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2 December 2013
An Open Letter On Renewing Hope, for the Future:
Divest From the Nuclear Power Industry
by David Ratcliffe
Supporting Documentation
Consider the following observations concerning the bottom-line
consequences our species must confront and deal with if we are to not
condemn the future of all life on Earth to increasing generation—for
thousands of human generations—of cancer, leukemia, genetic mutations,
inherited afflictions,
genomic instability, birth
defects, malformations and abortions at concentrations of man-made
long-lived radionuclides almost below human recognition and
comprehension. When we are dealing with such impossible-to-grasp
time spans as those manifesting in the radioactive trash being
generated from nuclear power plant operations, in the human time
scale we are essentially talking about forever.
“They [citing 3 other studies] leave, we believe, no escape from the
conclusion that there is no threshold dose [of irradiation from X, gamma,
or beta -rays], and that the individual mutations result from individual
‘hits’, producing genetic effects in their immediate
neighborhood....
“[T]he great majority of mutations being undesirable, ... their further
random production in ourselves should so far as possible be rigorously
avoided....
“[W]ith the coming increasing use of atomic energy, even for peace-time
purposes, the problem will become very important of insuring that the
human germ plasm — the all-important material of which we are the
temporary custodians — is effectively protected from this additional
and potent source of permanent contamination.”
“[With nuclear power w]e are taking responsibility for 100,000
years for our descendants. We cannot escape from the fact
already.”
“[When humans] turn a nuclear power plant on, there is no off
switch. The heat [from the spent fuel rods] remains for 10 years
and the radiation remains for 100,000 years. So you can’t change
your mind. Throwing that switch on is a 100,000 year commitment.
There is no off switch with nuclear power.”
“[M]ost people have no understanding of the intensity of the
radioactivity created in the core of the reactor during normal
operation.... the uranium that goes in is not nearly as
radioactive as the stuff that comes out. The stuff that comes
out is millions of times more radioactive than what goes in. And
the reason for that is because the uranium atoms are split and it
is all those broken pieces of uranium atoms which are so
intensely radioactive, ... when you hear words like cesium-137
and so on, those are little broken pieces of
uranium atoms.
And that is the stuff
that
is going into the ocean at Fukushima and
that is the stuff that would happen here in Canada or in the
States.”
“[I]onizing radiation is not like a poison out of a bottle where
you can dilute it and dilute it. The lowest dose of ionizing
radiation is one nuclear track through one cell. You can’t have a
fraction of a dose of that sort. Either a track goes through the
nucleus and affects it, or it doesn’t. So I said ‘What evidence
do we have concerning one, or two or three or four or six or 10
tracks?’ And I came up with
nine studies of cancer being produced
where we’re dealing with up to maybe eight or 10 tracks per cell.
Four involved breast cancer. With those studies, as far as I’m
concerned, it’s not a question of ‘We don’t
know.’ The DOE has never refuted this evidence. They just
ignore it, because it’s inconvenient. We can now [in 1994] say,
there
cannot be a safe dose of radiation. There is no safe threshold. If
this truth is known, then any permitted radiation is a permit to commit
murder.”
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Dr. John Gofman, Ph.D. in
nuclear/physical chemistry and a medical degree, worked in the
Manhattan Project, co-discovered protactinium-232, uranium-232,
protactinium-233, and uranium-233, proved the slow and fast neutron
fissionability of uranium-233, co-inventor of uranyl acetate and
columbium oxide processes for plutonium separation, received several
medical awards for pioneering work on the chemistry of lipoproteins
and their relationship with heart disease (Modern Medicine Award, 1954;
American Heart Association’s Lyman Duff Lectureship Award, 1965;
Stouffer Prize (shared) for outstanding contributions to research in
arteriosclerosis, 1972; American College of Cardiology, 1974,
selected as one of twenty-five leading researchers in cardiology of
the past quarter-century), Founder and first Director, Biomedical
Research Division of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory,
Chairman, Committee for Nuclear
Responsibility, Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology,
UC Berkeley, Right Livelihood Award, 1992,
‘for his pioneering work in exposing the health
effects of low-level radiation’, author of more than one
hundred scientific papers in peer-review journals in the fields of
nuclear / physical chemistry, coronary heart disease, ultracentrifugal
analysis of the serum lipoproteins, the relationship of human
chromosomes to cancer, and the biological effects of radiation, with
especial reference to causation of cancer and hereditary injury as
well as seven books,
Poisoned Power, The Case Against Nuclear Power
Plants Before and After Three Mile Island (1971, updated in 1979),
Radiation And Human Health (1981),
X-Rays: Health Effects of Common
Exams (with Egan O’Connor, 1985).
Radiation-Induced Cancer From Low-Dose
Exposure: A Independent Analysis (1990),
Chernobyl
Accident: Radiation Consequences for This and Future
Generations (in Russian, 1994),
Preventing Breast Cancer: The Story Of A Major,
Proven, Preventable Cause Of This Disease (1996),
Radiation from Medical Procedures in the
Pathogenesis of Cancer and Ischemic Heart Disease:
Dose-Response Studies with Physicians per 100,000 Population (1999);
“Gofman on the health effects of
radiation: ‘There is no safe threshold’,” synapse,
January 1994
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Just One Part in a Thousand ?
