Shadow Minister – Presumptions are a fatal line of defence in a logical debate particularly when one resorts to the same tired old accusation that everyone opposed to nukes, gleans their information from anti-nuke sites. Of course it’s entirely irrelevant to them that proponents of nukes glean their information from pro-nuke sites.

Naturally I understand just how ignorant some people are when they presume that ‘Freedom of Information’ reports (from which I provided the info) are manufactured by anti-nuke warriors.

As anticipated, you’ve ignored the information I provided which is typical of a denier. A denier feigns indifference when a child’s bite from a rabid dog is barely visible, denying the fact that the dog has rabies. Generally a rabid dog is euthanised but not so with the rabid dogs in the nuclear industry, therefore, where does your splendid spent fuel gobbler, the CANDU reactor, sit with Canada’s stockpile of some 230 million tonnes of radioactive uranium mine and mill tailings, over one million cubic metres of contaminated soil and thousands of cubic metres of HLW?

Of course a CANDU devotee need not be too concerned that Canada produces over six times more nuclear waste than any OECD country, coming dead last out of 30 countries and has an extremely poor environmental record. Nuclear energy is a complete dud when you consider that the US has more reactors than any country and is the largest polluter on the planet.

Naturally CANDU devotees will never allude to the CANDU’s high emissions of the lethal tritium or its destructive human and environmental impacts.

Canada’s permissible levels of tritium in drinking water is 7,000Bq/L and Europe’s maximum permissible levels is 100 Bq/L. Even the bad boys, the US, have a maximum permissible level of 740 Bq/L. However, Australia’s ignominious MPL is 76,103 Bq/L – a mere peccadillo for Australia's pro-nuke grim reapers and our intellectually disabled “regulators.”

I welcome the gaggle of geese on this thread to show evidence, disproving the information I have provided. To date the hapless reader has endured a vaudeville of insults and a stupefying round of irrelevant swill.

Currently more than 100,000 tonnes of radioactive waste is stored in the UK, awaiting final disposal. The majority of the existing UK nuclear power stations will need to be decommissioned in the next 20-30 years, which will generate a substantial amount of radioactive waste to be disposed.
The UK currently has no long-term solution, neither does the USA.

If we had nuclear power stations some time back then the wastes would even larger with no end in site for safe disposal.

One side effect of mining is waste for example South Australia is going through the phase of discussing the extension to Olympic dam. The environmental damage at the present site is far from satisfactory what with extracting precious water from the artesian basin, contamination of underground water and the evaporation ponds, which are huge (hundreds of hectares) causing the documented death of many thousand of birds that drink the acid water and that is only those that have been found on the lake sides.

If nuclear power was a viable clean option why are not the manufactures (CANDU) beating our door down and promoting it in the media they are big boys who usually get there way.
Now wait and hear others being blamed - that is not a reason just an excuse.

It is perhaps time for all comments made with full name and connections to ascertain where they are coming from.

Brief review Uranium weapons hazards Part 1

Dr Geoff Pain

I have selected some of the most interesting abstracts, especially from the US and Canadian military, so things in quotation marks are those of the authors acknowledged with references in square brackets. Starting with Afghanistan, Gulf, then Kosovo and Iraq, it all adds up to one very sorry state of affairs.

Uranium is very toxic as well as carcinogenic. One study has concluded that uranium intake in the range 0.004–9 µg kg-1 body weight affects kidney function in a dose-dependent manner. As a result of its ionic characteristics, UO22+ competes with Ca2+ for certain transport mechanisms and is rapidly accumulated in bone.

DU is predominantly 238U (half-life 4470 million years). Another radionuclide is 234U (half-life 245 000 years). Typically, DU contains some 0.2% of the fissionable 235U (half-life 704 million years).

White House concedes death and injury [8]

“A White House review prompted the Department of Energy to officially concede on January 29, 2000 that its nuclear weapons workers were placed at risk of increased disease and death. This Presidential review also served as an underpinning for the recent creation of a major worker compensation entitlement program by the U.S. Congress -- which specifically grants a non-rebuttable presumption for 22 listed cancers to uranium process workers exposed to recycled uranium, (contaminated with isotopes such as plutonium-239, neptunium-237, and Technetium 99) which now apparently has been measured in depleted uranium found on the battlefields of the Balkans and the Persian Gulf.”

