to minimize those weeks of misery.” Yale Medicine pediatric allergist Stephanie Leeds, MD

“I think the problem is that some people have a couple of weeks when they are miserable, and then the rest of the year they are fine, so they think they’ll just grin and bear it… But there is a better way. You can take steps to minimize those weeks of misery.” Yale Medicine pediatric allergist Stephanie Leeds, MD

“People are sneezing and coughing, and not getting tested for COVID-19 because they assume it’s allergies. And they are probably correct.” Yale Medicine allergist Florence Ida Hsu, MD

Pollen and other breathing allergies in the time of COVID are strange and often misleading bedfellows. Symptoms can overlap. Both have forceful respiratory aspects. Many of us have spent long periods of time indoors, many in sealed rooms with air conditioning and air filters. When we ventured outside, most of us wore masks. Fewer cars on the road generated less air pollution. Allergies in 2020 were hardly a primary concern. Welcome to 2021. COVID has not gone away, although a very large pool of Americans have now been vaccinated or generated an immune resistance by surviving an infection. Allergies really never left.

In the overall scheme of things – most certainly accelerated by climate change – the pollen count has continued to rise, year by year. Kathy Katella, writing for the May 18th edition of Yale Medicine, explains: “[Last] year was an unusual interruption of what experts say has been a rising pollen count trend… ‘This year I’m hearing a lot of patients say their symptoms are very severe,’ says Stephanie Leeds, MD, a Yale Medicine pediatric allergist… ‘The tree pollen has been particularly intense,’ says Florence Ida Hsu, MD, a Yale Medicine allergist who has seen patients with lots of nasal congestion, sneezing, coughing, and red, itchy eyes—and in the most serious cases, allergic symptoms that have led to asthma flares.

“A combination of at least two things could be contributing to these miserable symptoms. One small part is that more people are going outside without masks (which can also protect against pollen), now that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has relaxed mask guidelines. The other—and bigger—reason is that many are facing an onslaught of pollen.

“‘With climate change, the general trend has been that we’re getting higher levels of pollen and longer pollen seasons, whether that’s due to warmer temperatures or increased carbon dioxide emissions; it’s probably multifactorial,’ says Dr. Leeds. A study published in February in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) backs this up: It reported a lengthening of the pollen season by 20 days and a 21% increase in pollen concentrations between 1990 and 2018…

“Pollen is an airborne substance that comes from grass, flowering plants, trees, and weeds. In the past 12 months, 19.2 million adults and 5.2 million children under 18 were diagnosed with hay fever, the name given to allergic rhinitis caused by pollen. When someone has hay fever, their immune system identifies pollen as a threat and releases signals that lead to congestion, itchy eyes, runny nose, and sneezing, as well as problems like sinus pressure and allergic conjunctivitis (itchy, watery, and red eyes).

“The amount of pollen in the air depends on the season and the geographic area in which you live. The study reported in PNAS found the most pronounced effects in Texas and the Midwestern United States. However, the Northeast can have a significant spring allergy season as well, Dr. Leeds says. Tree allergies are especially common in New England—particularly due to birch and oak. Pollen allergies can also cause a cross-reaction with certain foods in some people; symptoms include an itchy or tingling mouth and throat after eating raw fruits and vegetables, seeds, and nuts.” Windy days can accelerate the impact of airborne irritants. Particles can lodge in your hair, to be dispersed later when you bring them inside. Children are often more severely impacted when they take their play outside for longer periods, usually without wearing masks. Some outgrow those allergies, but some don’t.

Yet with COVID lingering, there is one more confusing variable when addressing allergies. “The CDC has a Venn diagram that shows symptoms the two conditions have in common. These include congestion, cough, difficulty breathing, fatigue, runny nose, sore throat, and shortness of breath. But comparing the most common symptoms reveals clear differences. Seasonal allergies usually cause itchy or watery eyes and sneezing, while COVID-19 is characterized by fever and chills, muscle and body aches, new loss of taste and smell, nausea and vomiting, and diarrhea.

