The classic dictum in medicine states: If a disease is incurable, prevention is the only recourse.
While the specter of global warming looms large with associated epidemics of arthropod-borne diseases and millions of ecological refuges escaping catastrophic meteorological conditions, nuclear power as an alternative energy has an equally dire prognosis.
Nuclear power is responsible for the emission of substantial quantities of global warming gases from each step of the nuclear fuel chain,[1] and the medical consequences of nuclear power are equally catastrophic.
Each nuclear reactor contains 1000 times more long-lived radiation than released by the Hiroshima bomb, in the form of 200 new biologically dangerous isotopes – some with minuscule half-lives and others with half-lives of 17 million years.[2] This material – radioactive waste – must be isolated from the environment for geological time spans, a scientific and physical impossibility. Already radioactive isotopes are leaking into soil and water from nuclear waste repositories in many countries, and these isotopes bioconcentrate by orders of magnitude at each step of the food chain. Invisible and cryptogenic to the senses, these mutagenic radioactive materials will migrate to and concentrate in specific bodily organs – iodine 131 in the thyroid, cesium 137 in brain and muscle, strontium 90 in bone, and plutonium 239 (with a half-life of 24,400 years) in lung, liver, bone, fetus, and testicle. Ultimately, these radioisotopes will induce malignancy; however, because of the latent period of carcinogenesis, the cancers will not be diagnosed for many years.[3]
Over generations, radioisotopes in gonads will increase the incidence of genetic and chromosomal diseases. Animals and plants will be similarly affected. Nuclear power is therefore a fundamentally mutagenic industry that results in cancer with a transient byproduct – electricity generation. As such, nuclear power is medically contraindicated.
That's my opinion. I'm Dr. Helen Caldicott, Pediatrician and President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.
Footnotes
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References
- 1.Storm van Leeuwen JW, Smith P. Nuclear power, the energy balance. Chapter 1: the CO2-emission of the nuclear life-cycle. July 28, 2005. Available at: http://www.stormsmith.nl/report20050803/Chap_1.pdf Accessed November 28, 2006.
- 2.Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Takoma Park, Md: Nuclear Information and Resource Service; Routine radioactive releases from nuclear reactors - it doesn't take an accident. Available at: http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/routineradioactivereleases.htm Accessed November 29, 2006. [Google Scholar]
- 3.Caldicott H. Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer. New York: The New Press; 2006. [Google Scholar]
