[Reader-list] After Fukushima - Enough Is Enough - Helen Caldicott

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Date: 3 December 2011
Subject: After Fukushima - Enough Is Enough - NYTimes



After Fukushima - Enough Is Enough -
NYTimes.com<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/opinion/magazine-global-agenda-enough-is-enough.html>



IHT Magazine | Global Agenda 2012 | Energy After Fukushima: Enough Is Enough
Leandro Lima
 By HELEN CALDICOTT Published: December 2, 2011


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The nuclear power industry has been resurrected over the past decade by a
lobbying campaign that has left many people believing it to be a clean,
green, emission-free alternative to fossil fuels. These beliefs pose an
extraordinary threat to global public health and encourage a major
financial drain on national economies and taxpayers. The commitment to
nuclear power as an environmentally safe energy source has also stifled the
mass development of alternative technologies that are far cheaper, safer
and almost emission free — the future for global energy.

When the Fukushima Daiichi reactors suffered meltdowns in March, literally
in the backyard of an unsuspecting public, the stark reality that the risks
of nuclear power far outweigh any benefits should have become clear to the
world. As the old quip states, “Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil
water.”

Instead, the nuclear industry has used the disaster to increase its already
extensive lobbying efforts. A few nations vowed to phase out nuclear energy
after the disaster. But many others have remained steadfast in their
commitment. That has left millions of innocent people unaware that they —
all of us — may face a medical catastrophe beyond all proportions in the
wake of Fukushima and through the continued widespread use of nuclear
energy.

The world was warned of the dangers of nuclear accidents 25 years ago, when
Chernobyl exploded and lofted radioactive poisons into the atmosphere.
Those poisons “rained out,” creating hot spots over the Northern
Hemisphere. Research by scientists in Eastern Europe, collected and
published by the New York Academy of Sciences, estimates that 40 percent of
the European land mass is now contaminated with cesium 137 and other
radioactive poisons that will concentrate in food for hundreds to thousands
of years. Wide areas of Asia — from Turkey to China — the United Arab
Emirates, North Africa and North America are also contaminated. Nearly 200
million people remain exposed.

That research estimated that by now close to 1 million people have died of
causes linked to the Chernobyl disaster. They perished from cancers,
congenital deformities, immune deficiencies, infections, cardiovascular
diseases, endocrine abnormalities and radiation-induced factors that
increased infant mortality. Studies in Belarus found that in 2000, 14 years
after the Chernobyl disaster, fewer than 20 percent of children were
considered “practically healthy,” compared to 90 percent before Chernobyl.
Now, Fukushima has been called the second-worst nuclear disaster after
Chernobyl. Much is still uncertain about the long-term consequences.
Fukushima may well be on par with or even far exceed Chernobyl in terms of
the effects on public health, as new information becomes available. The
crisis is ongoing; the plant remains unstable and radiation emissions
continue into the air and water.

Recent monitoring by citizens groups, international organizations and the
U.S. government have found dangerous hot spots in Tokyo and other areas.
The Japanese government, meanwhile, in late September lifted evacuation
advisories for some areas near the damaged plant — even though high levels
of radiation remained. The government estimated that it will spend at least
$13 billion to clean up contamination.

Many thousands of people continue to inhabit areas that are highly
contaminated, particularly northwest of Fukushima. Radioactive elements
have been deposited throughout northern Japan, found in tap water in Tokyo
and concentrated in tea, beef, rice and other food. In one of the few
studies on human contamination in the months following the accident, over
half of the more than 1,000 children whose thyroids were monitored in
Fukushima City were found to be contaminated with iodine 131 — condemning
many to thyroid cancer years from now.

Children are innately sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation,
fetuses even more so. Like Chernobyl, the accident at Fukushima is of
global proportions. Unusual levels of radiation have been discovered in
British Columbia, along the West Coast and East Coast of the United States
and in Europe, and heavy contamination has been found in oceanic waters.

