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Don’t Be Fooled: Nuclear Power Kills
Two of the nuclear industry's talking points these days are that "nuclear power hasn't killed anyone" and that "no one died at Three Mile Island."
The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe puts the lie to such bull, but the deliberate denial of thousands of other deaths is also part of the industry's effort. For younger people who have no experience or recall of reactor explosions and meltdowns, steam bursts or radioactive waste spills, pro-nuclear propaganda has convinced many of them that radiation is merely medicinal or dental and must be harmless. On the contrary, there is no safe dose of radiation, and any exposure no matter how little increases the risk of cancer and other diseases.
A quick look at the record of some of the deadliest radiation accidents counters efforts by the Nuclear Energy Institute, and some in Congress, to whitewash their poisoned nuclear power and win another $32 billion in taxpayer giveaways for building new reactors. What follows is a sampling -- a completely footnoted version of the list is available from Nukewatch.
January 3, 1961: Three killed in Idaho
The experimental boiling-water reactor called SL-1 (Stationary Low-Power Plant No.1) in Idaho blew apart killing three technicians. Two Army Specialists, John Byrnes, age 25 and Richard McKinley, age 22, and Richard Legg, a 25 year old Navy Electricians Mate died in the explosion. According to Arlington National Cemetery Records, "One technician was blown to the ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands had to be buried separately with other radioactive waste, and their bodies were interred in lead coffins."
July 27, 1972: Two killed at Surry reactor
At the Surry Unit 2 pressurized water reactor in Virginia, pressurized steam burst through a corroded pipe and scalded two workers to death.
March 28, 1979: Three Mile Island and infant mortality
Exposure to radioactive fallout and contaminated water released by the meltdown at Three Mile Island may have caused thousands of deaths. Among many, two books, "Deadly Deceit: Low Level Radiation High Level Cover-up" by Jay Gould and Ben Goldman, 1990, and Joe Mangano's "Low-Level Radiation and Immune System Damage: An Atomic Era Legacy," 1999, document these fatalities.
Infant deaths in surrounding counties soared 53 percent in the first month after TMI; 27 percent in the first year. As originally published, the federal government's own Monthly Vital Statistics Report shows a statistically significant rise in infant mortality rates shortly after the accident.
Studying 10 counties closest to TMI, deaths from birth defects were15-to-35 percent higher afterward than before the accident; breast cancer incidence rose seven percent higher; these increases far exceeded those elsewhere in Pennsylvania. Gould suggests that between 50,000 and 100,000 excess deaths occurred after the TMI accident.
In counties downwind of the accident, leukemia deaths among kids under 10 (1980-to-1984) jumped almost 50 percent compared to the national rate. From 1980-1984 death rates in the three nearest counties were considerably higher than 1970-74 (before the reactor opened) for leukemia, female breast, thyroid and bone and joint cancers.
March 26, 1986: From 4,000 to 125,000 Chernobyl deaths
Estimates of deaths caused by Chernobyl vary widely. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported April 27, 1995 that Ukrainian Health Minister Andrei Serdyuk had announced the latest Ukrainian estimate of Chernobyl's death toll at 125,000 from illnesses traced to radiation.
The United Nations reported Sept. 6, 2005 that its scientists predicted about 4,000 eventual radiation-
related deaths among 600,000 people in the affected area. CNN reported April 26, 1997, "Ukrainian authorities say over 4,000 died of radiation-related illnesses.
The Wisconsin State Journal noted on April 15, 1991 that "The most senior scientist at the Chernobyl nuclear power station says the disaster claimed up to 10,000 lives, thousands more than Soviet authorities have admitted, a London newspaper reported on Sunday.
The Milwaukee Journal, on April 21, 1991 reported, "Many Soviet and Western researchers dispute the official death toll of only 32, saying that at least 500 people and possibly as many as 7,000 have died of cancer and other illnesses."
December 9, 1986: Four more killed at Surry
Again at the Surry Reactor Unit 2, a similar pressurized steam burned four people to death after an unchecked and corroded 18-inch steel feed-water pipe broke and spewed 30,000 gallons of extremely hot pressurized water.
