Alice divided on uranium exploration

The World Today - Friday, 1 May , 2009 12:34:00
Reporter: Sara Everingham

PETER CAVE: In the town of Alice Springs a fierce debate has erupted over the prospect of a uranium mine about 25 kilometres to the south.

The Northern Territory Government has given the go ahead to a Cameco-Paladin joint venture to start uranium exploration at the deposit known as Angela.

Supporters of the project say it's just what's needed to boost the Alice Springs economy.

Opponents though, say that a uranium mine close to the town would pose huge health and environmental risks.

Sara Everingham reports.

(Sound of car driving on dusty road)

SARA EVERINGHAM: The Angela deposit lies along a dusty road south of Alice Springs.

The landscape is mostly rocks and red sand.

Isabelle Kirkbride has become familiar with this area.

ISABELLE KIRKBRIDE: It's used for, by tourists, to go and see the Yuaninga (phonetic) rock hole, and to go to the other communities that are out this way.

SARA EVERINGHAM: A Cameco-Paladin joint venture has been given a license by the Northern Territory Government to begin exploring for uranium here.

Isabelle Kirkbride is part of Families for a Nuclear Free Future, just one of several vocal groups that's formed in response.

ISABELLE KIRKBRIDE: Well, it's only22 kilometres from the centre of town, and there's always a strong southerly blowing, like there is today. Often there is a strong southerly wind, so that blows straight into town.

SARA EVERINGHAM: So you're worried about dust?

ISABELLE KIRKBRIDE: Yep, we're worried about dust. In the exploration process, dust will, it will be difficult to suppress dust, we believe.

And we're also very concerned about contamination to our water basin, because this is in the water basin, the water catchment basin, this site.

SARA EVERINGHAM: So underneath us then, is that what you're saying?

ISABELLE KIRKBRIDE: Yeah, underneath us is our town's drinking water.

SARA EVERINGHAM: But there has been drilling done here before, is that right?

ISABELLE KIRKBRIDE: Yeah, there has been drilling done here before, in the 1970s. And I think time has told us that any uranium activity is very dangerous.

STEFAN STANDEN: I think it's a great deposit.

SARA EVERINGHAM: Stefan Standen is the manager of the exploration project for Cameco-Paladin.

He says the Angela site is now much more economically viable.

STEFAN STANDER: We've seen significant increases in the uranium price, and the world outlook for uranium as an alternative source of energy has, than coal, has improved dramatically.

SARA EVERINGHAM: Cameco-Paladin is preparing to start drilling. It's just waiting for its mine management plan to be approved by the Northern Territory Government, and Stefan Stander believes that's not too far away.

As for concerns about dust, he says that's all been taken into account, and that several drilling methods will be used to make sure there's no risk to the residents of Alice Springs

STEFAN STANDER: We won't be generating any dust that contains uranium in it.

SARA EVERINGHAM: And he says the drilling will stop well above the aquifer.

STEFAN STANDER: I think if we go back into the history, and we look at the exploration that's already been conducted, it clearly shows that none of that exploration had any impact on the town water supply.

(Sound of drills)

SARA EVERINGHAM: Gorey and Cole Drillers has the drilling contract at the Angela site.

Viv Oldfield's the director.

He says the project is just what Alice Springs needs.

VIV OLDFIELD: We had 25 odd blokes that were a bit precarious on whether they'd have work or not, and we couldn't really get them back, because we didn't know if we were really going to have work for them.

So it would give them an opportunity obviously to sort of shore up all their commitments they've got with housing and family and all their loans, etc.

SARA EVERINGHAM: The Alice Springs Mayor Damien Ryan agrees the exploration brings clear benefits for the town.

DAMIEN RYAN: Alice Springs need to create industry, create work, for the longevity of Alice Springs.

The reaction of whether it's a uranium mine or not will be a decision made by other parties.

I mean, these sort of things have to go through the environmental agencies put up by both the Territory Government and the Federal Government, and that's where the decision will be.

I support growth in Alice Springs.

SARA EVERINGHAM: Cameco-Paladin believes more people in Alice Springs approve of its project than disapprove.

It commissioned market research that's found 52 per cent support it and 46 per cent are against.

The research is contested by those who oppose the exploration. On the streets of Alice Springs opinion is divided.

Roy Winther has lived in Alice Springs for 11 years.

ROY WINTHER: I think that if all the safeguards are followed, I think it will be fine, because a lot of the world has been using it.

You talk about the major accidents that have happened have been with reactors that are over 50 years old.

So I don't think I'm panicking as much as other people.

SARA EVERINGHAM: But local business owner Nathan King disagrees.

NATHAN KING: The environment in Central Australia is so pristine and I simply don't see how trucks and trains and equipment and blokes flying in and out of town, how that could not have a negative effect on what we love so much about living in Alice Springs.

SARA EVERINGHAM: Cameco-Paladin says it plans to explore at the Angela site for two years and there's a 50-50 chance a uranium mine could be developed at there, although any mine would be another five to seven years away.

The debate around uranium in the Alice is set to continue for some time yet.

PETER CAVE: Sara Everingham reporting.

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2558211.htm

Three Mile Island & Nuke Saftey

AlterNet

April 4, 2009

Startling Revelations about Three Mile Island Disaster Raise Doubts Over Nuke Safety

By Sue Sturgis, Facing South

This story originally appeared on Facing South, online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies.

It was April Fool's Day, 1979 -- 30 years ago this week -- when Randall Thompson first set foot inside the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa. Just four days earlier, in the early morning hours of March 28, a relatively minor problem in the plant's Unit 2 reactor sparked a series of mishaps that led to the meltdown of almost half the uranium fuel and uncontrolled releases of radiation into the air and surrounding Susquehanna River.

It was the single worst disaster ever to befall the U.S. nuclear power industry, and Thompson was hired as a health physics technician to go inside the plant and find out how dangerous the situation was. He spent 28 days monitoring radiation releases.

Today, his story about what he witnessed at Three Mile Island is being brought to the public in detail for the first time -- and his version of what happened during that time, supported by a growing body of other scientific evidence, contradicts the official U.S. government story that the Three Mile Island accident posed no threat to the public.

"What happened at TMI was a whole lot worse than what has been reported," Randall Thompson told Facing South. "Hundreds of times worse."

