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People Were Killed by Three Mile Island and Other Nuclear Disasters
One of the biggest lies ever told in American industrial history is that "no one died at Three Mile Island."
In the frenzy to get public funding for still more nuclear reactors, some industry backers now say no one has ever been killed by the nuclear industry AT ALL.
These absurd statements reflect atomic energy's desperate need for federal loan guarantees, which have been slipped into the Energy Bill now before Congress. After fifty years of proven failure, no private sources will invest in this lethal, expensive technology.
Meanwhile billions are pouring into the booming business of green power, including wind, solar power and increased efficiency. These technologies are not only profitable and clean, they don't kill people.
And the reality is that people have, in fact, been killed by the fallout from atomic power, and not just at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
At the very birth of fission technology, Lewis Slotin, a top researcher on the Manhattan Project, was fatally irradiated in an early experiment. Patriotic workers were exposed to high radiation doses while building the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In the 1950s, a critical accident struck a reactor at Chalk River, Canada. Scores of American "jumpers" were run into the plant to do clean-up work and then run out. One was the future president Jimmy Carter, who joked about the incident in his autobiography "Why Not the Best."
In 1961, three workers were killed at the SL-1 plant in Idaho. One was pinned to the ceiling of the containment dome by a fuel rod that shot out of the reactor core. The men's bodies were classified as high level radioactive waste, and were buried in lead casks.
On October 5, 1966, a critical blockage brought Michigan's Fermi I fast breeder reactor to the brink of disaster. Fermi's owners said the $100 million accident released no radiation. But for a month state authorities prepared to evacuate Detroit.
The entire history of atomic energy is defined by radiation releases that the industry has covered up. Today, nothing reactor owners say can be believed. At both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, elaborate official studies done before the accidents "proved" that it was "impossible" for what then did happen to occur. The term "inherently safe" had been applied to reactors that proved very much otherwise. Today that same term is being used to describe the "new generation" of plants to be underwitten by these proposed guarantees.
In the late 1960s, Dr. John Gofman was asked to evaluate the killing power of so-called "normal" releases from America's fleet of atomic reactors.
Gofman was a towering figure. He was instrumental in developing the atomic bomb. As a medical doctor, his breakthrough discoveries in heart disease and LDL cholesterol are still in use.
Dr. Gofman was chief of health research at the Atomic Energy Commission. But he discovered that regular radiation emissions from America's nukes would kill 32,000 citizens per year, even without an accident or terror attack.
The industry demanded Gofman change his findings. When he refused, he was fired. He spent the rest of his life warning that Americans were being killed every day by the ever-growing fleet of US reactors.
In 1979, human error caused the melt-down at Three Mile Island Unit Two. The reactor's owners immediately denied there was any melting of fuel. This was a lie. Robotic cameras later showed that at least a third of the fuel had melted.
The owners said there was never a danger of a major catastrophe. That was a lie. The plant was very much at the brink of an apocalyptic radiation release.
The owners ridiculed those---among them Pennsylvania's Secretary of Health---who desperately warned that local citizens should be evacuated, especially to protect pregnant women and small children. The governor finally ordered just such an evacuation, but later fired his long-time friend at the Department of Health, who had advocated the evacuation, and who warned of damage from TMI's stealth radioactive fallout.
TMI's owners denied that its releases harmed anyone. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has admitted to Congress that nobody knows how much radiation escaped or where it went.
Official statistics showed a huge jump in infant death rates in Harrisburg in the three months after the accident compared to the numbers for the previous two years. State statistics showing heightened cancer rates were quickly altered. The state's tumor registry was abolished. Evidence showing downwind health effects was suppressed.
But an investigative team from the Baltimore News-Herald uncovered a massive epidemic of death and disease among the area's farm and wild animals.
In early 1980, I reported from ground zero on a ghastly epidemic of human death and disease. Based on a horrifying series of house-to-house interviews, I found cancer, heart attacks, respiratory problems, skin lesions, cataracts, a metallic taste in the mouth, hair loss, birth defects and everything else you'd expect from a major radiation release was everywhere to be found.
With three other researchers, I spent two years investigating these and other parallel epidemics at nuclear facilities throughout the United States. Our findings were published in 1982 by Dell/Delta in a book called Killing Our Own that showed a similar death toll throughout the nuclear fuel cycle---especially at uranium mines, mills and enrichment facilities---and at weapons production plants, waste storage pools and much more.
At TMI, 2400 central Pennsylvania families filed a class action lawsuit seeking justice. But the federal courts have never allowed their case to be heard.
Studies by Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina have confirmed the TMI death toll. Researcher Joe Mangano and others have used the government's own statistics to show a heightened cancer rate in the region. Parallel studies have correlated radioactive emissions with infant death rates, cancer rates and other health epidemics around other operating reactors.
But the industry's response is always the same. Anyone who shows that reactors kill people is automatically "discredited," even if their credentials, like those of Dr. Gofman, dwarf those of their attackers.