Fukushima is classified as a grade 7 accident on the International Atomic
Energy Agency scale — denoting “widespread health and environmental
effects.” That is the same severity as Chernobyl, the only other grade 7
accident in history, but there is no higher number on the agency’s scale.

After the accident, lobbying groups touted improved safety at nuclear
installations globally. In Japan, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. — which
operates the Fukushima Daiichi reactors — and the government have sought to
control the reporting of negative stories via telecom companies and
Internet service providers.

In Britain, The Guardian reported that days after the tsunami, companies
with interests in nuclear power — Areva, EDF Energy and Westinghouse —
worked with the government to downplay the accident, fearing setbacks on
plans for new nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power has always been the nefarious Trojan horse for the weapons
industry, and effective publicity campaigns are a hallmark of both
industries. The concept of nuclear electricity was conceived in the early
1950s as a way to make the public more comfortable with the U.S.
development of nuclear weapons. “The atomic bomb will be accepted far more
readily if at the same time atomic energy is being used for constructive
ends,” a consultant to the Defense Department Psychological Strategy Board,
Stefan Possony, suggested. The phrase “Atoms for Peace” was popularized by
President Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950s.

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are one and the same technology. A 1,000
megawatt nuclear reactor generates 600 pounds or so of plutonium per year:
An atomic bomb requires a fraction of that amount for fuel, and plutonium
remains radioactive for 250,000 years. Therefore every country with a
nuclear power plant also has a bomb factory with unlimited potential.The
nuclear power industry sets an unforgivable precedent by exporting nuclear
technology — bomb factories — to dozens of non-nuclear nations.

Why is nuclear power still viable, after we’ve witnessed catastrophic
accidents, enormous financial outlays, weapons proliferation and
nuclear-waste induced epidemics of cancers and genetic disease for
generations to come? Simply put, many government and other officials
believe the nuclear industry mantra: safe, clean and green. And the public
is not educated on the issue.

There are some signs of change. Germany will phase out nuclear power by
2022. Italy and Switzerland have decided against it, and anti-nuclear
advocates in Japan have gained traction. China remains cautious on nuclear
power. Yet the nuclear enthusiasm of the U.S., Britain, Russia and Canada
continues unabated. The industry, meanwhile, has promoted new modular and
“advanced” reactors as better alternatives to traditional reactors. They
are, however, subject to the very same risks — accidents, terrorist
attacks, human error — as the traditional reactors. Many also create
fissile material for bombs as well as the legacy of radioactive waste.

True green, clean, nearly emission-free solutions exist for providing
energy. They lie in a combination of conservation and renewable energy
sources, mainly wind, solar and geothermal, hydropower plants, and biomass
from algae. A smart-grid could integrate consuming and producing devices,
allowing flexible operation of household appliances. The problem of
intermittent power can be solved by storing energy using available
technologies.

Millions of jobs can be created by replacing nuclear power with nationally
integrated, renewable energy systems. In the U.S. alone, the project could
be paid for by the $180 billion currently allocated for nuclear weapons
programs over the next decade. There would be no need for new weapons if
the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals — 95 percent of the estimated 20,500
nuclear weapons globally — were abolished.

Nuclear advocates often paint those who oppose them as Luddites who are
afraid of, or don’t understand, technology, or as hysterics who exaggerate
the dangers of nuclear power.

One might recall the sustained attack over many decades by the tobacco
industry upon the medical profession, a profession that revealed the grave
health dangers induced by smoking.

Smoking, broadly speaking, only kills the smoker. Nuclear power bequeaths
morbidity and mortality — epidemics of disease — to all future generations.

The millions of lives lost to smoking in the era before the health risks of
cigarettes were widely exposed will be minuscule compared to the medical
catastrophe we face through the continued use of nuclear power.

Let’s use this extraordinary moment to convince governments and others to
move toward a nuclear-free world.Let’s prove that informed democracies will
behave in a responsible fashion.

 Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician, is founding president of Physicians for
Social Responsibility. A native of Australia, she left her Harvard Medical
School post in 1980 to work full-time on anti-nuclear education.