Summer was officially over last week and it was some summer in the Greater New York Area: record hot and a summer—and this is related—in which we were hit with loads of jellyfish off Long Island, where I live.
It used to be that jellyfish would arrive in these parts in August—when the waters off our shores had become sufficiently warm. But again this year, those stinging globs were here in June and by July there were swarms of them, remaining through August.
This jellyfish explosion here is mirrored around the world. With global warming a prime culprit, there’s been the revenge of the jellyfish for those who love the water all over this earth.
“There has been a global increase in jellyfish with the higher temperatures of recent years,” explains Dr. Christopher Gobler, associate professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at New York’s Stony Brook University. “With global warming, jellyfish emerge earlier, grow quicker and stay around longer.”
He notes other factors, too—also having to do with the activities of people.
There’s eutrophication, the process in which water bodies receive excess nutrients. Algal blooms are triggered by eutrophication, Dr. Gobler notes, and the blooms “reduce oxygen and water clarity. These conditions have adverse effects on planktivorous fish [fish that eat plankton] meaning the fish consume lower amounts of plankton. Because jellyfish are non-visual predators and are less sensitive to low oxygen” they can feast on the plankton that the planktivorous fish are missing. Jellyfish “thrive under these conditions.”
Then there’s overfishing. “The overharvest of filter feeding bivalves and planktivorous fish such as menhaden leaves more plankton for jellyfish to consume,” says Dr. Gobler.
And there is what’s termed “shoreline hardening—the building of bulkheads, docks and jetties which encourages greater jellyfish populations because jellyfish polyps attach to these “hard surfaces” and “we have more of these now,” says Dr. Gobler.
What was termed a worldwide “jellyfish plague” was examined a while back by the British magazine, New Scientist, in an article -- http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626323.700-insight-overfishing-is-creating-a-jellyfish-plague.html -- that began: “Global warming is starting to sting—literally.” The story by Debora Mackenzie told of how warmer water caused by global warming has resulted in mammoth swarms of jellyfish—such as one 20 square miles in area, 33 feet deep in the Irish Sea that hit a salmon farm “killing all 100,000 fish in it.
The piece also linked the increased levels of carbon dioxide being released on the planet—central to global warming—to the jellyfish explosion. The CO2 discharges are causing seawater to become more acidic. This has been harming “small creatures with acid-soluble shells that compete with jellyfish.”
It stressed overfishing, and what was described as “a vicious cycle” was outlined. “Overfishing means we need more fish farms and it also boosts populations of jellyfish which damage fish farms,” it related. “As the growing human population needs more food, that exacerbates warming, and…jellyfish prosper. The final irony: small plankton-eating fish, which compete most directly with jellyfish” are being “overfished—largely to make fishmeal, the main food for fish farms.”
The article stated: “Fisheries scientists have warned for years that we are replacing an ocean full of fish with one full of jellyfish.”
Wow, what an aquatic mess.
Now with due respect to those in the Orient who like to eat jellyfish, I must say I don’t like them at all—I can’t imagine eating them and I don’t like swimming around them.
Considering that humans are the prime culprits when it comes to the conditions that have created the huge uspsurge in jellyfish, it’s obvious that we must change course, and fast. The jellyfish explosion is sending us a very clear message.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Floating Chernobyls
Published on CounterPunch on July 27, 2010
They would be floating Chernobyls.
Russia has embarked on a scheme to building floating nuclear power plants to be moored off its coasts—especially off northern and eastern Russia—and sold to nations around the world.
“Absolutely safe,” Sergei Kiriyenko, director general of Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy corporation, told Reuters as the barge that is to serve as the base for the first floating plant was launched recently in St. Petersburg.
However, David Lochbaum, senior safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, describes an accident at a floating nuclear power plant as “worse” than at a land-based plant. “In a meltdown, a China syndrome accident, the molten mass of what had been the core would burrow into the ground and some of the radioactive material held there. But with a floating nuclear plant, all the molten mass would drop into the water and there would be a steam explosion and the release of a tremendous amount of energy and radioactive material. It would be like a bomb going off,” said Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project at Washington-based UCS.
“With a floating nuclear plant you have a mechanism to significantly increase the amount of radioactive material going into the environment,” said Lochbaum, who worked 18 years as an engineer in the nuclear industry and also for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A large plume of radioactive poisons would be formed and “many more people would be put in harm’s way.” Further, there would be radioactive pollution of the sea, he noted.
Nuclear experts in Europe—including in Russia—are as critical as Lochbaum is about floating nuclear power plants and their unique accident potential. Other issues raised include the floating plants being sources of fuel for nuclear weapons and easy targets for terrorists.
“This project is clearly a risky venture,” said Alexander Nitikin, a former chief engineer on nuclear-powered submarines of the Soviet Union and senior inspector for the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Inspection Department for its Department of Defense. He is now head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Bellona Foundation, an international environmental organization.
“Safety shouldn’t be neglected for the profits Rosatom wants to get from selling floating nuclear power plants to the troubled regions. Such Rosatom activities simply violate the idea of non-proliferation.”
“Such installations could heighten the risk of radioactive contamination of the sea and shore zones…by many times,” said Andrei Ponomarenko, coordinator for the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Project of Bellona’s chapter in Murmansk.
In a statement describing the plants “floating Chernobyls in waiting,” the main office of Norway-headquartered Bellona said that “Russia has neither the means nor infrastructure to ensure their safe operation, has made no plans for disposing of their spent fuel, and has not taken into consideration the enormous nuclear proliferation risks posed.”
“It is better to invest in solar and wind energy rather than produce time bombs,” said Vladimir Chuprov, energy projects chief for Greenpeace Russia.
Greenpeace Russia, in a report to Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, had declared that the export of the floating nuclear plants, particularly to countries in Southeast Asia with numerous terrorist groups, “creates a serious threat of terrorism and piracy on the high seas.”
The floating nuclear plants would use a far more volatile fuel compared to land-based plants: weapons-grade uranium containing 40 percent Uranium-235. The U-235 enrichment level in land-based plants is 3 percent. Each would include two reactors providing a total of 70 megawatts of electricity.
A press release by Rosatom issued with the June 30th launch of the football field-sized barge at St. Petersburg said “there are many countries, including in the developing world, showing interest” in the plants.
