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 the 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. Clean? All nuclear power plants must emit radioactive hydrogen. Affordable? Westinghouse and Areva have gone bankrupt over the building of nuclear power plants in the USA and in Finland. Reliable? France has had to buy electricity from Germany during heat waves. When the blackout of 2003 resulted in the shut-down of the nuclear power plants in the affected region, it took more than a week for them to reach full power again. Point Lepreau in New Brunswick has been plagued with outages; refurbishment took over four years during which the plant was offline.
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 in the 1920’s
- 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 emit 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 in 1957.
- Researchers were fired or had their funds cut when their results didn’t comply with the industry’s sales model. Eg. Dr. John Gofman, Dr. Thomas Mancuso, Dr. Joseph Mangano, Dr. Sternglass, and Dr. Steven Wing. They were then trivialized or their work discredited.
- 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.
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 boils 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. 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 and the liquid sodium is now radioactive.
Meanwhile plutonium is in high demand for the manufacture of nuclear bombs. That the push for SMRs 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 are suicidal. There are many things that we should be doing with our money instead of proliferating plutonium and arming a second MAD[i] race to the bottom.
[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.
[i] Mutually Assured Destruction. The term "mutual assured destruction", commonly abbreviated "MAD", was coined by Donald Brennan, a strategist working in Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute in 1962. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction. Accessed 26.5.2023
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