Archive for the ‘Nuclear Truths’ Category

What do you do on a slow news day?  Well, how about starting a panic over nuclear waste? 
 
Laura Hand, who anchors CNY Central’s Weekend Today out of Syracuse, filed the following breathless report on this week’s edition: 
 
“A Canadian power company plans to ship nuclear reactor components [emphasis added] from Ontario, through Lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario, then through the St. Lawrence Seaway on the way to Sweden, where the scrap will be recycled.

”Bruce Power says the 16 bus-sized cases contain the tubings that carried radioactive heavy water [Ibid], but that the cases are welded shut. A Swedish company will recycle the steel casings, with the remaining 10%, the radioactive tubes, to be shipped back to the East Coast and then trucked back to the Bruce site, where they’ll be stored.”
 
Nuclear components!  Pipes that once held radioactive water! In our broadcast region!  Sound the fire alarms!
 
Hand quickly played Paul Revere, galloping through the territory to warn the populace the radioactivity is coming. “As we contacted environmental and anti-nuclear groups here in Central New York, we found that many had not heard of the plan.”  For shame!
 
Nonetheless, Hand has no trouble turning up expressions of chin-stroking apprehension from the nuclear experts: 
 
“Environmental groups, including Save the River, based in Clayton, are concerned that the plan opens the door for much more nuclear transport.” 
 
“Mark Matson, environmental lawyer with [Lake Ontario Waterkeeper], says the concern is that this is a major shift in the way we handle environmental waste.”
 
Stay tuned for great video op of upstate environmentalists forming a human chain across the St. Lawrence to stop the shipments and preventing the Great Lakes from becoming a radioactive wasteland. Tonight at 11.

Read more at CNY Central

In his on-line column yesterday, Scientific America’s John Horgan, once a reliably anti-nuclear voice,  relates how a tour of Indian Point with Gwyneth Cravens, arranged by her, softened his views. But the moment of enlightenment came in reading Cravens’ book, Power to Save the World, which cleared up his nuclear misconceptions.
 
Horgan now testifies to the following truths:
 
·        -  Radiation is universal. It does not just come from nuclear reactors. The average American absorbs 360 millirems a year (recently revised upward to 620 mrem), while living next to a reactor would only add 1 mrem.
·        -  There is no evidence that radiation exposure at less than 100,000 mrem causes any health effects. All claims to such damage are based on the linear, no-threshold assumption, which has no empirical confirmation.
·        -   About 50 people died at Chernobyl. Background radiation in surrounding areas is now near normal
·        -   No one died at Three Mile Island. There has never been any evidence of increased cancer or birth defects in surrounding areas.
·        -   Nuclear reactors are running extremely efficiently and safely. The electricity they provide is cheaper than just about everything else.
·        -   The incredible energy density of nuclear power gives it an infinitesimally small environmental footprint compared to all forms of dilute “renewable” energy.
 
All this may seem like boilerplate material to people who understand nuclear energy, but it is incredibly important to find it in the popularizing scientific literature. As Charles McKay said in Extraordinary Popular Delusion and the Madness of Crowds, “Men go mad in herds. They recover their senses only slowly, and one by one.”