“‘Because of COVID-19, people are afraid of you when you’re sniffling,’ says Dr. Hsu. ‘But it goes both ways—a lot of people are sniffling and sneezing and coughing, and they are not getting tested for COVID-19, because they assume it’s allergies. And they are probably correct.’…Often the distinction is clear—people with allergies itch more, and they don’t have the fatigue, malaise, and fever that comes with COVID-19.  But anyone who is concerned should call their doctor, she says.” Yale Medicine. Allergy shots can be an effective treatment, but that takes planning and time. Non-medicine-related treatments can mirror CDC COVID guidelines, but, hey, we’ve just had too many of those restrictions.

Yale Medicine has a list of practical suggestions: “Medications aren’t the only way to help solve the problem. If you are having seasonal allergy symptoms, the CDC and Yale Medicine doctors offer the following non-medical strategies to help both adults and children:

• Stay in the house if you can, particularly on windy days. Keep the windows closed (in the car, too). Run the air conditioner, which should have a clean filter on it.

• Wear a face mask when you go outside to prevent you from inhaling larger particles of pollen (note that smaller particles can still get through). Wash the mask after each use because it may have pollen on it.

• Wear a hat and sunglasses to avoid getting pollen in your hair and to protect your eyes.

• Avoid outdoor activities such as mowing lawns or raking leaves, as they stir up pollen.

• If you spend time outdoors, brush off any pollen once you go back inside. “If you are pollen-sensitive, it’s a good idea to take a bath, wash your hair, and change your clothes, especially if you’re going to bed,” says Dr. Hsu. “Try to minimize the amount of pollen that goes from your head to your pillow, because you will be breathing it in all night.”

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC suggested ways to create a cleaner air space at home that can also be helpful in protecting against outdoor air irritants. A portable air cleaner/purifier can help; it works best when run continuously with the doors and windows closed.

• If your home has a forced air system, consult a qualified heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) professional about filters (HEPA or MERV-13 or higher) and settings (“Recirculate” and “On” rather than “Auto”) that can be used to reduce indoor air irritants.

“Check the daily pollen count (the number of grains of pollen in a cubic meter of air based on a sample taken in a 24-hour period) before you decide to spend time outdoors. The measure is reported as low, moderate, high, or very high. You can sign up with the National Allergy Bureau for notifications with information for your area.” There is clearly hope, but given the escalation in pollen every season, for many, increasingly severe seasonal allergies just might be a way of life for a very long time.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for a few of my readers, I hope today’s blog just might make dealing with seasonal allergies a little bit easier. 

Death by Dehumanization, Racism in the Disguise of Protecting Children

2021 has been the year of massive proposed and passed anti-LGBTQ legislation, heavily focused on transgender and non-binary individuals. Already, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia have passed anti-trans laws under the guise of “protecting children,” with comparable legislation now pending in Texas, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri and Arizona. These laws address public restrooms, the right to participate in school and college sports, access to medical treatment and gender designations on official documents. Aside from the harsh reality of “being different” in a world that constantly pushes individuals into a level of uniformity that lives in denial of the reality of diversity, this negation of an individual’s status is a slam to self-esteem that leads a surprising number of such individuals to thoughts of suicide, all too frequently realized.

2021 has been the year of massive proposed and passed anti-LGBTQ legislation, heavily focused on transgender and non-binary individuals. Already, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia have passed anti-trans laws under the guise of “protecting children,” with comparable legislation now pending in Texas, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri and Arizona. These laws address public restrooms, the right to participate in school and college sports, access to medical treatment and gender designations on official documents. Aside from the harsh reality of “being different” in a world that constantly pushes individuals into a level of uniformity that lives in denial of the reality of diversity, this negation of an individual’s status is a slam to self-esteem that leads a surprising number of such individuals to thoughts of suicide, all too frequently realized.

Rejection, marginalization and denigrating designation, often over traits that individuals have no control over and that have no real negative impact on the society at large, is a mental health nightmare. What’s even more puzzling is how individual legislators’ purportedly practicing fundamental Christianity, seem to find the New Testament’s prohibitions on not sitting in judgement of others, practicing loving and respecting others and mandating tolerance – core evangelical values – somehow suspended or non-applicable when it comes to persons that such legislators (and their constituency) find objectionable on any basis. Racial. Religious. Ethnic. Gender designations. My reading of the New Testament does not provide the kinds of hypocritical exceptions that such legislators believe to be “gospel.”