Even at an obvious catastrophe like Chernobyl, the deniers are out in force. The radiation releases at this unprecedented explosion far exceeded what was released at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
By all accounts, the plague that darkened central Pennsylvania after TMI was exponentially exceeded for thousands of downwind square miles in the Ukraine and other nearby nations of the former Soviet Union. The cancers, birth defects and other radioactive plagues have duplicated on a far larger scale what had already happened in the US in 1979.
Today, with billions in bailout dollars on the line, there is big money to be made in saying that atomic reactors have harmed no one.
But the truth is less convenient. Nuclear power kills people. From the Manhattan Project to TMI, from Chalk River to Chernobyl, even "normal" operations can be lethal.
Solar power, wind energy, bio-fuels, increased conservation---these sources are safe and clean. They don't create radioactive emissions or wastes, and will not be potential terror targets.
Nor do they need federal loan guarantees. Unlike atomic energy, green power is profitable for the entire community.
And unlike Three Mile Island, we will never have to evacuate wind farms or solar panels while their owners lie about what's really going down.
Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org and is senior editor of www.freepress.org.
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91 Comments so far
Show AllI'll Let Billy comment first. Oops, wrong again.
Nuclear fission plants must be shut down immediately. They pose one of the greatest dangers to all life forms on the planet. The worst part is that the most toxic and harmful radiation is on the subtler, finer planes of matter called "etheric matter", which conventional science is not able to detect yet. Geiger counters are very much out of date.
This is very serious folks. Eliminating nuclear radiation should be of equal, if not higher, priority than global warming.
It is not difficult to detect radiolucides.
Mr. Wasssermans's claims have been settled by extensive sampling and testing the area around the plant. The sampling was was done by a number of Federal and State agencies working independently. No significant amounts of radioactive materials were found. Someone standing at the plant boundary over the duration of the accident would have recieved about 100 millirem. The annual occupational allowance is 5000 millirem.
Extensive testing was done on air water soil, milk, and food grown in the area of the plant months following the accident, no levels sufficient to cause any health effects were found.
Cancer data from the surrounding counties - York, Lancaster, Cumberland Dauphin, show no cancer anomalies compared to other counties far from the plant.
http://www.dsf.health.state.pa.us/health/cwp/view.asp?A=174&Q=235896
Somewhere, I have heard that there are lies, damned lies, and government statistics.
Having personally observed some of the latter, I can vouch for the saying.
recently heard from a Latvian nurserynam. Before Chernoble there was just one kind of local buttercup. Now there are dozens of kinds with all manner of shapes an sizes of plants leaves and flowers.
Not so good if the same thing happens to your white blood cells or your children.
Our government lies whenever it is convenient or profitable---which means it lies just about all the time.
If we were to choose, as a nation what energy form we need to expand development for our future using all the available data, I seriously doubt nuclear power would be at the top of the list. True clean energy exists, but we ended up sending most of the manufacturing out of the states. Time to invest in solar, wind, wave, hydro and geothermal. By-products are far less apt to kill us or become major terrorist targets. Nuclear power is very expensive in danger and startup cost and cannot be insured. So who will shoulder the cost? You and me. Until we find a failsafe method of spent fuel rod storage it should NOT be an option, ever.
This is numerous different agencies, that don't even necesarily communicate with each other reporting this data - all the way down to the county health department level. It is all available to the public if you want to pursue the issue. The secret coordination required to falsify all the data out there is in the realm of unrealistic conspiracy theory.
I appreciate Wasserman's good work exposing the 2004 electoral malfeance in his home state of Ohio. But his allegations regarding TMI are wrong.
We need a more scientifically-educated USA.
Harvey Wasserman is not a scientist, not an academic, not even a public figure who can be held accountable for what he says and writes. He is an ideologically-motivated journalist. He has a reputation to protect - as a rabid opponent of anything nuclear, not as any kind of careful, fair-minded analyst or reliable source of information.
So, I really don't think there is any point in dissecting this compilation of half-truths and distortions. Anybody who really cares can and will do their own reading.
I'll just say that, yes, nuclear power does entail risks, and there have been accidents that have killed people, but far fewer than have died in coal mining accidents, for example, or than might die falling off roofs if the nation goes massively solar. And the release of radioactive materials will have some health impact, but far less than that caused by the burning of coal and oil. Then we have global warming to consider - at least, those of us who care to make an honest assessment of the total picture do, unlike Mr. Wasserman, who just has more anti-nuke screeds to write.
The problem with nuclear power stations is that no matter how safe they supposedly make the technology, human error always happens, and when it does the consequences are disaster or near disaster. The cynicism of using climate change to push for nuclear power is breathtaking. See http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/Nuclear_power/ for the way in which a government of climate change deniers in Australia sees the light if it means nuclear power and expanded uranium mining and exports pushed past a public that is anti-nuclear. Keep up the good work Harvey.
You can add to the "nuclear" mortality rate by including Depleted Uranium (DU) shells used by the military in Iraq and elsewhere. Does anyone know how many nuclear power plants are in operation around the world???
The government clearly lied about evaqcuation pland to the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in NH (USA) Thanks to Sununu and others
"The cynicism of using climate change to push for nuclear power is breathtaking."
Nothing cynical about it. Nuclear power plants are the only carbon-emission free source of electric power currently available that can replace coal generated power plants.
