Nuclear Power Can’t Be a Solution to Global Warming Precisely because of Global Warming
Nuclear Power Can’t Be a Solution to Global Warming Precisely because of Global Warming DISSIDENT VOICE Extreme Weather Events Multiply Existing Risks and Vulnerabilities of Nuclear Power: From Natural Disasters to Nuclear Disasters?by Jo-Shing Yang / February 7th, 2009 A new dawn is coming for nuclear power.
This week, America found out that President Obama’s economic stimulus plan includes a $50 billion loan guarantee for nuclear power plants in the Senate version. Nuclear power is about to be revived from its political and public-opinion grave to enjoy a “green renaissance,” now with 35 new nuclear reactors being planned. This lethally radioactive zombie is about to get an extreme makeover with the cosmetics of combating global warming, achieving environmental stewardship, deepening economic prosperity, and attaining energy independence..
Then it will get a new name: the new green energy. The irony is that while nuclear proponents cite global warming as the key impetus for expanding nuclear power, it is precisely global climate disruptions and the associated extreme weather events which will significantly multiply and amplify the existing risks and costs of nuclear power to make it more costly, risky, lethal, and unreliable. With global warming, nuclear power threatens to turn ordinary natural disasters (such as floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts) into potential nuclear disasters……………………
……… Droughts, Chronic Water Shortages, and the Coming Water Scarcity Are Achilles Heel of Nuclear Power Plants: No Water, No Nuclear Power. Period.
Nuclear power plants are a voracious consumer of water. Nuclear power requires even more water than gas-fired generators, at 3,100 liters per megawatt hour of electricity, just to keep the nuclear reactors from overheating. (Coal and natural gas use 2,800 liters and 2,300 liters per megawatt hours, respectively.) According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2006 “Report to the Congress on the Interdependency of Energy and Water,” the most water-intensive form of electricity generation is nuclear power………
……………….In the well-publicized drought and the heat waves when temperatures soaring above 100° F in summer 2003 led to thousands of deaths across Europe, Electricité de France (EDF) had to shut down a quarter of its 58 nuclear power plants in France while the average electricity price skyrocketed by some 1,300%………..
….. during Europe’s 2006 heat wave, French, German, and Spanish utilities were forced to shut down several nuclear power plants and reduce power at others for as much as a week due to low water levels……………
…………….Water will become scarcer and more expensive as global climate disruptions exacerbate existing water problems of groundwater and surface water pollution and intensify chronic water shortages worldwide………..
……………….The sensible solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not with more nuclear power, but with small, deconcentrated (as opposed to corporate monopolies), and decentralized power systems that can adapt to local conditions.
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radiation, uranium
Old radioactive mine tailings pose slow-motion threat
Old radioactive mine tailings pose slow-motion threat
Payson Roundup 8 Feb 09
After decades of delay, the U.S. Forest Service is seeking public comments about a slow-motion contamination risk — the radioactive dirt piles left over from now-abandoned uranium mines in the Young Ranger District along popular Workman Creek in the Sierra Anchas……………………….Many of these tailings dump sites lie along Workman Creek, which drains into Roosevelt Lake, which is a drinking water reservoir for Phoenix. Tests show sufficiently high radiation levels in the creek that the Forest Service advises people against eating fish caught in the creek…………….
………..Although federal officials have known for years of the contamination along the creek that empties into Roosevelt Lake, they still have no idea how much a cleanup will cost…………….
………….The tailings and abandoned mine shafts represent one small, local toll in the rush after the invention of the atom bomb to mine enough of the dense, weakly radioactive material to build thousands of warheads and fuel nuclear power plants. Other fallout from that boom in exploration locally before doctors understood fully the low-term effects of low-level radiation includes a raft of cancer cases among Navajo miners.
The Payson Roundup / Old radioactive mine tailings pose slow-motion threat
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radiation, uranium
Medical isotopes the likely cause of radiation in Ottawa waste
Medical isotopes the likely cause of radiation in Ottawa waste, CBC Canada February 4, 2009
The sludge that was recently quarantined near the Canadian border tested positive for radiation because of the presence of a medical isotope, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
The biosolids, which were being transported from the Robert O. Pickard Environmental Centre in Ottawa for disposal in New York State, were turned away at the border last Thursday because the truckloads had registered low levels of radiation.
Since then, the sludge has been stored at Third High Farms, a waste storage facility Iroquois, Ont., and consultants have been called in to investigate.
The culprit appears to be the isotope iodine 131.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has said the isotope, which is used for medial procedures, is most likely the source of the radiation detected in the sludge.
The commission also said that the presence of medical isotopes in sludge is not unusual.
