Thursday, 29 August 2013

NUCLEAR POWER: THE BOMB!

Image Credit: ctbto.org
Man has developed a great deal; from striking stones together to get fire to twisting a knob on the gas cooker; from walking many miles to using camels and donkeys for transportation; from riding bicycles to flying airplanes. Innovation and creativity has pushed the frontiers of knowledge and technology. But I just hope this great gift of curiosity wouldn't cause our untimely exit from planet earth--I pray it doesn't.
I'm not going to bore you with the physics of nuclear energy. Nuclear fission and fusion, splitting atoms, combining compounds and testing radioactivity, but I'd like you to understand that since the time of Albert Einstein and the discovery of nuclear energy, the world has never remained the same.
Electricity has improved a great deal as many countries have switched to nuclear power as a source of power generation for ships and several other engines, economies have boomed, technology has improved... Until tragedy struck

Effect of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
Image Credit: tumblr
Ukraine, 1986. The Chernobyl Nuclear disaster opened our eyes to the horror this our newly found magic--nuclear power--can cause. Green turned brown, and Pripyat, the city most affected by the disaster became a ghost town. The effect of radiation is still felt today; over two decades after that disaster. No life has grown there ever since. Time seems to have paused forever in that region.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan few years ago refreshed our memories of how nasty nuclear power can get, but if accidents were the only things we were to worry about then i'd have said we don't have much problems. But when you consider the fact that many people have gone ahead to use this 'magic energy' as weapons just gets me shaking every night. Countries like Iran and North Korea are even doing it openly; early this year tensions rose higher than normal as North Korea sent threats out to the world leaving everybody at the edge of their chairs expecting a possible missile launch... Thank God that came to pass.

Image Credit: earthtimes
But the question is; how far are we from a nuclear war? No peace treaty has been signed yet even, but aren't even peace treaties broken? So what can save us then you might ask... I must confess, I don't know. I just pray we loose our addiction to nuclear energy before it consumes us all.

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