The Times of London has reported countries interested in buying them include China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria and Argentina (“Floating Nuclear Power Stations Raise Spectre of Chernobyl at Sea.”) World Nuclear News in its article added Namibia and Cape Verde to the list
The notion of a floating nuclear power plant being pursued by Russia originated in the United States where it was scuttled because of excessive cost, public opposition and lack of energy need. Public Service Electric and Gas. Co. of New Jersey, in its literature, has related that while taking a shower in 1969 the idea of floating nuclear plants came to its vice president for engineering and construction, Richard Eckert. In the shower, Eckert thought that the sea could supply the mammoth amounts of water nuclear plants need as coolant.
PSE&G convinced Westinghouse Electric Co. to build such plants. In 1970, Westinghouse and Tenneco set up Offshore Power Systems to fabricate them at a facility it built on Blount Island off Jacksonville, Florida. The plants were to be towed into position with the first four moored l.8 miles off Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, 11 miles northeast of Atlantic City. Costs skyrocketed, there were protests—in both Jacksonville and New Jersey as well as national opposition. And because of the 1973 oil crisis energy conservation reduced PSE&G’s need for more power. In 1984, Offshore Power Systems cancelled the undertaking and dissolved after spending $180 million on the failed venture.
The most comprehensive analysis which has been done on the floating nuclear power plants Russia is now building is a book researched and written by a team of Russian scientists and titled: Floating Nuclear Power Plants in Russia: A Threat to the Arctic, World Oceans and Non-Proliferation. Its authors include: Vladimir Kuznetsov, formerly of the Russian Federal Inspectorate for Nuclear and Radiation Safety; Alexey Yablokov, a biologist, former environmental advisor to the Russian president and president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy; Yevgeney Simonov, senior engineer at the Obninsk nuclear power plant; Vladimir Desyatov, an engineer who worked in nuclear submarine construction; and Alexander Nitikin.
“One would have imagined that the Chernobyl catastrophe would have taught us to treat nuclear technologies with caution,” begins the book. It notes that the reactor to be used on the floating nuclear plants is a version of the reactor built for Soviet nuclear-powered icebreakers and provides information on “at least six serious accidents” involving it.
As to accidents, the book says that there can be no “guarantee that” the floating nuclear power plants “will operate in the way the developers suppose. Trouble-free operations of floating nuclear power plants cannot be in principle. The only question is how serious the emergency and its consequences.” It considers the “radioactive cloud” that would be formed in an accident, and for a plant off eastern Russia, says it would impact on a “considerable proportion of Alaska.”
Moreover, in the “case of such emergency, the engaging of any serious rescuing forces and means will be extremely difficult because of remoteness and usually unfavorable weather conditions…Thus, it is completely clear that [a} floating nuclear power plant creates [a] serious threat to the nature and the population.”
In a chapter on the floating plants as “an attractive object of nuclear terrorism,” the book cites an impossibility of providing “protection from torpedo attack or from underwater saboteurs, and on the surface from a rocket-bombing strike.” Further, the “spreading” of the floating plants “all over the world will allow” this to be done “much easier and with more efficiency.” Moreover, each floating nuclear plant will contain “the ready material for ten nuclear bombs in the way of enriched uranium of weapon quality.”
It speaks of officials in several Russian regions saying they welcome the floating plants “with their desire to receive funds from the federal budget” but they do “not imagine perils and negative consequences” of the plants’ operation.
The book includes a chapter on economics asking whether the floating plants can be profitable and concludes they cannot: that the cost of construction and operation of a plant would exceed the value of the electricity it would generate. It states: “During the Soviet era, the costs of constructing a nuclear power plant were covered by governmental funding and nuclear engineers were not overly concerned about providing accurate cost calculations since they knew that any additional expenditures incurred would eventually be covered.” Now, “purely ideological arguments can no longer take precedence over economic feasibility.”
“The idea of creating floating nuclear power plants originated in the USA, but did not come to fruition due to obvious inherent economic drawbacks,” it adds.
The floating nuclear plant scheme is backed, it has been reported, by now Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin “as part of a program to raise the portion of Russian electricity generated by nuclear power.”
Kiriyenko of Rosatom is extremely bullish on the project. Kiriyenko’s background is in politics: he, too, was Russia’s prime minister, but only briefly, from March to August 1998, when he was forced to resign after his financial machinations led to a devaluation of the Russian ruble and a major financial crisis that year. He was appointed as head Rosatom in 2005.
There is strong opposition in the initial area off which the first nuclear plants would be moored—the Murmansk Region. The Romir polling agency has found some 71 percent of respondents there said they were “strongly negative.”
And, “protests against the project have already occurred,” said Vitaly Servetnik, chairman of the organization Nature and Youth.
They would be floating Chernobyls.
Russia has embarked on a scheme to building floating nuclear power plants to be moored off its coasts—especially off northern and eastern Russia—and sold to nations around the world.
“Absolutely safe,” Sergei Kiriyenko, director general of Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy corporation, told Reuters as the barge that is to serve as the base for the first floating plant was launched recently in St. Petersburg.
However, David Lochbaum, senior safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, describes an accident at a floating nuclear power plant as “worse” than at a land-based plant. “In a meltdown, a China syndrome accident, the molten mass of what had been the core would burrow into the ground and some of the radioactive material held there. But with a floating nuclear plant, all the molten mass would drop into the water and there would be a steam explosion and the release of a tremendous amount of energy and radioactive material. It would be like a bomb going off,” said Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project at Washington-based UCS.
“With a floating nuclear plant you have a mechanism to significantly increase the amount of radioactive material going into the environment,” said Lochbaum, who worked 18 years as an engineer in the nuclear industry and also for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A large plume of radioactive poisons would be formed and “many more people would be put in harm’s way.” Further, there would be radioactive pollution of the sea, he noted.
Nuclear experts in Europe—including in Russia—are as critical as Lochbaum is about floating nuclear power plants and their unique accident potential. Other issues raised include the floating plants being sources of fuel for nuclear weapons and easy targets for terrorists.
“This project is clearly a risky venture,” said Alexander Nitikin, a former chief engineer on nuclear-powered submarines of the Soviet Union and senior inspector for the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Inspection Department for its Department of Defense. He is now head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Bellona Foundation, an international environmental organization.
“Safety shouldn’t be neglected for the profits Rosatom wants to get from selling floating nuclear power plants to the troubled regions. Such Rosatom activities simply violate the idea of non-proliferation.”