Thompson and his wife, Joy, a nuclear health physicist who also worked at TMI in the disaster's aftermath, claim that what they witnessed there was a public health tragedy. The Thompsons also warn that the government's failure to acknowledge the full scope of the disaster is leading officials to underestimate the risks posed by a new generation of nuclear power plants.

While new reactor construction ground to a halt after the 1979 incident, state leaders and energy executives today are pushing for a nuclear energy revival that's centered in the South, where 12 of the 17 facilities seeking new reactors are located.

Fundamental to the industry's case for expansion is the claim that history proves nuclear power is clean and safe -- a claim on which the Thompsons and others, bolstered by startling new evidence, are casting doubt.

An unlikely critic

Randall Thompson could never be accused of being a knee-jerk anti-nuclear alarmist. A veteran of the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine program, he is a self-described "nuclear geek" who after finishing military service jumped at the chance to work for commercial nuclear power companies.

He worked for a time at the Peach Bottom nuclear plant south of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania' s York County, but quit the industry six months before the TMI disaster over concerns that nuclear companies were cutting corners for higher profits, with potentially dangerous results. Instead, he began publishing a skateboarding magazine with his wife Joy.

But the moment the Thompsons heard about the TMI incident, they wanted to get inside the plant and see what was happening first-hand. That didn't prove difficult: Plant operator Metropolitan Edison's in-house health physics staff fled after the incident began, so responsibility for monitoring radioactive emissions went to a private contractor called Rad Services.

The company immediately hired Randall Thompson to serve as the health physics technician in charge of monitoring radioactive emissions, while Joy Thompson got a job monitoring radiation doses to TMI workers.

"I had other health physicists from around the country calling me saying, 'Don't let it melt without me!" Randall Thompson recalls. "It was exciting. Our attitude was, 'Sure I may get some cancer, but I can find out some cool stuff.'"

What the Thompsons say they found out during their time inside TMI suggests radiation releases from the plant were hundreds if not thousands of times higher than the government and industry have acknowledged -- high enough to cause the acute health effects documented in people living near the plant but that have been dismissed by the industry and the government as impossible given official radiation dose estimates.

The Thompsons tried to draw attention to their findings and provide health information for people living near the plant, but what they say happened next reads like a John Grisham thriller.

They tell of how a stranger approached Randall Thompson in a grocery store parking lot in late April 1979 and warned him his life was at risk, leading the family to flee Pennsylvania. How they ended up in New Mexico working on a book about their experiences with the help of Joy's brother Charles Busey, another nuclear Navy vet and a former worker at the Hatch nuclear power plant in Georgia. How one evening while driving home from the store Busey and Randall Thompson were run off the road, injuring Thompson and killing Busey. How a copy of the book manuscript they were working on was missing from the car's trunk after the accident. These allegations were detailed in several newspaper accounts back in 1981.

Eventually, after a decade of having their lives ruled by TMI, the Thompsons decided to move on. Randall Thompson went to college to study computer science. Joy Thompson returned to publishing and writing.

Today they live quietly in the mountains of North Carolina where, inspired by time spent seeking refuge with a traveling circus, they have forged a new career for themselves as clowns -- or what they like to call "professional fools." As Joy Thompson wrote in the fall 2001 issue of Parabola, a journal of myth, the role of the fool is to help people "perceive the foolishness in even ... the most powerful institutions, " noting the medieval court jester's role of telling the King what others dare not.

That conviction has led the Thompsons to tell their story today.

"They haven't told the truth yet about what happened at Three Mile Island," says Randall Thompson. "A lot of people have died because of this accident. A lot."

Anomalies abound

That a lot of people died because of what happened at Three Mile Island, as the Thompsons claim, is definitely not part of the official story. In fact, the commercial nuclear power industry and the government insist that despite the meltdown of almost half of the uranium fuel at TMI, there were only minimal releases of radiation to the environment that harmed no one.

For example, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying group for the U.S. nuclear industry, declares on its website that there have been "no public health or safety consequences from the TMI-2 accident." The government's position is the same, reflected in a fact sheet distributed today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency charged with overseeing the U.S. nuclear power industry: TMI, it says, "led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community." [The watchdog group Three Mile Island Alert offers their take on the NRC factsheet here.]

Those upbeat claims are based on the findings of the Kemeny Commission, a panel assembled by President Jimmy Carter in April 1979 to investigate the TMI disaster. Using release figures presented by Metropolitan Edison and the NRC, the commission calculated that in the month following the disaster there were releases of up to 13 million curies of so-called "noble gases" -- considered relatively harmless -- but only 13 to 17 curies of iodine-131, a radioactive form of the element that at even moderate exposures causes thyroid cancer. (A curie is a measure of radioactivity, with 1 curie equal to the activity of one gram of radium. For help understanding these and other terms, see the glossary at the end of this piece.)

But the official story that there were no health impacts from the disaster doesn't jibe with the experiences of people living near TMI. On the contrary, their stories suggest that area residents actually suffered exposure to levels of radiation high enough to cause acute effects -- far more than the industry and the government has acknowledged.

Some of their disturbing experiences were collected in the book Three Mile Island: The People's Testament, which is based on interviews with 250 area residents done between 1979 and 1988 by Katagiri Mitsuru and Aileen M. Smith.

It includes the story of Jean Trimmer, a farmer who lived in Lisburn, Pa. about 10 miles west of TMI. On the evening of March 30, 1979, Trimmer stepped outside on her front porch to fetch her cat when she was hit with a blast of heat and rain. Soon after, her skin became red and itchy as if badly sunburned, a condition known as erythema. About three weeks later, her hair turned white and began falling out. Not long after, she reported, her left kidney "just dried up and disappeared" -- an occurrence so strange that her case was presented to a symposium of doctors at the nearby Hershey Medical Center. All of those symptoms are consistent with high-dose radiation exposure.

There was also Bill Peters, an auto-body shop owner and a former justice of the peace who lived just a few miles west of the plant in Etters, Pa. The day after the disaster, he and his son -- who like most area residents were unaware of what was unfolding nearby -- were working in their garage with the doors open when they developed what they first thought was a bad sunburn. They also experienced burning in their throats and tasted what seemed to be metal in the air. That same metallic taste was reported by many local residents and is another symptom of radiation exposure, commonly reported in cancer patients receiving radiation therapy.

