Thorium Dream Factory

 The Thorium “Dream Factory”[1]

 

When nuclear power was sold to a reluctant public in the 1950s, it was “safe, clean, cheap, dependable and virtually inexhaustible”. It took a few decades or longer for people to realize that these were lies. It staggers the mind that otherwise reasonable people are now falling for the same claim being made for another generation of nuclear reactors. The fact is, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true. 

 

Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it.  Some of us are old enough to remember when Atomic Energy of Canada pursued this technology aggressively in the 1970's only to abandon it when the risk of nuclear weapons became evident.  One very small thorium reactor operated for five years in the 1960's at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  There is some media buzz about the development of thorium reactors in India and China but none have yet been built.  The technology to bump energy production from the 15 KW of Oak Ridge to something suitable for commercial use is just not there.  Even the industry admits that were it to invest in developing the technology, it would be 30 to 40 years before large-scale energy production would happen.

 

The Theory:  Thorium, Th-232, is lighter than uranium and about four times more widespread in nature.  India has quite a bit of it.  Its decay[2] is rapid with less high-level waste (defined as waste with lots of short-acting gamma emitters).  A thorium reactor would act as a waste disposal unit for plutonium (Pu) and produce uranium-233 for its own use all the while boiling water to produce steam to turn turbines for the production of electricity.  Furthermore, if such a reactor used a particle accelerator to fire neutrons at thorium to keep the reaction going, it could theoretically be shut down quickly simply by turning off the neutron beam.  

 

Safety?  Thorium doesn't naturally fission. Thorium is not even the actual fuel in the reactor. Thorium-232 has to be turned into uranium-233 by absorbing a neutron either fired at it by a linear accelerator or from the plutonium or uranium-235 mixed with the thorium. To  refer to thorium-232 as a fuel is misleading. In fact, the plutonium or uranium used to get the thorium started needs to be “weapons grade”. In the formation of uranium-233, U-232 also gets formed. This is an intense gamma emitter and definitely not safe.

 

A thorium reactor would typically use a molten salt (either referred to as MSR or as hybrid LFTR) in place of conventional solid fuel design.  This makes a meltdown accident impossible.  However, the high temperatures required to maintain the salt both in a molten state and in continuous flow also makes it extremely corrosive; although there are elegant ways to drain the salt away, no one knows how well it can be sufficiently contained.  

 

Clean?  This cycle is not clean.  It needs neutrons from another source to produce the fission cycle to get the process started.  Then it is run by using protons from the uranium-233. To keep it running, the uranium-233 needs to be continually stripped of the nasty U-232 and its fission products or the process clogs up.  Reprocessing, with acids and alkalis, produces large volumes of high-level liquid nuclear waste.

 

Recycle nuclear waste?  Conventional reactors have created over 200,000 tonnes of waste so it would be a dream come true if a reactor could truly recycle that waste.  However, there are actually only a few radioisotopes that can be “recycled”; they are the ones that produce neutrons. Hence the only wastes that can be recycled would be U-238 (“Depleted” Uranium), U-235 (conventional fuel still present in waste), Pu-239 and other “actinides” but these products would continue to perpetuate the “plutonium cycle”, not enter the “thorium cycle”.

 

Terrorist free?  If the reactor is “recycling” plutonium, it has to be transported to the reactor. This step by itself would require extensive security measures. The uranium-233 produced in the reactor is itself weapons-grade material. In 1955, it was used in a bomb that was part of the USA Operation Teapot.  What was done before can be done again.

 

Waste free?  This is a most bizarre claim. Of course, thorium reactors would produce waste. Uranium-232 has a highly toxic decay chain. It must be continually removed from the molten salt in order for the energy-producing reaction to continue; otherwise, the reactor just winds down by clogging up. Nuclear fission is ultimately uncontrollable no matter what kind of nuclear reactor is moderating it. Accurately predicting the products of splitting an atom cannot be done.