“Such installations could heighten the risk of radioactive contamination of the sea and shore zones…by many times,” said Andrei Ponomarenko, coordinator for the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Project of Bellona’s chapter in Murmansk.
In a statement describing the plants “floating Chernobyls in waiting,” the main office of Norway-headquartered Bellona said that “Russia has neither the means nor infrastructure to ensure their safe operation, has made no plans for disposing of their spent fuel, and has not taken into consideration the enormous nuclear proliferation risks posed.”
“It is better to invest in solar and wind energy rather than produce time bombs,” said Vladimir Chuprov, energy projects chief for Greenpeace Russia.
Greenpeace Russia, in a report to Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, had declared that the export of the floating nuclear plants, particularly to countries in Southeast Asia with numerous terrorist groups, “creates a serious threat of terrorism and piracy on the high seas.”
The floating nuclear plants would use a far more volatile fuel compared to land-based plants: weapons-grade uranium containing 40 percent Uranium-235. The U-235 enrichment level in land-based plants is 3 percent. Each would include two reactors providing a total of 70 megawatts of electricity.
A press release by Rosatom issued with the June 30th launch of the football field-sized barge at St. Petersburg said “there are many countries, including in the developing world, showing interest” in the plants.
The Times of London has reported countries interested in buying them include China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria and Argentina (“Floating Nuclear Power Stations Raise Spectre of Chernobyl at Sea.”) World Nuclear News in its article added Namibia and Cape Verde to the list
The notion of a floating nuclear power plant being pursued by Russia originated in the United States where it was scuttled because of excessive cost, public opposition and lack of energy need. Public Service Electric and Gas. Co. of New Jersey, in its literature, has related that while taking a shower in 1969 the idea of floating nuclear plants came to its vice president for engineering and construction, Richard Eckert. In the shower, Eckert thought that the sea could supply the mammoth amounts of water nuclear plants need as coolant.
PSE&G convinced Westinghouse Electric Co. to build such plants. In 1970, Westinghouse and Tenneco set up Offshore Power Systems to fabricate them at a facility it built on Blount Island off Jacksonville, Florida. The plants were to be towed into position with the first four moored l.8 miles off Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, 11 miles northeast of Atlantic City. Costs skyrocketed, there were protests—in both Jacksonville and New Jersey as well as national opposition. And because of the 1973 oil crisis energy conservation reduced PSE&G’s need for more power. In 1984, Offshore Power Systems cancelled the undertaking and dissolved after spending $180 million on the failed venture.
The most comprehensive analysis which has been done on the floating nuclear power plants Russia is now building is a book researched and written by a team of Russian scientists and titled: Floating Nuclear Power Plants in Russia: A Threat to the Arctic, World Oceans and Non-Proliferation. Its authors include: Vladimir Kuznetsov, formerly of the Russian Federal Inspectorate for Nuclear and Radiation Safety; Alexey Yablokov, a biologist, former environmental advisor to the Russian president and president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy; Yevgeney Simonov, senior engineer at the Obninsk nuclear power plant; Vladimir Desyatov, an engineer who worked in nuclear submarine construction; and Alexander Nitikin.
“One would have imagined that the Chernobyl catastrophe would have taught us to treat nuclear technologies with caution,” begins the book. It notes that the reactor to be used on the floating nuclear plants is a version of the reactor built for Soviet nuclear-powered icebreakers and provides information on “at least six serious accidents” involving it.
As to accidents, the book says that there can be no “guarantee that” the floating nuclear power plants “will operate in the way the developers suppose. Trouble-free operations of floating nuclear power plants cannot be in principle. The only question is how serious the emergency and its consequences.” It considers the “radioactive cloud” that would be formed in an accident, and for a plant off eastern Russia, says it would impact on a “considerable proportion of Alaska.”
Moreover, in the “case of such emergency, the engaging of any serious rescuing forces and means will be extremely difficult because of remoteness and usually unfavorable weather conditions…Thus, it is completely clear that [a} floating nuclear power plant creates [a] serious threat to the nature and the population.”
In a chapter on the floating plants as “an attractive object of nuclear terrorism,” the book cites an impossibility of providing “protection from torpedo attack or from underwater saboteurs, and on the surface from a rocket-bombing strike.” Further, the “spreading” of the floating plants “all over the world will allow” this to be done “much easier and with more efficiency.” Moreover, each floating nuclear plant will contain “the ready material for ten nuclear bombs in the way of enriched uranium of weapon quality.”
It speaks of officials in several Russian regions saying they welcome the floating plants “with their desire to receive funds from the federal budget” but they do “not imagine perils and negative consequences” of the plants’ operation.
The book includes a chapter on economics asking whether the floating plants can be profitable and concludes they cannot: that the cost of construction and operation of a plant would exceed the value of the electricity it would generate. It states: “During the Soviet era, the costs of constructing a nuclear power plant were covered by governmental funding and nuclear engineers were not overly concerned about providing accurate cost calculations since they knew that any additional expenditures incurred would eventually be covered.” Now, “purely ideological arguments can no longer take precedence over economic feasibility.”
“The idea of creating floating nuclear power plants originated in the USA, but did not come to fruition due to obvious inherent economic drawbacks,” it adds.
The floating nuclear plant scheme is backed, it has been reported, by now Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin “as part of a program to raise the portion of Russian electricity generated by nuclear power.”
Kiriyenko of Rosatom is extremely bullish on the project. Kiriyenko’s background is in politics: he, too, was Russia’s prime minister, but only briefly, from March to August 1998, when he was forced to resign after his financial machinations led to a devaluation of the Russian ruble and a major financial crisis that year. He was appointed as head Rosatom in 2005.
There is strong opposition in the initial area off which the first nuclear plants would be moored—the Murmansk Region. The Romir polling agency has found some 71 percent of respondents there said they were “strongly negative.”
And, “protests against the project have already occurred,” said Vitaly Servetnik, chairman of the organization Nature and Youth.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Obama Brings Back Space Nuclear Power
(Published in Summer 2010 issue of Space Alert!, publication of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power In Space -- www.space4peace.org.)
The Obama administration is seeking to renew the use of nuclear power in space. It is calling for revived production by the U.S. of plutonium-238 for use in space devices—despite solar energy having become a substitute for plutonium power in space.
