N is for Nuclear power

Urheberin: Anne Lund;
Rechteinhaber: OOA Fonden

I've lived in Switzerland since 2006 and I still can't get over the landscapes when I'm riding in a train through the country. I ooh and aah and sigh and gasp at the hills and mountains and meadows and sweet animals and then whoops! a cooling tower. I remember a photo in my high school French book, where there's this idyllic looking village with old wooden cottages and a cooling tower in the background and thinking that it looked absurd.
Somewhere in my home there's a photo of my husband playing naked in a sandbox with his friend while their hippy parents protest nuclear power plant (or that's how it was described to me - the boys were teeny tiny and I've not yet seen this newspaper clipping.) There are 5 nuclear power plants in Switzerland now, and currently the protests of them seem limited to stickers on bathroom walls. But they must have been effective, because in 2011, the Parliament decided that no new plants shall be built.
In 2013, Switzerland decided to begin phasing out nuclear power. When discussing this idea with a friend of mine who has family in Ukraine, she enlightened me to the fact that Switzerland's plan to reduce nuclear power in their country does not mean that they will reduce the nuclear power that is used within their borders necessarily, but that they will outsource it to poorer countries in eastern Europe. I felt a bit naive learning that.
I hadn't realized how close our nearest nuclear power plant was to us until we got out iodine tablets in the mail. Since Fukushima, the Swiss government has expanded the are of potential danger in the event of a nuclear incident. So apparently I now live in a potential danger zone.

the medicine that's gonna save me when the power plant blows