'..the horrific Soviet nuclear accident at Chernobyl. Then a particle physicist at Hamburg's Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Knies said the 1986 disaster prompted him to calculate how much energy the sun can deliver to the world.
"I thought to myself, 'Are we really so stupid that we put such things in our world that we cannot control? Just for some little comfort?'" he said.' '<blockquote>'Knies is now the energetic and at times defiant chairman of the board of trustees of the
Desertec Foundation, which is pushing the plan. He is eager to implement the solar vision he first developed in the wake of the horrific Soviet nuclear accident at Chernobyl. Then a particle physicist at Hamburg's Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Knies said the 1986 disaster prompted him to calculate how much energy the sun can deliver to the world.
"I thought to myself, 'Are we really so stupid that we put such things in our world that we cannot control? Just for some little comfort?'" he said.
Sitting in a tent drinking coffee at DESY during a recent conference on North Africa's clean energy prospects, Knies argued that climate change and the Fukishima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan -- which turned countries like his native Germany away from nuclear as a low-carbon option -- are lending new urgency to the current, more elaborate version of the plan. He roundly rejected any challenges to Desertec's motives or ability to help North Africa, arguing that criticisms of the solar project are unfounded.
"This is not a European invention," Knies said, noting that the solar initiative was designed by 15 European scientists and 25 scientists from the Middle East and North Africa.'
- Lisa Friedman,
Can North Africa Light Up Europe With Concentrated Solar Power? June 20, 2011</blockquote>
'Fukushima: It's much worse than you think' -
'..Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US..'<blockquote>'In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.
..
Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem.
"Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use," he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy."
..
Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim.
"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor." '
- Dahr Jamai,
Fukushima: It's much worse than you think, 16 Jun 2011</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
(Planetary) '..spending on defence..' Example (Brainstorm) '..planetary emergencies (quakes (2004: 9.4 Richter scale, 2011: 9.0 Richter scale), tornadoes, tsunami, meltdowns etc.)'</blockquote>