And the Obama administration appears to also want to revive the decades-old and long-discredited scheme of nuclear-powered rockets—despite strides made in new ways of propelling spacecraft. Last month, Japan launched what it called its “space yacht” which is now heading to Venus propelled by solar sails utilizing ionized particles emitted by the Sun. “Because of the frictionless environment, such a craft should be able to speed up until it is traveling many times faster than a conventional rocket-powered craft,” wrote Agence France-Presse about this spacecraft launched May 21.
But the Obama administration would return to using nuclear power in space—despite its enormous dangers.
A cheerleader for this is the space industry publication Space News. “Going Nuclear” was the headline of its editorial on March 1 praising the administration for its space nuclear thrust. Space New declared that “for the second year in a row, the Obama administration is asking Congress for at least $30 million to begin a multiyear effort to restart domestic production of plutonium-238, the essential ingredient in long-lasting spacecraft batteries.”
The Space News editorial also noted that “President Obama’s NASA budget [for 2011] also includes support for nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric propulsion research under a $650 million Exploration Technology and Demonstration funding line projected to triple by 2013.”
Space News declared: “Nuclear propulsion research experienced a brief revival seven years ago when then-NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe established Project Prometheus to design reactor-powered spacecraft. Mr. O’Keefe’s successor, Mike Griffin, wasted little time pulling the plug on NASA’s nuclear ambitions.”
Being referred to by Space News as “spacecraft batteries” are what are called radioisotope thermoelectric generators or RTGs, power systems using plutonium-238 to provide on board electricity on various space devices including, originally, on satellites.
But this came to an end when in 1964 a U.S. Navy navigational satellite with a SNAP-9A (SNAP for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power) RTG on board failed to achieve orbit and fell to the Earth, disintegrating upon hitting the atmosphere. The 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel dispersed widely. A study by a group of European health and radiation protection agencies subsequently reported that “a worldwide soil sampling program carried out in 1970 showed SNAP-9A debris present at all continents and at all latitudes.” Long linking the SNAP-9A accident to an increase of lung cancer in people on Earth was Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, who was involved in isolating plutonium for the Manhattan Project.
The SNAP-9A accident caused NASA to turn to using solar photovoltaic panels on satellites. All U.S. satellites are now solar-powered.
But NASA persisted in using RTGs on space probes—claiming there was no choice. This was a false claim. Although NASA, for instance, insisted—including in sworn court depositions —that it had no alternative but to use RTGs on its Galileo mission to Jupiter launched in 1989, documents I subsequently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from NASA included a study done by its Jet Propulsion Laboratory stating that solar photovoltaic panels could have substituted for plutonium-fueled RTGs.
And right now, the Juno space probe—which will getting its on board electricity only from solar photovoltaic panels—is being readied by NASA for a launch next year to Jupiter. It’s to make 32 orbits around Jupiter and perform a variety of scientific missions.
Meanwhile, in recent years facilities in the U.S. to produce plutonium-238—hotspots for worker contamination and environmental pollution—have been closed and the U.S. has been obtaining the radionuclide from Russia. Under the Obama 2011 budget, U.S. production would be restarted. Last year, Congress refused to go along with this Obama request.
As for rocket propulsion with atomic energy, building such rockets was a major U.S. undertaking 50 and 60 years ago, under a program called NERVA (for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) followed by Projects Pluto, Rover and Poodle. Billions of dollars were spent and ground-testing done, but no nuclear rocket ever got off the ground. There were concerns over a nuclear rocket blowing up on launch or crashing back to Earth. The effort ended in 1972 but was revived in the 1980s under President Reagan’s Star Wars program. The “Timberwind” nuclear-powered rocket was developed then to loft heavy Star Wars equipment into space and also for trips to Mars. Most recently, Project Prometheus to build nuclear-powered rockets was begun by NASA in 2003, but ended in 2006, the cancellation referred to in the Space News editorial.
Obama’s choice to head NASA, Charles Bolden, favors nuclear-powered rockets—but he acknowledges public resistance. In a recent presentation before the Council on Foreign Relations, he opened the door to having a nuclear-powered rocket launched conventionally and moving in space with nuclear power.
Bolden, a former astronaut and U.S. Marine Corps major general, spoke in the May 24th address, of work by another ex-astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, on a nuclear-propelled rocket. “Chang-Diaz is developing what’s called a VASIMIR rocket,” said Bolden. “It’s an ion engine, very gentle impulse that just pushes you forever, constantly accelerating. And this, theoretically, is something that would enable us to go from Earth to Mars in a matter of some time significantly less than it takes us now.”
But, he said, “most people…in the United States are never going to agree to allow nuclear rockets to launch things from Earth.” Yet “once you get into space, you know, if we can convince people that we can contain it and not put masses of people in jeopardy, nuclear propulsion for in-space propulsion” would enable a faster trip to Mars. He said, “You don’t want to have to take eight months to go from Earth orbit to Mars.”
Having nuclear power systems only activated once up in space was a system followed by the Soviet Union—because of it having suffered many launch pad explosions. Still, the scheme wasn’t accident-free. The worst Soviet space nuclear device accident involved its Cosmos 954 reconnaissance satellite. Its on board nuclear reactor was only activated after launch when the reactor was in orbit. But then there was a malfunction causing Cosmos 954 to tumble out of control and hurtle back to Earth, breaking up and spreading hotly radioactive debris over 124,000 square miles of the Northwest Territories of Canada.
President Obama, in a speech on “Space Exploration in the 2lst Century” given April 15 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, didn’t mention nuclear-powered rockets (not even those that would only be activated after launch). He did announce that “we will invest more than $3 billion to conduct research on an advanced heavy lift rocket—a vehicle to efficiently send into orbit the crew capsules, propulsion systems and large quantities of supplies needed to reach deep space. In developing this new vehicle, we will not only look at revising or modifying older models; we want to look at new designs, new materials, new technologies that will transform not just where we can go but what we can do when we get there. And we will finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and then begin to build it.”
“At the same time, after decades of neglect, we will increase investment—right away—in other groundbreaking technologies that will allow astronauts to reach space sooner and more often, to travel farther and faster,” he said.
“How do we supply spacecraft with energy needed for these far-reaching journeys? These
are questions that we can answer and will answer. And these are the questions whose answers no doubt will reap untold benefits right here on Earth.”
