UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
by Jim Kaness

Our culture is full of useful and exciting inventions concieved and produced by humans. Until a couple centuries ago nothing moved faster than a horse, and communication by fires and smoke signals was the "high-tech" of its day. Now we are all familiar with railroads, aircraft, automobiles and the Internet, and use them mostly without thought or concern.

But not all of man's inventions are so benign. The inventions discussed below are extremely useful and do their intended jobs very well. But each of them has "unintended consequences" that we are recently learning could, one day, destroy us!

NUCLEAR ENERGY
Nuclear Energy has been widely used to generate electric power for decades. It was sold as the solution to declining reserves of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas). The unintended consequences of nuclear energy, as I understand them, fall into two main categories: (1) What to do with nuclear waste, and (2) What to do when natural disasters overwhelm the many safety systems built into nuclear power plants.

In 1965 I joined several other visitors at the new San Onofre visitor center for their informative talk on how a nuclear power plant works and what it would mean for Southern California electric customers. Following the talk was a question and answer period. Eventually I raised my hand and asked, "What do you do with the nuclear waste?" Their answer came quickly, "Thank you all for coming!"

The nuclear waste problem is simple. The solution is not. When the nuclear fuel is no longer useful for that purpose, it remains highly radioactive for thousands of years and mankind does not really know what to do with it! Currently some is buried very deep, and some is stored in caves. It is unsafe to get close to it. For more information, see the Wikipedia article at Radioactive Waste.

Natural and man-made disasters can overwhelm the numerous safety systems built into any project using nuclear energy. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima come to mind, but there have been many more as listed at Wikipedia article.

PLASTICS
What would the modern world do without plastics? They are cheap to make in almost any shape and with almost any characteristics. They are everywhere in our lives today.

The CBS News program "60 Minutes" recently offered a detailed look at the "unintended consequences" of plastics. The takeaway line from that program is that "by 2040 there will be more plastics than fish in the oceans of the world!" Most plastics do not and will not bio-degrade. Yes, some can be recycled, but that requires that someone turn in their used plastic items to the recycler, and that the recycler can find someone to reprocess all that used plastic into something else that is saleable. See Live Science article. The enormous amounts of plastics in our oceans is testimony that a lot of plastics just get thrown away without any regard for what happens further to it. See also Plastic is Raining on the Rocky Mountains and Revealed: 90 Percent of Plastic Waste Comes from Asia and Africa. An April 2019 article published in Nature offers detailed counts and graphs of the increase of plastic waste in the world's oceans from 1950 to 2016.

DEPLETED URANIUM
Depleted Uranium is a byproduct produced from nuclear waste. I list it separately here because it has outstanding usefulness as armament in warfare. There is just nothing better for blowing up tanks and other military hardware than a shell made from depleted uranium which is heavier than lead.

As you might expect, blowing up military hardware throws around a lot of metal particles of all sizes including dust particles. And it is no surprise that these particles can not tell the difference between the enemy, the 'good guys' and innocent civilians who just happen to be in the location of all this fighting. The "unintended consequences" of using depleted uranium are that anyone in the vicinity of this warfare use of it, and anyone who comes along later to the scene of that warfare will stand a good chance of being contaminated by the highly-toxic radioactive debris and dust in and on the ground. For more information, see the Wikipedia article Depleted Uranium. A very detailed study of the toxicology of Depleted Uranium on humans is at Human DU Toxicology.

SOCIAL MEDIA
The many social media providers (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and all the others) offer you and me the opportunity to share our thoughts and photos with family, friends and total strangers. I do not participate in any social media, but on the surface they appear to offer useful services given their huge popularity.

It's those other services, the ones that are the subject of news headlines, that define the "unintended consequences" of using social media:

1. People used to talk with each other face to face where body language and expression is part of the conversation. But today, with fingers tapping away for hours a day, that personal touch is suffering. For example, see Smartphone Addiction.

2. When we create an account with any online service we are instructed to check the little box where it says we agree to the terms and conditions of their contract with us. Most of us are not lawyers and have no interest in all that fine print so we just check the box and get on with what is important to us. This leads to TWO unintended consequences for us: (a) What we blindly agreed to, and (b) what the social media does that they said they would not do!

(a) Most users will happily provide correct names, photos, and other personal information when setting up the account. But not everyone is so honest! For example, see Phony Facebook Accounts and Fake Profiles among others.

(b) There have just been too many news headlines lately about what Facebook and the others are doing with their accounts and user data that their users NEVER agreed to. For example, see Facebook in the News.

Social media is changing society and the traditional interactions citizens and government have come to expect. For example, see Social Media and Crime. Whatever your position on and use of social media, do be informed and keep your eyes and ears open.

ABOVE ALL, TO BE SAFE, JUST PRETEND THAT ANYTHING YOU POST ONLINE IS PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE! BECAUSE IT WILL BE!