nuclear-news

Focus on Nuclear at World Social Forum

NUCLEAR FORUM AT WSF HIGHLIGHTS WASTE PROBLEMS , West Mount Magazine, By Byron Toben, 18 Aug 16 

Shake hands with the Devil, who, in George Bernard Shaw’s 1903 masterpiece Don Juan in Hell, points out that…

In the arts of Peace, Man is a bungler. But in the arts of war, man is a true genius.
Only he could invent the maxim machine gun, the submarine and (even now is seeking to unlock)
The hidden molecular energies of the Universe…

Note that this was written two years before Einstein (who later became a friend of Shaw) announced E=mc2 and the race toward an atomic bomb, culminating in Little Boy devastating Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by Fat Man doing same to Nagasaki three days later.

In the interim 71 years, much has transpired in nuclear arms growth, the expansion of nuclear plants for use for power and concomitant protest groups. Suffice it to say, nuclear myths of clean, safe and inexpensive have been gradually discredited and new plant construction has ceased. So the focus has shifted to nuclear waste disposal, which is no easy matter as the stuff has half-lives of thousands of years.

Professor Gordon Edwards (Hampstead, Quebec) head of the Canadian Coalition For Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) one of the key speakers at this nuclear forum, (which consisted of 12 workshops. the most numerous of the hundreds of other themed subjects at the recent World Social Forum) opined that we have left the nuclear age and are now in the nuclear waste age.

What are the industry’s plans to get rid of the waste? There are none. There are only plans to package it, transport it and dump it somewhere. But the packaging is inadequate, the transport doubly dangerous and no feasible mid or long-term dumps nominated.

Thus, by default, the best approach, for now, is to leave the waste in situ with constant monitoring.

Edwards even dislikes the term “disposal” as it implies a final solution. He prefers the term “abandonment”, which is dangerous as it leads to amnesia as to where burial sites may be and over time, loss of technical expertise or knowledge of geographic locations……abandonment requires institutional safeguards of regular inspection by trained personnel and funding to boot, which can persist despite political changes.

Other key participants ……

GUIDING SPIRITS (MOSTLY WOMEN)

Karen Silkwood, a nuclear union activist and whistle blower, whose mysterious death in 1976 spawned a movie about her. She had alleged corruption and lax safety standards at the McGee-Kerr facility in Oklahoma.Rosalee Bertell, a nun and mathematician, whose book No Present Danger documented the dangers of low level radioactive tailings, dumped mostly on native American lands.

Native lands were a target of nuclear waste producers, as all 50 states rejected such dumps and the selection of Yucca mountain was rejected as being in an earthquake one and near underground aquifers.

Many native persons have protested this practice. Two of note are the late Grace Thorpe (daughter of great Olympics athlete Jim Thorpe) and Winona La Duke, twice US vice presidential candidate for the Green Party with Ralph Nader.

Apparently, women are more prone to nuclear exposure ailments than men by a 2-3 times ratio.

CURRENT LAWSUIT

On the last day of this Nuclear Forum, a lawsuit was filed in federal courts to delay the pending shipments of dangerous nuclear waste by truck and barge, without public consultation on secret routes, mostly thousands of miles to South Carolina. Readers who wish to read the court document can contact me through this web site at info@westmountmag.ca    http://www.westmountmag.ca/nuclear-forum/?utm_source=Westmount+Magazine+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c961272cc5-2016-08-18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5b5eeef0cc-c961272cc5-94434617&ct=t%282016-08-18%29&mc_cid=c961272cc5&mc_eid=d8693ec04e

August 19, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general