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Outside View: Nuclear Cancer Factories
Melbourne (UPI) Jul 12, 2005 Two thousand years ago Hippocrates laid down the dictum "primum non nocere," or "first, do no harm", meaning it's a physician's moral duty to induce no harm or injury to the patient in the course of treatment. Yet, certain ill-informed public figures and business leaders ignorant of the basics of biological science and genetics, who are prescribing the use of nuclear power to inoculate the world against the potential calamitous consequences of global warming, are instead violating Hippocrates' dictum at a profound level. Nuclear power will, without doubt, induce harm to global public health in a massive way and over generations. A standard 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor contains the equivalent radiation to that released by the explosion of 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. The electricity generated comes at the expense of the production of that radiation. Indisputably however, radiation induces cancer and genetic disease by causing the mutation of genes. Children and the elderly are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of radiation than others. The incubation time -- that is, the time between exposure and the manifestation of symptoms -- for cancer is five to 60 years; no tumor, though, appears with a "caused by" sign attached. Furthermore, the effects of radiation are cumulative. Each dose received adds to the risk of developing cancer or producing genetic disease in the offspring of those exposed to it. That's why we advise people not to have more medical or dental X-rays than are absolutely necessary Yet nuclear power plants routinely discharge millions of curies of radioactive elements into the air and water. The so-called" noble" gases -- krypton, xenon and argon -- are readily absorbed by humans through the lung and deposit in the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, where they irradiate the testicles and ovaries with high-energy gamma radiation. Tritium, radioactive hydrogen, is also routinely released. Tritiated water is absorbed directly through the skin, lung and digestive tract and is incorporated directly into the gene where it is mutagenic and carcinogenic. People living near nuclear power plants are exposed through routine and accidental releases to these carcinogens and others, and there are plenty of studies in the peer-reviewed medical literature which show that in the areas surrounding older nuclear reactors in the United States there have been increased incidences of malignancies of various kinds. Then there is nuclear waste. Each year some 30 tons of thermally, radioactively-hot nuclear waste, laced with highly radioactive elements, are removed from every standard 1000 megawatt reactor and stored in cooling pools, awaiting final disposal. Radioactive elements are tasteless, odorless and invisible. When they enter the environment they concentrate thousands of time at each step of the food chain -- in an aquatic environment in algae, crustaceans, and fish small and large; and on land - in grass, milk and meat. These elements also include radioactive iodine which concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk and when ingested migrates to the thyroid gland where it causes cancer. In Berarus, near Chernobyl, over 2,000 children since the reactor melted down in 1989 have had their thyroids removed because of cancer, a situation unheard of in medical history. Then there is Strontium 90, which concentrates in milk (including human breast milk) and can induce bone cancer and leukemia; Cesium 137, which concentrates in meat and induces a malignant muscle cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma; and Plutonium, named after the god of hell, which is so carcinogenic that 1-millionth of a gram causes cancer. Each reactor makes over 440 pounds of plutonium a year. Handled like iron by the body, it causes lung cancer, liver cancer, bone cancer and leukemia, and it crosses the placenta where, like thalidomide, it can damage a genetically normal embryo. It also has a predilection for the testicle, so that every male in the Northern Hemisphere carries a small load of plutonium in his testicles from weapons-testing days. Eighty thousand tons of this high-level waste, which remains radioactive from hundreds to tens of thousands of years, sits in inadequately protected cooling pools throughout the United States, while huge quantities also accrue at reactor sites in France, Japan, Germany, and other countries. The simple truth is that high-level waste will contaminate water and food over time, inducing epidemics of cancer and leukemia, particularly in children, while increasing the incidence of genetic diseases in future generations. Prognosis: Nuclear reactors are potential cancer factories and we should not look to them to solve the problem of global warming. Prescription: As a matter of public health policy, we should not be replacing one damaging technology with another that is even more damaging.
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