Nuclear Energy

Is Nuclear Energy Safe?
Chapter 3
According to President Bush, who very strongly voiced support for nuclear energy in
various international meetings, nuclear energy was a “safe and clean” energy source for the future. liv
His envoy to India, David Mulford, made the same claim at a function to celebrate World
Environment Day in 2008. lv Echoing the Master’s Voice, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has
repeatedly claimed that nuclear energy is a safe, environmental friendly and sustainable source of
energy. lvi India’s top scientists and leading ‘intellectuals’ are also strongly supporting India’s push
towards nuclear energy as a safe and clean source of energy. lvii
From US to India, politicians and intellectuals are blithely lying about nuclear energy. They
believe that if you lie frequently and with conviction, people will believe you.
Even if nuclear power plants are operating normally, the entire complex cycle from uranium
mining to nuclear reactors routinely emits huge quantities of extremely toxic radioactive elements
into the atmosphere every year. The environmental costs of the deadly radiation emitted by these
elements and its impact on human health are simply horrendous. What is infinitely more worse,
since these radioactive elements will continue to emit radiation for tens of thousands of years,
therefore, its effects will continue to plague the human race not just for the present, not just during
our lifetime, but for thousands of generations to come – yes, we repeat, for thousands of generations
to come. And if there is a major accident, and nuclear reactors are inherently prone to accidents, the
consequences will be cataclysmic!
As Dr. Helen Caldicott, a renowned physician and anti-nuclear activist who has worked
tirelessly to expose the real threat this technology from hell poses to human survival, wrote in
Nuclear Madness, her first book: “As a physician, I contend that nuclear technology threatens life
on our planet with extinction. If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the
water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential
health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced.” lviii
Before we discuss the radiation emitted at each stage of the nuclear fuel cycle and its
consequences for the human race, we first discuss what radiation is and how it affects human health.
Stable and Unstable Atoms
Part I: What is Radiation?
Most atoms are stable; that is, they do not undergo changes on their own. For instance, if we
put an atom of Aluminum (Z lix = 27) in a bottle, seal it and open it after a million years, it would
still be an atom of aluminum. Aluminum is therefore called a stable atom.
However, there exist some atoms that are unstable. An unstable atom is one whose nucleus
undergoes some internal change spontaneously. In this change, the nucleus emits radiation in the
form of subatomic particles, or a burst of energy, or both. This emission of radiation by the unstable
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