NEWS & LETTERS, August - September 2009
Nuclear reactors threaten civilization
Los Angeles--After the 2000 Presidential election, the Bush administration campaigned to restart building nuclear power plants in the U.S. and abroad. Since the 1979 near-meltdown at the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania and the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl, Ukraine, the nuclear power industry has built few reactors. The Chernobyl meltdown devastated 100,000 square miles of land and water in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus with highly toxic radiation, causing massive deaths, diseases and abnormalities. The breadbaskets in those areas have been contaminated with radiation forever.
In May 2001 Vice President Cheney stated: "[Nuclear power] is a very important part of our energy policy today in the U.S….America's electricity is already being provided through the nuclear industry efficiently, safely and with no discharge of greenhouse gases or emissions."
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION FAVORS NUKES
Maurine Doerken's One Bomb Away listed 34 nuclear plant accidents from 1952 to 2000. Helen Caldicott, in Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer, shows how uranium mining, milling, transporting, enriching, construction of reactors, storage of wastes, etc., uses massive amounts of energy, mostly fossil fuel which emits greenhouse gas. In addition, uranium enrichment emits huge amounts of chlorofluorocarbon, a gas which destroys the ozone layer in the stratosphere. The ozone layer filters out the sun's deadly UV rays.
During Secretary of State Clinton's July trip to India, it was reported that India bought two nuclear power plants to be built by GE or Westinghouse Corporation. And recently Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that his Department would hurry the approval for $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for utilities building nuclear plants. The Obama administration is favoring nuclear power over solar and wind power.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has received 17 applications to build 26 new power plants and many applications for uranium mining permits.
There are large amounts of uranium beneath the thousands of acres on and around the lands of the Navajo Nation (Diné) and other Indian pueblos in northwestern New Mexico. The Navajo Nation, other American Indian tribes and the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE) are fighting to block uranium mining. MASE is composed of Hispanics, American Indians and Anglos, from five grassroots organizations.
Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., stated, "I don't believe there is any safe technology that can be used to mine uranium. Many of my people died because of mining of uranium….It is devastating, it has wrecked the lives of our families....The tribe will continue to fight the state and federal agencies that grant permits to uranium companies despite the opposition of the American Indian Countries."
Linda Evers, a former miner, miller and ore hauler, is a member of MASE who contracted degenerative bone disease. She said, "My daughter was born with no hips at all…" Edith Hood, who lives in the area and contracted lymphoma in 2006, implored Congress to halt the NRC's approval of new mines. She spoke of pulmonary fibrosis and other illnesses in the area.
Long-term exposure to uranium (uranium tailings are left in huge piles after milling) or its by-product, radium, may cause anemia, cataracts, bone cancer, etc. The Dinés and MASE also oppose uranium mining because it contaminates springs, rivers and aquifers, their source of drinking water and crop irrigation.
NUCLEAR POWER IS NEVER SAFE
Nuclear power plants fuel global warming. The process of building and running them is not safe, nor has the problem of how to safely dispose of tons of deadly nuclear waste with hundreds of thousands of years of half-life been solved. A 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor produces 500 pounds of plutonium yearly. Ten pounds is enough fuel for an atomic bomb.
Iran's nuclear program raises the tension between Israel and Iran. North Korea's nuclear program raises tensions in the North Korea/Japan relationship and endangers the world even more. As Raya Dunayevskaya stated in the July 1961 N&L, "The new weapons system is not just a new form of 'blitzkrieg.' Rather, it threatens the extinction of civilization altogether."
--Basho
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