1) Health Effects - Dead or degenerated
2) Nuclear Weapons - Living on the edge
    2.1) The bomb - Capable of ending life on earth
    2.2) Depleted Uranium ammunition - Wars that can't be stopped
3) Radioactive Waste - Estimated to cost billions of lives from future generations
    3.1) Uranium mining waste - Radioisotopes for everyone, forever
    3.2) Depleted Uranium Waste - What to do?
    3.3) Medium- and High-level Wastes - Coming soon to you
    3.3.1) Pangea's Cocktail - Volatile, combustable, explosive, subcritical and intractable
            radioisotopes, all in here please
    3.3.2) Billa Kalina - Out of sight, out of mind
4) Nuclear Accidents - Spreading cancer to millions
5) The industry's best arguments - Deception, crime and greed
6) Nuclear Society? - Steps towards a responsible society
7) From Uranium to the Bomb - An overview of the nuclear industry

1) Long-term Consequences of Uranium Mining - Exemplified by the Olympic Dam mine at Roxby  Downs (SA), the biggest disaster in the Southern Hemisphere
2) Jabiluka mine - Disregard for human life, Traditional Owners and World Heritage
3) Beverley mine - Contaminating groundwater forever
4) Lucas Heights - Nuclear reactor threatening Sydney

Papers on Billa Kalina (proposed national radioactive waste dump) and Pangea (proposed international waste dump in Australia) coming in December or January

A) The Hazards from the Nuclear Industry

Ionizing radiation poses the main hazard from the nuclear industry. The health effects of this radiation are based on cell damage, including damage to the genes.

Low levels of radiation can cause lung cancer, leukemia, bone cancer (and just about any other cancer), Downs Syndrome, birth defects, genetic defects, heart disease, premature aging and weakened immune system. Higher levels of radiation, as they occur at nuclear accidents and nuclear explosions, increase the risk of such diseases. In extreme cases, they also lead to burns of the exposed skin and even to total combustion, leaving only a shadow of the person on the ground, as documented in Hiroshima.

These risks from the nuclear industry are posed by three main hazards: nuclear weapons, radioactive waste and nuclear accidents:

200,000 humans died in Hiroshima. A 'modern' nuclear bomb can kill millions. A global nuclear war could end life on earth.

For 50 years we have had to live with the ever-present threat of a nuclear war, be it initiated by accident or by insanity. In 1996, the International Court of Justice ruled against the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. The United States declared the verdict irrelevant. Since then, more countries have followed their example and have become nuclear powers. There are many more countries keen to develop their own nuclear weapons, especially in Asia. While nuclear reactors in Europe and US are gradually being phased out, the Asian market remains the last expanding market for uranium. Australian uranium mining expansion is largely designed for this Asian market. When India recently performed its first nuclear weapons test, the staunch friend of uranium mining John Howard called out: "It is madness."

The Nuclear Safeguards Agreements, intended to restrict the use of uranium for nuclear weapons, have been incapacitated by a wide range of exceptions and shortcomings (obligation swaps, origin swaps, lack of controls, and even lack of power to control). Australian uranium is obviously able to end up in nuclear weapons, be they French, Indian or Pakistani. The state-owned French company Cogema - the main uranium supplier to the French nuclear weapons program - is actually one of the major shareholders of ERA (Ranger, Jabiluka). The owner of the proposed Beverley uranium mine, General Atomics, did supply the Romanian dictator Ceausescu with a nuclear research reactor, essential for a nuclear weapons program. The US complemented the deal with 16 kg of weapons-grade uranium (Moody, 1992, p.390), and Ceaucescu boasted of his capability to build nuclear weapons.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki have proven the destructive potential of nuclear weapons. Since then, the deadly efficiency of these weapons has increased a hundredfold. Today there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on earth many times over.

A global nuclear war could be triggered by accident or by a severely disturbed human in power, perhaps an alcoholic or somebody driven by blind ambition

In the context of nuclear weapons proliferation a development of great concern is happening at ANSTO's site in Sydney, further increasing the risk of nuclear war: A company with the name Silex uses the nuclear technology environment at Lucas Heights, Sydney, to develop laser based enrichment equipment.

Up until now enrichment of uranium and plutonium - essential for nuclear weapons production - is a costly and technologically difficult process. This makes it impossible for most countries to pursue a nuclear weapons program. With the new technology it will become easier and cheaper to enrich the raw materials to weapons-grade. Silex is effectively developing a technology, which will help nuclear weapons to spread to Third World countries, including some power-addicted dictators in our region. Please remember that the Australian government supported only recently an extensive nuclear reactor program of the now ousted Indonesian dictator Suharto [This program was only shelved when Indonesia got into economic difficulties two years ago].