Medical isotopes the likely cause of radiation in Ottawa waste
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
None Dare Call It Treason
None Dare Call It Treason
Author * Morton S. Skorodin, M.D. Arkansas Indymedia 4 Feb 09 Politicians backed by powerful business interests have initiated a legislative assault to bring nuclear power back to Oklahoma. There are numerous reasons why this is a bad idea, some of which are discussed in this article. Oklahomans successfully fought off the attempt to build a nuclear reactor at Black Fox a generation ago. We will fight it again.This will, if the sponsor and his backers prevail, bring jobs and cancer to our state.
We’ve got a problem. We humans interpret the world and have survived by our five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. They have served us well; they guide our behavior, and this is all obvious as we look around.During the twentieth century and beyond, we have seen new things and new types of events, in defiance of the old saying: “There is nothing new under the sun.” Most important was the development of man made nuclear radiation.
We haven’t had hundreds or thousands of years to adapt to this new and insanely dangerous phenomenon. We can not see, hear, feel, smell or taste nuclear radiation.
The danger of nuclear power is as great as our ability to perceive it is small………………………………..To compound this problem, many facts about nuclear power and nuclear munitions are not widely known. Additionally, many problems and potential problems have not been made public.
Remember, it is a business. It is the legally binding responsibility of top management of all firms involved in this business to make as much money as possible. Ugly facts would get in the way of this Prime Directive. Thus the impulse to hide unpleasant information is overwhelming. Monkey see no evil, hear no evil, tell no evil.
We, the people, have to do the heavy digging. We have no other choice. Like a putrid abscess this abomination must be eliminated by exposure to fresh air and sunlight………………………………………..There appears to be more public awareness of the dangers of non-radioactive chemical pollutants than of the radioactive and it is evident that more than one factor goes to making cancer. What serious investigators fear is that radiation (nuclear) pollution interacts with chemical poisons to magnify the problem. By itself, Uranium interacts with the body’s estrogen hormone system, disrupting it as do a number of other pollutants. It can do its dirty work even if present at tiny amounts- amounts lower than current federal EPA standards for this poison.
Arkansas IMC: None Dare Call It Treason
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
CQ Politics | Gore Calls for Quick Action on Greenhouse Gas Emission Limits
Gore Calls for Quick Action on Greenhouse Gas Emission Limits CQ Politics By Avery Palmer, 29 Jan 09 ormer Vice President Al Gore told senators Wednesday he was skeptical of the roles nuclear power or advanced coal technology could play in addressing global warming.Gore’s remarks may put him at odds with lawmakers in both parties who want to provide incentives for traditional sources of energy, such as coal and nuclear, in future climate-change legislation………………….he said, Congress should consider ways to provide full employment to coal industry workers whose jobs are displaced. “We must not have any more conventional, dirty coal plants that do not capture and sequester [carbon dioxide],” he said………………………..He said the most promising future sources of energy would be renewable technologies such as wind turbines, or concentrated solar plants that use mirrors to reflect sunlight in the desert…………………………..
“Our home — Earth — is in grave danger,” Gore said. “What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.”
At the same time, he sought to dispel claims that it was too hard to deal with global warming and the economy at the same time. “In fact, the solutions to the climate crisis are the very same solutions that will address our economic and national security crises as well.”
CQ Politics | Gore Calls for Quick Action on Greenhouse Gas Emission Limits
As Europe fiddles, US may take lead on climate change – On Line Opinion – 19/1/2009
As Europe fiddles, US may take lead on climate change
ON LONE Opinion By Fred Pearce – 19 January 2009Is global climate leadership about to pass from Europe to the United States? It seems so. And Barack Obama’s plans to rejoin international climate negotiations, green American energy policy, and build an electricity super-grid to bring renewable energy out of the West could be a planet-saver.Europe’s leadership on fighting climate change seemed unassailable until just a few months ago. It had grabbed that position more than a decade ago, when Germany’s then environment minister, a former East German chemist named Angela Merkel, negotiated the groundwork for the Kyoto Protocol in Berlin in 1995. Two years later, Europe basically pushed Bill Clinton to send Al Gore to Kyoto to sign up to the first emissions targets – which were never ratified by the US Senate and subsequently repudiated by George W Bush………………………………striking are the green energy entrepreneurs tooling up in California. “If Barack Obama wins,” David Mills, the bicycling-mad boss of solar energy pioneers Ausra in Palo Alto, told me, “then it’s going to be boom time here”. He was cheering even louder with the news of Chu’s appointment.
Mills and Ausra are in the vanguard of what many believe will become the critical renewable technology for America – solar thermal energy. Unlike photovoltaics, which convert solar heat directly into electricity, solar thermal concentrates solar energy using mirrors to heat water, which is then used to drive conventional steam turbines. One of the advantages of solar thermal is that it allows the energy to be stored for when it is needed, in the form of hot water.