Veterans are still digging for documents [9]

References
[1] Arfsten DP, Still KR, Ritchie GD. A review of the effects of uranium and depleted uranium exposure on reproduction and fetal development. Toxicol Ind Health. 2001 Jun;17(5-10):180-91 Naval Health Research Center Detachment-Toxicology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB), Ohio 45433-7903, USA

“In a memorandum from the DoD date 16 Aug 1993 on depleted uranium.
“during peace time, exposure must be kept as far below the NRC limits (specified in exposure to DU in table 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations, 10CFR20, Appendix B to part 20.1001 thru 20.2401, page 23409, Federal Register, May 21,1991.) as is reasonably achievable. There are no comparable limits for wartime. When soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust, they incur a potential increase in cancer risk. The magnitude of that increase can be quantified (in terms of projected days of life lost) if the DU intake is known (or can be estimated).”

US Military concerned over veteran children and grandchildren [1]

“Depleted uranium (DU) is used in armor-penetrating munitions, military vehicle armor, and aircraft, ship and missile counterweighting / ballasting, as well as in a number of other military and commercial applications. Recent combat applications of DU alloy [i.e., Persian Gulf War (PGW) and Kosovo peacekeeping objective] resulted in human acute exposure to DU dust, vapor or aerosol, as well as chronic exposure from tissue embedding of DU shrapnel fragments. DU alloy is 99.8% 238Uranium, and emits approximately 60% of the alpha, beta, and gamma radiation found in natural uranium (4.05 x 10(-7) Ci/g DU alloy).
[2] Miller ML, Cornish RE, Pomatto CB. Calculation of the number of cancer deaths prevented by the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project. Health Phys. 1999 May;76(5):544-6 Roy F. Weston, Inc., Albuquerque, NM 87110, USA.

[3] Ritz B.Radiation exposure and cancer mortality in uranium processing workersEpidemiology. 1999 Sep;10(5):531-8 Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles 90095-1772, USA.

[4] Durakovic A. Undiagnosed illnesses and radioactive warfare. Croat Med J. 2003 Oct;44(5):520-32 Uranium Medical Research Center, 3430 Connecticut Avenue/11854, Washington, DC 20008, USA

Given the intemperate, ad hominem, and woefully ignorant nature of many of the responses to my article, it seems we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of political wing-nuttery into the Australian equivalent of the American Tea Party and Birther movements. Such is the current level of rational “discourse” Down Under when it comes to the issues of nuclear power and nuclear war.

Given space constraints I’m not able here to correct every egregious error and mis-representation , but let’s look at one of the the major porkies.

Contrary to one respondent’s assertion, Generation Four reactors do not solve the problem of nuclear waste..

These so-called “fast breeder” technologies require five to fifteen tons of plutonium ( whose half-life is 24,400 years) to be extracted from spent civilian radioactive fuel , fashioned into fuel rods which are then placed in a fast (breeder) reactor cooled by volatile liquid sodium. However, only ten percent of the plutonium fissions into strontium 90, cesium 137 and other radioactive elements , leaving ninety percent of the plutonium and fission products to be disposed of – as waste. Further, a breach of the cooling system in such a reactor would not only trigger a sodium fire or explosion, but the loss of coolant would almost certainly precipitate a meltdown and a scatter carcinogenic plutonium to the four winds.. Finally, this scheme -- called the “closed fuel cycle” by the nuclear industry -- is enormously costly : the electricity it generates is 4.5 times more expensive than that produced by present day light-water generators.

As Thomas Cochran and Christopher Paine -- senior scientist and director respectively of the Nuclear Program at the Natural Resources --noted in their testimony before Congress in March 2009, such reactors are “complex to build, expensive to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair.” Morever, then went on,” the development of such reactors has failed thus far in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan. “

Says Peter A "It is perhaps time for all comments made with full name and connections to ascertain where they are coming from", why is that PeterA, do you think there is a conspiracy afoot, you've been Caldicotted have you? I note you don't post your full name and address, of course you'd be exempt wouldn't you, but would line up for some finger wagging I'm sure.

Helen, you've held back progress for decades, so of course Gen 4 is way behind where it should be.

The AGW folks must be wondering just which way to jump, given a technology like Nuclear Power is held back by little minded bigots.

Thanks a lot, from our children's children!