 

Cost?  One big argument against following this line of research is that it is still theoretical and would cost unbelievable sums of money to develop.  None of the main companies within the nuclear industry are particularly interested without huge government subsidies – something the nuclear industry has relied upon for the last seventy years. Since it shows no advantage over our current CANDU reactors, why would one pursue it?

 

Conclusion:  Thorium is not a source of sustainable or renewable energy.  Besides generating a list of false claims, a thorium reactor, if it existed, would be, like conventional nuclear power plants, unable to connect to the “smart grid” of the future.

 

“With uranium-based nuclear power continuing its decades-long economic collapse, its awfully late to be thinking of developing a whole new fuel cycle whose problems differ only in detail from current versions.”  Amory Lovins, March 2009.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1]   Courtesy Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (www.ccnr.org)

[2]  Often there is confusion about the products of decay and those of fission.  In decay, the product and the energy release during its production are always the same.  Each radioactive element has a decay sequence specific to themselves.  In fission, the nucleus is broken apart. There will be a host of products with varying amounts of energy. Humans cannot control decay; in nuclear power plants, the rate of fission is controlled but there is no control over the kinds or numbers of new elements formed. 

Using Position and Privilege

In “Does Shaming Have a Place in Public Health” (CMAJ, Feb 2021), Dr. Naheed Dosani is 

quoted as saying “it’s important for physicians to use their position and privilege to challenge

the “countercultural movement against science and evidence.”

It is long overdue for physicians to wade into the debate about nuclear power, especially with the recent promotion of a proliferation of small modular nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors routinely emit ionizing radiation. We, as a profession, have been quiet about it. 

We use radioactivity both diagnostically (x-rays, CT scans) and therapeutically (radiotherapy) and we walk the tightrope between damage and health. We routinely stand behind lead walls or use lead aprons in the vicinity of x-rays for our own or our patients’ safety.

But as a profession, we have had a careless past with the thoughtless overuse of radioactive imaging. We even may have used it when we didn’t know what else to do.

It took two researchers on two sides of the Atlantic to change that practice. In the 1950’s, both the UK and the USA were having “epidemics” of childhood leukaemia and had launched research teams. Dr. Alice Stewart was astounded to discover that leukaemia was doubled in children whose mother received x-rays in utero[i]. When the USA Tri-State Study came to the same conclusion a few years later, the practice of “pelvimetry” (measuring the size of the pelvis by the use of x-rays close to term) was brought to an end.

More recently, the routine use of CT scans on children with head injuries was challenged by research[ii]. A team in Montreal reviewed the health records of 80,000 patients receiving PET scans and found an increase of 3% cancers per 10 mSv exposure over the following five years[iii]. RISM (Radiation-induced Secondary Malignancies) has been acknowledged for decades among oncologistsfor an incidence of between 8 and 17%[iv]. 

It matters little if the ionizing radiation comes from an imaging machine in the form of x-rays or a nuclear reactor in the form of beta or alpha particles or gamma rays, the ionization of cellular proteins results in cellular damage.

During the 1950’s and 60’s, 528 bombs worldwide were tested in the atmosphere. Studies of thyroid cancers in the fallout zones in both the USA[v] and the Marshall Islands (where the USA conducted many of their tests) resulted eventually in a list of compensable illnesses[vi].

Fallout victims received doses of alpha and beta particles coming from the hundreds of broken bits of uranium, among them iodine-129, iodine-131, strontium-90, carbon-14, xenon-135.and caesium-137. 

The RERF (Radiation Effects Research Foundation) is conducting a lifetime study on the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For all its flaws, the study indicates that cancers increase at the same ages as you would expect to find them in non-affected people. This suggests that the recent “cancer epidemic” described by the American Cancer Society might be the effect of fallout over 50 years ago!

How is this connected to nuclear power? 

Nuclear power is neither clean nor green. The same radioisotopes that fall out of the sky from a nuclear bomb test are those which are intermittently but routinely released from nuclear power plants. The emissions are a health problem because the human body cannot distinguish between radioactive elements and non-radioactive elements. Routinely released tritium, radioactive hydrogen, can be incorporated into every cell of the body. Strontium-90 substitutes for calcium, caesium-137 for potassium, iodine 129 and 131 preferentially seek out the thyroid gland.

