Have you reached maximum fear yet? Are so scared out of your God damn mind that you can be stampeded into believing almost anything ? No? Well gosh darn it, I guess the hard working folks at Sky News and The Guardian are just going to have try harder.
The news factories are pumping out scare stories about the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station 24/7 – with a new twist appearing every few hours. These pieces are designed to get the sheeples running in a particular direction – nothing more.
Sky News and ‘expert’ Professor Michael Clarke sets the mood, thundering that if an explosion were to ‘disturb’ the reactors at Zaporizhzhia that “it would be something akin to Chernobyl in 1986.”
Professor Clarke is the retired Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute with no expertise in nuclear power. He has gigs on Sky News and parrots whatever they want him to say. I demonstrably know a lot more about Chernobyl than Michael Clarke because I have both studied and visited the plant.
Zaporizhzhia can never be ‘akin to Chernobyl’ because:
(a) Chernobyl flowed from a botched safety check, designed to test if the plant could cope with losing external power while running. All the reactors at Zaporizhzhia are shut down.
(b) The VVER reactors at Zaporizhzhia are much smaller and safer, using water as a moderator instead of graphite.
(c) Zaporizhzhia has substantial concrete containment buildings – Chernobyl had none.
(d) The RBMK reactors at Chernobyl had a design flaw quite impossible in Zaporizhzhia’s VVER’s.
Professor Clarke brought his many years of not knowing anything about Chernobyl or nuclear power to bear on the problem of reading his script, chattering about fuel rods quite oblivious to how ludicrous his statements are.
“If they are exploded, it would still cause damage and they will probably overheat, even in their passive state, so there will be some nuclear fallout and then it depends which way the wind is blowing. It might blow over Russia but equally it might blow over the West, Western Europe.”
The Chernobyl disaster was a massive un-contained steam explosion of a very particular kind, followed by a catastrophic fire. The idea of this happening at Zaporizhzhia is laughable but his fear mongering about fuel rods is beyond absurd.
How do you explode a solid metal fuel rod inside a cooling pond, itself inside a massive concrete building? I suppose you could take the rod out of the pond, attach explosives to it and blow it up in your own face – but this hardly seems in anyone’s interest, least of all the Russians!
Not only is Professor Clarke happy to peddle these preposterous nuclear lies, his employers need you to be afraid, so he helpfully tells you not merely that you SHOULD be afraid but exactly what your level of fear ALREADY IS and why.
“We’ve reached the point now of maximum fear.” Professor Clarke chirped happily and then answered the question nobody asked him about whether the Russians are mad enough to ‘disturb’ the Zaporizhzhia NPP: “…are they mad enough to do it? Yes they are!”
These stories continue apace this very morning:
New satellite images show unidentifiable shapes at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant! [Sky News]
Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant could become ‘dirty bomb’ [Yahoo News]
What’s the worst-case scenario for Zaporizhzhia? [DW News]
What would be the impact of sabotage at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant? [RTE News]
There are literally thousands of such stories – but I am not at all worried about the Zaporizhzhia NPP.
I am worried about:
(a) Groups of children stumbling across unexploded cluster munitions (sent by the U.S.) a few years from now and being sliced apart.
(b) Children being born with birth defects caused by depleted Uranium sent by the west.
(c) Children stepping on land mines that are being showered over Ukraine like confetti by both sides.
(d) Reports that Ukraine is deploying chemical weapons near Bakhmut.
Most of all I am worried that they are trying to manufacture consent for a direct NATO confrontation with Russia by endlessly publishing fear-mongering propaganda about the Zaporizhzhia NPP.
The people we should be really worried about work in offices in London and Washington and they fear your calmness, intelligence and your sense of humour – so fight them with that.
Keep calm and carry on fighting for the only thing they don’t want – peace.
Since 2013 I have worked on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and speaking simple truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.
I am a home schooling parent on a low income – paying for the domain, web hosting and security entirely out of my own pocket.
If you find this website useful and could spare us a few shillings to help keep our lights on, it would be very much appreciated.
Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.
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