Peters soon developed diarrhea and nausea, blisters on his lips and inside his nose, and a burning feeling in his chest. Not long after, he had surgery for a damaged heart valve. When his family evacuated the area a few days later, they left their four-year-old German shepherd in their garage with 200 pounds of dog chow, 50 gallons of water and a mattress. When they returned a week later, they found the dog dead on the mattress, his eyes burnt completely white. His food was untouched, and he had vomited water all over the garage. They also found four of their five cats dead -- their eyes also burnt white -- and one alive but blinded. Peters later found scores of wild bird carcasses scattered over their property.

Similar stories surfaced in The People of Three Mile Island, a book by documentary photographer Robert Del Tredici. He found local farmers whose cattle and goats died, suffered miscarriages and gave birth to deformed young after the incident; whose chickens developed respiratory problems and died; and whose fruit trees abruptly lost all their leaves. Local residents also collected evidence of deformed plants, some of which were examined by James Gunckel, a botanist and radiation expert with Brookhaven National Laboratory and Rutgers University.

"There were a number of anomalies entirely comparable to those induced by ionizing radiation -- stem fasciations, growth stimulation, induction of extra vegetative buds and stem tumors," he swore in a 1984 affidavit.

Scientists say these kinds of anomalies simply aren't explained by official radiation release estimates.

Evidence of harm

The evidence that people, animals and plants near TMI were exposed to high levels of radiation in the 1979 disaster is not merely anecdotal. While government studies of the disaster as well as a number of independent researchers assert the incident caused no harm, other surveys and studies have also documented health effects that point to a high likelihood of significant radiation exposures.

In 1984, for example, psychologist Marjorie Aamodt and her engineer husband, Norman -- owners of an organic dairy farm east of Three Mile Island who got involved in a lawsuit seeking to stop TMI from restarting its Unit 1 reactor -- surveyed residents in three hilltop neighborhoods near the plant. Dozens of neighbors reported a metallic taste, nausea, vomiting and hair loss as well as illnesses including cancers, skin and reproductive problems, and collapsed organs -- all associated with radiation exposure. Among the 450 people surveyed, there were 19 cancer deaths reported between 1980 and 1984 -- more than seven times what would be expected statistically.

That survey came to the attention of the industry-financed TMI Public Health Fund, created in 1981 as part of a settlement for economic losses from the disaster. The fund's scientific advisors verified the Aamodts' calculations and launched a more comprehensive study of TMI-related cancer deaths led by a team of scientists from Columbia University. The researchers found an association between estimated radiation doses received by area residents and instances of non-Hodgkin' s lymphoma, lung cancer, leukemia and all cancers combined. Crucially, however, the researchers decided there wasn't "convincing evidence" that TMI radiation releases were linked to the increase in cancers in the area because of the "low estimates of radiation exposure." The paper did not consider what conclusions could be drawn if those "low estimates" turned out to be wrong.

By the time the Columbia research was published in the early 1990s, a class-action lawsuit was underway involving about 2,000 plaintiffs claiming that the radiation emissions were much larger than admitted by the government and industry. (The federal courts eventually rejected that suit, though hundreds of out-of-court settlements totaling millions of dollars have been reached with victims, including the parents of children born with birth defects.)

Consulting for the plaintiffs' attorneys, the Aamodts contacted Dr. Steven Wing, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health in Chapel Hill to provide support for the plaintiffs. Dr. Wing was reluctant to get involved because -- as he wrote in a 2003 paper about his experience -- "allegations of high radiation doses at TMI were considered by mainstream radiation scientists to be a product of radiation phobia or efforts to extort money from a blameless industry." But impressed with the Aamodts' compelling if imperfect evidence, Wing agreed to look at whether there were connections between radiation exposure from TMI and cancer rates.

Wing reanalyzed the Columbia scientists' data, looking at cancer rates before the TMI disaster to control for other possible risk factors in the 10-mile area. His peer-reviewed results, published in 1997, found positive relationships between accident dose estimates and rates of leukemia, lung cancer and all cancers. Where the Columbia study found a 30 percent average increase in lung cancer risk among one group of residents, for example, Wing found an 85 percent increase. And while the Columbia researchers found little or no increase in adult leukemias and a statistically unreliable increase in childhood cases, Wing found that people downwind during the most intense releases were eight to 10 times more likely on average than their neighbors to develop leukemia.

Dr. Wing reflected on his findings at a symposium in Harrisburg marking the 30-year anniversary of the Three Mile Island disaster last week.

"I believe this is very good evidence that releases were thousands of times greater than the story we've been told," he said. "As we think about the current plans to open more nuclear reactors, when we hear -- which we hear often -- that no one was harmed at Three Mile Island, we really should question that."

Documenting discrepancies

Randall and Joy Thompson couldn't agree more. If anything, they think Dr. Wing's findings understate the impact of Three Mile Island because they're based on low-ball estimates of radiation releases.

"Given what he was allowed to know or could figure out, he did a slam-bang job of it," Joyce Thompson says.

In 1995, the Thompsons -- with the help of another health physics expert who was also hired to monitor radiation after the TMI disaster, David Bear (formerly Bloombaum) - prepared a report analyzing the Kemeny Commission findings. Their research, which hasn't been covered by any major media, documents a series of inconsistencies and omissions in the government's account.

For example, the official story is that the TMI incident released only 13 to 17 curies of dangerous iodine into the outside environment, a tiny fraction of the 13 million curies of less dangerous radioactive gases officials say were released, primarily xenon. Such a number would seem small compared with, for example, the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, which released anywhere from 13 million to 40 million curies of iodine and is linked to 50,000 cases of thyroid cancer, according to World Health Organization estimates.

But the Thompsons and Bear point out that the commission's own Technical Assessment Task Force, in a separate volume, had concluded that iodine accounted for 8 to 12 percent of the total radioactive gases leaked from Three Mile Island. Conservatively assuming the 13 million curie figure was the total amount of radioactive gases released rather than just the xenon portion, and then using the Task Force's own 8 to 12 percent estimate of the proportion that was iodine, they point out that "the actual figure for Iodine release would be over 1 million curies" -- a much more substantial public health threat.

