Let me make a few things clear.

This is Rick Cromack.

Before I get into anything: This is a distraction from this Forum's intended purpose. If you don't want to read this, don't. I also understand if the mods decide to delete this. I think this is all pretty much an exercise in futility, anyway, as the nuts seem to be coming right out of the trees, these days. But, whatever.

Thanks to two regular BRAWM Forum posters (you know who you are) for alerting me to some of the comments made about and toward me here of late. I really didn't think I'd be back here, but, after what I've just read, I'm glad you contacted me.

I want to respond to someone (I have no evidence that it's more than one person at this point, one very very lonely, unchallenged and twisted person, at that) and some allegations that have been made about me and my contributions here.

One: I have NEVER posted under any other name here, than "Rick Cromack". Occasionally, I have forgotten to put my signature on posts, so those have appeared as "Anonymous". (There haven't been many of those.) In the recent stretch during which I was active here, I declined to put my name in the field provided for that information, because I'm lazy and was annoyed at having to type that information twice. I was asked -- ordered, really -- to comply, and I didn't. Prior to that, months ago when I used to post here, I got some flack at first from someone who was annoyed at having to read my mindless drivel and so I started putting "[R. Cromack]" at the front of each Subject line when I was initiating a thread. I did not do this when I returned last month -- to be honest, I forgot.

I am NOT Red Mercury, BC, Bill Duff, HotCaviar, VB, "Red Herring Alert", or any of the innumerable pseudonyms of a certain person who has posted under handles such as "Golden Kazoo", "Can you see the real me", and probably half a dozen others. I have never attempted to impersonate anyone. I have not intentionally logged posts here under "Anonymous" in an effort to pose as anyone. I do not and will not try to conceal my identity by writing (typing) any differently than I ordinarily would. I am, to contradict someone who had an opinion on this recently and expressed it here, unafraid to challenge ANYONE and have done so repeatedly USING MY OWN NAME. (Sorry if this ofends anyone, but using anonymity as a shield when you're acting belligerent seems particularly cowardly and craven to me.) I don't hide when I act belligerently. It's essential to keeping my self-respect in this frustrating medium full of falseness and feckless flamboyance.

As an addendum: I have NEVER posted to ENENEWS, or any other Internet site having to do with nuclear power, anti-nuclear advocacy, conspiracies, or the like. I did post a few comments to the Forbes environmental blog, under my own name, and was given a nice shout-out by that column's author and a few of the regulars there, but that's it.

Two: I don't manufacture any personality or persona or whatever the Hell you want to call it. What you see / read, is what I am. Why go to the effort of being something you're not, to impress or distract or confuse a bunch of people you don't care about and will never meet? I've read a few posts here tonight by people who seem as if they advocate putting on a disguise, crafting an elaborate ruse, when participating -- ANONYMOUSLY!!! -- in online social forums. REALLY? Folks, if you want to act that badly, go join a local dinner theater or something. At least then, you'll know if you have an audience. This sort of Internet LARPing just boggles my mind, frankly. Really, don't you people have anything better to do? If you're THAT creative, AND bored, for crying out loud, do something ACTUALLY PRODUCTIVE with these skills, something you might actually get, you know, paid for or something, and stop wasting time trying to fool or impress total friggin' strangers, is my advice. And, while we're on the subject of payment...

Three: I have a full-time job. Actually, when you include involvement in my community youth rec sports organization, church and a disaster-relief program, I probably "work" about sixty hours a week. So I don't have time to sit around all day and [edited] myself off online, like some people here seem to. I also don't have time to be -- let's see here, a "plant", a "shill", a "stooge", a "spy", or whatever the Hell else certain paranoiacs have alleged. Are there REALLY people who are paid to represent industries or government agencies or vast international conspiracies online, in obscure chat rooms and academic public-discussion forums and fringe-news aggregators and the like? REALLY? 'Cause if there are, first, I'm not interested. I frankly can't stand many of the people who apparently hang out in places like those I just described, ALL DAY LONG. Second, I'm not qualified. I'm a former submariner who majored in liberal arts, folks. I'm not a scientist, or an industrialist, or an intelligence agent. Third, I don't have the time. Fourth, WOULD I BE USING MY REAL NAME??? REALLY????? And while we're on the subject of conspiracies...

Four: I don't have an agenda, except the truth. Period. I remember talking to a young man who used to frequent this Forum on the phone several months back, just before I went away for the first time. (This is, if you're keeping a box score at home, my third attempt at engaging people here.) He was pretty darned upset about everything, and that last time we chatted, I spoke to him for about an hour or so and tried to get him calmed down. He was, understandably, anxious -- we all were, this was I believe right after that useless bag of [edited] former TEPCO president was ousted, and when it seemed like at any moment The Powers That Be might just lock the gates to the plant and walk away and give up. (This was also right around the time I started taking fire from a couple other Forum posters, for reasons I frankly still can't fathom and don't really care about any more.) And I was, I believe, hopeful, but fair, telling him that, look, I don't think the world's ending today, but there's a LOT of things I / we still don't know, and, yeah, I suppose it's possible the situation could get flushed down the toilet pretty darned fast, if worst came to worst. And he thanked me, and then, he said a few things that I thought were really, really odd:

"You know, a lot of us on the Forum have been talking," he said, "and we can't figure out what your agenda is."

