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Radioactive Wastes from Nuclear Reactors

Questions and Answers, Gordon Edwards 28 July 24

“Why Are We Worried? – about decommissioning The San Onofre nuclear power plant ?

Dr. EDWARDS RESPONSE
 
Good question. If nuclear power were just generating electricity and nothing else, it would be safe. But it also mass-produces deadly radioactive poisons that were never found in nature before the nuclear age began, just 85 years ago.

For instance, nuclear fuel can be safely handled before it goes into the reactor, but after it comes out, it is millions of times more radioactive — and it will kill any nearby human being in a matter of seconds by means of an enormous blast of gamma radiation.
  
What makes the used fuel suddenly so dangerous? Well, inside the fuel, there are literally hundreds of brand new varieties of radioactive elements that are created by the splitting of uranium atoms – for example, iodine-131, cesium-137, strontium-90. These are radioactive varieties of non-radioactive elements that exist in nature all around us. They are human made radioactive poisons They’re like evil twins.

For example, ordinary table salt has a little bit of iodine added to it. It’s not radioactive. The iodine goes to the thyroid gland and helps to prevent a terrible disfiguring disease called goiter. Well, nuclear plants produce radioactive iodine. It also goes to the thyroid gland and causes cancer. 6000 children in Belarus had to have their thyroid glands surgically removed because of radioactive iodine from the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986, in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, in northern England and Wales, for 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, sheep farmers could not sell their meat for human consumption when it was contaminated with radioactive cesium. To this day, hunters in Germany and Austria who kill a wild boar cannot eat the meat because of radioactive cesium contamination from Chernobyl. It’s in the soil.

You know, everything is made up of atoms. The only difference is that a radioactive atom will explode. It’s called an “atomic disintegration”. Radioactive atoms are like little time bombs. If they explode inside you, they damage living cells, especially DNA molecules. When DNA is damaged, it may make things grow in an unnatural way. Radiation-damaged cells can and do develop into cancers of all kinds.

Meanwhile, in northern England and Wales, for 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, sheep farmers could not sell their meat for human consumption when it was contaminated with radioactive cesium. To this day, hunters in Germany and Austria who kill a wild boar cannot eat the meat because of radioactive cesium contamination from Chernobyl. It’s in the soil.

You know, everything is made up of atoms. The only difference is that a radioactive atom will explode. It’s called an “atomic disintegration”. Radioactive atoms are like little time bombs. If they explode inside you, they damage living cells, especially DNA molecules. When DNA is damaged, it may make things grow in an unnatural way. Radiation-damaged cells can and do develop into cancers of all kinds.

So radioactive wastes remain dangerous for millions of years. They are the most toxic wastes ever produced by any industry, ever. These poisons are essentially indestructible.  Countless billions of dollars are planned to be spent to keep these materials out of the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. At Hanford, in Washington State, the radioactive clean-up is estimated to cost more than $300 billion according to the US General Accounting Office. By building more reactors, we are just adding to the burden.

In reality, the ultimate products of a nuclear reactor are radioactive wastes and plutonium which remain dangerous for millions of year. The electricity is just a little blip on the screen, a short-term benefit for just a few decades. The radioactive legacy lasts forever………………………………………………………………………………. ———–

www.ccnr.org/Radioactive_Q&A_2024.pdf
  

July 31, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | radiation, Reference, wastes