In another instance, the Kemeny Commission claimed that there were 7.5 million curies of iodine present in TMI's primary loop, the contained system that delivers cooling water to the reactor. But a laboratory analysis done on March 30 found a higher concentration of iodine in the reactor water, which would put the total amount of iodine present -- and which could potentially leak into the environment -- at 7.65 million curies.

"Thus, while the apparent difference between 7.5 and 7.65 seems inconsiderable at first glance," the Thompson/Bear report states, "this convenient rounding off served to 'lose' a hundred and fifty thousand curies of radioactive Iodine."

They also offer evidence of atmospheric releases of dangerously long-lived radioactive particles such as cesium and strontium -- releases denied by the Kemeny Commission but indicated in the Thompsons' own post-disaster monitoring and detailed in the report -- and show that there were pathways for the radiation to escape into the environment. They demonstrate that the plant's radiation filtration system was totally inadequate to handle the large amounts of radiation released from the melted fuel and suggest that the commission may have arbitrarily set release estimates at levels low enough to make the filtration appear adequate.

Shockingly, they also report that when readings from the dosimeters used to monitor radiation doses to workers and the public were logged, doses of beta radiation -- one of three basic types along with alpha and gamma -- were simply not recorded, which Joy Thompson knew since she did the recording. But Thompson's monitoring equipment also indicated that beta radiation represented about 90 percent of the radiation to which TMI's neighbors were exposed in April 1979, which means an enormous part of the disaster's public health risk may have been wiped from the record.

Finally, in a separate analysis the Thompsons point to discrepancies in government and industry accounts of the disaster that suggest the TMI Unit 2 suffered a scram failure -- that is, a breakdown of the emergency shutoff system. That would mean the nuclear reaction spiraled out of control and therefore posed a much greater danger than the official story allows.

The Thompsons aren't the only ones who have produced evidence that the radiation releases from TMI were much higher than the official estimates. Arnie Gundersen -- a nuclear engineer and former nuclear industry executive turned whistle-blower -- has done his own analysis, which he shared for the first time at a symposium in Harrisburg last week.

"I think the numbers on the NRC's website are off by a factor of 100 to 1,000," he said.

Exactly how much radiation was released is impossible to say, since onsite monitors immediately went off the scale after the explosion. But Gundersen points to an inside report by an NRC manager who himself estimated the release of about 36 million curies -- almost three times as much as the NRC's official estimate. Gundersen also notes that industry itself has acknowledged there was a total of 10 billion curies of radiation inside the reactor containment. Using the common estimate that a tenth of it escaped, that means as much as a billion curies could have been released to the environment.

Gundersen also offered compelling evidence based on pressure monitoring data from the plant that shortly before 2 p.m. on March 28, 1979 there was a hydrogen explosion inside the TMI containment building that could have released significant amounts of radiation to the environment. The NRC and industry to this day deny there was an explosion, instead referring to what happened as a "hydrogen burn." But Gundersen noted that affidavits from four reactor operators confirm that the plant manager was aware of a dramatic pressure spike after which the internal pressure dropped to outside pressure; he also noted that the control room shook and doors were blown off hinges. In addition, Gundersen reported that while Metropolitan Edison would have known about the pressure spike immediately from monitoring equipment, it didn't notify the NRC about what had happened until two days later.

Gundersen maintains under the NRC's own rules an evacuation should have been ordered on the disaster's first day, when calculated radiation exposures in the town of Goldsboro, Pa. were as high as 10 rems an hour compared to an average cumulative annual background dose of about 0.125 rems. No evacuation order was ever issued, though Gov. Dick Thornburgh did issue an evacuation advisory on March 30 for pregnant women and preschool children within 5 miles of the plant. The government also did not distribute potassium iodide to the public, which would have protected people from the health-damaging effects of radioactive iodine.

Lessons for the future?

When asked by Facing South to respond to these allegations, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not address them directly, instead stating that it continues to stand by the Kemeny Commission report. The NRC further insists that the radiation releases from Three Mile Island had only "negligible effects" on the physical health of humans and the environment, citing other reports from federal agencies [For a PDF of the NRC's response to Facing South, see here.]

But Gundersen and the Thompsons argue such claims don't address new findings at odds with the government's account.

"I believe [the] data shows releases from TMI were significantly greater than reported by the federal government," Gundersen says.

They also say their findings that releases were potentially much larger have important ramifications for current plans to expand the nuclear power industry.

With more than $18 billion in federal subsidies at stake, 17 companies are seeking federal licenses to build a total of 26 nuclear reactors across the country, the first applications since the 1979 disaster. The Atlanta-based Southern Co. plans to begin site work this summer for two new reactors at the Vogtle site in Georgia, where state lawmakers recently approved legislation forcing ratepayers to foot the bill for those facilities up front. Florida and South Carolina residents have also begun paying new utility charges to finance planned reactors, USA Today reports. Plans are in the works as well for new reactors in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

Harold Denton, a retired NRC official who worked in Three Mile Island during the crisis, recently told Greenwire that changes made after the 1979 disaster "significantly reduced the overall risks of a future serious accident." But the Thompsons and Gundersen point out that the standards the NRC is applying to the new generation of nuclear plants are influenced by assumptions about what happened at Three Mile Island. They say the NRC's low estimates of radiation exposure have resulted in inadequate requirements for safety and containment protocols as well as the size of the evacuation zones around nuclear plants.

Other nuclear watchdogs have also raised concerns that the NRC's standards for protection against severe accidents like TMI remain inadequate. In a December 2007 report titled "Nuclear Power in a Warming World," the Union of Concerned Scientists notes that the worst accident the current generation of reactors was designed to withstand involves only partial melting of the reactor core but no breach of containment. And the NRC requires operators of plants found to be vulnerable to severe accidents to fix the problem "only if a cost-benefit analysis shows that the financial benefit of a safety backfit - determined by assigning a dollar value to the number of projected cancer deaths that would result from a severe accident - outweighs the cost of fixing the problem," the report states.

Given their personal experiences, the Thompsons warn that we may be fooling ourselves into believing nuclear power is safer than evidence and history suggest.

