FAIL-SAFE

Sometime after the advent of the atom bomb, someone came up with the idea that the nuclear destruction system was too dangerous to be left unprotected. There had to be discrete, layered protections. No one person could "push a button" and start a nuclear World War III. Consistent with the conceptual operation of the U.S. republic, there would be "checks" built into the system.


As time went by and data had accumulated on radiation, etc., from such experiences as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Bikini Island, the idea of environmental damage being greater then the actual explosive events. The living would envy the dead, after such a war, we were advised.


The presidents and congresses seemed to readily understand the nuclear danger, even when they knew nothing of physics. Why was it so impossible for these people to understand the perils of petroleum exploration off-shore? After all, the Exxon Valdez event in Alaskan waters made manifest the problem of oil spilled from a tanker. Why was the federal government not able to envision a "spill" from drilling pipes deep under the sea? Is this not criminal negligence?


It is not hard for congress to write a bill and enact it. There would be no problem writing a bill that required a fail-safe method(s) for shutting down an oil-well under any circumstance conceivable. It could be made the sine qua non of getting an oil lease. It would not be difficult to write a bill that penalized a company that frustrated the law by deceitful circumvention. Such penalty might include confiscation of the assets of a guilty company to defray the costs involved in halting a disaster such as has been unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Further, deceitful circumvention of the law should exact a series of criminal charges that at the minimum would be equal to those levied against a poor person who robbed a branch of Citibank. In the name of the People congress should force top executives to be, first of all, good citizens. Consciousness-raising may be a first step.


Isn't all this mess in the Gulf of Mexico extraordinary, when one considered the decades of concern about global warming? How numerous the scientists climbing on the bandwagon of this issue, and how scant the numbers of scientists concerned about an offshore, deepwater petroleum leak? Would it never enter any of the heads of this exalted set of gurus that a gusher might not merely ruin a beach area but travel into the Gulf Stream or other ocean current? Global warming may be deadly long term, but the befouled oceans would be a quicker doom. It would be truly ironic if the only way to seal the gushing hole in the Gulf was with a nuclear bomb.


June 02, 2010