Mills, a Canadian, developed his system in Australia. But a couple of years ago, frustrated by government indifference there, he shipped out Solargenix to California……………………………
This is not just about the United States. The technology that drives America usually ends up driving the world. If Obama goes for a smart super-grid, you can almost guarantee that Merkel and her fellow Europeans will suddenly get more enthusiastic about a super-grid scheme quietly being promoted there to hook up to solar energy from the Sahara desert. A grander version would also tap geothermal energy from Iceland, hydropower from Scandinavia, and wind power from the North Sea.
And China? Whisper it quietly, but China is already the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines. Any industrialist sitting in China and watching the U.S. government open its wallet to rebuild the country’s energy infrastructure will be thinking contracts, contracts, contracts. China will want to manufacture the wind turbines and solar panels and superconducting cables.
As Europe fiddles, US may take lead on climate change – On Line Opinion – 19/1/2009
Radioactive Medical Devices Could be Used to Make Dirty Bombs
Radioactive Medical Devices Could be Used to Make Dirty Bombs January 15, 2009 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer (NaturalNews) The radioactive devices used in medical centers across the country could pose an attractive target for terrorists seeking to make dirty bombs, according to a report by a panel of the U.S. National Research council.
In a report commissioned by Congress, the council suggests phasing out the 5,000 most radioactive medical devices in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the 1,300 radionuclide devices that use radioactive cesium chloride.
Cesium chloride contains the high-activity radionuclide cesium-137.
“We think it is possible to get rid of most of the 5,000 high-activity radiation devices over the next 10 to 20 years if there was a national policy to encourage it,” panel chair Theodore L. Phillips said.
These 5,000 devices, using eight different radionuclides, account for 99 percent of the highest security risk radioactivity sources in the United States, the report concluded. Of these eight radionuclides, the one of most concern is cesium-137 in the form of cesium chloride.The report recommends that the federal government stop licensing, importing or exporting new cesium chloride irradiators, and that it provide incentives for older devices to be phased out.
Radioactive Medical Devices Could be Used to Make Dirty Bombs
Press TV – Environment and human life under attack
Environment and human life under attack
Press TV Tue, 13 Jan 2009
By Mahmood Perviz Alam “………………………Nuclear weapons leave a legacy of their own. Environmental problems from the Chernobyl incident are still being uncovered. A nuclear explosion is followed by radiation with a chain of innumerable consequences. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are examples of this tragedy. The health threats brought about by the war in Iraq — and more recently, what is happening in the Gaza Strip — can be better understood when we focus on the statement of Norwegian doctors who found traces of depleted uranium in the wounded. Catastrophes keep on unfolding because budget allocations are made to keep the muscles of the war machine strong and impressive………………………”.
Press TV – Environment and human life under attack
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Old tooth study revived to look at radiation effects
Old tooth study revived to look at radiation effects
Baltimore Sun January 12, 2009 – “……………….Fifty years ago, concern about atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons spurred a group of local scientists and other area residents to begin the project, then called the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey.An early apparent link between fallout and health problems was established by the study. But now, more than 40 years later, the study is resuming. Researchers now hope to find links between fallout and instances of cancer in children born in the 1950s and early 1960s…………….
…………….The scientist, Joseph Mangano, is executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. He said in a telephone interview that his research group has had possession of 85,000 donated baby teeth since 2001 but lacked the money until recently to begin a full study of the cancer risk posed by nuclear tests.
Old tooth study revived to look at radiation effects — baltimoresun.com
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
H-bomb ‘guinea pigs’ claim compensation
H-BOMB ‘GUINEA PIGS’ CLAIM COMPENSATION
DAILY EXPRESS January 12,2009
By John Ingham NUCLEAR test veterans will this month launch their case for compensation, claiming they were used as guinea pigs. About 22,000 British servicemen from attended H-bomb tests in Australia and the South Pacific between 1952 and 1958.
Every other country that had servicemen at the tests has provided them with help.
Campaigners say many British veterans died young, had diseases like cancer or saw their wives suffer miscarriages or give birth to deformed children. Next week lawyers representing 1,000 survivors and their widows will launch an action for compensation which could cost the Ministry of Defence millions.
Veterans accuse the MoD of stalling, knowing the longer the process goes on the fewer will be left alive.
Daily Express | UK News :: H-bomb ‘guinea pigs’ claim compensation
Climate refugees – the hidden cost of climate change
Climate refugees – the hidden cost of climate change
BY GREEN LEFT ONLINESolomon Times Online January 13, 2009 By Margarita Windisch (Green Left Weekly) 3 December 2008 – The culturally diverse 7 million Pacific Islanders live in 22 nations. They only contribute 0.06 percent to global greenhouse gas emissions but are three times more vulnerable to climate change than countries of the global North, according to the IPCC.