"Once you realize how deep and broad the realignment of facts about TMI has been, it becomes really pretty amazing," Randall Thompson says. "I guess that's what it takes to protect this industry."

(Images from top: Photo of President Jimmy Carter leaving Three Mile Island for Middletown, Pa. on April 1, 1979 from the National Archives and Records Administration; photo of Randall Thompson swallowing fire by William Mosher; map showing increases in cancer rates in the TMI area after the disaster courtesy of Dr. Steve Wing; graph showing dramatic spike in pressure inside the TMI containment on March 28, 1979 courtesy of Arnie Gundersen.)

Toohey’s column missed a lot of important facts, problems

Toohey’s column missed a lot of important facts, problems

To the editor:

I would like to respond to some of the comments recently published in your newspaper by Richard E. Toohey, president of the Health Physics Society, “Understanding the benefits, balancing the risks,” (March 8, page A11).

In his column, Toohey makes a number of claims that, while narrowly true, manage to distort a fair discussion of the issues.

The first example is his claim that nuclear energy is “carbon free.” In fact, this is true only if you look at the nuclear reaction itself. The mining, milling and processing of uranium into fuel for use in a nuclear power plant produce plenty of carbon dioxide. So does the building of a nuclear plant. And, of course, the remediation of the mines and mills and the disassembly of the plant itself and long-term disposal and storage of the high-level radioactive waste also consume energy and produce greenhouse gases. The level of this problem is less than with coal, but is not non-existent; and, should we have to mine lower and lower grade ore as we deplete higher grade deposits, the problem could increase dramatically.

A second example is his claim that no new radioactivity will be produced at the site. Technically this is true. The uranium and other isotopes in the ore are already there. If anything, mining will remove some of them. But that is not the real concern. Mining the ore will bring radioactive materials currently underground to the surface and has the potential, as has been the case elsewhere in the United States and around the world, to spread those materials around in the environment to an extent that they would not be if they were left alone. To date I have never seen a mining operation that did not leave copious contamination and environmental impact.

Third, Toohey talks a lot about trade-off of benefits and costs and cites power generation and production using U.S. natural resources as benefits. My understanding is that the nuclear industry has only been viable in the United States because of huge subsidies from taxpayers. But that aside, and addressing aspects I know more about, nuclear power is not clean in the sense of producing no toxic waste. In fact, the biggest problem that nuclear energy currently faces in the U.S. is that there is no approved storage site for the large qualities of high-level waste that are produced already. The Yucca Mountain site may never be approved.

What are we going to do with all this high-level waste we already have, let alone tons more that could be generated? Perhaps we could reprocess it, but there are problems that come with that option, including fears of contributing to nuclear weapons proliferation. And, if reprocessing is the answer, then it is an alternative to mining, not an argument for more mining. The bottom line is that nuclear energy has been neither cheap nor clean.

Finally, let me point out, as I did when I gave a talk in Pittsylvania County on the subject, that the focus solely on radiation hazards is misguided.

There are numerous chemical hazards associated with uranium mining, as well as radioactive concerns. While radon is a highly potent lung carcinogen, uranium itself is primarily a heavy metal toxin, more similar to lead or mercury. Perhaps it is not as exotic as radiation, but uranium is quite capable of causing kidney damage, birth defects and possibly estrogenic (feminizing) effects. Uranium ore also frequently contains other highly toxic, though non-radioactive, contaminants.

The upshot, from my perspective, is that the history (which some people want to forget or have you forget) is that uranium mining has left a miserable record of damage to workers, communities and the environment for more than 50 years. The onus is on the proponents of uranium mining to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will not continue the legacy from the past into the future.

Arguments such as those ofToohey that seem to play with words to sound reassuring are, if anything, quite the opposite.

DOUG BRUGGE
Associate Professor
Tufts University Boston

Uranium is harmful

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 9:29 AM EDT

I am writing because of former letters using the Bible to explain uranium mining is safe but the verses were changed.According to the Bible, we are to protect the Earth. Below are the true verses:

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." (Genesis 2:15)

"The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great-and for destroying those who destroy the earth." (Revelation 11:18)

"Treat the earth well, it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children." (Native American Proverb)

I believe God did not give us his earth to destroy God's earth.

God gave people free will, and free will has done evil and good.

The most evil of free will is greed and pride. Greed takes over logic and people who believe in uranium mining and nuclear power plants always saying uranium does not hurt or kill people.

Our government gives money to nuclear power plants, therefore enabling foreign governments to become rich.

They have records earnings.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's priority is on the financial health of the nuclear industry, not on public health.

However, working for a nuclear fuel plant is not the same as uranium mining.

All forms of uranium processing have accidents according to NRC.

Dr. Arjun Makhijani said at a press conference, "Uranium is forever.

There is no such thing as an acceptable amount of radiation.

Every level of contamination is an area of concern.

"Uranium is defined as a metallic element that is used as nuclear fuel and is highly toxic and radioactive.

Exposure to radiation from uranium can occur in various ways.

The breakdown of uranium products creates radon daughters.

These can attach to dust particles and, if workers inhale the dust, the particles lodge in their lungs, where they release high doses of radiation.

This is believed to be why Navajo uranium miners face a risk of lung cancer that is 28 times normal.

According to the "experts," if mining is allowed, it cannot be harmful to people nor animals, but there are plenty of examples of uranium mining causing harm to people and animals.

Serious health problems for miners as well as nearby communities include:Chromosome abnormalities in residents of Karnes County, Texas, where uranium was mined commercially starting in the 1950s;An increase in birth defects in babies born to mothers and animals who lived near a uranium mine waste dump in New Mexico;Excess risk of cancer mortality in communities near uranium mills in Spain;An increase in lung cancer risk for residents living near uranium mines in Germany.

Some claim that underground water and water running in the streams have never harmed humans and animals, but uranium levels shut two wells and new health standards have a town eyeing alternatives in Texas.

Uranium Energy Corporation has been conducting exploration for uranium in northern Goliad County for over a year, leaving some families with contaminated water and iron bacteria that clogs up filters, renders well water undrinkable in some instances, and forces residents to purchase and haul drinking water.

There are too many examples of uranium mining accidents to list.

Just a few include:On April 7, 2003, McClean Lake & Rabbit Lake/Cameco suspended production due to underground flood.