Agenda? What the...? I have an AGENDA?

"Well, it's just that you're so good at being positive and reassuring people, it's almost like BRAWM hired you to, you, know, keep us from going completely nuts or something. Did they?"

I honestly didn't know how to respond to that, but I think I made a joke out of it: "You know, I should ask 'em if they'll pay me to just keep doing what I'm doing, I could use the money!" (I never did.)

And, here's why I'm mentioning it: It was only a day or two later that something like that was actually SAID, right on the BRAWM Forum. And a little after that, came the accusations of "shill" and "plant" and "agent" and the like. At first I thought it was happening because I'd had the temerity to defend BRAWM against certain posters who seemed intent on calling them liars and questioning their scientific integrity. But, boy howdy, did people (perhaps all the same person, I really don't know) start piling on! One day, someone's praising me for my level-headedness (not sure if I ever actually earned that characterization, but, whatever), the next day, I'm some stooge for Big Nuclear or the Zionists or the Illuminati or something.

So, I'm here to categorically say: YOU PEOPLE ARE FRIGGIN' NUTS. I am none of these things, and again -- If I was, and I was SOOOOO "good" at it, WHY WOULD I USE MY REAL NAME? EVER? And: Would you EVER suspect you'd been duped?

Five: I'M NOT ANTI-NUCLEAR.

I've said this here before, many times -- it's been a while, but, if someone really wanted to, I'm sure they could find my earlier posts. I've been a proponent of nuclear energy (AND nuclear weaponry) MY ENTIRE CONSCIOUS LIFE. I served aboard nuclear-powered submarines, and I know that a well-trained crew and a well-funded, well-designed and well-operated bureaucracy can come VERY close to achieving PERFECTLY SAFE, RELIABLE, CONSISTENT, COST-EFFECTIVE NUCLEAR ENERGY PRODUCTION. Sure, there are always potentialities for error -- it wouldn't be a human enterprise if there wasn't. People can make mistakes. There can be gaps in training and oversight. Fabrication errors. Faulty equipment. Poor communication. Bad maintenance programs. Lousy standards. But for all that, you know, it's not the KNOWN challenges that are the biggest threat; it's the UNKNOWN ones that'll foul you up and cause a casualty that can't be recovered from. And I believe that's what mainly happened at Fukushima Dai-ichi: A failure of imagination (and common sense, too) caused TEPCO to prepare for everything, EXCEPT the thing they couldn't conceive that they really, REALLY needed to prepare FOR.

I'm a conservative, but I have some VERY liberal notions -- I am, in my own way, for example, very much an environmentalist. For years -- decades -- I've joked that I'm a supporter of "green" initiatives, "especially if they're GLOWING green". Nuclear power has phenomenal potential, and if properly designed, run, maintained, and overseen, it can and does produce simply ENORMOUS amounts of energy -- fuelling our irrevocably energy-addicted modern society -- with VERY FEW ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE OR COSTS. ...Until, of course, something goes wrong, and then, well, it's possible you can kiss entire regions of the earth goodbye for the next 30,000 years or so. And, there's the rub.

How do I feel today? In a word, sober. I don't make jokes about "green -- and GLOWING!" any more. My eyes have been opened to several facts I had failed to appreciate before Fukushima: First, that NOT EVERY COUNTRY OR COMPANY HAS THE SAME ABILITIES OR STANDARDS AS THE U.S. NAVY. Second, that NATURE IS CAPABLE OF DICTATING OUTCOMES WELL OUTSIDE OUR CURRENT SOCIETAL OR TECHNOLOGICAL ABILITIES TO OVERCOME OR MITIGATE. Third, THE RISKS OF FAILURE ARE MASSIVE AND THE POTENTIAL COSTS AND OUTCOMES OF THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO WILL NEVER BE FULLY APPREHENDED... UNTIL IT HAPPENS.

I'd still like to believe in nuclear power. I'm no fan of coal, and until we figure out how to transmit power without massive bleed-offs or design an entirely new kind of capacitor, wind and solar are economically and functionally unsound large-scale options. The oil will not last forever; natural gas looks more promising for the next century or so, but that, too, will one day run dry. Hydroelectric is preferable in many ways, but not without great caveats -- the environmental impact is truly massive, and all but irreversible -- and it can't be attempted in very many places, and that brings you back to the problem of efficient transmission. Geothermal is promising, but true and reliable large-scale infrastructure to support it may be decades or even a century away, as it'll have to be DEEP. Biomass may have a future. But, honestly, I think conservastion, reclamation, and recycling are all going to be absolutely essential anyway, and we need an entirely new approach on electronic-device power efficiencies. And that leaves nuclear power as the ONLY proven, even nominally economically sustainable alternative, unless we all want to live like Londoners in 1900, Pittsburghians in 1950 -- or Beijing residents, today.

