- Below is Helen Caldicott's talk at the NPT on Nuclear
Power with a recommendation for creating a Sustainable Energy Agency from
Herman Scheer of Eurosolar.
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- NGO Presentations to the 2005 NPT Review Conference
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- The Medical and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear Power
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- Speaker: Dr. Helen Caldicott Nuclear Policy Research
Institute
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- The official task of the IAEA since 1957, enshrined in
article IV of the NPT promotes the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and
the "transfer" of nuclear technology. Superimposed upon this
official policy is a huge propaganda push by the nuclear industry promoting
nuclear power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases.
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- There are presently 442 nuclear reactors in operation
globally. If, as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to replace
fossil fuels on a large scale, it would be necessary to build 2000 large
1000-megawatt reactors. Furthermore, to replace all fossilfuel-generated
electricity today with nuclear power, there is only enough economically
viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to four years. Belgium, Germany,
Spain and Sweden have decided to phase out their operating nuclear reactors,
while Britain plans 10 new reactors and China plans 27 by 2020. The US
administration has called for construction of more than 50 new reactors.
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- The true economies of the nuclear industry are never
fully analysed - including costs of uranium enrichment, the massive liability
involved in a nuclear accident, decommissioning all existing and new nuclear
reactors and the enormous expense in the transportation and storage of
radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years. The prevailing ethic
says that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.
In the US for instance, where much of the world's uranium is enriched,
the enrichment facility at Paducah, Kentucky, requires the electrical output
of two 1000-megawatt coalfired plants, which release large quantities of
carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50% of global warming. Also, this
enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, leak from rusty pipes
93% of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the US. The production
and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol
because it is mainly responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But
CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon
dioxide.
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- The nuclear fuel cycle in all countries uses large quantities
of fossil fuel at all stages - the mining and milling of uranium, the construction
of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the
intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20 to 40-year operating
lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities
of radioactive waste. Contrary to the current propaganda line, nuclear
power is not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors consistently
release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water
each year. These unregulated sanctioned releases occur because the industry
considers certain radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential.
This is not so. These unregulated releases include the noble gases krypton,
xenon and argon, which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living
near a nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the
fatty tissues of the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs,
near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit high-energy
gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm inducing genetic
disease. Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, is another biologically
significant gas, routinely emitted from nuclear reactors. Tritium combines
with oxygen creating "tritiated" water. Tritium which is a soft
energy beta emitter, more mutagenic than gamma radiation incorporates directly
into the DNA molecule of the gene and it passes readily through the skin,
lungs and digestive system where it is distributed throughout the body.
The half life of tritium is 12.3 years, giving it a biologically active
life of 246 years.
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- The dire subject of massive quantities of radioactive
waste accruing at the 442 nuclear reactors across the world is also rarely,
if ever, addressed by the nuclear industry. Each typical 1000-megawatt
nuclear reactor manufactures 33 tonnes of thermally hot, intensely radioactive
waste per year. More than 80,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste sits
in cooling pools next to the 103 US nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation
to a storage facility yet to be found. Much more accrues at reactor sites
in France, Japan Russia and elsewhere. This dangerous material is an attractive
target for terrorist sabotage as it traverses roads, railway and shipping
lines of many nations.
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- The long-term storage of radioactive waste is an immense
insoluble problem. No country, including the US has a plan for preventing
this toxic carcinogenic material escaping into the biosphere and contaminating
the food chain for the rest of time. Furthermore, a study released recently
by the US National Academy of Sciences shows that the cooling pools at
nuclear reactors, which store 10 to 30 times more radioactive material
than that contained in the reactor core, are subject to catastrophic attacks
by international terrorists, which could unleash an inferno and release
massive quantities of deadly radiation -- significantly worse than the
radiation released by Chernobyl. This vulnerable high-level nuclear waste
stored in the cooling pools at the 442 global nuclear power plants includes
hundreds of radioactive elements that have different biological impacts
in the human body, the most important being cancer and genetic diseases.
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- The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years following
exposure to radiation. Children, old people and immuno-compromised individuals
are many times more sensitive to the malignant effects of radiation than
other people. Following are four of the most dangerous elements made in
nuclear power plants. Iodine 131, which was released at nuclear accidents
at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in
the US, is radioactive for twenty three weeks and it bio-concentrates in
leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and
the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later
induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2000 children have had their
thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded
in pediatric literature. Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium
analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human
breast during lactation, and in bone, where it can later induce breast
cancer, bone cancer and leukemia. Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600
years, concentrates in the food chain, particularly meat. On entering the
human body, it locates in muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle
cancer called a sarcoma. Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements
known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic.
More than 200kg is made annually in each 1000- megawatt nuclear power plant.
Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in
the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can
induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung
cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide,
it can cause severe congenital deformities. Plutonium has a predisposition
for the testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and induce genetic
diseases in future generations. Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living
on to induce cancer and genetic diseases in future generations of plants,
animals and humans.
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- Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons -- only
5kg is necessary to make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 200kg
per year. Therefore any country with a nuclear power plant can theoretically
manufacture 40 bombs a year.Nuclear power produces a carcinogenic legacy
for all future generations, it produces global warming gases, and it is
far more expensive than any other form of electricity generation, while
it triggers the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
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- A supplementary protocol to the NPT is needed, which
would permit the signatory States to fulfil their obligations stated in
Article IV of the NPT by supplying technical aid in form of Renewable Energy
Technologies. The supplementary protocol should be the basis for an International
Renewable Energy Agency that can act as a counterbalance to the institutionalized
advocates for nuclear energy. The main provision of the supplementary protocol
to Art IV should be: "The present Treaty permits the parties to the
Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty to replace the assistance in the peaceful
use of nuclear energy provided for in article IV with assistance in promoting
the use of clean, sustainable, renewable energy."
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- Convenors: Helen Caldicott, Herman Scheer, Xanthe Hall,
John Loretz, Alice Slater
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