This was not the first time that the environmental and health effects of an industry have been ignored by the medical profession. It took decades before the profession supported Dr. Andrew Pipe’s call to put restrictions on the tobacco industry.

I’m old enough to recall the battle between the health care establishment and tobacco companies. Tobacco companies had parliamentarians and policy makers under their sway. Physicians, many of whom were addicted to tobacco, were complicit. The surgeons' lounge at Royal University Hospital, Saskatoon, was thick with cigarette smoke - so thick that we students scurried in for our coffee and stood drinking it in the hallway. The industry added filters to cigarettes, and increased advertising that equated cigarettes with individuality and freedom of choice. Smoking was healthy, safe and clean. They even marketed a so-called 'light' cigarette - a low tar cigarette[vii]. 

Like the tobacco industry then, the nuclear industry has compromised the medical profession. The industry has capitalized on our love of gadgetry, convincing many of us that nuclear medicine requires nuclear reactors when cyclotrons and accelerators are much more efficient and cost effective. 

The small modular nuclear reactor is equivalent to today’s 'low tar cigarette' of the nuclear industry. 

The Canadian Medical Association should take a strong stand on protecting health and the health of future generations by opposing the "light cigarette" of the nuclear industry. The CMA should take a strong position in opposition to nuclear power and promote clean-ups of existing radioactive waste sites. It should actively participate in the on-going process of decommissioning nuclear facilities. For far too long we've allowed the medical profession to be sidelined and our efforts on the behalf of the health of future generations to be minimized. We have the science and the evidence, so as Dr. Dosani says, we should be challenging the media spin and its pseudoscience on the topic of small modular nuclear reactors.

 

 

 

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[i] Alice stewar, J. W. Webb, and David Hewitt, “A Survey of Childhood Malignancies,” British Medical Journal

(28 June 1958): 1495 – 1508.

[ii] Pearce MS, Salotti JA, Little MP, et al. Radiation exposure from CT scans in childhood and subsequent risk of leukaemia and brain tumours: a retrospective cohort study. The Lancet, Early online publication: June 7, 2012. Available at: doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60815-0.

[iii] Eisenberg, Afilalo, Lawler, Abramahamowicz, Righar, Pilote, “Cancer Risk Related to Low-Dose ionizing Radiation from Cardia Imagine in Patients after Acute Myocardial Infarction,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 183 (March 8, 20110: 430-436.

[iv] China Dracham, Abhash Shankar, Renu Madan, “Radiation induced secondary malignancies: a revew article. Radiat Oncol J. 2018 Jun; 36(2): 85–94. Published online 2018 Jun 29. doi: 10.3857/roj.2018.00290

[v] Maps of fallout in the USA. Note the distinctive cut-off at the 49^th parallel https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&sxsrf=ALeKk02aqr8lf_6Sz2rx2gODbnbqRc3vnA:1615386601674&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=maps+of+radioactive+fallout+from+nuclear+bomb+testing&client=safari&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi068SE-KXvAhXDuZ4KHUYqD_gQjJkEegQIEBAB&biw=1120&bih=969#imgrc=0qnaZ_1Yx5gzDM

[vi] Marshallese islanders compensable damage: https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&sxsrf=ALeKk02aqr8lf_6Sz2rx2gODbnbqRc3vnA:1615386601674&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=maps+of+radioactive+fallout+from+nuclear+bomb+testing&client=safari&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi068SE-KXvAhXDuZ4KHUYqD_gQjJkEegQIEBAB&biw=1120&bih=969#imgrc=0qnaZ_1Yx5gzDM

[vii] See a collection of advertisements: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/493144227921441876/

Fraudulent At Birth: The history of nuclear power

  

I'm going to write a book with the title above. Maybe it won't get past this blog site but it's a start. I want a place to put the information that I'm learning. I want to share difficult concepts in a comprehensive form. This book catalogues my journey from true believer to strong critic. I was misled, I was taught a lie and I believed a lie. Not just one lie but many lies. Uncovering one lie after another, my conclusion is that the nuclear industry is completely fraudulent.