“And by 2025,” Obama said, “we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So we’ll start—we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars.”
“I want to repeat this,” Obama asserted. “Critical to deep space exploration will be the development of breakthrough propulsion systems and other advanced technologies.”
With Obama on the platform was U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida—who he introduced at the start of his speech. Nelson in 1986 was a passenger on the space shuttle (before the 1986 Challenger disaster ended the shuttle passenger program) and he is a member of Senate Science and Transportation Committee. Although Obama was not specific on the kind of spacecraft he envisioned for trips to Mars, later that day on “Hardball With Chris Matthews” on MSNBC, Nelson was—and it was Chang-Diaz’s nuclear rocket. “One of my crewmates,” said Nelson, speaking of former astronaut Chang-Diaz who was with him on the 1986 shuttle flight, “is developing a plasma rocket that would take us to Mars in 39 days.”
The object of Administrator Bolden and Senator Nelson’s technical affections, Chang-Diaz, a Costa Rican-native, the first naturalized U.S. citizen to become a U.S. astronaut, founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company after retiring from NASA in 2005. He is its president and CEO. In an interview with Seed.com last year, he said the engine for his VASIMIR (for Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) could work with solar power. The engine uses plasma gas heated by electric current to extremely high temperatures.
But larger versions are needed for space travel and they require nuclear power, said Chang-Diaz. “What we really need is nuclear power to generate electricity in space. If we don’t develop it, we might as well quit, because we’re not going to go very far. Nuclear power is central to any robust and realistic human exploration of space. People don’t really talk about this at NASA. Everybody is still avoiding facing this because of widespread anti-nuclear sentiment.”
“People have fears of nuclear power in space,” continued Chang-Diaz, “but it’s a fear that isn’t really based on any organized and clear assessment of the true risks and costs.”
Comments Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space: “Despite claims that ‘new’ and innovative technologies are under development at NASA, the story remains much the same—push nuclear power applications for future space missions. Obama is proving to be a major proponent of expansion of nuclear power—both here on Earth and in space. His ‘trip to an asteroid and missions to Mars’ plan appears to be about reviving the role of nuclear power in space. The nuclear industry must be cheering.”
The Obama administration is seeking to renew the use of nuclear power in space. It is calling for revived production by the U.S. of plutonium-238 for use in space devices—despite solar energy having become a substitute for plutonium power in space.
And the Obama administration appears to also want to revive the decades-old and long-discredited scheme of nuclear-powered rockets—despite strides made in new ways of propelling spacecraft. Last month, Japan launched what it called its “space yacht” which is now heading to Venus propelled by solar sails utilizing ionized particles emitted by the Sun. “Because of the frictionless environment, such a craft should be able to speed up until it is traveling many times faster than a conventional rocket-powered craft,” wrote Agence France-Presse about this spacecraft launched May 21.
But the Obama administration would return to using nuclear power in space—despite its enormous dangers.
A cheerleader for this is the space industry publication Space News. “Going Nuclear” was the headline of its editorial on March 1 praising the administration for its space nuclear thrust. Space New declared that “for the second year in a row, the Obama administration is asking Congress for at least $30 million to begin a multiyear effort to restart domestic production of plutonium-238, the essential ingredient in long-lasting spacecraft batteries.”
The Space News editorial also noted that “President Obama’s NASA budget [for 2011] also includes support for nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric propulsion research under a $650 million Exploration Technology and Demonstration funding line projected to triple by 2013.”
Space News declared: “Nuclear propulsion research experienced a brief revival seven years ago when then-NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe established Project Prometheus to design reactor-powered spacecraft. Mr. O’Keefe’s successor, Mike Griffin, wasted little time pulling the plug on NASA’s nuclear ambitions.”
Being referred to by Space News as “spacecraft batteries” are what are called radioisotope thermoelectric generators or RTGs, power systems using plutonium-238 to provide on board electricity on various space devices including, originally, on satellites.
But this came to an end when in 1964 a U.S. Navy navigational satellite with a SNAP-9A (SNAP for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power) RTG on board failed to achieve orbit and fell to the Earth, disintegrating upon hitting the atmosphere. The 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel dispersed widely. A study by a group of European health and radiation protection agencies subsequently reported that “a worldwide soil sampling program carried out in 1970 showed SNAP-9A debris present at all continents and at all latitudes.” Long linking the SNAP-9A accident to an increase of lung cancer in people on Earth was Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, who was involved in isolating plutonium for the Manhattan Project.
The SNAP-9A accident caused NASA to turn to using solar photovoltaic panels on satellites. All U.S. satellites are now solar-powered.
But NASA persisted in using RTGs on space probes—claiming there was no choice. This was a false claim. Although NASA, for instance, insisted—including in sworn court depositions —that it had no alternative but to use RTGs on its Galileo mission to Jupiter launched in 1989, documents I subsequently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from NASA included a study done by its Jet Propulsion Laboratory stating that solar photovoltaic panels could have substituted for plutonium-fueled RTGs.
And right now, the Juno space probe—which will getting its on board electricity only from solar photovoltaic panels—is being readied by NASA for a launch next year to Jupiter. It’s to make 32 orbits around Jupiter and perform a variety of scientific missions.
Meanwhile, in recent years facilities in the U.S. to produce plutonium-238—hotspots for worker contamination and environmental pollution—have been closed and the U.S. has been obtaining the radionuclide from Russia. Under the Obama 2011 budget, U.S. production would be restarted. Last year, Congress refused to go along with this Obama request.
As for rocket propulsion with atomic energy, building such rockets was a major U.S. undertaking 50 and 60 years ago, under a program called NERVA (for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) followed by Projects Pluto, Rover and Poodle. Billions of dollars were spent and ground-testing done, but no nuclear rocket ever got off the ground. There were concerns over a nuclear rocket blowing up on launch or crashing back to Earth. The effort ended in 1972 but was revived in the 1980s under President Reagan’s Star Wars program. The “Timberwind” nuclear-powered rocket was developed then to loft heavy Star Wars equipment into space and also for trips to Mars. Most recently, Project Prometheus to build nuclear-powered rockets was begun by NASA in 2003, but ended in 2006, the cancellation referred to in the Space News editorial.
Obama’s choice to head NASA, Charles Bolden, favors nuclear-powered rockets—but he acknowledges public resistance. In a recent presentation before the Council on Foreign Relations, he opened the door to having a nuclear-powered rocket launched conventionally and moving in space with nuclear power.
