Nature and Its Toll

Last night I was telling my dad about a friend of mine with a heart condition that can be fixed by a fairly straightforward but expensive operation.  My friend is uninsured, and so far nobody will cover the preexisting condition.

Dad, a fairly conservative man, said that "Worst cases make bad law."

"A person can die of this," I told him.  "It's preventable."

"Under Obamacare, she'll be eligible for care," he said.  In 2014.

"Then I'm for Obamacare," I said.

"We cannot cover everybody; we cannot borrow from our children to pay for every hard luck story."

I was a little shocked at the irony.  We borrow from our children to defend our borders and our interests.  We borrow from our children to send people into space.  We can sink ourselves into debt to China for a trillion dollars (they plan to foreclose on New Jersey soon) for wars.  But we cannot pay for our poor to live.

The libertarian / conservative take on healthcare is principled and consistent: it's just immoral.  "Amoral," says one of my libertarian friends, but I disagree. 

-------------

In other news, Japan is pulling personnel from its damaged and leaking nuclear reactors: they are stepping down, in other words, efforts to cool off the fuel.  The U.S. is alarmed, and one official says that Japan should be going balls-to-the-wall in a "suicide mission" to cool the reactors. 

Nuclear power is a strategic necessity.  I don't think that's deniable.

But what's kind of startling is how defenders of it seem to think there is such a thing as "safe" nuclear power. 

Nature is not safe.  

As with so many other things in life, the greater the power you choose, the more helpless you are when it escapes your control.   The plants that are now going critical were well-enough conceived.  But an earthquake and a tsunami damaging your primary cooling loop and venting to the atmosphere are not good.  Uncooled nuclear material is worse.  And sometimes it seems to me that our best defense against these things is, "Oh... that will never happen."

Swell.

Human fantasies of control in the face of nature are necessary.  But they are often catastrophically ill-conceived.

We can borrow from our kids to extend our energy infrastructure.  They will, we reason, benefit from that.   And the truth is, when nuclear power works like it'supposed to (it's not supposed to be damaged by earthquakes and tsunamis), it really makes life better.  We can't borrow from our kids to save a heart, though.

Nothing, or little, is likely to change in our assumption that nuclear power plants are safe.  Japan is a worst case scenario.  Worst cases make bad law.

Tell it to Japan.  Tell it to my friend.