“It may sound like a trifle to put only one part per thousand of a poison
into the environment, but we will show what one part per thousand means with
respect to radioactive cesium.
“The cesium-137 produced each year by a 1000-megawatt (electrical) nuclear
power plant amounts to nearly 4 million curies. Since its radioactive
half-life is 30.2 years, very little of it decays during a year.
“The Chernobyl reactor contained a two-year cesium-inventory of about 8
million curies. Recent estimates are that the Chernobyl reactor released
about 2.5 million curies of cesium-137, which is equivalent to (2.5 / 4.0)
or 62.5 % of a ONE-year inventory.
“Now let us consider 100 large nuclear power plants each operating in the
USA for a lifespan of about 25 years each. Call "A" the yearly cesium-137
production by one plant. Then 100A = the yearly production by 100 plants.
Lifetime production = 25 yrs x 100A/year = 2,500A. 99.9 % containment =
release of 1 part per 1,000. With 99.9 % perfect containment, loss = 2.5A.
Chernobyl lost 0.625A. The ratio of 2.5A and 0.625A is 4.0.
“This ratio, 4, has an enormous meaning. It means that achieving 99.9 %
PERFECT containment of the cesium-137 produced by 100 plants during 25 years
of operation, through all steps of the cesium’s handling up through final
burial, would STILL result in cesium-137 contamination equivalent in curies
to 4 Chernobyl accidents.
“Worldwide, there are about 400 plants underway, so the same scenario
(99.9 % perfection in containing cesium) would mean cesium-loss equivalent
to 16 Chernobyl accidents per 25 years of operation. And this assault on
human health could occur without blowing the roof off any single plant.”
“Many people think nuclear power is so complicated it requires
discussion at a high level of technicality. That’s pure nonsense.
Because the issue is simple and straightforward.
“There are only two things about nuclear power that you need to
know. One, why do you want nuclear power? So you can boil water.
That’s all it does. It boils water. And any way of boiling water
will give you steam to turn turbines. That’s the useful part.
“The other thing to know is, it creates a mountain of radioactivity,
and I mean a mountain: astronomical quantities of strontium-90
and cesium-137 and plutonium — toxic substances that will
last — strontium-90 and cesium for 300 to 600 years, plutonium for
250,000 to 500,000 years — and still be deadly toxic. And the
whole thing about nuclear power is this simple: can you or can’t you
keep it all contained? If you can’t, then you’re creating a human
disaster....
“So I find nuclear power this simple: do you believe they’re going
to do the miracle of containment that they predict? The answer is
they’re not going to accomplish it. It’s outside the realm of
human prospects.
“You don’t need to discuss each valve and each transportation cask
and each burial site. The point is, if you lose a little bit of
it — a terribly little bit of it — you’re going to
contaminate the earth, and people are going to suffer for
thousands of generations. You have two choices: either you
believe that engineers are going to achieve a perfection that’s
never been achieved, and you go ahead; or you believe with common
sense that such a containment is never going to be achieved, and
you give it up.
“If people really understood how simple a problem it is — that
they’ve got to accomplish a miracle — no puffs like Three
Mile Island — can’t afford those puffs of radioactivity, or
the squirts and the spills that they always tell you won’t harm
the public — if people understood that, they’d say, ‘This is
ridiculous. You don’t create this astronomical quantity of
garbage and pray that somehow a miracle will happen to contain
it. You just don’t do such stupid things!’
“Licensing a nuclear power plant is in my view, licensing random
premeditated murder. First of all, when you license a plant, you
know what you’re doing — so it’s premeditated. You
can’t say, ‘I didn’t know.’ Second, the evidence
on radiation-producing cancer is beyond doubt. I’ve worked fifteen
years on it [as of 1982], and so have many others. It is not a question
any more: radiation produces cancer, and the evidence is good all the way down to the
lowest doses.”
“Long-lived radionuclides, such as cesium-137, are something new to
us as a species. They did not exist on Earth, in any appreciable
quantities, during the entire evolution of complex life. Although
they are invisible to our senses, they are millions of times more
poisonous than most of the common poisons we are familiar with. They
cause cancer, leukemia, genetic mutations, birth defects,
malformations and abortions at concentrations almost below human
recognition and comprehension. They are lethal at the
atomic or molecular level.
“They emit radiation, invisible forms of matter and energy that we
might compare to fire, because radiation burns and destroys human
tissue. But unlike the fire of fossil fuels, the nuclear fire that
issues forth from radioactive elements cannot be extinguished. It
is not a fire that can be scattered or suffocated, because it burns
at the atomic level – it comes from the disintegration of
single atoms.”
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Steven Starr,
Clinical
Laboratory Science Program, University of Missouri,
Senior
Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility;
“The Implications of Massive
Radiation Contamination of Japan with Radioactive Cesium,”
Helen Caldicott Foundation Symposium,
“The
Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear
Accident,”
Co-Sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, March 11 and 12, 2013
See Also:
“Costs
and Consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi Disaster,” Steven Starr,
PSR - Environmental Health Policy Institute, October 31, 2012;
Steven Starr maintains a web site on the long-term environmental consequences
of nuclear war: Nuclear Darkness,
Global Climate Change & Nuclear Famine
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