In 1989, 2 million liters of radioactive water spilled into Wollaston Lake. The company was charged and eventually pled guilty, receiving a $5,000 federal and a $55,000 provincial fine.

By 1976 all 55 miles of the Serpent River system were badly contaminated with acid generating, highly radioactive wastes.

An official Ontario report noted that there were no living fish in the entire river located downstream from the mining wastes.In 1978 alone, more than 30 tailing dam failures were reported.

On Feb. 26, 2007, an employee was burned with hydrofluoric acid and sent to the hospital for treatment.The root cause of the event was determined to be that the uranium hexafluoride cylinder valve failed to seat at the Columbia, S.C., nuclear fuel plant.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission established a special inspection team to go to a commercial nuclear fuel plant near Wilmington, N.C., to inspect and assess circumstances associated with an event in which moisture was detected in a process vessel that should not have contained moisture so as to prevent a nuclear criticality.

There was a loss of criticality safety controls at the Richland, Wash., nuclear fuel plant.

Two uranium fuel plants in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Erwin, Tennessee, must immediately adopt stricter anti-terrorist measures such as more guards, vehicle barriers and patrols, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Aug. 22, 2002.

The NRC cited the Lynchburg nuclear fuel plant for inoperable criticality monitors.

All forms of uranium are polluting for water, land, and air.So people, we have the right to protect our homes from greedy uranium people.Deborah DixBlairs

Uranium

Comment: Just a history of uranium, thought as interesting!

War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World

By Tom Zoellner

Uranium is highly unstable at the best of times, but put a bunch of the atoms close together, then shoot one with a neutron, and the whole lot becomes cataclysmically unhinged.

It is uranium's contact with humans, of course, that results in the mayhem.

Left to its own devices, uranium is happy to shed particles in orderly fashion, shape-shifting its way down the isotopic chain to radium, to radon and polonium, on and on until coming to rest as lead. But refine the atom from U-238 to U-235 and you've got an element with profound anger-management issues that can be exploited by folks bent on violence.

Tom Zoellner's "Uranium" is a serious and exciting, in a terrifying way, telling of the element's story, a behavioral geology of its progress through the human condition.

It is not often a pretty picture - though it can be, as uranium is highly chromatic: It has been used as body paint, and as a tint for stained glass and a line of dishes known as Fiesta Ware.

Mostly, once the refined product U-235 is on the table, what we witness are "some of the darker pulls of humanity: greed, vanity, xenophobia, arrogance, and a certain suicidal glee."

The book is timely, with all the talk about nuclear power's future role in the politically charged world of energy needs and how it might have a rightful place in tempering global warming. Before anyone blindly jumps on that bandwagon, Zoellner reminds us that many of the same safety questions we had 50 years ago about nuclear energy have yet to be answered:

"How do you dispose of the waste? How do you keep the plant from being a military target? How do you make sure the plutonium by-product isn't being secretly taken elsewhere and packed into the core of a bomb?"

Zoellner comes at uranium as an investigative reporter who takes the facts and shapes them into a journey, starting with the Congolese mine that yielded much of the uranium used in the Hiroshima bomb.

Congo was given a small reactor in thanks for its help with the Manhattan Project, which went critical in 1959, one year before an endless civil war broke out. Two fuel rods, at least, have been stolen so far.

Though it's a tale full of colorful anecdotes and freebooting characters, the tone here is one of dread: a schizophrenic genie uncorked from its bottle, with a malevolent side that could easily prevail. Lost, stolen or strayed, plenty of U-235 has already been mislaid - inevitably, considering human nature.

Zoellner's chapters on Australia's uranium industry highlight our fraught relationship with the element.

Its mining created a measure of wealth and a great deal of power, while questions arose regarding toxic waste, disregard of Aboriginal culture and nuclear proliferation.

And there, from an Australian opponent of uranium mining, a coda: "Was putting all this stuff into the world really making the planet any safer?"

Peter Lewis is a writer at the American Geographical Society. E-mail him at books@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/13/RVHR167QSA.DTL

Demand Full Investigation and Remediation

Comment: Modern Uranium Mining at it's Worst (happening all over the World)


Accident at Jadugoda, India


On December 24, 2006, one of the pipes carrying radioactive wastes from the uranium mill to a storage dam had burst, discharging highly toxic wastes into a nearby creek. When released into the environment in such a hazardous manner, the radioactive wastes are deadly to the people living in the surrounding area as well as their land and water.

The accident occurred in Dungridih – a small village near Jadugoda inhabited largely by displaced families whose lands were acquired to construct two of the three storage dams, also known as tailings ponds.

The tailings ponds store all the radioactive wastes generated by the milling of uranium ore in Jadugoda. Based on the experience of similar accidents in other countries, however, the negative effects on human and environmental health will impact communities living downstream, perhaps even hundreds of kilometers away.

Therefore, it is imperative that the Uranium Company of India Limited (UCIL) – the owner and operator of the uranium mine, mill, pipes, and tailing ponds in Jadugoda – immediately inform downstream communities of the disaster and prevent them from using the creek water until it is certifiably safe.

Until the creek is safe to use, UCIL should supply water to the impacted communities so that they can continue their necessary activities such as bathing and washing clothes.

Also, UCIL may need to provide compensation for families living downstream whose livelihoods depend upon the stream, a tributary to the Subarnarekha River, either for irrigation or fishing.

It is troubling that UCIL did not have its own alarm mechanism to alert the company in cases of such a disaster.

Rather, the villagers that had arrived at the scene of the accident soon after the pipe burst informed the company of the toxic spill.

Even more reprehensible is the fact that the toxic sludge spewed into creek for nine hours before the flow of the radioactive waste was shut off.

Consequently, a thick layer of radioactive sludge along the surface of the creek killed scores of fish, frogs, and other riparian life.

According to reports in local Hindi newspapers, UCIL has begun repairing the pipe and removing sludge from the creek. This is an important step, but there must be a comprehensive remediation plan for cleaning up the affected sites in Jadugoda and elsewhere.

