''We stand in the shadow of a modern-day Stonehenge, a multibillion-dollar monument to a failed energy policy, to formally commission the operation of a renewable energy technology that will harness the power of the wind for the benefit of Long Island's environment.''
Although, it was only able to generate electricity to power 25 homes per day, that moment would symbolise the beginning of the end of an era of nuclear power.
 |
| Stonehenge, built approx. 3000 B.C., England |
There is something atavistic about monuments. As if entombed in stone, they were somehow immortalised for generations to witness their terrible beauty.
 |
| Fukushima nuclear power plant, built in 1971, Japan |
Scholars have theorised that Stonehenge was a burial area, where the living dead were put to rest. In a similar vein, the Fukushima nuclear reactors will be entombed in concrete; the deceased people who might lay nearby, unable to be retrieved due to radioactive poisoning. When encompassed in concrete, the Fukushima nuclear power plants will be a no-living zone, where for centuries, the radioactive plutonium, celesium and iodine will make the once fertile land a kind of burial space.
 |
| Stonehenge map |
 |
| Fukushima II nuclear power plant |
Once entombed in concrete, Fukushima will be a city turned to stone, a monument to a nuclear Medusa that had perfectly captured its beauty, like a crushed butterfly encased in a horrific display.
Where Stonehenge stands now, the land is lush again and eccentrically green. We still ponder why for hundreds of centuries, the surrounding land had been a no-living zone. All we can surmise is that life did not exist around 1500 B.C., some 1500 years after Stonehenge had been built. Anthropologists and scholars extrapolate that there were periods in our earth's history where massive extinctions of complex life occurred for unknown reasons.
The heretical question remains then, in our contemporary era, will our dependence on nuclear power eventually destroy us in the end?
(Disclosure: I do not hold any positions in stocks that power nuclear energy such as EXC, ETR, D and GE)