March 11, 1997: Cancer deaths unknown at Tokaimura
Japan's Tokaimura reprocessing facility suffered explosions and fire at this experimental waste treatment site. At least 37 people were seriously contaminated, 34 internally through inhalation. Experts said, "a massive amount of heat and energy was released" in the explosion at the state-run facility. A lack of medical follow-up for the contaminated workers has allowed the industry to deny that deaths resulted.
September 30, 1999: Two killed at Tokaimura
Workers at Japan's Tokaimura uranium processing complex caused a "uranium criticality burst" that killed two men, exposed at least 600 residents in the surrounding community to a burst of neutron radiation, and caused the evacuation of thousands. One worker died of radiation poisoning after 82 days of agonizing pain, the other took 210 days to die.
August 9, 2004: Five killed at Mihama
At the Mihama reactor in Japan, a burst of highly pressurized steam at 390° F, killed five workers and severely burned 11 others when a corroded pipe ruptured and burned them to death. The accident was Japan's deadliest at a nuclear reactor. About 800 tons of water escaped from the large pipe that had not been inspected in 28 years.
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27 Comments so far
Show AllThat does not take into account the number of deaths of miners and people living near the processing plants. The U.S. government took years before funding medical treatment for uranium miners with cancer, especially smokers. I think the government waited so the cost would drop as more of the miners died.
That does not count the mutations. There may be a huge increase in mutations in the insect populations downwind of every reactor. I don't know this as fact, and I wonder if there is any true research on mutations due to radioactivity.
A new study released by the New York Academy of Sciences: 'Chernobyl:Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment', shows that 960,000 lives were lost as a consequence of the accident there. WHO and the IAEA limited the number to 4,000 deaths. Not to be trusted. It may take up to 7 generations to realize the effects of the homozygotic recessive mutations. Unsafe at any level!
Also, note that the "depleted" uranium taken from nuclear plants is being re-fashioned into artillery rounds, used in Iraq and is currently causing a catastrophic rise in grotesque birth defects among the surviving citizens of Fallujah.
Plus the many US military volunteers who are being sickened by this radioactive ammo.
No serious study found excess deaths around TMI. The Harrisburg area
The Cernobyl reactor was as different, from a safety perspective, from a light water or CANDU-type comercial reactors as a fire log is from a bucket of gasoline. So, while tagic, it is an irrelavent event in assessing the safety of reactors of the sort that are being used or proposed around the world.
So, that leaves 16 deaths over 50 years - and 11 of those were accidents that can occur at any kind of steam plant. So that leaves 5 deaths atttribted to nuclear reactions themselves (and the Idaho incident is suspected to have been a suicide). Can anyone find ANY industry (even working in an office) with such a comparble safety record?
Sure, there may also have been some occupational-related cancer deaths, but these pale next to the cancer risks from chemicals used in thousnds of other occupations -from auto mechanic to construction to manufacturing. And lets not forget the radon seeping through the floors of a majority of US homes.
It keeps geting hotter. Renewables are very important, but no one has ever seriously shown that an industrial nation can get all it's electric power from renewables. What alternative is there but nuclear?
The alternative is a combination of mandatory conservation combined with the same government subsidies for alternative energies as the nuclear industry receives. Chances of that happening are the same as the chances that racism will be eradicated: zilch. Nuclear power is a scourge, a bane that keeps certain groups wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone else. The concomitant pursuit of nuclear weapons makes nuclear power the embodiment of death.
Most of the gov't subsidy to nuclear industry could not be applied to a reasonably safe industry of any kind.
The development of nuclear plants themselves was taxpayer-funded: the design for the light water reactors used in almost all American nuclear plants was re-adjusted from designs for nuclear submarines. Other facilities, like Hanford and Oak Ridge, came out of the government investment in eliminating large civilian populations.
Industry was given the technology almost completely free of charge.
This could hardly be given to the solar or wind industries retroactively, because these already function at a higher level than nuclear power generation: both generate electricity, solar and wind more cheaply, and the waste problem is far greater for nuclear plants.
The nuclear industry is given massive subsidy because they are held accountable for only a tiny fraction of the damage they cause. Governmentally imposed limits to their liability were necessary to make the plants insurable at any price. Nuclear and wind power have no such problems, and so can make use of no such subsidy.