 

Nuclear power, the power of the atom, is fascinating. The centre of an atom is held together with unimaginable strength – when nucleus is cracked, like cracking an egg, the energy released can blow up a city or boil water for electricity. It can cause disease or it can heal.

 

However, it is not “clean, affordable and reliable[1].” The industry uses the media to say the same thing over and over again, so often that many people believe it. All polluting emissions are not carbon dioxide. There is really nothing about nuclear power that is reliable. Affordable? Westinghouse and Areva have gone bankrupt. 

 

What if the only reason that there are so many supporters of this nefarious industry is that it has marketed itself relentlessly? Like cigarette companies in the 70’s and 80’s, full page ads appear in the magazines. They look like bonafide articles until, with our reading glasses, we identify the small print in the corner that says “advertisement”. 

 

I’m angry, angry that I was so misled and angry that so many continue to be misled. I’m angry with my profession – with its inability to come to terms with a scourge upon humanity and with its willingness to subvert health of populations to the nuclear industry. I’m also angry with the nuclear industry which has knowingly and purposely misled parliamentarians and populations and lied, denied and misdirected researchers.

 

Physicians knew that ionizing radiation affected human health from the very beginning of humanity’s interaction with it:

- miners in Czech and their “rotten lungs”

- radiologists in the early 1900’s who used their hands to focus x-rays 

 - dentists and doctors that diagnosed the “radium girls”, the clock painters

- members of various International ionizing radiation protection associations

             

The same silence from physicians during atmospheric atomic testing continues in an environment where nuclear power plants emitting ionizing radiation (especially tritium). 

 

The industry knew that ionizing radiation was bad for human health:

- International Atomic Energy Agency lobbied to silence the World Health

 Organization on matters affecting human health – and won.

            - Fired researchers when their results didn’t comply with the industry’s sales model

Eg. Dr. John Gofman, Dr. Thomas Mancuso, Dr. Joseph Mangano, Dr. Sternglass, Dr. Steven Wing and then trivialized them or discredited their work.

            - Held international meetings on the health of Chernobyl victims behind closed doors. 

 

In 2009, I met one of the shills for the nuclear industry. He questioned me on my credentials in such a manner that I asked for his name. He coyly said that he was “just a concerned citizen”. Later I learned that he was the President of the Canadian Nuclear Association. 

 

The new President and CEO for the same CNA, a Mr. John Gorman, a long-time registered lobbyist has met with the government minister in charge with rolling out Canada’s energy plans, Mr. Seamus O’Regan, a recorded eight times. Which leads to the question of whether  Mr. O’Regan sought any opinion other than that of the industry's.

 

Many people feel that they have to leave the decisions about nuclear power to “specialists” to form an opinion on nuclear power. This is not so; a science or engineering degree is not required. All that is needed are two facts. 

 

Fact one:  Nuclear power is a means to boil water – that is all that it does. Like coal, it oils water and the steam turns the turbines which produce electricity. Anything that will turn turbines would work as well. 

 

Fact two: The waste lasts for a hundred thousand years. It isn’t just a little poisonous, like a cup of bleach on the counter, it is big time toxic – standing next to a waste fuel rod, a fuel rod that has been “used up” in the reactor, for less than twenty seconds would result in death. This is not science fiction or hyperbole. There have been deaths among people in the early history of nuclear research. Not only is the waste poisonous but everything that the fuel has “touched” during the burning process is also radioactive and toxic. There is no recycling.

 

Ionizing radiation[2] – the type of radiation produced by nuclear power plants – causes cancers, autoimmune disorders, teratogenic[3] alterations and genetic damage. The nuclear industry itself does not deny this. It is not under contention. The industry simply fudges the truth, and then states that there is a level below which ionizing radiation is not harmful. This is a lie, uncovered countless times most recently by the National Academy of Sciences in its BEIR VII (Biological Effects of Nuclear Radiation) documents of 2007. Like the cigarette industry before it, the nuclear industry has successfully mothballed scientific research and trivialized researchers. It has even jumped past the financial sector to the governmental goldmine. It is truly a fraudulent industry.