Based on the experience of remediation efforts in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, some of the major action items that must be included in the plan are to:

• thoroughly investigate the causes and impacts of the disaster, involving UCIL, appropriate state agencies, and representatives of local community organizations such as JOAR (Jharkhand Organization Against Radiation);
  
• compensate the people harmed by the radioactive waste that has been accidentally discharged into the environment;


• decontaminate the soil and streams that have been affected by the bursting of the pipe;


• create and establish inspection mechanisms and procedures to routinely monitor the quality and safety of UCIL’s equipment;


• regularly measure and monitor the exposure of workers and area residents to the radioactive and hazardous chemical contaminants that are generated by the mining and milling of uranium;


• create and establish emergency response programs in order to ensure the safe, effective, and timely response to possible disasters; and


• fully disclose to area residents UCIL’s progress in its clean-up of the disaster as well as reports of its inspections and monitoring programs.
  

Greenpeace speaker confronts nuclear misconceptions

Comment: No Nuke Plants, therefore, No Uranium Mining

Date: 2009-02-27 By Joel Wiebe

It's human arrogance to think science and technology are simply going to step in and save us from climate change says Bruce Cox, and he's kicking off a 10-city tour across the province to let people know what we need to do.

"We are really running out of time," he adds.

Carpooling to Peterborough in an old Ford Escort isn't exactly a stylish way for the executive director of Greenpeace Canada to travel, but it's all part of walking the talk.

The focus of his tour - he was in Peterborough Thursday at Market Hall - is letting people know what the solutions are in Ontario, and what stands in the way.

A simple question about why nuclear energy hinders renewable energy brings out the passion he has for the subject.

"Once we go down that road it's difficult to turn back," he emphasizes.

Nuclear reactors, he says, are expensive and heavily subsidized. The government is ready to spend another $40 billion on nuclear power, he says, yet they haven't paid off the debts from the old ones.

The pollution in mining for uranium and the lack of knowledge of what to do with the waste are environmental issues he has with nuclear power.

The solution exists," he notes.

There is only so much room for power on the grid: he's concerned the government won't pursue the need for green power after spending so much on nuclear. This could turn off green entrepreneurs.

We need an energy revolution," he says.

While energy production is a big issue, he believes conservation is the first step. Rather than try and figure out how to generate enough green power to meet Ontario's needs, we need to reduce our needs.

More efficient energy use is an issue. Rather than use a boiler to simply heat a building, the energy from the hot water can be used to create electricity and then heat the building.

"We're going to have to pick up the pace."

"The solution exists,"

Bruce Cox's top 10 reasons to replace the aging Pickering reactors with green power:

10. Renewable is doable
9. Nuclear is unreliable
8. Nuclear is dirty
7. Nuclear is unsafe
6. Green energy is quick to build
5. Nuclear is expensive
4. No radioactive waste
3. No uranium mining
2. Green energy creates more jobs
1. Nuclear stops green energy

http://www.mykawartha.com/news/article/37409

Traditional owner: don’t mine our land

Jay Fletcher & Emma Murphy4 February 2009

A multinational mining company that has been exposed for leaking uranium into Lake Ontario in North America is now exploring uranium deposits only a few kilometres from a significant Alice Springs water supply.

Canadian resource giant, Cameco, has entered a joint venture with Australian Paladin Energy to explore and potentially mine the Angela Pamela uranium tenement 25 kilometres south of Alice Springs near the old outstation of Owen Springs.

Last year, Cameco was forced to admit to leaking uranium, arsenic and fluorides into Lake Ontario, one of the biggest lakes in North America.

On May 23, ABC Alice Springs reported that the Port Hope refinery plant was closed when contaminated soil was discovered, but during the “clean-up” it is likely that tailings found their way into the harbour.

Moreover, the company has been ordered to pay a C$1.4 million settlement to the state of Wyoming for failing to comply with environmental standards at its uranium mine.

Among the charges were problems with the pace of ground water restoration, according to Canada’s Calgary Herald.Traditional owner Raelene Silverton from Urana Potara community — located on the West Waterhouse station near Owen Springs — told Green Left Weekly in December that mining the site would create serious risk to local and Aboriginal communities.

“There are a lot of people saying not to mine in there”, Silverton said.

“There’s a bore there and Alice Springs communities get their water from there, it would be too dangerous.”Cameco-Paladin were granted an exploration permit by the Northern Territory government in 2007.

A May 27, 2008 media release from the Central Land Council (CLC) said that negotiations were being conducted with traditional owners, yet local owners such as Silverton, who do not want the plans to go ahead, say they have been excluded from the process.

“That’s all my father’s dreaming gone through there, around Owen Springs area”, Silverton told GLW. “That’s a big story.

We are related to that place … There is uranium there and they’re going to mine there. I don’t want that to happen.“It belongs to Central Arrernte people.”

Silverton, who worked as a councillor for the CLC, said that consultation with the Aboriginal population has been either limited or non-existent.“Nobody has talked to us properly”, she said.Alice Springs is surrounded by Aboriginal settlements, previously pastoral outstations.

Environmental groups and anti-nuclear campaigners have expressed grave concerns over the proposed site, with adverse environmental impacts set to affect these groups the most.

The Arid Lands Environment Centre (ALEC) in Alice Springs has organised against uranium mining, nuclear energy and waste dumping in central Australia since it began in 1980 and has formed the Alice Springs Angela Pamela collective in response to the government’s and Cameco-Paladin’s plans.In the collective’s mission statement, the group argues that exploration and mining will pose a significant threat to water security, human health and the environment.

“Workers, nearby communities and the environment will all be exposed to radioactive materials”, it says.

“Mining uranium is the first step in a nuclear chain which includes: unsafe, expensive, water-intensive energy production; risk-prone transport of radioactive materials; inadequate safeguards against sale of uranium for nuclear weapons and production of radioactive waste which will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years.”

Silverton is also facing challenges under the federal government’s intervention, with her home community one of the 500 being considered for its “economic viability” at the end of last year.

The federal government discussed closing smaller communities and moving the Aboriginal residents to larger stations and towns.

Unsurprisingly, all communities that were considered sit on land rich in uranium.Since federal Labor abolished its “no new mines” policy in April 2007, uranium mining ventures in the NT have increased sharply.

