Dear “Earth Talk”: Nuclear power seems
like such a clean and cost-effective alternative to burning fossil fuels.
Why are so many environmentalists against it? — Paul Franklin, Missoula, Montana
Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear power spares us the
carbon dioxide that promotes global warming and the airborne pollutants
that cause respiratory harm. But the technology does have a serious
downside: It generates radiation that can cause a host of genetic
abnormalities, notably cancer. The lymphatic system, bone marrow,
intestinal tract, thyroid, and female breast are most vulnerable to the
effects of radiation, especially in children and adolescents.
When most people think of the dangers of nuclear
energy, they think of the highly publicized accidents that occurred at
Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and Chernobyl in the Ukraine in
1986. Studies have turned up very little environmental damage from the
Three Mile Island accident, which was quite minor compared with Chernobyl.
Although casualty figures are in dispute, Ukrainian officials blame that
accident for at least 4,300 deaths beyond the 30 that occurred during the
meltdown and immediately afterward, and there is little disagreement that
the accident caused as much as a 100-fold increase in thyroid cancers among
children in Ukraine and in nearby Russia and Belarus. According to the
Ukrainian Ministry of Health, in Ukraine alone more than 2.32 million
people, including 452,000 children, have been treated for radiation-linked
illnesses, including thyroid cancers and blood cancers such as leukemia.
A nuclear accident, however, does not have to occur
for radiation to escape and pose a health threat. The waste from
power-plant operations is also radioactive, and already the U.S. nuclear
industry has left behind a legacy of nearly 100,000 tons of it. Scientists
have not yet found a way to store nuclear waste — which stays
radioactive for thousands of years — such that they can guarantee
that it won’t harm people, even when it is buried miles below ground.
The nuclear industry and the Bush administration are proposing that Yucca
Mountain in Nevada be a central repository for the nation’s nuclear
waste, but transporting the waste there from its widely dispersed locations
poses even greater concerns for the health of citizens in the areas through
which the transporting trucks and barges would pass.
Meanwhile, some environmentalists are pushing for
more nuclear energy, but primarily as a stopgap measure to stave off global
warming. Among them is noted scientist and author James Lovelock,
considered by many one of the ideological leaders of the modern
environmental movement. Lovelock argues that global warming is happening
too fast and that renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar are
not developing fast enough to reverse that trend.
“I don’t see nuclear as the ultimate
solution,” he said. “I see it as a kind of medicine, which is
an unpleasant medicine in some ways that we have to take while we’re
curing ourselves of fossil fuels.”
For more information: Nuclear Information and
Resource Service, www.nirs.org; Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy,
www.ecolo.org; International Chernobyl Research Information Network,
www.chernobyl.info.
Send questions to “Earth Talk” in care of
E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881, or e-mail earthtalk@emagazine.com.
This article appears in May 12-18, 2005.