“If these people can spend millions and millions on sending troops to fight other countries, why can’t they spend maybe a couple of billions just to save people, like ourselves; the marginalised, poorest of the poor. Why? Because we are taking the brunt, we are the victims of these green[house] gas emissions, the pollution made by industrialised countries.”
These words were spoken by a Carteret Islander in an unfinished documentary, The First Wave, the evacuation of the Carteret Islands. For the inhabitants of Pacific and Indian Ocean island nations, such as the Carteret Islands, climate change is already a devastating reality.
……………………….The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report identifies small islands, including those in the South Pacific, as one of the key global regions to be most affected by climate change.The IPCC report predicts an estimated 150 million environmental refugees worldwide by the middle of this century, citing coastal flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural degradation as major factors.
The culturally diverse 7 million Pacific Islanders live in 22 nations. They only contribute 0.06% to global greenhouse gas emissions but are three times more vulnerable to climate change than countries of the global North, according to the IPCC.
Climate refugees – the hidden cost of climate change | Regional | Solomon Islands News
Depleted uranium found in Gaza victims
Depleted uranium found in Gaza victims
Global research 9 Jan 09 “………..Norwegian medics told Press TV correspondent Akram al-Sattari that some of the victims who have been wounded since Israel began its attacks on the Gaza Strip on December 27 have traces of depleted uranium in their bodies.The report comes after Israeli tanks and troops swept across the border into Gaza on Saturday night, opening a ground operation after eight days of intensive attacks by Israeli air and naval forces on the impoverished region.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Sunday that the wide-ranging ground offensive in the Gaza Strip would be “full of surprises.”
Depleted uranium found in Gaza victims
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive
Radiologists see overuse of patient scans; specialists see turf battle
Radiologists see overuse of patient scans; specialists see turf battle
Stesman.com 9 Jan 09 Lawmakers expected to be asked to referee dispute between radiologists and other doctors investing in own scanning equipment.By Mary Ann RoserAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFFThursday, January 08, 2009Are you being overexposed?Some Texas radiologists — the doctors who use scans such as CT and MRI to see inside the body — say yes. And they want the Legislature to consider regulating who can scan, where the scanning is done and who reads the tests.Once lawmakers convene for a new session Tuesday, radiologists plan to ask them to order a study of who owns scanning equipment, hoping to curb what they say is a growing problem: a rising number of scans being done by specialists who are not radiologists but who own advanced imaging equipment.
They say this is a conflict of interest that is driving up health care costs and exposing some patients to unnecessary radiation………..
……………….At issue is the use of CT, or computed tomography, and MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, both of which scan organs inside the body, and PET, or positron emission tomography, which uses a radioactive substance to show the functioning of organs and tissues. With a CT scan, patients are exposed to 100 times more radiation than with a standard X-ray, Perkins said. MRI does not use radiation…………
…….A November 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine said…..
….with rising CT use about 1.5 percent to 2 percent of all cancers could be attributed to CT scans in future decades, based on scans received today, the study said. CT scans increased from 3 million in 1980 to 62 million per year in the mid-2000s.
Radiologists see overuse of patient scans; specialists see turf battle
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive
Head-to-toe executive physicals get their own checkup
Head-to-toe executive physicals get their own checkup
Quality health care or snake oil for VIPs? The Montreal Gazette By EVRA TAYLOR LEVY & EDDY LANGDecember 30, 2008 – “……………………Executive physicals that include total body CT scans – which have no proven benefit but subject patients to a significant dose of radiation – may, several years down the road, increase the risk of the very cancers that the test was trying to detect.
Head-to-toe executive physicals get their own checkup
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Chromosomal changes seen in long-term airline pilots | Health | Reuters
Chromosomal changes seen in long-term airline pilots
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) 19 Dec 08 – New research suggests that airline pilots with long-term flying experience may be exposed to higher than average levels of radiation, resulting in more chromosomal translocations than usually seen.Further studies with longer follow-up and more subjects, however, will be needed to determine if these pilots are at increased risk for cancer, according to the report in the online issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.Chromosomal translocations occur when a chromosome fragment breaks off and attaches to another. This can lead to a range of medical problems, such as leukemia, breast cancer, schizophrenia or muscular dystrophy, depending on were the fragments reattach.”Airline pilots are exposed to cosmic ionizing radiation, but few flight crew studies have examined translocations in relation to flight experience,” Dr. Lee C. Yong, from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, Ohio, and colleagues explain.The research team therefore looked for chromosome translocations in the blood cells of 50 airline pilots and from 50 comparison subjects……………………..among pilots, the frequency of translocations was directly related to flight years. For each 1-year increase in flight years, the likelihood of a translocation rose by 6 percent.
Relative to pilots in the lowest quartile of flight years, those in the highest quartile were 2.59-times more likely to have chromosomal translocations, the report indicates.
Chromosomal changes seen in long-term airline pilots | Health | Reuters
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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