Dr
Helen Caldicott is widely regarded as one of
the most articulate and passionate advocates of
citizen action to remedy nuclear and environmental
crises. She
was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was the
2003 winner of the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. Dr
Caldicott has devoted the last 35 years to an
international campaign to educate the public about the
medical hazards of the nuclear age, and the necessary
changes in human behavior to stop environmental
destruction.
A
renowned physician and activist,
she is the co-founder of Physicians for Social
Responsibility (PSR), an organization of 23,000
doctors committed to educating their colleagues about
the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and
nuclear war. International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the
umbrella group for PSR, was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1985.
In
2001 Dr. Caldicott founded the Nuclear Policy Research
Institute in Washington DC, to help educate Americans
about the profound medical, environmental, political
and moral consequences of perpetuating nuclear
weapons, power and waste. She also founded
Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) in the
U.S. in 1980.
Dr
Caldicott has been the subject of three films: Helen’s
War, Eight Minutes to Midnight, and the Academy
Award winning If
You Love this Planet.
She has authored many books including: Nuclear
Madness: What You Can Do, Missile Envy, The New
Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial
Complex, and most recently Nuclear
Power is Not the Answer.
Her forthcoming book War
in Heaven: The Militarization of Outer Space is
due out in early 2007.
Nuclear
Power is Not the Answer
An op-ed
by Dr. Helen Caldicott
George
Bush, when visiting the Pennsylvania (US) Limerick
nuclear power plant on May 24, 2006 categorically
stated “Nuclear power helps us protect the
environment.” While it is unclear where the
President obtained his scientific and medical
expertise, his actual knowledge leaves much to be
desired.
Contrary
to industry propaganda the energy intensive process
used to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, to construct
the reactor and to transport and store the intensely
radioactive waste for eons of time, emits global
warming gases to the atmosphere. A gas fired plant
emits three times more CO2 than a similar sized atomic
reactor, but as the supply of usable uranium declines
over several decades, a nuclear plant will generate as
much CO2 as the gas fired generator. Nuclear power
therefore contributes substantially to global warming.
If all electricity today was generated with nuclear
power only nine years supply usable uranium is
available. It is therefore a finite commodity like
oil.
Wall
Street and Standard & Poors are extremely
reluctant to invest in nuclear power having been
severely burnt in the 1970s and 80s when Three Mile
Island and Chernobyl caused the cost of nuclear
reactors to soar.
The 2005
energy bill allocated a massive $13 billion to this
inefficient dangerous industry. A meltdown induced by
terrorism, mechanical or human failure would signal
the end of nuclear power and billions of invested
dollars will be lost.
David
Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer from the Union of
Concerned Scientists is not sanguine stating “It is
not if but when there is a meltdown” because of lax
and inefficient safety procedures overseen by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the 103 operating US
reactors.
In fact,
security has virtually not been tightened at these
reactors since 9/11 even though one of the intended
targets of the 9/11 terrorists was the Indian Point
reactors 35 miles from Manhattan. Up to 43,700 people
within 50 miles would succumb to acute radiation
sickness over 2 weeks and as many as 518,000 people
would die of radiation induced cancer years later
according to a study by the Union of Concerned
Scientists. The financial capital of the world
would be rendered uninhabitable.
Operating
nuclear reactors routinely emit dangerous radioactive
materials into the air and water every minute of every
day. The noble gases, xenon, krypton and argon are
continuously released into the air, where they hover
at ground level during meteorological inversion
systems, to be inhaled by the surrounding populations.
Fat soluble noble gases are readily absorbed through
the lung and migrate in the blood to fatty tissues of
the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs where they
irradiate the reproductive organs with high doses of
mutagenic gamma radiation.
Similarly,
radioactive hydrogen, or tritium is routinely released
into air and water and it also has accidentally leaked
into underground water at Indian Point, at the
Braidwood, Byron and Dresden reactors near Chicago and
the Palo Verde reactor in Arizona. Tritium is a potent
carcinogen in animal studies and causes congenital
defects. Absorbed readily through the skin, it
also enters the body through the gut and lung. With a
half life of 12.1 years it is radioactive for over 100
years. People living near nuclear power plants are
therefore continually at risk.
But more
is at stake. 30 tons of highly carcinogenic nuclear
waste is manufactured yearly in each reactor. Nuclear
waste is extremely radioactive and so hot that it must
be continually cooled for decades, in what
euphemistically are called “swimming pools”
adjacent to the reactors. A terrorist attack on a
swimming pool containing 10 to 30 times more radiation
than the reactor could release massive quantities of
radiation which would devastate surrounding
communities and agricultural areas for ever.
Nuclear
waste must be isolated from the environment for at
least 250,000 years, a physical and scientific
impossibility. In many areas in the US including
Hanford WA, Savannah River NC, West Valley NY,
radioactive isotopes seep and leak into the
environment, where they concentrate at each step of
the food chain. Odorless, tasteless and invisible they
enter the human body, and migrate to specific organs
where they irradiate and mutate surrounding cells for
many years. The incubation time for cancer is long –
5 to 60 years, hence the delay in exposing the medical
dangers of nuclear power.
Over time
however nuclear waste will induce epidemics of cancer,
leukemia and genetic disease in all future
generations.
The
medical dictum states if a disease is incurable the
only recourse is prevention.
While
nuclear power is a transient generator of electricity
its actual legacy is and will be medically
catastrophic.
Dr. Helen Caldicott is the author of
Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, published in
September 2006 by The New Press. She is the Founder
and President of the Nuclear Policy Research
Institute, www.nuclearpolicy.org.
Dr
Caldicott will be giving public lectures followed by
book signings in
Regina
at 7:00 pm on March 6th at the Education
Auditorium University of Regina and in Saskatoon at
7:30 pm on March 7th at Third Ave United
Church. She
will also be doing
Grand
Rounds at Royal University Hospital from 12:00 to 1:30
on March 8th
For
more information and a photo of Dr. Caldicott, go to:
http://www.nuclearpolicy.org:80/index.cfm?&Page=Module&ModuleID=1