According to ALEC’s website, between January 2007 and April 2008, the NT government granted 386 exploration licences, 193 of which were to companies specifically interested in the exploration and mining of uranium.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #781 4

DNA and Mitochondrial Time Bombs: Uranium and Mercury

Comment: The article below is about medical reviews on ways uranium affect our DNA!

Monday, March 03, 2008 by: Mark Sircus Ac., OMD, citizen journalist

There are three things that determine the toxicity of radioactive materials:

Chemical effects – Uranium is chemically very toxic.

Radioactive effects (includes half-life and energy released) - One gram of DU (1/20th of a cubic centimeter) releases 13,000 alpha particles a second.

One alpha particle can cause cancer under the right conditions and certainly it has the capacity to wreck havoc in beta cells and everywhere else.Particle size - in the nanoparticle range (diameter of 0.1 microns or smaller) the particulate effect (non-specific catalyst or enzyme) is far more biologically toxic than the first two effects.

This is why DU is so devastating (See extensive notes on this in the reference section).

Type Two Diabetes is an increasingly prevalent disease in the world, especially the United States, where the number of new patients grew 49% between 1991 and 2000.

The Chernobyl incident was a major humanitarian disaster, which has resulted in a plethora of health problems that are still far from being fully recognized.

Most studies analyzing the medical consequences of this catastrophe have so far focused on diseases such as thyroid cancer, leukemia, immune and autoimmune pathology, even though an increase in the incidence of Type 1 diabetes mellitus, a disorder involving the immune system, was observed within the residential population of Hiroshima among survivors of the atom bomb detonation. Studies have also shown that thymectomy and a sub-lethal dose of gamma radiation induces Type 1 diabetes in rats.

This is important to our medical review that concludes that toxic exposure to uranium is dangerous and readily provokes diabetes.

In this case, we see that vitamin D deficiency predisposes individuals to type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Vitamin D deficiency has been shown to impair insulin synthesis and secretion in humans! Furthermore, epidemiological studies suggest a link between vitamin D deficiency in early life and the later onset of type 1 diabetes. In studies on diabetic mice, pharmacological doses of vitamin D have been shown to delay the onset of diabetes, mainly through immune modulation. Vitamin D deficiency is very much involved in cancer and the outcome of treatments so again we are seeing how closely tied together are cancer and diabetes.

Dr. Dayna Kowata wrote, "I have noticed an upward trend in uranium toxicity in my pediatric patients and not just those with autism.

The effected patients come from the Temecula/Murrieta area of southern CA.

One of my autistic patients has had an extremely difficult time chelating this metal. We've had success with all other heavy metals but the uranium remains consistently high.

We've used oral DMSA 'and EDTA.

"Nobody with any sense is supporting uranium mining and the kind of activities that turns the earth into a toxic waste dump.

Increasing levels of uranium in people's bodies changes the entire picture of chelation (removal of heavy metals from the body) thanks to the widespread use of depleted uranium weapons that are used abroad but tested at home.

These are the perfect weapons of mass destruction. We are threatened from many sources of ionizing radiation including x-rays and local contamination from leaking nuclear facilities but the threat from the use of depleted uranium armaments is truly frightening.

Uranium pollution is starting to compete with mercury as a major environmental contaminant.

We ignore uranium now at great risk.

The vast majority of doctors do not conceive of removing heavy metals as a form of treatment of disease, so the public is in trouble and is being let down by the medical profession.

Most doctors do not even do a test for heavy metals and those that do are not yet aware of the looming problem with uranium contamination.

Just ask your doctor about diabetes or autism and what is causing these terrible epidemics?

The chances are about zero he or she will tell you that both mercury and uranium and some other poisons are at the heart of it.

Medical scientists have struggled to explain rising rates of cancers, childhood brain disorders, diabetes and neurological conditions in both young and old alike but have fallen short of any kind of understanding that will yield helpful answers.

Something about modern living has driven a steady rise of certain maladies, but they have not been able to figure out what.

Uranium levels 54.6 times the U.S. standard were found in water supplies in a village near Icheon, about 25 miles northeast of Osan Air Base, according to a South Korean government environmental report.

South Korea's Ministry of Environment said it was not ready last week to release its full uranium survey of 93 sites in South Korea, but it issued a news release on its findings.

Uranium levels measured 1,640 micrograms per liter in Janpyeong-ri village near Icheon."A recent analysis of my hair ordered by my physician indicated a uranium level that is about five times the maximum reference range.

How alarmed should I be with respect to this result? I am not exposed to uranium by occupational hazard, as I'm an office manager in a very clean environment.

Past ingestion may have been the result of private well water, but I've not ingested any of this well water for six years now," reports one patient.

Uranium does chelate with DMSA and EDTA chelators but NOT dramatically (Dr. Garry Gordon).The best approaches to both mercury and uranium detoxification and chelation are natural ones.

What is needed today is a radical shift in the community of doctors who do chelation mostly for neurologically damaged children and heart patients.

Before even thinking of using anything that would officially bear the title of chelator of heavy metals, we and our doctors need to understand the nature of minerals (magnesium, selenium and zinc) and what they do for us to protect us from harm and what they do for us in helping us get better.

The removal of heavy metals is impossible without minerals and without a full house of minerals our cells just cannot deal with the poison.

The very first thing one should do if interested in protecting themselves from the harmful effects of uranium and mercury is to start immediately with full mineralization.

Iodine and magnesium are the best places to start but one should also be thinking of zinc and selenium and of course ALA.

When considering children, it is helpful to know that both iodine and magnesium can be easily applied transdermally. Selenium also is vital and is the perfect antidote for mercury toxicity.

Iodine is vital for the protection of our thyroid gland against radiation but in reality, when we supplement properly with this, we are strengthened in ways unimaginable to modern medicine.

The most important question of our times is: what is the safest most effective way to remove uranium,mercury and an army of other toxins in our and our children's bodies?

For more information on the author Mark Sircus Ac., OMD, Director International Medical Veritas Association, go to:(http://www.imva.info)(http://www.magnesiumforlife.com)
yahooBuzzArticleHeadline="DNA and Mitochondrial Time Bombs: Uranium and Mercury";yahooBuzzArticleCategory="health";yahooBuzzArticleType="text";yahooBuzzArticleId=window.location.href;

Comment: This a very long article, go to the link and finish reading: http://www.naturalnews.com/022760.html