{"id":2458,"date":"2011-11-07T09:57:24","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T15:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=2458"},"modified":"2011-11-07T09:58:48","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T15:58:48","slug":"nuclear-power-is-a-hell-of-a-way-to-boil-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=2458","title":{"rendered":"“Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water”"},"content":{"rendered":"

November 7. 2011-by Linda Greene in the Bloomington Alternative<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photograph by Heide Smith. Dr. Helen Caldicott foresaw the Fukushima nuclear disaster in her 2006 book Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer. The cofounder of Physicians for Social Responsibility now calls it "by orders of magnitude many times worse than Chernobyl."<\/p><\/div>\n

According to the scientific secretary for the European Committee on Radiation Risks (ECRR), when senior employee of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission the late Professor John Goffman resigned from his post, he said,\u00a0\u201cThe nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Pediatrician Helen Caldicott, one of the world\u2019s most important authorities on the health effects of ionizing radiation and the world\u2019s leading spokesperson for the antinuclear movement, would agree. Caldicott is also the cofounder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize and the 2003 winner of the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. She recently established the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.<\/p>\n

In her 2006 book\u00a0Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer<\/a><\/em>, Caldicott points out that people living near nuclear facilities undergo ongoing exposure to radiation routinely released into the air, water and soil during normal operations. Minor \u201caccidents\u201d are commonplace at nuclear reactors. People living in areas near the sites of nuclear accidents, including Fukushima, Japan, are at greater risk.<\/p>\n

The health effects of radiation are well known: cancer and birth defects are part of the spectrum. \u201cNo dose of radiation is safe,\u201d Caldicott notes, \u201cand all radiation is cumulative\u201d in the body.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It took Caldicott less than a week to determine the extent of the March 11 nuclear disaster in Fukushima: \u201cJapan is,\u201d she said in a March 18\u00a0news conference<\/a>, \u201cby orders of magnitude many times worse than Chernobyl,\u201d until this March the worst nuclear power disaster in the history of the world. And she isn\u2019t alone in this assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cA \u2026 realistic estimate would put the total [radiation] releases at 10\u201320 percent of Chernobyl,” according to an article titled \u201cRecovery Still Years Away: Japan\u2019s Nuclear Disaster Radiation Still Leaking\u201d in the Sept. 16\u201330, 2011, print edition of\u00a0CounterPunch<\/em>, written by Richard Wilcox, who the newsletter says lives in Japan and studies environmental issues. “Yet, for many reasons, researchers such as [Arnold] Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer, and [EECR Scientific Secretary] Chris Busby \u2026 have both said that, based on various criteria, \u2018Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Caldicott\u2019s expertise allowed her to foresee the Fukushima accident.Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer<\/em>\u00a0says, \u201dAlthough nuclear reactors are designed to withstand serious earthquakes, a quake large enough could trigger a very severe accident. This is true as well for many of the reactors in Japan, a country riven with earthquake faults.\u201d It was both an earthquake and tsunami that caused three reactors at Fukushima\u2019s Daiichi nuclear power plant to melt down.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Tokyo University professor Tatsuhiko Kodama famously testified to the Japanese Diet in late July, the radiation released from the Fukushima reactor explosions was equivalent to 20 Hiroshima atom bombs,\u201d theCounterPunch<\/em>\u00a0article quoted Busby.<\/p>\n

At the March 18 news conference Caldicott quoted Albert Einstein as saying, \u201cNuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water.\u201d Indeed, nuclear power is just that \u2013 a way to boil water to create steam that turns turbines to generate electricity. Because of the radiation involved, it\u2019s the most dangerous \u2014 and expensive \u2014 way to generate electricity.<\/p>\n

The United States is home to 23 GE Mark I nuclear reactors, the same model that underwent meltdowns in Fukushima. In 1972 engineers who worked on the Mark I design \u201cresigned because they knew [the reactors] were dangerous,\u201d Caldicott said at the news conference.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer<\/em>, Caldicott dissects with surgical precision the claims that the industry and its advocates make about the benefits of nuclear power.
\n“Because of the radiation involved, it\u2019s the most dangerous \u2014 and expensive \u2014 way to generate electricity.”<\/span>
\nThe industry claims that nuclear power is \u201cgreen and clean.\u201d As Caldicott points out, however, vast amounts of conventional fossil fuels go into mining uranium for fuel; crushing and milling the ore; enriching the uranium; creating the steel and concrete for the reactor; decommissioning, dismantling and cleaning up after reactors; and transporting and storing the thermally and radioactively hot nuclear waste for 500,000 years without any leaking or seepage. Besides using fossil fuels, each stage of the process emits radiation.<\/p>\n

The transport of nuclear waste involves moving it through highly populated areas and in severe weather conditions, Caldicott writes.<\/p>\n

There is no known way to store the radioactively contaminated waste safely. Among the waste is plutonium, which its discoverer, Glen Seaborg, called, \u201cthe most radioactive substance on earth,\u201d according to Caldicott. Inhalation of one millionth of a gram of plutonium causes lung cancer. Plutonium also causes bone cancer and leukemia. It has a half-life of 24,400 years, meaning that it remains radioactive for half a million years.<\/p>\n

Further, the plutonium that civilian nuclear power plants manufacture is used in nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Nuclear reactors are so unsafe that no insurance companies will insure them. Only public subsidies can sustain their construction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news,\u201d Caldicott asserts, \u201cis that there is no need to build new nuclear power plants to provide for the projected energy needs of the future. Indeed, it would be possible, using other forms of electricity generation, to close down most of the existing nuclear reactors within a decade. There is enough wind between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River alone to supply three times the amount of electricity that America needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the March 18 news conference Caldicott quoted Einstein as saying, \u201cThe splitting of the atom changed everything but [humans\u2019] mode of thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linda Greene can be reached at\u00a0lgreene@bloomington.in.us<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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