For some reason, even beyond suspending those aspects of the Bible that some social conservatives simply do not like, there has been a growing trend to legitimize, even create legal mandates against, human beings for non-threatening personality and biological traits, which are mostly a reflection of genetic realities. It seems that it is now acceptable knowingly to castigate and discriminate against people who offer no threat to society just because the party in power does not like them. As the Asian/Pacific Islander anti-hate bill becomes law and as the DOJ is taking increasing interest in police actions, political movements and escalating overt hatred against stated minorities, red state legislators are working overtime to pass new laws to discriminate against helpless minorities, as well as to contain and defeat voters whose ballots would likely be cast against conservative incumbents and their values.

MSNBC reported on May 20th that “In a survey of young LGBTQ people, 42% reported seriously considering suicide in 2020, and a larger percentage [94%] reported struggling with their mental health [because of recent political efforts against them], according to The [LGBTQ-support group] Trevor Project.  The group’s executive director says this is a public health crisis, as states debate laws that will affect LGBTQ youth.” That 42% rises to 52% for trans and non-binary youth. As more states contemplate restrictions against and posting law negating the realities of being LGBTQ, the mental health crisis among such individuals is rising very fast. Parental attitudes about their own children can make bad self-esteem that much worse. If even one adult in the family sympathizes with, supports and loves that LGBTQ child, there is a major upbeat in that self-esteem. 

Oddly, the use of the right pronoun by those who purportedly care for such LGBTQ persons has a wildly positive impact on mental health. Migrating away from gender specific pronouns (e.g., his, her, him, he, she, etc.) to a more neutral “them, they, their,” etc. has a hugely positive impact on an LGBTQ individual. Nikita Shepard, a Columbia University researcher who is exploring the social and psychological aspect of the world of LGBTQ, points out how the “justification” for anti-LGBTQ legislation relies on a profoundly false narrative (in the May 10th Washington Post): 

“In March, the Arkansas legislature passed a bill banning gender-confirming medical treatment for transgender youths. The bill marked just one instance of a wave of recent anti-transgender legislation across the country that would restrict trans people’s access to athletic participation, health care, sex education and other accommodations. As Arkansas state Sen. Alan Clark (R) declared: ‘This bill sets out to protect children in an area where they very much need protection.’

“It might seem strange that a politician with no medical training could justify a bill denying certain children medical treatment — without which, advocates note, they will suffer horrifying consequences — on the basis of ‘protecting children.’… Yet history shows that political discourse about protecting children since the mid-20th century has never really been about improving their health. Instead, it has a lot to do with race.

“The roots of ‘protecting children’ in U.S. political rhetoric lie in efforts to defend white supremacy. While the groups targeted as threats to children — African Americans in the South, unmarried mothers, abortion rights activists, lesbians and gay men, and, more recently, transgender people — have changed over time, the underlying political logic has proved enduring and successful.

“Children’s well-being first became a political issue as industrialization and urban growth accelerated toward the end of the 19th century. Debates over child labor, education and immigration catalyzed a broad Progressive Era ‘child-saving’ movement. Then, in the mid-20th century, postwar prosperity and Cold War tensions contributed to a renewed focus on children as symbols of the American future.

“But in the South, the politics of ‘protection’ did not at first focus on children. After Reconstruction, White elites in the states of the former Confederacy consolidated their rule through a combination of political exclusion and violence, with White vigilantes committing thousands of racial terror lynchings between 1880 and the 1950s. Though their violence aimed to suppress labor disputes, breaches of racial etiquette and Black political organizing, lynchers nearly always justified their actions as necessary to protect White womanhood…

“[In] the South, the politics of ‘protection’ did not at first focus on children. After Reconstruction, White elites in the states of the former Confederacy consolidated their rule through a combination of political exclusion and violence, with White vigilantes committing thousands of racial terror lynchings between 1880 and the 1950s. Though their violence aimed to suppress labor disputes, breaches of racial etiquette and Black political organizing, lynchers nearly always justified their actions as necessary to protect White womanhood… But as the civil rights movement gained strength, racist violence that targeted Black children discredited White men’s claims to be justly protecting women… By the time of the 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing, which killed four children, the Jim Crow regime had lost all moral legitimacy to national observers.

