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Please read this excellent article as to why nuclear can't be an energy
option... Plus a couple of clips at bottom not-to-miss!
Tamara Lorincz
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Caldicott: Nuclear Power is the Problem, Not a Solution
The Australian
April 15, 2005
Nuclear Power is the Problem, Not a Solution by Helen Caldicott
There is a huge propaganda push by the nuclear industry to justify nuclear
power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases.
In fact Leslie Kemeny on these pages two weeks ago (HES, March 30) suggested
that courses on nuclear science and engineering be included in tertiary
level institutions in Australia.
I agree. But I would suggest that all the relevant facts be taught to
students. Mandatory courses in medical schools should embrace the short and
long-term biological, genetic and medical dangers associated with the
nuclear fuel cycle. Business students should examine the true costs
associated with the production of nuclear power. Engineering students should
become familiar with the profound problems associated with the storage of
long-lived radioactive waste, the human fallibilities that have created the
most serious nuclear accidents in history and the ongoing history of
near-misses and near-meltdowns in the industry.
At present there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. If,
as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to replace fossil fuels
on a large scale, it would be necessary to build 2000 large, 1000-megawatt
reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant has been ordered in the US
since 1978, this proposal is less than practical. Furthermore, even if we
decided today to replace all fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear
power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the
reactors for three to four years.
The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for.
The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidised by the US government. The true
cost of the industry's liability in the case of an accident in the US is
estimated to be $US560billion ($726billion), but the industry pays only
$US9.1billion - 98per cent of the insurance liability is covered by the US
federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing US nuclear
reactors is estimated to be $US33billion. These costs - plus the enormous
expense involved in the storage of radioactive waste for a quarter of a
million years
- are not now included in the economic assessments of nuclear electricity.
It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.
In the US, where much of the world's uranium is enriched, including
Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Kentucky, requires the
electrical output of two 1000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large
quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50per cent of global
warming.
Also, this enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, release from
leaky pipes 93per cent of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the
US. The production and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by
the Montreal Protocol because it is the main culprit responsible for
stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to
20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilises large quantities of fossil fuel at
all of its stages - the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of
the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the
intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20 to 40-year operating
lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of
radioactive waste.
In summary, nuclear power produces, according to a 2004 study by Jan Willem
Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, only three times fewer greenhouse gases
than modern natural-gas power stations.
Contrary to the nuclear industry's propaganda, nuclear power is therefore
not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors consistently
release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water
each year. These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry
considers these particular radioactive elements to be biologically
inconsequential. This is not so.
These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon,
which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near a nuclear
reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty tissues of
the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, near the
reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit high-energy
gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm and cause
genetic disease.
Tritium, another biologically significant gas, is also routinely emitted
from nuclear reactors. Tritium is composed of three atoms of hydrogen, which
combine with oxygen, forming radioactive water, which is absorbed through
the skin, lungs and digestive system. It is incorporated into the DNA
molecule, where it is mutagenic.
The dire subject of massive quantities of radioactive waste accruing at the
442 nuclear reactors across the world is also rarely, if ever, addressed by
the nuclear industry. Each typical 1000-megawatt nuclear reactor
manufactures 33tonnes of thermally hot, intensely radioactive waste per
year.
Already more than 80,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling
pools next to the 103 US nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a
storage facility yet to be found. This dangerous material will be an
attractive target for terrorist sabotage as it travels through 39 states on
roads and railway lines for the next 25 years.
But the long-term storage of radioactive waste continues to pose a problem.
The US Congress in 1987 chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 150km northwest of
Las Vegas, as a repository for America's high-level waste. But Yucca
Mountain has subsequently been found to be unsuitable for the long-term
storage of high-level waste because it is a volcanic mountain made of
permeable pumice stone and it is transected by 32 earthquake faults. Last
week a congressional committee discovered fabricated data about water
infiltration and cask corrosion in Yucca Mountain that had been produced by
personnel in the US Geological Survey. These startling revelations,
according to most experts, have almost disqualified Yucca Mountain as a
waste repository, meaning that the US now has nowhere to deposit its
expanding nuclear waste inventory.
To make matters worse, a study released last week by the National Academy of
Sciences shows that the cooling pools at nuclear reactors, which store 10 to
30 times more radioactive material than that contained in the reactor core,
are subject to catastrophic attacks by terrorists, which could unleash an
inferno and release massive quantities of deadly radiation -- significantly
worse than the radiation released by Chernobyl, according to some
scientists.
This vulnerable high-level nuclear waste contained in the cooling pools at
103 nuclear power plants in the US includes hundreds of radioactive elements
that have different biological impacts in the human body, the most important
being cancer and genetic diseases.
The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years following exposure to
radiation. It is important to note that children, old people and
immuno-compromised individuals are many times more sensitive to the
malignant effects of radiation than other people.
I will describe four of the most dangerous elements made in nuclear power
plants.
Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in
Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the US, is
radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables
and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and the lung, it
migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later induce thyroid
cancer. In Belarus more than 2000 children have had their thyroids removed
for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded in pediatric
literature.
Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it concentrates in
cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast during lactation, and
in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia.
Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food chain,
particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle, where
it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.
Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so
toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 200kg is made
annually in each 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant.
Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the
liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce
bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer. It
also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause
severe congenital deformities.
Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause
testicular cancer and induce genetic diseases in future generations.
Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living on to induce cancer and genetic
diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.
Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons -- only 5kg is necessary to
make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 200kg per year. Therefore any
country with a nuclear power plant can theoretically manufacture 40 bombs a
year.
Because nuclear power leaves a toxic legacy to all future generations,
because it produces global warming gases, because it is far more expensive
than any other form of electricity generation, and because it can trigger
proliferation of nuclear weapons, these topics need urgently to be
introduced into the tertiary educational system of Australia, which is host
to 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the world's richest uranium.
Helen Caldicott is an anti-nuclear campaigner and founder and president of
the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, which warns of the danger of nuclear
energy.
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Here's the most dynamic four minutes of British MP James Galloway's
testimony before the US Senate. Worth watching and spreading.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8866.htm
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Very good must watch 30-second video...
http://truemajority.kintera.org/bensbbs
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