With Australia being the third largest producer of uranium - soon to be the largest producer - we are facing collectively an unprecedented challenge to our ethics: Do we want to be involved with a technology which will cost billions of lives from our future generations, which could even end life on earth today?

Uranium is the heaviest metal readily available. For this reason, bullets with uranium tips are able to penetrate armoured vehicles more easily. This again means that an army equipped with such ammunition can destroy the enemy's tanks from a greater distance, a distance from which their own tanks are safe from the enemy's bullets.

The uranium used for these bullets is depleted uranium (DU), a waste product of the nuclear industry. It consists of uranium-238, which is a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. When uranium-238 decays emitting very powerful alpha radiation, it forms another radioactive isotope, which after some time again decays, forming another radioisotope. Each uranium atom will eventually have formed 13 other radioactive isotopes until it finally ends up as the stable lead-206. The majority of those radioactive decay products are themselves emitters of alpha radiation.

For these reasons, uranium-238 is a very dangerous substance if inhaled or ingested. The 'Code of Practice on Radiation Protection in the Mining and Milling of Radioactive Ores',1987, Commonwealth of Australia, requires that the inhalation of uranium dust be limited to 1.4 milligrams per year - a quantity not measurable with normal scales, and hardly visible. Even more concerning is the very long half-life of DU, making it a hazard for billions of years.

The use of depleted uranium ammunition on the battlefields of Iraq by the US introduced for the first time a weapon, which remains active for eternity. This was not warfare against the Iraqi people, even less against Saddam Hussein - this is warfare against anybody who will ever live in the Southern areas of Iraq, be it in 100 years or in 100 million years. After 100 million years, depleted uranium retains about 98% of its destructive radioactivity.

The extent of this harm can be studied in the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the many thousand US soldiers already today affected by disease and death due to depleted uranium.

The effects of DU ammunition do not stay confined to the Iraqi and Yugoslavian battlefields. On impact of the DU bullet, the DU pulverizes into an extremely fine powder, which behaves like an aerosol. This way a large proportion of the DU can be carried by the wind to distant places.

Considering the extremely long half-life of DU, future generations will be the main victims of its use, people totally innocent to today's conflicts, people completely unable to avert these conflicts. The use of DU ammunition appears to be even more despicable than the use of the nuclear bomb.

So far, DU ammunition has been used by the US in Iraq, Serbia and Kosovo. In Iraq alone some 300 to 500 tonnes have been pulverized.

Within some 55 years of nuclear ambition several billion tonnes of radioactive waste have been accumulated worldwide. The largest category of this waste is the radioactive waste accumulated during mining and extraction of uranium.

The hazard from this type of waste is usually underestimated as its low-level radiation has no immediately visible health effects. However, this type of waste (the bulk of it being uranium tailings) will cost more lives than any other category of radioactive waste. There are various reasons for this:

• Time span: Uranium tailings remain deadly radioactive for a very long time span. Two parent isotopes (thorium-230 and uranium-238) replenish the 13 radioactive decay products in the tailings just about forever. The half-lives of the parent isotopes are 76,000 years and 4.5 billion years respectively. This means that the tailings derived from a few decades of uranium mining, would have to be safely stored for billions of years. This is impossible.
• Quantities: Australia alone has produced some 50 million tonnes of radioactive waste over the last 50 years. The currently approved production would increase our radioactive waste to some 670 million tonnes, theoretically enough to cover the whole of Victoria 1.7mm high. When it was stated above that uranium tailings cannot be stored safely because of the enormous time span involved, it is now even more obvious that safe storage is not possible because of the enormous quantities involved.
• The Hazard: the mining, milling and leaching of uranium ore makes the powerful alpha radiation of its isotopes biologically effective. Especially their powdery consistency makes them subject to erosion, leaching and assimilation by plants and animals. Most of these radioactive isotopes remain in the mining waste which is usually dumped at the mine site. The half-lives of the relevant isotopes require safe storage of uranium tailings for billions of years. Australian regulations request safe storage for only 1000 years. However, leakage and erosion start as soon the tailings are dumped in tailings dams and mine pits, and continue forever. As a consequence, an estimated 130 million people will die in the future from the tailings of the Olympic Dam uranium mine alone (located at Roxby Downs in South Australia). If we assume human inhabitation of Australia for a billion years, averaging at today's population levels, then the cumulative death toll from our current uranium mining is estimated to reach many tens to hundreds of billions in Australia alone.
• Undetectable: Ionizing radiation is not detectable with any of the human senses. While it is possible to detect, measure and interpret radiation hazards with the help of science and technology, this avenue is available only to a very few. The information derived is generally not passed on to those most affected. Consequently, children and tourists have been swimming in tailings dams in Australia, thousands of houses in the US have been built with contaminated materials and farmers in Eastern European and Third World countries are growing their food on soil contaminated with uranium tailings.

