Nuclear energy is a dangerous toy
Nuclear energy is a dangerous toy,
a careless play with death.
It is sure that a super-MCA (maximum credible accident)
will happen.
It is sure that atomic waste will leak even if
sealed into glass, concrete or other material.
It is like the Russian roulette game.
Once, at some time, it will happen.
It will happen then, when we do not expect it.
There is no sure hiding place for nuclear waste
not even in regions that are seemingly free of earthquakes.
Wars, bombs, bulldozers, geologic movements,
earthquakes turn everything upside down.
Nothing is static on this earth or in the universe.
Everything is moving constantly.
Do we know where the Inkas, where Karthago have put their things? And this was only 2000 years ago. Do we know where our grandmother has hidden her gold coins? And this is only 50 years ago.
But nuclear waste remains lethal for all life for 500 000 years.
The first sealed containers with nuclear waste are already leaking and emit radioactivity.
And they were buried only 20 years ago.
And already we do not know exactly where these containers have been hidden.
Nuclear waste cannot be buried like a dead body.
Nuclear waste does not turn to humus. Sealed containers with nuclear waste are time bombs.
They will brake open sooner or later.
Politicians and scientists tell us that nuclear energy is longlasting harmless. This is a criminal lie.
They have in mind personal career and short sighted profit and are blind for the danger to future generations.
Why should we submit ourselves to the haphazard estimation of some scientists who are blinded by progress and who want to play with the switchboard of atomic power.
Police and security measures will be at the expense of our tolerant and human society and will be a danger for democracy. This is too expensive for us.
Centralized power will bring more automation which will make man even more superfluous.
The result is unemployment.
Nuclear energy is an economic disaster.
Nuclear energy costs more than it brings in.
Unemployment, permanent peril of death, slow disease, loss of the dignity of man and loss of home are more important than a bit of lethal energy which is programmed to destroy nature and mankind.
I would like to point out that nuclear energy only appears to provide a short-term answer to a so-called need of energy.
In the long run, however, nuclear energy breeds a chain reaction series of new disasters.
The more time is passing, the more we recognize the extent of the perils we have set into our world. New unforeseen problems will necessitate increasingly costly and increasingly dangerous antidotes.
The present level of experience does not yet permit us to perceive the whole consequence of this course of events.
It would be irresponsible to ignore the fact that technicians, scientists and experts are leading us into a vast world of problems which they themselves can manage no longer. We in return become dependent upon deadly perilous things which are beyond our comprehension.
This is the end of us all.
What a pity.
We must again live as if in times of war.
Man has to be careful.
Man must think independently, must plan economically.
We must avoid mindless waste.
Man must see to it that the natural cycle continues to function.
Happiness does not depend on materialistic wealth.
Happiness does not depend on production.
The technocratic chaos is a cancer which can only be cured by creative ecological means.
This is a long way but the only possible way out.
A tree is cut down in five minutes but it
takes fifty years to grow the tree.
That is approximately the relation between
technocratic destruction and ecological rebuilding.
In order to master ecologically our dismanaged situation, we need creative thinking combined with the knowledge of the law of nature.
By no means do we need the spirit of industrial progress.
The so-called progress has turned out to be a step towards the abyss.
We can only survive if we step back.
On the occasion of Hundertwasser's anti atom campaign and poster donation in Washington
Published in:
Hundertwasser. New York: Parkstone Press International, 2008, pp. 197-200