Vera Fan’s letter (“Stick with nuclear power”, April 11) appears
reasonable and has a good point but about power stations being built in the wrong places.
Whether they are safe, that’s another question, and it’s not the only question.
It is true that using nuclear power to generate electricity does not create greenhouse gases but the problems of the inherent danger in the plants and the need to dispose of the radioactive waste, are not minor. In fact, they are huge problems.
First point is that nuclear power involves the use of explosive
materials that are also used to make nuclear weapons.
Also, nuclear power stations are soft targets for terrorists.
A nuclear explosion would contaminate the entire planet, poisoning the air, the sea and the land. There would be no escape, for us humans or for all creatures alive today. And as radioactivity around us increased, so would mutations and cancers.
It’s our children and the coming generations that we are protecting by leaving the short-sighted path of dependence on nuclear power.
Also, with the technology today there is no solution in sight to safely process nuclear waste into environmentally safe materials. And it has to be restated that the natural decay of this waste takes tens of decades and longer.
We have to seek out and dig up the facts about the huge investment in the nuclear industry in each country to understand why the pro-nuclear lobby is so strong.
That is why there are calls for transparency in regard to the Daya Bay plant on our doorstep and the gradual substitution of nuclear power with renewable energies and other power sources.
We must close down all nuclear power-generation stations throughout the world and turn to other means.
Tony Henderson, chairman, Humanist Association of Hong Kong
