There's been something on my mind. I heard our Governor say something that I thought was insane and I'm wondering if it's because I'm Gen X. Let's review a bit about how Gen X was educated.
We grew up with Reaganomics, the Cold War, Acid Rain, and riding our bikes without helmets. There was nary a concern that kids were outside, by themselves, without an adult supervising because no one knew about child abductions until kids' faces started showing up on milk cartons. Yes, we even drank milk...real dairy stuff from cows. (Because you can't get milk from an almond, ok!)
We were taught about preserving our environment, and the need to use a condom. AIDS was a real thing, and it wasn't just a gay thing which led to us learning about homosexuality. We learned home economics and how to use a table saw in public school. We had 9 planets in our star system. A home computer was a luxury and used for playing games no matter how much you told your parents it was a valuable school necessity.
We didn't put a man on the moon, but we did launch a space shuttle that returned to Earth to be used again. D&D was still scary to most people and was thought to lead to Satanic rituals. Nuclear anything was bad news always. Even our Saturday morning cartoons didn't use nuclear weapons, just those ACME bombs that never seemed to be able to hit a roadrunner.
Here's where my dilemma starts: nuclear power.
See Gen X learned that nuclear power wasn't a great option for the future of energy because of one thing: radiation. I learned that uranium that fueled these reactors became highly radioactive. The rods and "waste" that nuclear power plants produced were radioactive and had half-lives of tens of thousands of years. So, what do you do with the nuclear waste? Bury it. See, that doesn't seem to be a smart idea to me. What happens to a landfill that has too much garbage? They plow over it and start a new one. How does that work with radioactive material? Do we just dig more caves under mountains to throw the stuff in? What happens if there's an earthquake, a volcano erupts, some dipshit thinks he can be a terrorist by holding the nuclear waste "hostage" and threaten to release it unless we comply with demands?
Gen X was taught to fear nuclear catastrophe. And not just a nuclear bomb. There was Chernobyl. In 1986, we all heard about Chernobyl and to any Gen Xer, that's all that needs to be said. In the same way, you just say "pandemic" and everyone knows what you're talking about. Radiation poisoning is a horrible way to die, and the danger doesn't just lie in a disaster like Chernobyl. There's all that radioactive waste that we're sealing up in concrete BENEATH the power plants. Are you kidding me? That has been the safety solution after all these years for nuclear reactors?! Congress said we were going to build a huge storage facility out in the desert somewhere and truck all that radioactivity out of people's "backyards". Guess what? We never built it. We never approved the money for it. Say WHAT?
Let's not even factor in nuclear submarines. Really? Are these still a thing? We're not still building nuclear subs, are we? God DAMN!
I bring it up because I have heard that NY is now looking into building a new nuclear facility to help supply power needs for the state. HUH? WHY? Nuclear reactors are not "clean" "green" energy. They produce radioactive waste that takes THOUSANDS of years to decay and become non-lethal. It's like putting venomous snakes in the petting zoo because they'll only kill you if you don't have anti-venom. What the F is wrong with this?!
Why can't we build windmills? They kill birds and whales. BS. Non reflective buildings kill more birds. Whales are not affected by turbines in the ocean. Not one whale has died because of a wind turbine.
Why can't we build solar panels? They take up nutrient rich soil that could be used for farming. They don't have to be built there. They can be placed on the roofs of houses and buildings. They can be placed over parking lots. They can shade rivers or ponds. Have you seen the size of the parking lots at Disney World? Just build solar panels over them and they provide shade to the cars below and soak up the sun for energy production.
We have enough radioactive waste with the reactors the world already has and it's not just that. Radioactive waste is produced from medical tests, too. Can we please do something that won't lead us into the plot of a Godzilla movie?
Gen X has always figured that they're on their own. Safety wasn't a concern when we were kids. If you fell off your bike onto asphalt, no one raised the alarm that all bikes should be banned. But enough of us fell to make folks feel that maybe, just maybe, we needed helmets. Then, everything required a helmet; construction work, football, motorcycles, hockey. So maybe nuclear energy has improved its safety record. Maybe we learned something from Chernobyl.
You're gonna have to prove that to Gen X.
And until you can, we'll vote against it always. See, we're all grown up and our vote COUNTS now.
So stick that in your reactor and smoke it.
-Wy