 

The more we learn about small modular reactors, the more we dislike them. The words “recycling” or “reprocessing" are usually associated with the environmental movement but in the case of nuclear waste, the words are "repurposed". After a highly delicate process of dissolving the waste uranium fuel in high-temperature liquid sodium (salt?), the plutonium is separated to be burned as fuel – making more waste. The liquid sodium is now radioactive. 

Meanwhile plutonium is in high demand for the manufacture of nuclear bombs. That the push for SMNRs coincides with the build-up of UK nuclear weapons and the refurbishment of those of the USA cannot be an accident. 

 

Hence, the story ends with the plutonium, the major link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons suicidal. There are many things that we should be doing with our money instead of proliferating plutonium and arming a second MAD race to the bottom.

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[1] Opening statement on the Canadian Nuclear Association website, 20.01.21

[2] The term “radiation” will be used throughout to mean this particular form of radiation, one that produces ions and oxidation products in molecules. The molecules might be in biological entities but also structural objects such as steel and concrete.

[3] Effects on the fetus during development.

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in urgent need of reform

 Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in urgent need of reform

There is an urgent need to reform the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and eliminate the agency’s strong tendency to prioritize industry needs over its primary mandate: protecting Canadians and the environment from radioactive hazards stemming from nuclear operations.

 

MPs tend to refer to the CNSC as a “world-class regulator,” just as Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan did in a recent keynote address that hyped the “SMR [Small Modular Nuclear Reactor] action plan for Canada.” MPs often respond to public concerns with assurances that the CNSC will look after things and base its decisions on science and

international best practices.

 

There is a jarring disconnect between such affirmative remarks by MPs and statements made in recent years about the CNSC by international peer reviewers, high-ranking Canadian officials and many others.

 

The International Atomic Energy Agency recently reviewed Canada’s nuclear safety framework. It identified numerous deficiencies including: not following IAEA guidance on nuclear reactor decommissioning, failure to justify practices involving radiation sources, inadequate management systems for transporting nuclear materials, and allowing pregnant nuclear workers four times higher radiation exposures than IAEA would permit.

 

In testimony before the House Standing Committee on Natural Resources, in November 2016, Canada’s Environment Commissioner said:

 

“the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission… was quite difficult to work with… I would say that the commission was aggressive with the auditors.”

 

In April 2017, the Expert Panel on reform of environmental assessment noted in its final report that it had heard many concerns about lack of independence at the CNSC:

 

“There were concerns that these Responsible Authorities (CNSC and NEB) promote the projects they are tasked with regulating…The term “regulatory capture” was often used when participants described their perceptions of these two entities.”

 

The nuclear industry publication, Nuclear Energy Insider, recently touted Canada’s “benign regulatory environment” as a reason for SMR developers to come to Canada to experiment with and promote “small”, “modular”, nuclear reactors.

 

A Globe and Mail article in November 2018, revealed that CNSC officials had engaged in backroom lobbying to exempt small modular nuclear reactors from environmental assessment. 

 

A June 2020 briefing session for MPs and media,“Sham regulation of radioactive waste in Canada,” by the Canadian Environmental Law Association and other NGOs, outlined several ways in which the CNSC was creating “pseudo regulations” to benefit the nuclear industry and enable substandard nuclear waste facilities to receive approval and licensing.

 

An email sent by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on March 30, 2017, confirmed that the CNSC Commissioners had never refused to grant a license during the agency’s (then)17-year history.

 

A recent petition to the Auditor General entitled “Nuclear governance problems in Canada” noted that the CNSC has a mandate to protect health but lacks a health division.  A review of CNSC’s organizational chart reveals that the word health does not appear on it.