“However, backlash against the civil rights movement gave rise to a new, more successful strategy of appropriating the rhetoric of child protection. After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision mandated public school desegregation, “massive resistance” to impede integration took shape across the South. While male politicians signing the “Southern Manifesto” against Brown emphasized ‘states’ rights,’ the women who formed the movement’s grass-roots base mobilized as White mothers to argue that school segregation was necessary to protect their children and white supremacy. Integrated schools, they claimed, would lower educational standards, expose White children to disease and violence, and lead to interracial dating and, eventually, marriage.”

Indeed, using “protecting children” is the rubric relied upon by right-wing conservatives desiring to appear being responsible and protective. But what exactly are our general population children being protected from? Being seduced by those in the LGBTQ lifestyle, folks being attacked with a much greater proclivity to contemplate and commit suicide? No possible connection to genetics, right? Talk to those “impressionable” American youth to see how they feel. Unlike many of their parents, kids seem to have continued to develop a notion of increased tolerance of diversity. LGBTQ people just are… people. Most Americans have come to understand this basic reality, whether or not they embrace New Testament mandates of tolerance and brotherly love. This isn’t just a “Christian” value; it’s pretty universal across most faiths. But targeting people with discriminatory legislation because either you do not personally like them or because your intolerant constituency demands “their way or the highway” flies in the face of American democracy, which in the most simplistic expression is “majority rule within a nexus of minority rights.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time send a clear message to those hell-bent on dictating total social control over everybody: stop the steal!

Not My Fault – The Nuclear Option

Nuclear power is downright scary. Especially when the reactors that generate so much electrical power are inadvertently underbuilt (think Ukraine’s Chernobyl and Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island) or built on precarious land (think Japan’s Fukushima and California’s San Onofre and Diablo Canyon)… Exacerbated by the fact that we just do not know what to do with spent but still very radioactive fuel rods and other nuclear waste. Sitting on the Columbia River in Hanford, Washington, for example, the federal nuclear disposal site there is leaking radioactive waste into groundwater, and eventually the river. The clean-up cost is enormous.

Yet, every time a reactor is shut down, pollution and fossil fuel usage rise: “California’s planet-warming emissions rose by 2% after the San Onofre generating station in San Diego County malfunctioned, eventually leading to its permanent closure. That wasn’t the only reason emissions rose, but it was almost certainly a factor… Similarly, the share of New York state’s electricity coming from natural gas, a fossil fuel, rose by 4 percentage points after one of two reactors at the Indian Point nuclear plant closed last year. The other reactor produced its final electrons last month.” Los Angeles Times, May 18th. It’s a Hobson’s choice.

If you believe Bill Gates, and he speaks with great credibility on this issue, even with an aggressive implementation of alternative energy policies and technology, the world will still fall about 30% short in meeting its energy needs. While the Biden move to support greater deployment of electric cars and trucks made in the good old USA is a positive choice, we still have to generate the electricity to power them. And how we generate that electricity is what will directly impact climate change abatement. Gates is heavily invested in a government supported new endeavor, TerraPower, that is constructing what he believes is the necessary but vastly safer generation of nuclear reactors (labeled “Natrium Reactors”).

“Nuclear fission, a process where atoms split and release a large amount of energy, generates a lot of heat. In conventional nuclear power plants, called light-water nuclear reactors, water absorbs that heat, turning it to steam. The steam then turns a turbine to produce electricity… The problem is, that steam can also build up and create pressure inside of a reactor, which has the potential to cause an explosion.

“So TerraPower’s Natrium plant uses a different method, pioneered decades ago: liquid sodium as a cooling agent. (‘Natrium’ means ‘sodium’ in Latin.) Liquid sodium has a higher boiling point and can absorb a lot more heat than water, which means high pressure does not build up inside the reactor… ‘Liquid sodium has certain improved thermochemical properties when compared to water that can change risk profiles and reduce the probability of events that might be more probable in a light water reactor,’ says Brett Rampal, the director of nuclear innovation at non-profit Clean Air Task Force.”  CNBC.com, April 8th.

