The Antidote

Earlier this week, I managed to get my last anti-nuclear power post onto the “Your say” section of News24. I think this sort of cross-pollination from blogs to conventional web spaces can be quite fruitful.

I’m really keen to get people thinking and talking about issues that I feel pationate about, like nuclear power. It really doesn’t bother me if they don’t share all of my opinions as long as some sort of dialogue has been started in their heads and around their proverbial water coolers (not that we have many of those in SA, so maybe I should say “around their braai fires”). Exploring other avenues to get my stuff out into public spaces is definitely something I want to try to do more.

Getting the story onto News24 increased traffic to this blog substantially. I was a bit annoyed that the comments facility on the individual News24 contributions was disabled, making it much less interactive and open to immediate comments and responses.

Nonetheless, two people sent in lengthier replies to my initial rant. David Kritzinger
seems to be one of those nuclear energy supporters who think of themselves as environmentalists (or perhaps he is an environmentalist who’s turned to the dark side, I don’t know) , saying that we’re all really on the same side. Can’t say I agree - in my opinion, you cannot call yourself an environmentalist and support atomic energy.

Eelke de Boer from Botswana complained about my biased opinion and insisted on pointing out that renewable energy options are not perfect. It entirely slipped Eelkes mind to mention that nuclear power is, in fact, even less perfect.