Wind and solar have contributions to make, but they will not replace the need for large power generation plants.
Yes, I know fossil fuel is used to mine and process the fuel - it is also uaed to mine and process coal - or the raw materials for wind turbines or solar panels. This is, in a large part due to the majority of electricity being currently poroduced from fossil fuel. The incidental carbon emissons from a nuclear plant are miniscule compared to coal, oil or gas.
"Does anyone know how many nuclear power plants are in operation around the world???"
Quite a few. France and Japan, and probably some other countries are almost entirely dependent on nuclear for their electric power.
Albert Einstein once defined insanity as repeting the same action over and over and expecting a different outcome. The good ole boys of the oil/nuclear lobby are the ones that obviously will be the beneficaries of massive subsidies. Depending on the present economic system to somehow magically convert itself to clean renewables on a scale that is necessary is equally delusional. What needs to happen- as course of national homeland security defense etc- is the underwriting of large and well designed retrofit conversion projects in our major population areas. This where we- as the ultimate source of these billions in government subsidies- should fight for sane energy policy.
I was in kindergarten in Middletown, PA on the morning of the Three Mile Island accident (well, waiting to go to afternoon kindergarten) and then lived for twenty years in Middletown (a mile down from the plant).
I've never seen data for the following: cancer rates for people who were downwind of the radioactive bubble ("hydrogen bubble" it was called at the time) that the plant released, and cancer rates for people who worked in the plant during the accident and, especially, those who worked to "clean up" the damaged reactor (a job title referred to as a "sponge" locally - could only work a a "sponge" for x amount of months due to radiation concerns) in the coming decade.
Anecdotally, there are a lot of workers from T.M.I who have developed cancer and/or since passed away from cancer.
Soil samples around the plant wouldn't tell you how much radiation was in the released bubble (released at the time to avert what they thought could be an explosion), who was directly exposed to it and/or the radiation exposure of workers in the plant at the time.
It's not that the research into T.M.I was or is flawed, it's that the research that was funded wasn't necessarily the right research to be taking place.
Take Care,
Roger
When it comes to calculating the effects of radiation exposure, there are two different schools of thought. The difference between them is responsible for some of the differences in claims regarding TMI.
One school of thought embraces the concept of a 'threshold' dosage. If the amount of radiation received is below this threshold amount, it is assumed that it does no damage. This way of thinking comes from the sorts of statistical analysis. If the radiation level is below the threshold, it is statistically hard to prove that the radiation caused the effect.
However, there is also analysis of the specific means by which radiation damages the body. When looking at it this way, one particle\beam of radiation can cause a cancer if hit happens to hit the nucliide of a cell in just the right way. That cell can then become cancerous and be the beginning point of a tumor.
My apologies if I have this wrong. While I know a bit about nuclear physics, I'm rather weak on biology.
But you can see the difference in the two approaches. One says there is a safe level of radiation, while the other says that any radiation exposure can be harmful. One relies on statistics to essentially say that harm caused by radiation below the threshold can't be statistically detected.
When someone says that 'no statistically significant amounts of radiation were detected' they are relying on the the threshold type of analysis to say while some radiation was detected, it was believed to be below the amount that can cause harm.
That doesn't mean someone didn't get unlucky and get hit just right by a small amount of radiation that caused a fatal cancer. That just means that the this cancer can not be statistically separated from the other cancers that would also be appearing in the same sample of the population.
One key point ... if someone says that 'no one has died' from a nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power, that is provably false. Just ask the firefighters who were the first responders to Chernobyl. They were the heroes who litterally ran out onto the roof of the reactor building and used shovels to pick up chunks of the radioactive core that were lying about and toss them back into the hole where the reactor explosion had taken place. Doing this limited the disaster to one reactor at Chernobyl, whereas fires and radiation may have made it impossible to keep the other reactors on the site under control except for this heroism.
Although, I did mis-speak. It would be very hard to ask these firefighters as most were dead within a couple weeks of the accident. You'd have to go ask their surviving loved ones.
Hey PJD, every time CD publishes Harvey Wasserman on the insanity of reviving nuclear power, you chime in with "Wind and solar have contributions to make, but they will not replace the need for large power generation plants." No matter how many times you write this, it's still as misleading as the first time! Don't you ever watch the History Channel? "Modern Marvels" just spent a whole WEEK on all kinds of new energy technologies that are already up and running -- including a working model of a car that runs on compressed air!
The choice is not nuclear vs. wind and solar. It's between nuclear and ALL of the following: conservation (a huge untapped resource!), solar (photovoltaics, heating, and mirror array electric generation), wind power, tidal turbines, and geothermal (for heating and cooling, you don't need to be in Iceland to take advantage of the temperature differential underground). All these things will create millions of jobs in engineering, construction and maintenance in our country if we get on with it NOW. The new energy bill should delete nuclear, and add a clause that all the renewables must be made with American labor! I've written to my Senators and Congressman about this. Please, contact your representatives in Washington (no, not you, PJD -- I mean people who want to BE the positive change they can imagine).
We finally have a chance to (1) get this energy thing right; (2) put U.S. manufacturing back on its feet, including myriad union jobs; and (3) begin to ameliorate the global warming crisis. Let's not blow it by listening to nuclear siren songs.
