Open Letter: Why Nuclear Power is Unsafe & Not Clean by Scott Leyland, Green Party of Canada: "

OPEN LETTER ON NUCLEAR POWER - UNSAFE & NOT CLEAN

I would ask that you read Dr Helen Caldecotts 'Nuclear Power is not the Answer' or writings of Drs. Rosalie Bertell or David Suzuki on how clean and safe Nuclear Power is. Essentially:

[Not] Clean- The only reason that 'nuclear fission' is tolerated by the worlds public is for what in the early 1950s was touted as the 'friendly atom' ='nuclear power' and that myth has been perpetrated on the public ever since. It is not clean from either a Greenhouse Gas sense, nor a poisonous emissions sense.

Greenhouse Gas: 1)Exploration, Mining, Milling all consume vast amounts of petrol fuel and electricity to get to the yellowcake level of concentration. 98+% of the rest is 'waste', emitting radon gas into the air/water (its heavier than air so pockets in basements,gullys etc), uranium dissolved into the water, radioactive dust into the air (generally uranium-oxide similar to DU particulates) and other radioactive/heavy metal poisons toxic to virtually all biotic life. Should companies/governments be responsible enough to try to 'deal with' the waste properly, the energy consumed would multiply.

2)Enrichment of U235 in yellowcake from 0.7% to 3.5% necessary for reactor fuel. The plant in Petuka(sp?) Kentucky has two coal fired electicity plants going full-tilt to supply the energy needs for the uranium enrichment plant, hardly carbon neutral. At one time the plant in Oakridge Tennisee consumed 15% of the US energy grid. Essentially, vast quantities of electricity are used in enrichment, fuel processing, and fuel re-processing plant stages of 'carbon-neutral' Nuclear Power.
3)Then there is the Chloro-fleuro-carbon (CFC) emissions (you thought they were illegal, but the nuclear industry got an exemption in the international treaty banning all such...hmmm) to which the Nuclear Industry contributes 93% of total emissions.
4)And there are the cooling tanks (pumps for vast quantities of water), the waste storage shuffle, the building/mothballing/decommisioning of plants every 20-40 years because they get contaminated and 'fatigued' such that they are no longer 'safe' to operate.

Then there is the 'radioactive' daughters of U 238 and U235 from reactors (both of which are poisonous themselves, but in nature are so diffuse that they represent little overall hazzard to biotic life) Over 200 man made isotopes are created in Nuclear Chain Reactions/Fission. Iodine 237, Cesium 134, Strontium 90, Plutonium 139 are but a few of the exceptionally dangerous man made (never existed in nature before man made nuclear fission) isotopes. Several of these are routinely (the industry readily admits this but doesn't 'advertise' this) released as gasses into the air or dissolved in water and released, because there simply isn't the technology to contain them and continue with the fission reaction necessary to do their job. All gases in the world, diffuse quite quickly in our atmosphere, such that within days molecules from Hanford will be in Cape Hope or Bombay, or New York (small wonder that the local-concentrated cause-effect of these very toxic gases are impossible to blame on the local Nuclear plant because the bone-cancer etc. rates aren't greatly elevated compared to non-Nuclear plant areas)

-Tritium-gas, and Tritiated water are released in vast quantities. Tritium is radioactive Hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most common element on earth, the basis of all life, the essential element in water. Water diffuses slower than gases, but it to0 evaporates and diffuses in a matter of weeks/months throughout the earth. And so, slowly Nuclear fission is polluting all the water of our earth. It will take awhile since there are more Hydrogen atoms than any other.

-Radioactive Halogens: Salt has halogens in it. So when biotic life forms need salt, chances are they will ingest a radioactive salt molecule, hopefully not enough to tip the balance by irreparably damaging the genes in the cells.

-Radioactive Noble Gases: Argon, xenon etc...inert they say...but the fact that they can and do degenerate into harmful elements such as Strontium 90 (bone cancer etc.) is 'within acceptable levels'..acceptable to them.

Then there is the 'safety'..I won't go into the security expenses necessary to keep Nuclear Fission byproducts out of the hands of 'terrorists'....

Essentially, if we humans want to be deluded enough to think Nuclear Fission/Nuclear Power is clean and safe, then whatever greater power is governing the universe will apply Darwins principle to our multi-organ, complex species that requires all of these organs to function properly in order to exist. And the universe will note mans existence as a small mistake in the fullness of time.....Scott Leyland

Scott Leyland is CEO of the Pacific Division of the Green Party and Green Party Candidate in last 2 Federal Elections in BC Southern Interior
Uranium Free Kootenay;Boundary and the Uranium Free BC Coalition.
http://uraniumfreekootenayboundary.ca/

NUCLEAR FREE ZONE
http://peaceinspace.blogs.com/nuclear_free_zone/

URL of this article:

http://peaceinspace.blogs.com/nuclear_free_zone/2007/05/open_letter_why.html

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(Via NUCLEAR FREE ZONE.)

Open Letter: Why Nuclear Power is Unsafe & Not Clean by Scott Leyland, Green Party of Canada