Nuclear Power
Sweden stood alone on the banks of the Kalmar Strait, looking out over the blue waters of the Baltic Sea. There had been a minor incident at the Oskarshamn Nuclear Power Plant here yesterday, involving—of all things—jellyfish. A sudden swarm of them had clogged up the cooling system, forcing the plant to shut down temporarily.
At this point, the operators of the plant had assured Sweden that the jellyfish were being cleared out and that everything would be fine. Indeed, considering all the safety precautions, there was never really that much danger to begin with, but the threat still scared him. Something as simple as those nearly-invisible brainless creatures could have, under worse circumstances, brought the former Viking nation to his knees.
Caught up in his musings, Sweden almost didn't notice a voice behind him calling his name. Turning around, he found a country dressed in a farmer's outfit running up to meet him—Ukraine, he recognized immediately.
"Sweden!" Ukraine said, coming to a stop a next to the Nordic country. "Sweden, I heard that one of your nuclear power plants was having trouble with jellyfish. I just wanted to make sure that you're still all right and that nothing terrible has happened."
"Yeah, 'm fine," Sweden grunted. "Had precautions in place."
Ukraine smiled softly. "I'm glad. I would hate for someone else to experience the horror that I had felt almost three decades ago."
Sweden paused for a moment before realizing what she was talking about. "Chernobyl?"
Ukraine nodded solemnly. "Even now I'm not sure if I've fully recovered from that disaster. And the worst part is, it wasn't even contained within my borders. My younger siblings Belarus and Russia were affected by the fallout and recovery operations just as much as, if not more than, I was. I'm such a bad older sister, putting them through so much danger and stress like that…" She shuddered a little. "S- Sorry. I didn't come here to talk about myself. I'm happy you don't have to go through all that."
She fell silent, probably expecting Sweden to speak, but he just turned back towards the waters.
Finally, when Ukraine could bear the silence no longer, she said, "Sweden, you're being even quieter than usual. What's on your mind?"
"Japan, two years ago in Fukushima," he said, and Ukraine's expression darkened. "He had precautions in place, too, but they failed."
She sighed. "I know. The worst nuclear accident since my own. I felt so powerless to help him. And that's not even mentioning that he had to deal with the only nuclear weapons attack in history. The poor thing has not had much luck with nuclear activity, has he? I hear he's trying to phase out use of nuclear power plants."
"We're all scared. If even Japan, one 'f the strongest nations in the East, can't handle radioactivity well… 'Nd this incident here yesterday, too. 'Vebeen thinking how little separates us fr'm disaster. An unexpected swarm of jellyfish. An untimely earthquake. An unhandled surge in electrical power. Even a Viking can do nothing against things as simple 's those." Sweden shifted uncomfortably. "…'Nd yet, radioactive waste aside, 't's still the one of the cleanest forms of energy."
"I know. In fact, technically, in terms of fatalities per year per unit energy produced, nuclear power is much safer than traditional fuels, given that accidents are rare—if disastrous. But it's also so much newer that we don't know if there are long-term effects that we don't know about. People involved in the Chernobyl accident experienced an increased number of cases of thyroid cancer and leukemia, but it hasn't been even three decades since the disaster; how do we know there aren't more long-term effects?"
Sweden shook his head. " 'Re's so much to left debate, so much left to decide. Health effects, energy costs, societal pressures, political effects, international relations…"
"It is such a complicated issue, isn't it?" Ukraine sighed. "And nuclear reactors are still active and running across our two countries—across the world, even. Despite how much Chernobyl and Fukushima have affected us, we're still so dependent on nuclear power, you and I and the rest of the world."
"But if we can't ensure its safety, even 'gainst jellyfish…" Sweden said.
Ukraine put a hand on Sweden's shoulder. "As you said, there's a lot of discussion that we still have to do—with our bosses, with our people, with each other. We don't have to decide today if we need new policies, especially since we have quite a few defenses in place already—and what happened yesterday proved that they do indeed work. As long as we're all still around to discuss these issues in an informed manner, we can make whatever choices that's best for our people and the whole world's people."
Sweden stayed silent for a moment longer before sighing and turning back towards Ukraine. "S'rry. 'M acting uncharacteristically depressed." He gently removed Ukraine's hand from his shoulder. "Th'nks, Miss Ukraine. Guess I needed t' say my thoughts out loud. You know how hard it is f'r me t' speak freely; thanks f'r listening to me. As you said, we'll need to just sort through all the pros and cons, with other countries and with human experts. I alone, or even you and I together, can't do all that m'ch by ourselves."
Ukraine smiled back. "Now that we've got that settled, Mr. Sweden, I believe you've been out here for quite some time, and it's quite cold today, even if the scenery is quite pleasant here. You ought to get to someplace warmer."
"Mm," Sweden agreed.
As Ukraine tugged Sweden's hand gently away from the deep blue waters of the Kalmar Strait, Sweden allowed himself a small smile. It was good, sometimes, to be able to talk with a friend about things as simple as jellyfish and as serious as nuclear disasters.
Author's note: So Hetalia. The premise is genius—how do you get people interested in history? Well, people get extremely into fandoms, especially where there is shipping involved. So combine the two!
That said, I don't really ship any two Hetalia characters in particular. Instead, history and culture just provide interesting fanfic ideas. For example, there was an incident at Sweden's Oskarshamn Nuclear Power Plant on September 30, 2013 when a swarm of jellyfish clogged up the cooling system. Translating that into Hetalia characters, you get Sweden, the tall intimidating Viking, being defeated by jellyfish. It's such a ridiculous picture—even if it's actually quite serious—that it made itself into a fanfic. Ukraine seemed like a nice complementary person to add to the fic, given both her motherly personality that contrasts with Sweden's stoicism and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that happened on April 26, 1986 in Ukraine (when it was still part of the Soviet Union).
As for the actual arguments for and against nuclear power, I was mostly inspired by Uranium – Twisting the Dragon's Tail, a documentary about uranium presented by Derek Muller (known on YouTube as Veritasium). Related, however, are three videos on YouTube by Kurzgesagt (In a Nutshell) about nuclear power, which you might want to check out. Either search for them, or go to the YouTube video with the video ID "rcOFV4y5z8c" for the first video in the miniseries. Hopefully, I've successfully represented both sides of the argument fairly, but this is ultimately all second- and third-hand information.
Finally, the cover image is from Wikipedia's article for the Oskashamn Nuclear Power Plant, taken by user Anchor2009, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Published September 5, 2015