For more details on uranium tailings, please refer to "Long-term Consequences of Uranium Mining"

There are two other very important categories of radioactive waste, namely depleted uranium (DU) and medium- to high-level wastes:

DU consists largely of uranium-238, which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years as mentioned above. Most of the mined uranium ends up as depleted uranium at various stages of nuclear fuel production and nuclear weapons production.

DU will eventually (as its 13 radioactive decay products establish from its decay) have a similar isotope composition as the tailings, except that DU is several hundred times more concentrated. Then, the total activity, integrated over time, contained in DU is several times higher than that contained in the tailings (for given amount of uranium).

However, the concentrated form of DU gives some hope that at some stage in the future it can be transformed into less dangerous materials, for example by cold fusion. Another option may be to transport the waste to the sun. Currently, there may be some 2 to 5 million tonnes of depleted uranium around. Such a venture would cost all of humanity's resources for decades.

There is no such hope (cold fusion or dumping into the sun) for the billion tonnes of uranium tailings.

After 50 years of forced prosperity the nuclear industry is finally compelled to face up to its wastes. These wastes may be exemplified by the uranium tailings in Australia and the medium- and high-level wastes in the US:

Medium- and high-level wastes are largely wastes from nuclear reactors. They are considerably more radioactive than tailings, however their quantities are much smaller and their half-lives much shorter. While these wastes constitute a very large threat to our generation and to some 5 generations into the future, the radioactivity of tailings and DU will affect all future generations on this planet.

What are the dangers from these wastes? Very small quantities of these wastes can have very dramatic effects if released into the atmosphere. These effects could be similar to the consequences of the melt-down of the Chernobyl reactor, estimated to cost millions of lives. How might these wastes be released into the atmosphere? There are a great variety of mechanisms, and many of them have already happened at some small scale:

• Fires can bring previously solid wastes as smoke and gas into the atmosphere. There are several combustable radioactive wastes, plutonium being one of them. Several medium- and high-level waste dumps had fires in the past.
• Explosions have repeatedly occurred in such waste dumps. Radioisotopes are not just stored on their own. They are contained in all sorts of chemical compounds which change their behavior over the years, which can also get in contact with other wastes as the containers deteriorate.
• Criticality accidents can occur as for example the heavier uranium gradually collects at the bottom of a tank. Again such accidents have happened in the past. They involve the spontaneous onset of a chain reaction, resulting in very high levels of radiation, which in turn can affect other radioactive wastes stored nearby. The associated heat can start a fire.
• Human interference with a waste storage, either in ignorance or to get access to weapons-grade material
• Terrorism
• Military attacks are probably the most serious threat to medium- to high-level waste dumps as well as to nuclear reactors. A couple of missiles fired at a reactor or at a medium / high-level waste dump can bring nearly all of the radioactive inventory into the atmosphere. If such an attack is timed in such a way that the wind direction favours the population centres, and that a slight rain brings the isotopes down, then the effects could far exceed those of the Chernobyl accident.
• Any natural disasters like fires, floods, earthquakes, meteorites,
• Extended power failure is detrimental for high-level waste dumps and nuclear reactors. High-level wastes need continuous cooling, and the back-up generators have a considerable failure rate. There are many reasons for extended power failure (war, severe earthquakes, civil unrest, large bushfires, Y2k and other events we couldn't even imagine just like the completely unexpected Y2k threat).
• Extended disruption of water supply is of great concern (similar to the previous point as water is essential for cooling).

A quote from the 'World Uranium Hearing' in Salzburg, 1992 may give some illustration of the hazards:

"Behind the gates of Sellafield lie eleven silos full of highly toxic, highly volatile radioactive waste, and each silo contains eight times the radioactive amount released by Chernobyl. And each silo has to be cooled for years to prevent it from exploding. Some are leaking. And we have 88 Chernobyls waiting to happen."

If medium- and high-level wastes are released into the atmosphere, be it by accident, military attack or sabotage, they can cost many millions if not billions of lives. The current attempt by Pangea to relocate the radioactive wastes of several First World countries to the Southern Hemisphere (Australia or Argentina) is an attempt to offload this risk to the people in the Southern Hemisphere (there is little mixing of air between Southern and Northern Hemisphere). For more information, please refer to "Pangea - proposed international radioactive waste dump in Australia".

Currently the Australian government intends to locate a radioactive waste dump in South Australia. The vast majority of the wastes to be stored there are wastes from ANSTO's site at Lucas Heights, Sydney. Ironically, the waste site is to be located on Aboriginal Land, which had to accept most of the effects from nuclear testing and which is also exposed to the effects from the worst environmental disaster in the Southern Hemisphere, the Roxby Downs uranium mine.