Bolden, a former astronaut and U.S. Marine Corps major general, spoke in the May 24th address, of work by another ex-astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, on a nuclear-propelled rocket. “Chang-Diaz is developing what’s called a VASIMIR rocket,” said Bolden. “It’s an ion engine, very gentle impulse that just pushes you forever, constantly accelerating. And this, theoretically, is something that would enable us to go from Earth to Mars in a matter of some time significantly less than it takes us now.”
But, he said, “most people…in the United States are never going to agree to allow nuclear rockets to launch things from Earth.” Yet “once you get into space, you know, if we can convince people that we can contain it and not put masses of people in jeopardy, nuclear propulsion for in-space propulsion” would enable a faster trip to Mars. He said, “You don’t want to have to take eight months to go from Earth orbit to Mars.”
Having nuclear power systems only activated once up in space was a system followed by the Soviet Union—because of it having suffered many launch pad explosions. Still, the scheme wasn’t accident-free. The worst Soviet space nuclear device accident involved its Cosmos 954 reconnaissance satellite. Its on board nuclear reactor was only activated after launch when the reactor was in orbit. But then there was a malfunction causing Cosmos 954 to tumble out of control and hurtle back to Earth, breaking up and spreading hotly radioactive debris over 124,000 square miles of the Northwest Territories of Canada.
President Obama, in a speech on “Space Exploration in the 2lst Century” given April 15 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, didn’t mention nuclear-powered rockets (not even those that would only be activated after launch). He did announce that “we will invest more than $3 billion to conduct research on an advanced heavy lift rocket—a vehicle to efficiently send into orbit the crew capsules, propulsion systems and large quantities of supplies needed to reach deep space. In developing this new vehicle, we will not only look at revising or modifying older models; we want to look at new designs, new materials, new technologies that will transform not just where we can go but what we can do when we get there. And we will finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and then begin to build it.”
“At the same time, after decades of neglect, we will increase investment—right away—in other groundbreaking technologies that will allow astronauts to reach space sooner and more often, to travel farther and faster,” he said.
“How do we supply spacecraft with energy needed for these far-reaching journeys? These
are questions that we can answer and will answer. And these are the questions whose answers no doubt will reap untold benefits right here on Earth.”
“And by 2025,” Obama said, “we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So we’ll start—we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars.”
“I want to repeat this,” Obama asserted. “Critical to deep space exploration will be the development of breakthrough propulsion systems and other advanced technologies.”
With Obama on the platform was U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida—who he introduced at the start of his speech. Nelson in 1986 was a passenger on the space shuttle (before the 1986 Challenger disaster ended the shuttle passenger program) and he is a member of Senate Science and Transportation Committee. Although Obama was not specific on the kind of spacecraft he envisioned for trips to Mars, later that day on “Hardball With Chris Matthews” on MSNBC, Nelson was—and it was Chang-Diaz’s nuclear rocket. “One of my crewmates,” said Nelson, speaking of former astronaut Chang-Diaz who was with him on the 1986 shuttle flight, “is developing a plasma rocket that would take us to Mars in 39 days.”
The object of Administrator Bolden and Senator Nelson’s technical affections, Chang-Diaz, a Costa Rican-native, the first naturalized U.S. citizen to become a U.S. astronaut, founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company after retiring from NASA in 2005. He is its president and CEO. In an interview with Seed.com last year, he said the engine for his VASIMIR (for Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) could work with solar power. The engine uses plasma gas heated by electric current to extremely high temperatures.
But larger versions are needed for space travel and they require nuclear power, said Chang-Diaz. “What we really need is nuclear power to generate electricity in space. If we don’t develop it, we might as well quit, because we’re not going to go very far. Nuclear power is central to any robust and realistic human exploration of space. People don’t really talk about this at NASA. Everybody is still avoiding facing this because of widespread anti-nuclear sentiment.”
“People have fears of nuclear power in space,” continued Chang-Diaz, “but it’s a fear that isn’t really based on any organized and clear assessment of the true risks and costs.”
Comments Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space: “Despite claims that ‘new’ and innovative technologies are under development at NASA, the story remains much the same—push nuclear power applications for future space missions. Obama is proving to be a major proponent of expansion of nuclear power—both here on Earth and in space. His ‘trip to an asteroid and missions to Mars’ plan appears to be about reviving the role of nuclear power in space. The nuclear industry must be cheering.”
Saturday, May 22, 2010
My TV Commentary on Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Disaster
Just posted on YouTube, my TV commentary on the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXIksDe4Zl4
Cancer and Pollution
The Health Department of New York State this month put out a first-in-the-nation cancer map showing the locations of incidences of cancer and likely sources of pollution such as hazardous waste and Superfund sites. For many places in New York, with high cancer rates and numerous sources of pollution, the map—accessible on the Internet—is a breakthrough.
Only reluctantly did the Health Department put together the map based on cancer cases between 2003 and 2007 listed in the state’s Cancer Registry and data on potentially polluting sites provided by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
As the New York Times reported, the department along with the American Cancer Society
“opposed” the mapping because of “concerns that its unfiltered data could be misinterpreted.” But Governor David Paterson “sided against his own administration in signing the legislation” which mandated the mapping, noted the Times.
The Assembly sponsor of the legislation, Richard Brodsky of Westchester County, commented that the map is a “first step in getting to answers about whether these clusters are statistical accidents or related to an environmental cause.”
The unveiling of the map came a week after the President’s Cancer Panel issued a 240-page report pointing to chemicals and radiation as key causes of cancer. It is titled “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now” and is also available online.
It states that “cancer continues to shatter and steal the lives of Americans. Approximately 61 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent will die from the cancer. The incidence of some cancers, including some most common among children, is increasing…The burgeoning number and complexity of known or suspected environmental carcinogens compel us to act to protect public health.”
The panel concludes that “the grievous harm” from carcinogens “has not been addressed adequately by the National Cancer Program…The burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated…The American people…are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures.”
It urges President Obama “most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.”
But will government move? For example, although the Toxic Substances Control Act was passed in 1976 requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to assess chemicals in commercial use in the U.S.—now totaling 80,000, the report notes—EPA has only gotten around to examining 200.
