Beyond Nuclear International
Why women should oppose nuclear power
Pregnant women don’t get x-rays. There’s a reason
By Linda Pentz Gunter
It may come as no surprise to learn that it was women who first raised the alarm about just how dangerous radiation exposure might be to humans, but especially to women and their children. As the late Walter Wolfgang, a co-founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), recalls in Carol Turner’s book, Corbyn and Trident:
”Around the time of Britain’s first atomic tests many women in particular became concerned about the health dangers of radiation, its effect on unborn children and so on. This was much discussed in scientific journals at the time, and found a reflection in political magazines such as Tribune and New Statesman. Through opposition to testing, people became aware of the problem with nuclear weapons. Then politicos such as myself got involved, concerned about Britain’s foreign policies and international relationships. There was a coalescence between the two that led to the foundation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.”
Dr Alice Stewart (third from left) with Edinburgh doctors and nurses. (Photo: Wellcome Trust/WikiCommons)
What is surprising is that, decades later, we still find ourselves trying to impress these truths upon the public, and even on reluctant women politicians. After all, it was back in the 1950s that these dangers first became apparent, through the pioneering work of a woman, Dr. Alice Stewart, who died 17 years ago, on June 23, 2002 at 95.
Emissions omissions
EDF keeps pushing its pointless nuclear pipe dream
By Pete Wilkinson
EDF CEO Jean-Bernard Lévy makes some schoolboy errors in his misleading defence of nuclear power in his February 25th speech at the International Energy Agency, as reported by World NuclearNews, 20 May 2019. M. Lévy is careful to use the word “direct” when claiming that nuclear power produces electricity without emissions; by this, he presumably means that the only part of the nuclear fuel chain that can even come close to being “low carbon” is that which “burns” uranium in the reactor.
Of course, he knows, as do we all, that across the entire fuel chain, nuclear power requires an acceptance of a carbon footprint from uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fuel production, transport, nuclear plant construction, storage and the still-unknown CO2 burdens created by final spent fuel and waste management conundrums. To claim otherwise is disingenuous, especially from someone in such a position of responsibility.
Nuclear power requires an acceptance of a carbon footprint across the entire nuclear fuel chain, starting with uranium mining. (Photo: Vonvon/WikiCommons)
It is true that the fight against climate change is challenging, but to conclude that nuclear power is essential to winning that fight is wrong and designed to defend a technology which is antiquated, costly, polluting and presents us with a wealth of unresolved health issues related to childhood leukaemia. Sixty studies, including the seminal German government-sponsored KiKK Report indicate elevated rates of leukaemia and other cancers as a result of exposure to ionising radiation.
Cartographie d’un corps contaminé à l’uranium
Par où transite l’uranium et ses produits de désintégration et comment ils nous nuisent
(This is a republication, in French, for our French-speaking readers, of our original article, The Uranium Map in our Bodies.)
Traduction par Sortir du Nucléaire Paris
L’uranium est radioactif. Depuis plus d’un siècle, les humains extraient de l’uranium dans le monde entier, que ce soit pour vernir les poteries ou pour la production de bombes atomiques. Alors que l’impact de l’uranium et de ses produits de désintégration sur la santé on été initialement inconnus, au moment de la constitution de l’arsenal atomique de la guerre froide, des effets évidents sur la santé ( le cancer du poumon, par exemple, étaient devenus associés aux mines d’uranium dès les années 1930) ils ont été ignorés pour favoriser la production d’ogives nucléaires. Les mines et les usines de concentration d’uranium se sont répandues aux États-Unis.
Dans l’ouest des États-Unis, comme dans la plupart des pays du monde, les mineurs et les personnes vivant à proximité de ces installations étaient en grande partie autochtones. Non seulement la santé des travailleurs a été impactée, mais les processus industriels de l’uranium ont laissé une contamination radioactive dans le sol et dans l’eau, les habitants de la région ont également subi des effets néfastes sur la santé. L’uranium et ses produits de désintégration jonchent encore ces paysages, posant un danger permanent, en particulier lorsqu’ils sont inhalés ou ingérés. Bien que ces radio-isotopes soient naturels, ils sont artificiellement présents en raison de leur traitement industriel. Bien que l’extraction de l’uranium soit la source la plus évidente, l’or et d’autres procédés miniers peuvent également libérer ces matériaux. Les sites miniers et les zones environnantes constituent le plus grand danger d’exposition à l’uranium et à tous ses produits de désintégration.