The nuclear industry is subsidized beyond this because the US government has contracts with most power companies in the US to handle their nuclear waste. Since the government has in all cases failed to do so, most power companies have sued the government for damages--at least usually successfully, since the government is indeed in flagrant violation of every such contract, since no adequate storage has been proposed.
By the 1980's, despite the subsidies, despite governmental and industrial collusion to avoid publicizing the health costs, public awareness of the nuclear problem had provoked sufficient controls that nuclear power was no longer profitable, and major energy providers in the United States looked to sue Westinghouse, Bechtel, the US Government, and other entities that had been involved in the design, construction, and maintenance of their plants.
Nuclear construction stopped not because it was banned: it was not. It stopped because it cannot be done both safely and profitably.
So the taxpayers whose parents paid for research and development have been deprived of the information that they paid for. They were then subjected to health problems caused by the practices that they were not informed about. Now they are asked to pay again for the waste created by the process.
To fix a dollar amount to such subsidies would be fairly arbitrary, but by any measure, the subsidy has to be immense. Just the insurance scam alone would have been a deal-breaker for all nuclear power in any capitalist system based on market economics and a legal system that might demand accountability for causing sickness and death.
Were anything approximating the dollar-value of any one of these subsidies even loaned to US residential and commercial landowners and renters, we might approach 100% green electricity within a very few years.
The decision to retain nuclear, coal, or gas power on anything beyond a transition basis is driven not be desperation to serve the populace, but by considerations of corporate profit and military hegemony.
A graph of cancer deaths around TMI in the years following the accident flow with the prevailing westerly winds.
Simply to label the studies that show this "unserious" answers nothing. Beware of industry criticism of such studies. In general, this industry keeps considerably different figures internally than what it delivers publicly.
..
"The alternative" to nuclear power is all other alternatives, including wasting less.
As early as the 1980's, solar and wind were both less expensive than nuclear power. The power industry rejects them, insofar as it does, primarily for two reasons:
--The power industry, as it is currently structured, cannot use them profitably. The principal reason is that the power industry would use dedicated land, whereas individuals and small businesses could easily use land and buildings for multiple purposes and not cycle the electricity out onto "the grid," where much of it is currently lost.
-- The power industry gets massive subsidy for going nuclear. Prominent is the legislation that limits industrial liability. Essentially, the population near the plant underwrites the primary health costs of the plant. Ultimately, our offspring underwrite the gross failure to dispose of waste.
This idea that nuclear power is somehow the only alternative, or even a good alternative, is thorough myth.
Having worked in the power generation industry for decades I have found that a big part of the problem is Groupthink.
If you want to get through college and get a job in the power generation business you need to favor large, centralized generation plants such as coal or nuclear. If you favor decentralized wind, solar and other renewables you better keep it to yourself.
Sabocat said:
"No serious study found excess deaths around TMI. The Harrisburg area"
Well not according to the court appointed epimindolgists. Despite Nuclear Industry malarkey like getting the judge to throw out 8 out of the 10 experts and limiting the study to within only 10 miles even though the fallout reached 150 miles away and nuked the Hershey Chocolate Milk Cattle, results still showed cancer rates soared downwind of the accident six years later. In deference to Billy's desire to be objective and show both sides, the first link highlights the disagreement between medical experts Mangano and Wing.
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1997/105-8/correspondence.html
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=09-P13-00043&segmentID=1
http://www.tmia.com/march26
Steven Wing et al.
Joseph J. Mangano
Consultant
Radiation and Public Health Project
Brooklyn, New York
TJ
The U.S. Government has ALWAYS lied re nuclear issues. During the 1950s - 60s nuclear tests in NV, locals and the now famous "downwinders" were told there was no health danger. Governmental scientists knew the truth and kept quiet.
That there is no "safe level" of ionizing radiation -- that there is a straight-line relationship between it and tissue damage all the way to zero -- has been know for at least half a century.
Yes -- and Americans pay for the research and then the lies --
and now we pay to bring a new nuclear wave into being -- $36 BILLION in
new loans to the private nuclear industry and its also uninsurable --
leaving only the government to also insure this new folly!
Is capitalism suicidal -- ? Seems obvious --
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Well, I'm off to check out Nukewatch. Thanks!