I wrote a book on all this titled The Poison Conspiracy, out in 1983, showing how those who are supposed to protect us from poisons—including the EPA—largely do not because of coziness with those who do the polluting.
And in a chapter on “Admitted Consequences,” I cited reports of a number of federal panels on the cancer epidemic and its pollution link including a 1980 report of the Presidential Toxic Substances Strategy Committee that found “environmental factors…are significant in the great majority of cancer cases seen, perhaps 80-90 percent.”
The American Cancer Society criticized the new President’s Cancer Panel report insisting pollution isn’t a major cause of cancer. This caused Dr. Samuel Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and author of The Politics of Cancer, to criticize the society noting the large amount of money it receives from DuPont, BP and other polluters.
The poisoning—and consequent cancer—isn’t necessary. The President’s Cancer Panel emphasizes how “the requite knowledge and technologies exist” to provide safe “alternatives” to cancer-causing agents. But this doesn’t suit those doing the polluting—who have such a hold on government.
Only reluctantly did the Health Department put together the map based on cancer cases between 2003 and 2007 listed in the state’s Cancer Registry and data on potentially polluting sites provided by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
As the New York Times reported, the department along with the American Cancer Society
“opposed” the mapping because of “concerns that its unfiltered data could be misinterpreted.” But Governor David Paterson “sided against his own administration in signing the legislation” which mandated the mapping, noted the Times.
The Assembly sponsor of the legislation, Richard Brodsky of Westchester County, commented that the map is a “first step in getting to answers about whether these clusters are statistical accidents or related to an environmental cause.”
The unveiling of the map came a week after the President’s Cancer Panel issued a 240-page report pointing to chemicals and radiation as key causes of cancer. It is titled “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now” and is also available online.
It states that “cancer continues to shatter and steal the lives of Americans. Approximately 61 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent will die from the cancer. The incidence of some cancers, including some most common among children, is increasing…The burgeoning number and complexity of known or suspected environmental carcinogens compel us to act to protect public health.”
The panel concludes that “the grievous harm” from carcinogens “has not been addressed adequately by the National Cancer Program…The burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated…The American people…are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures.”
It urges President Obama “most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.”
But will government move? For example, although the Toxic Substances Control Act was passed in 1976 requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to assess chemicals in commercial use in the U.S.—now totaling 80,000, the report notes—EPA has only gotten around to examining 200.
I wrote a book on all this titled The Poison Conspiracy, out in 1983, showing how those who are supposed to protect us from poisons—including the EPA—largely do not because of coziness with those who do the polluting.
And in a chapter on “Admitted Consequences,” I cited reports of a number of federal panels on the cancer epidemic and its pollution link including a 1980 report of the Presidential Toxic Substances Strategy Committee that found “environmental factors…are significant in the great majority of cancer cases seen, perhaps 80-90 percent.”
The American Cancer Society criticized the new President’s Cancer Panel report insisting pollution isn’t a major cause of cancer. This caused Dr. Samuel Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and author of The Politics of Cancer, to criticize the society noting the large amount of money it receives from DuPont, BP and other polluters.
The poisoning—and consequent cancer—isn’t necessary. The President’s Cancer Panel emphasizes how “the requite knowledge and technologies exist” to provide safe “alternatives” to cancer-causing agents. But this doesn’t suit those doing the polluting—who have such a hold on government.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
My Enviro Close-Up Programs Now Can Be Seen In Full On Your Computer
Yesterday, my partners at EnviroVideo accomplished having many of the Enviro Close-Up television programs I've hosted in the past years--plus current offerings--put up on the Internet and available to be viewed, in full, on computer. Visit www.envirovideo.com and you will see a wide variety of programs you can click on and watch.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Chernobyl Catastrophe: 24th Anniversary
With the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster coming next week, a new book has been published by the New York Academy of Sciences which concludes that between 1986, when the accident happened, and 2004 some 985,000 people died, especially of cancer, as a result of the radioactivity that was emitted.
The 985,000 figure is based on health data, radiological reports and scientific studies—some 5,000 in all—especially from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus but from other affected nations as well.
It belies the assertion of the International Atomic Energy Agency that, as the IAEA still claims on its website, the “total number of deaths already attributable to Chernobyl or expected in the future…is estimated to be about 4,000.” That claim of the IAEA, which was set up in 1957 “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy,” has been widely reported as the toll from the disaster.
The new book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, shows it to be an extreme minimization.
It is authored by three noted scientists: Dr. Alexey Yablokov of Russia, a biologist and former environmental advisor to the Russian president; Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist, and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. The consulting editor is Dr. Janette D. Sherman, a Virginia-based physician and toxicologist who has long specialized on the impacts of radioactivity.
The work is comprehensive, indeed, the most encompassing study that has ever been done of the Chernobyl accident. It is anchored in strong evidence. And it is chilling.
The radioactive release from Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, starting with it exploding on April 26, 1986 and ending when it stopped burning in mid-May, “was many hundreds of millions of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” notes the book.
The “winds around Chernobyl” kept changing, covering 360-degrees “so the radioactive emissions from the mix of radionuclides varied from day to day and covered an enormous territory.” The radioactive poisons included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90, among others.
A country-by-country breakdown of where they fell out, with the detailed measurements taken and maps, follow. The list starts with Belarus—“Practically the entire country of Belarus was covered by the Chernobyl cloud”—and on to Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom and so on to Asia and North America, where “some 1% of all Chernobyl radionuclides…fell.”
The consequences on public health are exhaustively analyzed, first “General Morbidity, Impairment, and Disability.” Again, the grisly list starts with Belarus where, it is noted: “According to data from the Belarusian Ministry of Public Health, just before the catastrophe…90% of children were considered ‘practically healthy.’ By 2000, fewer than 20% were considered so.” Rises in nonmalignant diseases including blood and cardiovascular diseases are examined.
There is a focus on genetic impacts with records showing an increase in “chromosomal aberrations” cited. This will continue through the “children of irradiated parents for as many as seven generations.” Thus, “the genetic consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe will impact hundreds of millions of people.”
And then comes cancer—with records illuminated by charts showing the increases in various countries of childhood cancer, thyroid cancer, leukemia and other cancers. For Ukraine, for instance, “According to official data, the general [cancerl] mortality rate in the heavily contaminated territories was 18.3 per 1,000 in 1999, some 28% higher than the national average of 14.9 per 1,000.”