Parmi les autres sites susceptibles de présenter un danger par les produits de désintégration, on peut citer les sites d’élimination des déchets de thorium et les usines qui utilisaient de la peinture au radium pour des produits de consommation, et militaires tels que les cadrans de montres et d’avions. Ces sites parsèment le paysage nord-américain et, bien qu’un certain nombre de ces installations aient été nettoyées dans le cadre du programme Superfund, pour certaines, la surveillance est en cours. Le radon peut lixivier du sol dans de nombreux endroits, pas seulement des mines, et se retrouver piégé dans des bâtiments. Dans ce cas, toutefois, le radon peut être éliminé facilement et en toute sécurité grâce à une technologie simple, recommandée par la US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), qui ne présente pratiquement aucun danger.
Suing to stop sea turtle kills
Nuclear power plant continues to take too high a toll on endangered species
By Linda Pentz Gunter and Paul Gunter, with the Turtle Island Restoration Network
On Thursday, May 30, 2019, the Turtle Island Restoration Network and Beyond Nuclear filed a formal notice of their intent to sue the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Florida Power & Light (FPL) for failing to protect endangered species from illegal intake and harm at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant in Jensen Beach, Florida.
For decades, the reactor site’s cooling water intake system, which draws in nearly three billion gallons of sea water daily, has routinely captured, harmed and killed thousands of marine animals, most notably endangered and threatened species of sea turtle as well as the endangered smalltooth sawfish. But it’s not just countless species of marine wildlife—two scuba divers were sucked through the unprotected cooling intake pipe on separate occasions, one of whom is suing the power plant for being entrained at the plant in 2016.
A video, produced by the authors in 2001, showed how sea turtles — around since the time of the dinosaurs — are being assailed from many quarters, and the compounding and cumulative damage done to them by captures and kills at nuclear power plants.
A rogue regulator worth reading
A shocking if predictable look inside a captured nuclear agency
By Libbe HaLevy
“Nuclear power is a failed technology.”
If that unequivocal statement by former Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Greg Jaczko were the only “confession” he made, it would be powerful enough. But in his recently published book, Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator, Jaczko rips away the secrecy from the inner workings of the NRC as he experienced it first-hand.
This ultimate nuclear insider provides a clear picture of the failings of the captured nuclear agency, the corrosive day-to-day political battles with other commissioners, and the unfolding terror when Fukushima’s nuclear reactors were first shaken, then swamped – and no one could predict what was going to happen next.
With a lean narrative, a scientist’s spare prose, and a canny sense of how to make complex technical issues understandable, Jaczko paints the picture of what’s wrong with the nuclear industry and the NRC. The result is a narrative both shocking and, for some of us, sadly predictable, as he confirms the worst beliefs and observations held about the agency that’s supposed to regulate the most deadly energy technology on earth.
Gregory Jaczko at an Oval Office a meeting in the Obama White House just days after the Fukushima nuclear accident began, along with John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Rob Nabors, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Paying the price for peace
Protesters at drone base and Nevada National Security Site cross the line for peace
By John Amidon
We came for the annual Nevada Desert Experience Sacred Peace Walk. But this year, it is different. This year, eight of us will leave the Walk in belly chains. It is Holy Week, Good Friday, April 19, 2019. We are loaded into a white truck to begin the 50-minute ride from the Nevada Test Site — recently rebranded the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) — to Pahrump Jail.
Our annual pilgrimage for nuclear abolition and in support of Western Shoshone sovereignty had begun a week earlier in front of the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. It ended at NNSS where, in the past, we were mostly apprehended, then released. But today we are being treated with a heavier hand.
We walk because we want to see an end to nuclear weapons, but also because we are deeply concerned that should radioactive waste move to be stored at Yucca Mountain it will never be safe. All of these issues intersect at the Nevada National Security Site, a name designed to obscure its deadly and poisonous work.
The Western Shoshone People are the legal owners of the land we traverse and also of much of the State of Nevada, a sovereign nation under occupation.
(Watch a video about why we walk, below).