The way I look at coal vs nuclear is this.
On most days, I'd rather have the nuclear plant as a neighbor. Its cleaner, and actually less radioactive at the boundary fence than a coal plant. A coal plant does emit radiation. Coal, ie carbon, has radioactive isotopes found in it naturally. Think Carbon-14 dating if you doubt this ... that measures the change in the radioactive carbon 14 isotope to take a decent guess at age. So, while it is counter-intuitive, a coal plant emits more radiation on a 'normal day' than a nuclear plant.
The problem is when it isn't a normal day. What's the worst case for a disaster at a coal plant. Basically it might burn down, a boiler might explode etc. This would likely hurt some workers, but it would be unlikely to affect nearby population.
Meanwhile, look at the worst case for a nuclear plant. Chernobyl is basically what we are talking about. That accident killed a fair number of people, such as the firefighters mentioned above. It also forced massive evacuations of populations. And there is now a 20-30km zone around that plant where people are banned from entering. It will stay dangerous there for a very long time.
I've never heard it discussed, but to me the costs of Chernobyl might have helped create the fall of the Soviet Union. The SU had to buy massive amounts of oil and power after that accident, both to make up the loss of that one plant, and also for the 20 or so other similar plants that were shutdown. They destroyed large amounts of food in their agricultural heartland. Food had to be trucked in and provided to people who would normally eat from the local markets. There were large evacuations. And there was this exclusion zone placed around the plant so a 20km circle of what used to be very productive farmland is now off limits. In the late 1980's, the SU had to pay a very large bill in many ways because of Chernobyl. By the early 90's, the SU was gone.
And people argue they didn't destroy enough food, and the exclusions zone wasn't big enough, and that they didn't evacuate enough people.
So ... here's the question to me. Yes, a nuclear plant may make more sense than a coal plant when looking at a 'normal' day. But, if things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong at a nuke plant. We could literally make an American city uninhabitable if a plant upwind and close enough to the city had an accident. The question isn't entirely as to which is better on a normal day. The question is are you willing to bear the risk of having a really bad day from the nuke plant.
At the very least, nuclear power should have to prove its market feasibility with no subsidies to support it. And it should have to bear the risks of an accident on its own without a Federal cap on liabilities incurred to the nuclear plant. (I wonder what an insurance company would charge for that!)
PS ... at Chernobyl, they got 'lucky' with the wind direction. The wind was basically blowing from Kiev towards Sweden. The first realization that something was wrong was when workers at a Swedish nuclear plant started setting off radiation detectors at the plant gates when they were ARRIVING at work.
North and Northwest of Chernobyl and Kiev is a maassive swamp area that is sparsely population. If the wind had been blowing in the more typical direction towards the major Ukranian city of Kiev, things could have been much, much worse.
Bobby Kennedy Jr. talks about this issue on Ring of Fire and has noted that you cannot insure your home against nuclear power plant disasters.
Obama believes nuclear power is an option even though it costs a lot in money AND energy to bring a plant on line. We don't know how to safely handle the wastes. And nuclear plants are vulnerable not only to problems like at TMI but also to terrorists. The 9-11 Commission reported that the Indian Point nuclear plant, 35 miles north of New York City, was the original target but they thought it would be too guarded so chose the World Trade Center instead.
I quote one of my TMI era pins, "NO Nukes is Good Nukes".
(Does anyone know how Hillary Clinton feels about nuclear power plants?)
Just to answer the question .... Google says:
"At the moment there are more than 400 nuclear power plants (NPP) all over the world, which produce about 17% of the world's electricity. The share can range from just few percent in some countries up and to 75 % as in France. The Krško Nuclear Power Plant produces almost 40% of the electrical energy in Slovenia."
That's from the nuclear industry. Specifically http://www.icjt.org/an/tech/jesvet/jesvet.htm
One of Obama's big contributors is Entergy Corp. They own and operate a bunch of nuclear power plants. As always in America, money talks. So Obama gets big bucks from the nuclear industry and thus supports nuclear power.
"Meanwhile, look at the worst case for a nuclear plant. Chernobyl is basically what we are talking about."
Not true.
Chernobyl was a Soviet-era, graphite-moderated design, for dual-use weapons material production, that would never be allowed or even considered for a power plant in the west. An explosive event of the type that happened at Chernobyl is not possible with a light water reactor. Likweise, the successful containment of the severely damaged and largely melted core at TMI demonstrated that the feared "China Syndrome" is also in the realm of extremely remote-to impossible.
Gosh, I thought we were finally going to get beyond solutions (nuclear) which just changed the wrappings on the problem. Silly me! I thought all the creative genius that has gone into exploring/developing clean, unambiguously safe, life-affirming energy sources, that if implemented, might serve to de-centralize and thus democratize energy delivery systems, were what we could all agree would be best for the collective future of the planet/us.
Just because there are 400 nuclear power plants operating around the world begs the question of potential catastrophic risk. There are already some very alarming manifestations of the devastating impact of global warming. Assuming we find the collective will to address the problem aggressively, there are still going to be consequences in the near future. Thank you very much, I feel much safer not having to worry about fire, flood or earthquakes anywhere near a nuclear power plant. Why would we increase the risk by building more?