To call me "anti-nuclear" is a gross misrepresentation. I still consider myself a very, very cautious, conflicted, insecure pro-nuke advocate... But Fukushima has rocked me deeply, and the only thing I'm certain of is that, with the proliferation of nuclear-power projects worldwide (including and especially in nations that have, shall we say, less-than-desirable standards and morals), and the inevitability of natural disasters (and, perhaps just as inevitable, human conflicts and mistakes), IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.

I still don't eat tuna, nor any seafood that hasn't been provably sourced from a non-Pacific Ocean region. I'm very nervous about sea salt and certain foods and supplements that contain kelp and other marine products. I have given up sushi, I don't eat Kobe beef any more. And when I went on vacation earlier this year and had squid, I made sure it was caught locally.

Here's a last thing I want to say: I don't understand the apparent hate people have for the nuclear power indutry. No, hear me out. Look, folks, I don't know how many of you have worked in the private sector, but let me tell you something: TEPCO, GE, AREVA, don't give a DAMN about nuclear power, at the end of the day. THERE IS NO PRO-NUCLEAR CONSPIRACY. Like ANY corporation or business endeavour, THEY JUST WANT TO MAKE MONEY. That means investing in technologies and processes that MAXIMIZE PROFIT while MINIMIZING RISK. And, especially as the global-warming and environmental-protection movements gained traction over the last two decades, NUCLEAR POWER LOOKED LIKE A GOOD BET. That wasn't easy; Chernobyl scared the Hell out of everybody (funny that Fukushima hasn't, at least not to date); why do you think not a single new-construction nuclear power plant has been completed in this country since the George H.W. Bush administration? But the risks of technologies like coal-fired plants, hydroelectric dams, oil-burning power plants, etc., are very much established KNOWNS, and with the EXCEPTION of Pripyat -- which many could, and still do, write off to a substandard Soviet system, rather than the actual technology utilized at Chernobyl -- the potentialities of nuclear disaster have very much been UNKNOWNS. Fukushima is changing that, certainly, especially as it becomes more and more clear that TEPCO only has very nominal and fragile control over, or even understanding of, the situation at F-D. But, look, here it is: THIS IS WHAT YOU PEOPLE WANTED. WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY THAT EATS POWER. LOTS OF PEOPLE BITCH ABOUT IT, BUT WHO GIVES UP THEIR IPHONE AND THEIR INTERNET AND THEIR WII? EVERYTHING ELSE FALLS SHORT, PRESSURE IS ON ENERGY COMPANIES TO PRODUCE POWER WITH LITTLE TO NO ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT. NUCLEAR POWER WAS THE ONLY PRACTICAL ALTERNATIVE.

Put it another way: THIS IS YOUR FAULT. AND MINE. AND EVERYONE ELSE'S, WHO WANTED IT ALL: UNLIMITED POWER AVAILABILTIY, WITH LIMITED ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT. WE HAVE DRIVEN THE WORLD BACK INTO THE ARMS OF NUCLEAR POWER. DEAL WITH IT.

What have these companies done that's so wrong? Is there a need, a demand, for public-use energy? Yes. Do they fill that demand? Yes. Do we want our skies blackened with soot, our water fouled with chemical runoff, our polar bears drowning? No. Does nuclear power mitigate, when operating properly (perfectly), these concerns? Yes.

What are the guilty of? Trying to meet a public need at a profit so they can invest in other endeavours and maybe even increase efficiency and safety down the line? Grow up. No one is "TRYING" to kill you. (If they did, they couldn't CHARGE you, you nincompoops.) And the MINUTE nuclear power becomes financially undesirable -- as may well happen now, since you can bet insurance rates are about to go into orbit, in Western countries anyway, for nuclear-power facilities -- they'll switch to something else, and you can start worrying about soot and dirty water and the polar bears again.

Again: GROW UP, PEOPLE.

A footnote: I challenge ANYONE to find ANY proof that the BRAWM Team has redacted, edited, or concealed their findings or has behaved in any fashion in a manner contrary to the scientific and academic standards they are sworn to uphold. These folks don't deserve the abuse they have heaped on them, here and elsewhere; in fact, what they DO deserve is our thanks, our support, and our financial assistance.

And that's all I have to say, now or ever. I've promised to leave the Forum before, and, like Al Pacino in "The Godfather, Part III", I keep letting myself be pulled back in, so I'm not going to do that again. What I will close with is this: Some of you people have some growing up to do, and I think some of you require mental health attention. And I think others -- or, maybe, the same people -- are playing some weird, sick game with elements of obsessiveness, delusion, and mania. I hope you get the help you clearly need, and I'll ask you to leave me the Hell alone and out of your reindeer games from now on, thank you very much. And, with apologies to some very nice and sincere people I HAVE met here, I want nothing more to do with any of you, thank you very much, and I wish you a fond and desperately sincere farewell.

Thanks, BRAWM.

Rick Cromack.
Allen, Texas