Pruning Hooks Not Spears

It's a pruning hook.

This is from Darryl Wellington of the Progressive Media Project, writing in the Deseret News:

But the nuclear age is a suicidal age. We've had several near misses, the Cuban Missile Crisis being the most obvious. And we've almost had accidental nuclear war when our radar systems (and Russia's) have thought they were seeing incoming nuclear weapons and have prepared to launch nuclear weapons in response. At some point, we won't be able to avert the catastrophe.

Similarly, nuclear power plants may seem to provide part of the solution to our energy crisis. But Fukushima highlighted the dangers of accidents, and nuclear waste can never be truly safely stored.

The incident he’s referring to is the so-called “Norwegian Rocket Incident,” in which Russia prepared to launch its nuclear arsenal at the United States after a Norwegian rocket spooked Russia into thinking that the Americans had fired a missile from a submarine. It was indeed a near thing.

But that transition, “Similarly!” Really? To paraphrase Rocket J. Squirrel, That trick never works. To quote Isaiah, not to mention Joel and Micah, “And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.“ Domestic nuclear energy may use fission as its basis but its outcomes have nothing to do with weaponry. Pruning hooks, not spears.


This one really has got to be retired. Have at nuclear energy on its own terms – guilt by association is never attractive.