And even if you don't buy my "alarmist" view, look at the pricetag---just think how many wind generators and solar panels and whatever else we've got coming down the pike for energy sources that could be funded with those proposed subsidies.
De-centralize power generation---bring it closer to home whenever and wherever possible. And if we do, I am pretty sure there will be few that want nuclear in their town or neighborhoods.
The realm of extremely remote to impossible is a very interesting realm. Accident probabilities in the nuclear industry are calculated using accident trees that correlate all of the different components and their predicted incidences of failure. The near catastrophe at Brown's Ferry in 1975 was caused by a fire in a wiring conduit that didn't even appear on the plant blueprints. So much for accident trees. A Friends of the Earth article at the time described the delightful occurrence:
***
At noon on March 22, 1975, both Units 1 and 2 at the Brown's Ferry plant in Alabama were operating at full power, delivering 2200 megawatts of electricity to the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Just below the plant's control room, two electricians were trying to seal air leaks in the cable spreading room, where the electrical cables that control the two reactors are separated and routed through different tunnels to the reactor buildings. They were using strips of spongy foam rubber to seal the leaks. They were also using candles to determine whether or not the leaks had been successfully plugged -- by observing how the flame was affected by escaping air.
The electrical engineer put the candle too close to the foam rubber, and it burst into flame.
The resulting fire, which disabled a large number of engineered safety systems at the plant, including the entire emergency core cooling system (ECCS) on Unit 1, and almost resulted in a boiloff/meltdown accident, demonstrates the vulnerability of nuclear plants to "single failure" events and human fallibility.
***
The full article appears at http://www.ccnr.org/browns_ferry.html
And if you want a real-world scientific analysis of the costs of "carbon-free" nuclear power, you're much more likely to find it at the Rocky Mountain Institute: http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid185.php than listening to the nuclear shills in this thread.
Another good source of info on the topic: Union of Concerned Scientists (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/nuclear-power-and-climate.html).
#
jamaz November 19th, 2007 2:04 pm said:
"Until we find a failsafe method of spent fuel rod storage it should NOT be an option, ever."
Isn't DU weaponry a way to use some of that spent fuel? Of course you'd have to define "Failsafe."
I'm a nuclear veteran (Operation Redwing, Bikini Atoll, 1956.) There is no failsafe.
I Have Seen the Dragon
I have seen the Dragon
Through clenched lids and arms pressed tight.
I have felt its hot breath on my back
And listened to the rumble of its voice.
I have looked upon its breath,
Glowing Amethyst, red and purple,
Climbing towards the stratosphere
To deposit its venom downwind.
I have waited in fear as my gums began to bleed
And my hair came out in clumps.
I breathed a prayer of thanks
As I began to heal.
After fifty years, our ranks are thin,
We who have seen the Dragon and survived.
Those who have died or are sickened still,
Their numbers are legion.
All we can hope for, work for, pray for,
Is that no madman will ever be allowed
To unleash the Dragon again.
For its legacy to all is death, disease and decay.
© Stephen M. Osborn
2 November 2006
Yours for peace and sanity in our time.
Argonne National Lab and others are working on a new generation of nuclear power that will reduce fuel costs and improve safety beyond description. Try to find links for the Argonne Advanced Fast Reactor. The reactors will "burn" depleted uranium, and the final small amount of waste at the end of the reactor's life will be safe within a couple hundred years, not thousands or millions. They might even be able to burn up a lot of the burn a little U235 and put the other 99% in a hole for million years garbage our present reactors make.
An energy bill should include funds to perfect this technology, standardize it and get Exelon, Southern and others to start replacing their coal, oil and old nukes ASAP. Just build them next to old plants and plug them right into the grid. You shouldn't need nuclear catastrophe insurance, either.
It makes what Iran is working on now into an expensive catch up just to get left in the dust again scheme. Another thing about the new fast reactors is you can't extract plutonium from them.
Mr. Wassermann is right about a lot of things. A lot of present nuclear technology doesn't make sense. Water cooled reactors can be unsafe. Multiply the risk times thousands of reactors and many different levels of training and regulatory oversight. In sum, its a little scary. Also, U235 is going to get very expensive, and the waste problem is a nightmare. The new generation reactors might make that all go away, along with CO2!
Do Hillary and Obama know any of this? We know the other guys wouldn't care if they did. They might even fight it. Almost free energy might be frightening to the neocons.
It is easy to hate what you don't understand. In fact radioactivity is a normal part of life. It would exist if we didn't and doesn't care that we do. It is there all the time - Solar radiation, radon from (naturally occurring) radioactive decay, etc. Take a hike and camp on a good sized granitic mountain - just commune with nature for a while. You will take the same dose you would have gotten while standing at the fence during TMI. Airline pilots take that dose (from solar radiation) every time they fly.