 

In November 2009, hundreds of workers at Ontario Power Generation’s Bruce nuclear plant breathed in plutonium dust (a by-product of nuclear-energy production) but the plutonium remained undetected for weeks. Many of the workers had not been given respirators. We believe it may have been the largest preventable exposure of workers to internal radioactive contamination in the history of the civilian nuclear industry. To our knowledge, no one was disciplined or held accountable for this incident.

 

In our opinion, based on many years of experience intervening at licensing hearings of the CNSC and its predecessor the Atomic Energy Control Board, the CNSC shows all the signs of being a captured regulator that prioritizes the needs of the nuclear industry over protecting Canadians and the environment.

 

Consider the background of CNSC’s current president, Rumina Velshi.  Before her appointment as CNSC president, she worked for Ontario Power Generation for eight years in senior management positions and led the OPG commercial team involved in a multi-billion dollar proposal to build new nuclear reactors. 

 

The International Atomic Energy Agency says that the regulatory body must be separate from “promoters of nuclear energy”. energy”. Placing an experienced promoter of nuclear business initiatives in charge of the CNSC seems to run contrary  to IAEA guidance.

 

During Ms. Velshi’s presidency, CNSC has expedited licensing processes for small modular nuclear reactors. It has also moved to allow entombment in concrete of the radioactive remains of old nuclear reactors, against the explicit advice of the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

 

IAEA guidance also suggests that the CNSC should not report to the Minister of Natural Resources, given that the minister also has a mandate to promote nuclear energy under the Nuclear Energy Act. Even more

importantly, the binding international convention on Nuclear Safety to which Canada is party, clearly states:

 

“2. Each Contracting Party shall take the appropriate steps to ensure an effective separation between the functions of the regulatory body and those of any other body or organization concerned with the promotion or utilization of nuclear energy.”

 

Existing enabling legislation allows Cabinet to change the Minister to which the CNSC reports with a simple Order-In-Council decision.

 

CNSC’s tendency to prioritize industry needs is a throwback to the days

when its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Control Board, had a legal mandate to promote the nuclear industry under the Atomic Energy Control Act.

 

Times have changed, radioactive hazards are mounting, and bad decisions are being made. 

 

We need a nuclear regulatory regime that is truly focused on protecting the environment and the health of Canadians. Having the CNSC report to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change would be an important first step in the needed reforms.

Statement courtesy Lynne Jones and Gordon Edwards.

 

Speculation on cancer of the pancreas

  

Frustration - I've been involved in learning about the nuclear industry, reading and studying about the science and the effect upon human health.

 

In 1997, I had three patients with pancreatic cancer, the next year I had three – two of the first group had died, two more were diagnosed. The oncologist said that I had just run into a “cluster”. Over the following years I always had one victim whereas in the 1980’s, it was more likely 1 in 2 years. So I started to look into stuff like agricultural products and water quality. 

 

I stumbled across research done on radioactive fallout in the 1960’s. They looked at the numbers of children surviving their first year of life and noticed that the numbers kept getting better (immunizations, antibiotics, health of mothers). Then the curve levels off. The point at which it flattens coincides with the first atmospheric tests and fallout. The difference was 400,000 dead babies. 

 

Why did we not know this? The few scientists who were in the position to know this were threatened, muzzled, belittled, insulted, and trivialized – all the worst treatment that is aimed at whistleblowers by the more powerful.

 

We do know that radiation causes cancer – when we use it as a treatment, we are accepting a 8 – 16% increased risk of further cancers. Used in cardiac imaging, the risk of cancer as a result of such scans is 13%. 

 

The atomic plumes from the tests of the 1960’s spread over the prairies. We know that solid cancers take between 30 and 40 years to form and that cesium-137 affects the pancreas. I’m not saying that my patients had pancreatic cancer as a result of fallout but I am asking, why could there not have been a connection?

 

This industry was born in secrecy and has continued to misrepresent itself. It lies, distorts radiation science and trivializes opposition. After fifty years of studying radiation and health and learning about the mining and all things nuclear, I’ve concluded that it may be the most fraudulent industry in human history.