Coal miners don't die? Sometimes by the dozen? Mercury from coal plants doesn't poison the ocean food chain? Sulfates and particulates from fossil fuels don't sicken millions and kill thousands every year? Deep drilling for oil isn't hazardous? Shale fracking doesn't threaten water supplies? And don't forget GHG emissions overheating the earth and acidifying the oceans almost to the point of no return. Then there is the corn/ethanol scam using more fuel than it creates while poisoning the Mississipi and Gulf with nitrate runoff. Gimme a break.
Nuclear is (already) part of the answer to the need for sustainable GHG neutral energy, and it is growing and developing in many different countries. Technology to "burn" DU with waste actinides is partly developed. It would result in hundreds of years of essentially free fuel. Nuclear energy might even be employed some day to synthesize fuel from carbon dioxide and water. It just has to be done right.
Most injuries from nuclear I believe aren't obvious. I haven't worked in a nuclear facility so I can't be sure but I haven't heard good results from those who have. What you say sounds too optimistic.
You can also die shoving a fork into an electrical outlet, So don't do that.
Chernobyl is the worst example, of the Soviet Aministration, not nuclear power. The Commisar said do this, at this time, and they did it, they were hoping for the best but knowing if they didn't they'd be reassigned, somewhere worse.
Until Solar and wind are improved by a large factor, they cannot be any substitute for Fission Nuclear Power. like it or not, thats how we'll keep the ligths on for the time being.
>^^<
What rubbish Catz,
Residential Rooftop Solar in the Southern states would enable shutting down every coal and nuclear plant in existence. Gas fired plants would take over during darkness or bad weather on the grid.
No Meltdown risk.
No disposal problems.
No Terrorism risk.
No Corporate Monopoly of power rates.
If we can subsidize war at a trillion dollars a year we can certainly subsidize rooftop solar. Nuclear power is unsafe for anyone who lives in the same state with a reactor. See:
http://planetliberty.wikidot.com/nuclear-power-incidents
TJ
Don’t Be Fooled: Nuclear Power Kills
by John LaForge.
Although just as silly as the assertion that Nuclear Power does not kill, this is a silly headline. Everything kills. Water and Oxygen kill. This headline should read, -----:Nuclear Power Can Kill.
The nuclear reality of matter is a great opportunity. Mankind would be silly not to grasp it. Because man has grasped it stupidly does not change this reality.
There is a great deal of journalism in much that is written as news or comment. This reality is a great problem. It obscures the vital power of man's abilities, paradoxically allowing all sorts of opportunists to gain huge rewards for cynical deeds. Obscuring the issues provides cover for crooks.
In this case the vital power is enormous and beneficial. As with any such enormity, we have to do it properly. We need clearly expressed and genuine information. This is the only way we will be able to identify the crooks and the public who support the crooks.
If the demand for electric powered vehicles keeps rising along with other things that draw big from electricity, both coal and nuclear power plants will be built carte blanche. Solar power could fill in for some of the demand but I don't see a bright future ahead on this.
something like 370,000 thousand people died in the US in the past ten years driving. Nukes in power plants are a bit down the scale.
dave m,
When those 370,000 died in auto accidents the last ten years, did it force an evacuation the size of the state of Alabama?
No.
Did it cause the ground downwind of the auto accidents to be uninhabitable for 600 years?
No.
"Nukes in power plants" (sic) if they melt down can cause this kind of nightmare. This is the current situation downwind of Chernobyl. It's absolutely crazy to support a system that requires 100 percent perfect safety all the time. It cannot be done. Aviation is an extremely safe form of transport, yet every model airliner every built, with any years of service, has fatally crashed. Fortunately when jet fuel gets in a river, not many people die. But most nuclear power stations leak the damage can last for generations. And that's a huge understatement, because they all routinely leak.
TJ
Nuclear power and Doctor Strange Love, or how I learned to be co-opted by corporate crooks. Big finance has it right with corporate profits for it's successes and the people's bailout (socialism) for their loses.
Now comes the nuclear boys that use the publics money's for almost everything but the profits and then quietly leave town and the environment with a quarter of a billion years of toxic shit on it's hands. Well maybe we'll all mutate into some heroic comic book characters with super powers that roam the barren earth looking for someone to save..... to late you'll have to wait for another extraordinary human life potential form on some distant planet for an eternity or two.