The hysteria over DU, in the complete absence of facts, is simply ridiculous. DU is significantly less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium. It is a heavy metal and its chemical toxicity is far greater than its radioactive danger - until the level of enrichment reaches approximately 2-3% U-235, or roughly two orders of magnitude greater than in naturally occurring uranium - and even then it is not very toxic (humans amongst all animals seem to have a particular resistance to it). The kidney appears to be the most easily affected tissue and the toxic level of uranium appears to be 3 micrograms/gram of tissue. That is having a whole bunch of uranium O's for breakfast. This is of course dependent on a number of variables including enrichment level, chemical composition, and solubility.
The long chain oxides formed by pyrophyric combustion are being studied and unfortunately that research must still be classified as I have not been able to find much on the subject. Conjecture would have it that the long chains are inherently less soluble and therefore more toxic, but that is again mere speculation.
All of life is a trade-off. Cover the desert with solar panels and somebody with little better to do, will bitch about how some lizard is being driven to extinction by the lack of sunlight. All species on this planet are doomed to extinction. Only the timing is in question. Take an astonomy course. Take a geology course. Get some perspective. Get a life.
Well, Chernobyl was a different design, but I don't think you are correct in saying that an explosive event is not possible in a US light water reactor.
The earlier comments on TMI referred to a "hydrogen bubble". This was a bubble of mostly pure hydrogen that was forming at the top of the reactor container from the breakdown of the metals in the fuel rods.
Hydrogen is highly explosive if exposed to a spark and a source of oxygen. Watch films of the Hindenberg burning to get an example. The reason the operators of TMI were concerned about that hydrogen bubble is that had the explosive potential to blow the top of the reactor off and break open the containment. That's exactly why they tried to bleed off that hydrogen and thus expose the population to the radiation that was released at the same time. They decided that risk of radiation exposure was less dangerous than the risk of the hydrogen explosion blowing open the reactor and the containment.
Explosions can happen in different ways. To say that because the Chernobyl reactor was a different design and thus that precise type of explosion can't happen at a US reactor is rather misleading. If that hydrogen bubble had exploded at TMI, I'm not sure the people in the area would have given a damn if the explosion and radioactivity release was from the same reason as Chernobyl or a different one.
My recollection of people in the 1980's when I was studying nuclear engineering was that they were damn lucky not to have a china syndrome event at TMI. I remember being in a seminar when someone from the NRC was showing pictures of the melted core before the news was public, and "holy shit" was the common reaction amongst the nuclear scientists in the room.
Du is a good case to talk about how people can be misled.
If you walked up to me with a piece of metal and said is was DU and wanted to hand it to me, I'd be willing to take it from you. As you say, its radioactivity is generally rather low.
But, when its used as a weapon its different. The force and heat of the impact aerosolize the DU into very fine particles that are suspended in the air and later coat most surfaces. At that point DU becomes highly dangerous. Because it now easily can get inside the body. Now you have both a toxic heavy metal and particles of an alpha emitter inside your body where it can do great harm.
So, around DU there is lots of statistics floated around how it can't be dangerous. But everywhere its been used as a weapon you see very high instances of diseases like leukimia.
Money & Power!
It will take the "BIG BOYS" to build nuclear plants, thus THEY will CONTROL it! Aren't we wanting to lean toward the "commonwealth" and community? ( doubled # of organic farmers markets last year)
Machias Maine used to have it's own power plant on the Little Bad Falls. A tremendous amount of energy is created there. Sadly, the stone foundation of the old plant, is now a park with benches where you can sit and watch the water roar! I wonder how broad an area could be served by building a new plant there? Cpould be done as a state bond issue, and wouldn't take 3 or more years to build, by pricey specialists, as nuclear. And my Bangor Enron bills run about 100. 125 a month!
Also how about educating builders. The majority of them don't have a clue about passive solar! AN awful lot can be done by harnessing nature instead of defying it.
BTW: A biopsy showed I had to have my thyroid gland removed, about 2 1/2 years after 3 mile island! I had a goiter, and that day I swallowed my radio active iodine, and went to the hospital for my "pit & pendulum" nuclear test. When I stepped out of my apartment in NJ due east of 3 mile, here was a strange low lying mist.............
NO HISTORY OF THYROID DISEASE in my well documented family tree!
The above comment about the human element being involved hits the nail on the head. When I was studying nuclear engineering, I felt that I was a good enough engineer to design a reactor that could be operated safely ... on paper.
But then in the real world its an organization of thousands of people who have to build and operate these things. And the human element is very much a part of things. All the way through from design to operation.
Just one example, real life from Georgia Power (a Southern Company). It may not be obvious, but a nuclear reactor needs power from the power grid to operate. Lots of electrical pumps and electronics involved, and the electrical engineers would tell you why you just can't tap into the generators and get nice 120volt AC power to run it. So, every nuclear reactor has backup generators on standby.
At one of Ga Power's plants, one day a truck hit a power pole by the entrance road cutting the power from the grid to the plant. And then they made a very nasty discovery. The backup generators were there and basically ready to go. Only one problem. They had electric starter motors. I guess no one had noticed this when doing hypothetical tests. But when there was no electricity, it became very obvious that there was a big problem here.