But most remaining nuclear power-generating reactors were built well before we really understood the risks. This is particularly true with so-called “hybrid reactors,” dedicated both to generating electrical power as well as creating additional fissionable materials used in weapon systems. Chernobyl, for example. Or some of the reactors in Iran. As reactors are taken off-line for obvious reasons, reality sets out some very serious questions: how to dispose of the nuclear fuel that must be removed and where to deposit that waste, how to stabilize (demolish if possible) the older reactor, and how to replace the resulting lost power-generating capacity with a clean alternative.

With coastal tsunami and earthquake threats, sitting on the eastern edge of the Ring of Fire, America’s west coast faces some of the most serious issues in taking down and replacing its nuclear reactors. Southern California’s twin-domed San Onofre’s reactors have been shut down for a while but are still a problem site, and the Central Coast’s Diablo Canyon reactors (pictured above) are next on the shutdown list.

“The twin reactors along California’s Central Coast were nearing completion, and tens of thousands of people had gathered to protest. It was 1979, just months after a partial nuclear meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, and a young Jerry Brown — serving his first stint as California governor — earned a standing ovation when he declared, ‘No on Diablo Canyon.’

“Four decades later, Pacific Gas & Electric is finally preparing to shut the nuclear power plant. It sits near several seismic fault lines and has long stirred fears that an earthquake-driven meltdown could spread deadly radiation across the state.

“But if Diablo Canyon is the devil Californians know, the devil they don’t know is what happens when it closes… The plant is California’s largest power source, generating nearly 6% of the state’s electricity in 2019. That energy is emissions-free, meaning it doesn’t produce planet-warming greenhouse gases or lung-scarring air pollutants… And unlike solar panels and wind turbines, Diablo Canyon can make electricity around the clock, regardless of the weather — a key attribute for a state that suffered brief rolling blackouts last summer.” LA Times.

Basically, we don’t really know what we are doing or how to make up for the energy deficit that closing reactors entails. But we know we cannot just let those reactors continue, especially in seismically active zones, without a huge change. So… “When nuclear plants do shut down, climate advocates agree that replacing them with clean energy sources is crucial.

“That’s the problem in California, where officials acknowledge the state is likely to burn more gas after Diablo goes offline… In a recent report studying the possible closure of the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility outside Los Angeles, the Public Utilities Commission cited Diablo’s retirement as one of several reasons gas demand is expected to increase in the coming years.

“For [California] Assembly member Jordan Cunningham (R-Templeton), who co-wrote the law ordering regulators to make sure emissions don’t rise after the plant’s closure, it’s inexcusable that the Public Utilities Commission doesn’t have a dedicated plan do so… ‘I don’t know if it’s a lack of urgency, or it’s just a slow-moving bureaucracy, or they just move from crisis to crisis,’ Cunningham said. ‘So much of energy policy moves through the PUC, and they just don’t move very fast. And it’s frustrating.’

“The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report in February examining what might happen if Diablo closes without a plan to replace its output. The group estimated California would emit an additional 15.5 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon over the next decade — roughly equivalent to keeping 300,000 gasoline-powered cars on the road over that same time period.

“Nitrogen dioxide pollution, which can cause asthma attacks and reduced lung function, would also rise in communities near gas-fired power plants. The added pollution would be equivalent to operating 1,750 diesel school buses, the report found… The Public Utilities Commission says it’s following the law.” LA Times. 

In a nation where policy has become more reactive (pun intended), where we wait for a crisis before we attempt to correct a problem that could have been prevented, with a long-term disaster that can accompany a significant nuclear meltdown (easily triggered by a tsunami or earthquake), that approach just does not work. Experts tell us that the Chernobyl site will not be safe for at least 3,000 and maybe as long as 20,000 years, and even Fukushima – where there is a degree of containment – won’t be safe for decades. We must prioritize this de-nuclearization and potential safer re-nuclearization as a combination of facing an immediate challenge and major threat with the opportunity to help solve the much bigger climate change problem.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is clearly time for us both to invest in our future… and insure that we can safely have one.