Maryellen sent this astonishing short video. It’s a light flash on a world map every time a nuclear weapon is exploded from 1945 to 1998. Did you know there had been 2,053 detonations as of 1998 and some are still going off? The video is just 7 minutes – if you’re really pressed, just watch the last minute.
Very interesting but it got me thinking.
By official count America has exploded 1,151 devices, 331 of them atmospheric – the others would be underground with some underwater. Most of the tests were at the Nevada Test Site and the Pacific Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands but 10 other tests took place in the United States, including Amchitka Alaska, Colorado, Mississippi, and New Mexico.
A CDC/ National Cancer Institute study claims that nuclear fallout might have led to approximately 11,000 excess deaths, most caused by thyroid cancer linked to exposure to iodine-131. UN experts say Chernobyl caused perhaps 6,000 extra deaths – the anti-nukes want to claim double that.
When you compare these deaths to other causes – such as cars, smoking, heart attacks, diabetes – one could ask, what’s the problem? Don’t get me wrong, airplane crashes get investigated until we find the cause and suggest future prevention. Nuclear incidents should get at least that attention but we shouldn’t stop flying.
Some folks want to blame cancer on nukes and chemicals – also coffee, coke, wine, burnt hamburger, trans fats, anything bioengineered, etc. We know lot of bad stuff does cause cancer if you get too much of it but it’s my understanding that if you get old enough you will get cancer anyway. It’s not that bombs and nuclear plant problems and chemicals aren’t dangerous it’s that the biggest cancer problem is from the sun – our DNA gets damaged every single day and sooner or later that causes trouble.
A lot of smart people are reminding us that we’ve become risk adverse. For some reason we’re becoming a nation of Luddites. A lot of people make a living “protecting” us as well as our flora and fauna – they need dragons to slay. I think they pedal more hyperbole than science.
Bombs and reactors are different for certain. Radioactivity at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was over 90% gone one week after the bombings and was less than the background level after one year. Within 1.5 miles of Chernobyl, farming would be dangerous and completely inappropriate for at least 200 years. And it will be 20,000 years before the entombed reactor will be safe.
On the other hand, 800,000 conscripted Soviet soldiers were used for years to “clean” the site – none of them has been killed. There are health complaints now after 25 years but no definitive science – the debate reminds me of Agent Orange. Reporters and scientists visit the site often, without risk. Some people have refused to leave their homes in the exclusion area – lucky us, we get to study them. Locals want to make the place a tourist destination.
Some Americans hate nuclear energy and the Japan incident is threatening to bolster them for a generation. But if we think about electric plant accidents – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Japan – those emissions are nothing compared to one bomb in the atmosphere.
What are we so afraid of?
At this moment worldwide, there are 441 nuclear power plants, 58 more under construction, 152 planned for operation within 10 years and 347 more proposed for operation within 15 years; plus 250 “research” reactors [we need bomb fuel] and 180 reactors on ships and submarines. That’s 971 reactors running now with an expected 57% increase to 1,528 within 15 years. America gets 20% of its electricity from nuclear plants and we haven’t built one since the 70s.
This is a technology we invented. The world would buy American before Chinese, Russian or even French if they could. We should expand this research before high speed trains. Congress should get nuclear regulators and law suits back in their boxes and guarantee construction loans for this industry for a while. Congress should open Yucca Mountain over the President’s Executive Order and tell the NRC to start building a second repository for spent fuel.
Nuclear means research, good jobs, clean air and growth. If we box up the lawyers, it would mean cheap energy too. What are we thinking?
No comments:
Post a Comment