I can trust engineers and PhDs to design a new, safer reactor. What I don't trust is that in the real world that anything is perfect. Like any engineer with some real world experience, I believe in Murphy's Laws and think Murphy was a genius. And when the cost of 'anything that can go wrong will go wrong is a nuclear accident', I'm quite happy to be living today somewhere where I don't think there's a nuclear plant anywhere near me. Lots of warheads not too far away, but that's another story.
Excellent comments CO MARC.
It is unfortunate that so many believe the type of comment KENDPOTTER wrote concerning DU, that is precicely why it is now being used as ammunition by 30 nations.
There has never ever been anything humanity has designed and built, that won't eventually experience a failure. The more complex it is, the more things that can go wrong. Someday we will have a massive accident at a nuclear power plant, which could permanently steralize an area of land the size of Texas, or Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York combined and kill or physically disable hundreds of thousands of citizens. Will it happen? We cannot predict the future, but the insurance companies insure, based upon mathematical odds and they won't insure a nuclear power plant.
Set aside for a moment the fact that nuclear technology is extremely dangerous, not least because of Murphy's Law as several have noted above.
Contrary to the incessant claims of the nuclear industry, nuclear power is by no means carbon free. It would actually be worse than coal-fired power within a short time after any nuclear "renaissance." It can only make global warming worse. However, for the short term benefit of a few, it would prevent forever the deployment of safe and renewable energy systems. From http://www.stormsmith.nl/
Some novel concepts are introduced, to make the results of this study better accessible: the 'energy cliff', the 'CO2 trap', the 'coal ceiling' and the 'energy debt'.
Beyond the energy cliff the nuclear system cannot generate net useful energy and will produce more carbon dioxide than a fossil-fueled power station (CO2 trap). Nuclear power may run off the energy cliff with the lifetime of new nuclear build.
Beyond the coal ceiling more uranium ore has to be processed each year to feed one nuclear power plant than the annual coal tonnage of coal consumed by a coal-fired power plant to generate the same amount of electricity.
The exceedingly large and long-term energy debt, combined with the insecurities of the nuclear energy system will seriously delay the transition of the world energy supply to a real sustainable one. A delay we cannot afford. The nuclear option would absorb a disproportionate part of the ability to cope of the society in a ever diverging need for energy, high quality materials and human skills.
The ease with which the nuclear industry waives the unsolved problems of nuclear power suggests an attitude of 'après nous le déluge'.
Some responses on COMarc's extensive comments here:
The linear no-threshold dose response model for cancer and genetic damage due to low-dose radiation exposure is the scientific consensus model. When the predicted incidence of a disease is too small to detect against the background rate, you do not say the effect is nonexistent, but you do have an interesting philosophical argument about whether it matters. We all die. Many people will get cancers and babies are born deformed and this would occur even if there were no manmade radiation sources or harmful chemicals in our environment. We all face risk factors. The approach which says "If you do this it will kill 100 people" but ignores the fact that it will be impossible to tell which 100 out of 6+ billion human deaths that are already absolutely certain to occur, and ignores the benefits (including saved lives) from the action, is in some sense a fundamentalism.
The differences between the consensus science and iconoclasts like Gofman, Bertell, and a few other credentialed people do not stem from the latter using linear no-threshold and the former assuming a threshold. Rather, they stem from claimed observations of effects which are either sublinear (and thus larger at low dose) or larger than those which are well-established in the literature. Some of the more extreme antinuclear critics (like Bertell) are known for bizarre claims, some of the research is pseudoscience, and some people hold tenure but are regarded by their peers as cranks. Gofman, for example, was anti- everything nuclear except nuclear weapons, which he strongly supported.
Chernobyl was an atrociously bad design; it was inherently unstable, had inadequate safety systems and no containment. TMI wasn't such a great piece of engineering, either, but the containment worked. The next generation of reactors will be much safer and very well contained.
You can say that mistakes are made in every complex enterprise yet we do manage to tame dangerous forces and make them adequately safe. Better materials, better quality control, better management practices, and the use of more sensors and more computer automation makes newer plants safer and more idiot-proof.
Also, with regard to DU, I don't want to breathe a whole lot of the oxide, either. But actually, it is present naturally in our environment and when blown about by the wind and dispersed from combat sites it does not add much to the toxic burden. DU attack sites should be quarantined and cleaned up. But there is no substance to claims that "everywhere its been used as a weapon you see very high instances of diseases like leukimia." That's only if you believe the Baath Party.
Nobody has a right to put millions of lives at risk for nuclear industry profits. Nobody has a right to pollute the earth and condemn future generations to cancer forever.
Ionized DU from use as ammunition and bombs is NOT naturally present in our enviroment. Uranium is, solid DU is not very dangerous. What COMARK posted concerning DU is 100% accurate. I don't believe the Baath party, I do believe the doctors and scientists who have spent many years studyng the subject of DU as used in ammunition. I do believe the results of what has happened to thousands of troops who have severed in the Mid-East, breathed in DU and are now suffering and dying from radiation poisoning.
That link is not avaliable anymore, imagine that. There are many thousands of links on the net if one wishes to learn about DU, just Google depleted uranium. Some of the first we come to are written by government officials and they lie, as they lied about Agent Orange.