Considering health data of people in all nations impacted by the fallout, the “overall [cancer] mortality for the period from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated as 985,000 additional deaths.”
Moreover, “the concentrations” of some of the poisons, because they have radioactive half-lives ranging from 20,000 to 200,000 years, “will remain practically the same virtually forever.”So “the number of Chernobyl victims will continue to grow in the next several generations.”
The book investigates, too, the impact on flora, fauna and animals. It presents numerous studies, including those finding rapid genetic alterations, and, as to animals, notes “serious increases in morbidity and mortality that bear striking resemblance to changes in the public health of humans—increasing tumor rates, immunodeficiencies, decreasing life expectancy…”
The book concludes: “The Chernobyl catastrophe demonstrates that the nuclear industry’s willingness to risk the health of humanity and our environment with nuclear power plants will result, not only theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear weapons.”
Dr. Sherman, speaking of her experience editing the book, commented: “Every single system that was studied—whether human or wolves or livestock or fish or trees or mushrooms or bacteria—all were changed, some of them irreversibly. The scope of the damage is stunning.”
In his foreword, Dr. Dimitro Grodzinsky, chairman of the Ukranian National Commission on Radiation Protection, writes about how “apologists of nuclear power” sought to hide the real impacts of the Chernobyl disaster from the time when the accident occurred. The book “provides the largest and most complete collection of data concerning the negative consequences of Chernobyl on the health of people and the environment...The main conclusion of the book is that it is impossible and wrong ‘to forget Chernobyl.’”
The claim that “only” 4,000 people will die as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe is among the biggest lies of modern times.
The Chernobyl disaster should not only be remembered but must not be allowed to be repeated—which will happen regularly if the forces behind nuclear power get their way in their effort to “revive” nuclear power and build more nuclear plants.
Those in operation now need to be shut down and no more built—and a rapid transition made to clean, safe energy technologies available today, led by solar and wind power, which don’t kill people and other forms of life.
The 985,000 figure is based on health data, radiological reports and scientific studies—some 5,000 in all—especially from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus but from other affected nations as well.
It belies the assertion of the International Atomic Energy Agency that, as the IAEA still claims on its website, the “total number of deaths already attributable to Chernobyl or expected in the future…is estimated to be about 4,000.” That claim of the IAEA, which was set up in 1957 “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy,” has been widely reported as the toll from the disaster.
The new book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, shows it to be an extreme minimization.
It is authored by three noted scientists: Dr. Alexey Yablokov of Russia, a biologist and former environmental advisor to the Russian president; Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist, and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. The consulting editor is Dr. Janette D. Sherman, a Virginia-based physician and toxicologist who has long specialized on the impacts of radioactivity.
The work is comprehensive, indeed, the most encompassing study that has ever been done of the Chernobyl accident. It is anchored in strong evidence. And it is chilling.
The radioactive release from Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, starting with it exploding on April 26, 1986 and ending when it stopped burning in mid-May, “was many hundreds of millions of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” notes the book.
The “winds around Chernobyl” kept changing, covering 360-degrees “so the radioactive emissions from the mix of radionuclides varied from day to day and covered an enormous territory.” The radioactive poisons included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90, among others.
A country-by-country breakdown of where they fell out, with the detailed measurements taken and maps, follow. The list starts with Belarus—“Practically the entire country of Belarus was covered by the Chernobyl cloud”—and on to Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom and so on to Asia and North America, where “some 1% of all Chernobyl radionuclides…fell.”
The consequences on public health are exhaustively analyzed, first “General Morbidity, Impairment, and Disability.” Again, the grisly list starts with Belarus where, it is noted: “According to data from the Belarusian Ministry of Public Health, just before the catastrophe…90% of children were considered ‘practically healthy.’ By 2000, fewer than 20% were considered so.” Rises in nonmalignant diseases including blood and cardiovascular diseases are examined.
There is a focus on genetic impacts with records showing an increase in “chromosomal aberrations” cited. This will continue through the “children of irradiated parents for as many as seven generations.” Thus, “the genetic consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe will impact hundreds of millions of people.”
And then comes cancer—with records illuminated by charts showing the increases in various countries of childhood cancer, thyroid cancer, leukemia and other cancers. For Ukraine, for instance, “According to official data, the general [cancerl] mortality rate in the heavily contaminated territories was 18.3 per 1,000 in 1999, some 28% higher than the national average of 14.9 per 1,000.”
Considering health data of people in all nations impacted by the fallout, the “overall [cancer] mortality for the period from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated as 985,000 additional deaths.”
Moreover, “the concentrations” of some of the poisons, because they have radioactive half-lives ranging from 20,000 to 200,000 years, “will remain practically the same virtually forever.”So “the number of Chernobyl victims will continue to grow in the next several generations.”
The book investigates, too, the impact on flora, fauna and animals. It presents numerous studies, including those finding rapid genetic alterations, and, as to animals, notes “serious increases in morbidity and mortality that bear striking resemblance to changes in the public health of humans—increasing tumor rates, immunodeficiencies, decreasing life expectancy…”
The book concludes: “The Chernobyl catastrophe demonstrates that the nuclear industry’s willingness to risk the health of humanity and our environment with nuclear power plants will result, not only theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear weapons.”
Dr. Sherman, speaking of her experience editing the book, commented: “Every single system that was studied—whether human or wolves or livestock or fish or trees or mushrooms or bacteria—all were changed, some of them irreversibly. The scope of the damage is stunning.”
In his foreword, Dr. Dimitro Grodzinsky, chairman of the Ukranian National Commission on Radiation Protection, writes about how “apologists of nuclear power” sought to hide the real impacts of the Chernobyl disaster from the time when the accident occurred. The book “provides the largest and most complete collection of data concerning the negative consequences of Chernobyl on the health of people and the environment...The main conclusion of the book is that it is impossible and wrong ‘to forget Chernobyl.’”
The claim that “only” 4,000 people will die as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe is among the biggest lies of modern times.
The Chernobyl disaster should not only be remembered but must not be allowed to be repeated—which will happen regularly if the forces behind nuclear power get their way in their effort to “revive” nuclear power and build more nuclear plants.
Those in operation now need to be shut down and no more built—and a rapid transition made to clean, safe energy technologies available today, led by solar and wind power, which don’t kill people and other forms of life.
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