KEM PATRICK_--first time I read about DU was on a homeopathic website--the practioner was treating Gulf War I vets for some serious imbalances that were attributed to DU. Wish I could remember the site---anyway, apparently the vets could not get the VA to acknowledge their health problems as being combat related despite the fact that so many were having symptoms of radiation overload, and all had served in the ME during Desert Storm.
Hmmmmmmm SO how long did it take for Vietnam era vets to get anyone to officially recognize the terrible legacy of Agent Orange? Is there a pattern here?
Didn't realize the govt link had been removed about DU---I think that's very telling indeed.
Either climate change is real or it isn't.
If it is, we risk a global catastrophe of immense proportion. Vast populations will suffer: floods, droughts, crop failures, disease, and all the rest. No one has the right to condemn huge swaths of the planet to the effects of climate change either.
Because we have delayed so long arguing whether it was real, now we're in an emergency situation. The downsides of any energy contributor must be weighed against the downsides of the climate change caused by the carbon fuel they would displace. If this truly is an emergency, and I believe it is, then everything we can do must be on the table.
Personally, I'd rather go with localized distributed risk that we can make efforts to manage, as opposed to overall planetary catastrophe on an immense scale that is completely out of our control.
So I really don't think it's an issue of "whether" nukes are going to happen. I do sincerely hope that it's an issue of whether they can happen soon enough. I don't like it much, but the alternative is far worse in every way.
Would someone tell Barack and Hillary? Edwards already gets it.
I noticed the post from rotogroover, November 19th, 2007 4:08 pm:
"I was in kindergarten in Middletown, PA on the morning of the Three Mile Island accident (well, waiting to go to afternoon kindergarten) and then lived for twenty years in Middletown (a mile down from the plant).
I was downwind from TMI that morning, and had a strange encounter that day, and a strange physical "issue" manifest itself about 2 or 3 days later. Yes, this is quite anecdotal, and could easily have other explanations.
I was a professional driver for a few years, and that day I had stopped along the interstate to restack the load on the end of my flatbed, when a PA system belted out "Are you OK?" and startled me so much I almost fell off the trailer.
The PA State Cop had remained in his car and pulled up within 10 feet of my trailer (and 12 feet of me).
I mimed "OK" to him, and he left. I think he understood from my facial expression that I was pretty mad at him for needlessly scaring me so.
Two or three days later, the tops of both of my ears (about an inch or so long), became completely "raw", the skin peeled right off, and I mean RAW.
I've ended up thinking that cop was pretty smart, he was aware of what had happened a few miles away, and why be "outside" when you don't really have to be. My ears? I have no idea, nothing like it had ever happened before, and hasn't since, to my ears or any other part of my body.
Good thing you didn't stop to pee.
STAROFTHESEA. On another article about DU posted on this page, the one with the picture of the DU bullet. Paul Magill Smith posted an excellent reply to the question you and others have, on the subject of vets having radiation poisoning. His was posted on Nov 19 at 2:43am. He also gave some excellent links that cover the entire subect in great detail. Thousands of Gulf War vets have died, or are dying from inhaling DU and the government will not admit DU is the cause. Naturally, how could they possibly admit such a horrific war crime against all of humanity?
The use of DU in weaponry is a separate issue from using nuclear power to generate electricity.
CoMarc believes that the potential disaster from coal is much less than the potential disaster from a nuclear power plant. However, the REALITY of burning coal is that our climate is changing. The impending disaster is that the Earth becomes uninhabitable. Global warming is already causing widespread species destruction. How long will it be before we are unable to grow crops, or unable to withstand rising temperatures?
There are many doomsday scenarios one can imagine with nuclear power. However, coal has killed far more people than nuclear energy has, and the worst is yet to come.
Chernobyl is not relevant to discussions about the modern American nuclear industry. It lacked a containment dome. The workers were ordered to run the plant beyond its operating limits for testing purposes. The safety backups were disabled for the test, etc. etc.
Nuclear power has been effectively squashed. Meanwhile there are 150 new coal plants being built in the US alone. They receive very little scrutiny. Unfortunately, as nuclear power is squashed, coal flourishes. Look at a list of our biggest polluters---You will see a lot of coal plants, not nuclear power plants.
I was hoping you would post on this JSTEVENS. You are absolutely correct. Of course I don't want nuclear power either. I want to see about one tenth as much money we've wasted on the unjust and illegal war in Iraq, spent on developing clean energy from geo-thermal, wind/solar and tidal power. Then close down every coal fired plant and every nuclear plant and hope we can get our atmosphere cleaned up before the global warming does kill off the human race.
Kem Patrick: Clearly, utilities are very nervous about the idea of energy from a non-proprietary source--ie wind and sun. They realize that they will have a hard time asking for price increases based on rising fuel costs, because, of course, the wind and sun are free for everyone. Our best chance is that more and more individuals install their own systems--windmills and solar panels and bypass the utilities entirely.
Until that time, coal is worst, coal should go first.
I remember flying over 3 mile island the day after the disaster. It was commercial flight from NYC to North Carolina. The pilot pointed it out over the intercom. We were way up there but you could see a big cloud of steam down there. Something big was happening.