ANSTO's site poses a most severe threat to the population of Sydney because of its nuclear reactor (see section A4), and an even more serious threat to peace on our planet because of the research into laser-based enrichment undertaken there (see section B4).

The worst industrial accident ever was a nuclear accident, the partial melt-down of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. The more credible estimates of the eventual death toll from this one accident range from 450,000 to 3 million.

Any global or regional event involving an extended breakdown of the electricity supply can cause multiple Chernobyls as nuclear reactors depend on electricity supply to cool their reactor core and the pool containing the spent fuel rods. An extended interruption of this cooling will cause a melt-down.

Such an event may be triggered by war, Y2K-type disruptions, severe electromagnetic disturbances in the atmosphere (e.g. EMP), severe earthquakes, massive meteorite showers or severe climatic changes. All these disruptions are either unforeseeable or difficult to gauge. The current Y2K threat is one such event, which has not been conclusively evaluated, despite thousands of engineers having worked for years on Y2K problems.

Another event which can cause a reactor meltdown is a direct military attack onto the reactor building. Such an attack can be designed in such a way as to release most of the radioactive inventory into the environment within a very short time. If such an attack is timed to take advantage of climatic conditions, the Chernobyl death toll can easily be exceeded.

5. The industry's best arguments - Deception, crime and greed

• Cheap energy: Originally, the nuclear lobby promised energy nearly for free. This has long been proven wrong. Nuclear power is the most expensive form of energy on the market. However, the claim of cheap nuclear energy is still being made. Nuclear power stations usually receive generous subventions by governments, tens of billions of dollars in the US alone. Why? Without those bailouts the nuclear utilities could not compete. Instead of providing generous funds for R+D into renewable energies, the nuclear utilities are being kept artificially afloat at the expense of the renewables. The cost of radioactive waste storage is in any case to be carried by the people of the future.
  Currently, the cheapest energy comes from gas-fired combined cycle plants, followed by coal. When suitable sites are available, then wind energy can compete very well. In locations not connected to the electricity grid yet, solar energy is often the most economical choice. The most expensive energy is nuclear energy - not even considering the cost of safeguarding and maintaining storage for medium/high-level wastes, and even less the eternal problems of maintaining safe storage for uranium tailings and depleted uranium (DU). The toll of human lives from this industry is beyond costs. It has been estimated that each dollar of profit from uranium mining costs several human lives from future generations.
• Safe technology: Uranium mining and nuclear reactors are again and again described as safe industries compared to other mines and energy sources. Again, the indirect effects of this industry are being ignored: The billions to die in the future from the radioactive waste left behind from our 50-year nuclear venture don't count. Also, the plutonium produced in those reactors, and its potential to end life on earth, and finally the Chernobyl accident with an estimated death toll of 450,000 to 3 million have all not been considered. Furthermore, the casualty statistics are being severely manipulated. For example at Roxby Downs, workers have been put on contract and then have been sacked when they got sick or had an accident. It does not need much consideration to realize that the nuclear industry is the most deadly pursuit on this planet.
• Greenhouse Effect: The nuclear industry often defends its activities with the claim that nuclear power has zero Greenhouse emissions. This is far from the truth: The construction of a nuclear power station requires so much energy that it takes the reactor some 6 years to just recover this energy. Also the mining, milling and leaching of uranium ore, the enrichment and fuel fabrication, and finally the reprocessing use large amounts of energy.
  Most importantly, the storage of the radioactive waste (tailings, depleted uranium and medium / high-level wastes) require many times more energy than ever to be produced by nuclear reactors. The high-level wastes require continuous cooling for years, and the billions of tonnes of low-level wastes require maintenance of their storage forever.
  This maintenance involves mainly earth works, but also groundwater filtration. Whenever maintenance is neglected, people will have to pay the savings with their lives. Tailings and DU remain deadly radioactive for billions of years, requiring safe storage for billions of years. There is only one way to discard the Greenhouse emissions arising from maintenance works - that is to discard maintenance. This costs billions of lives from our future generations.
  Further Greenhouse emissions arise from the emergency measures after nuclear accidents and from the required clean-up.
  The death toll from nuclear accidents and from radioactive wastes has to be seen in the context of the perverse 'Zero-Greenhouse emissions' claim: The very reason for the Greenhouse convention is the protection of human life and health. How could a technology involving the death of billions be praised as a solution?

The nuclear society of today is characterized by the severest crimes against the people of future generations (the massmurder of billions by contamination with our radioactive wastes) and even the permanent, hour to hour, risk of extinction of life on earth in a global nuclear war. These crimes, committed out of greed and power addiction, have been legalized by the respective parliaments. In no way does this lessen the crimes - it rather shows that there is something intrinsically wrong with our society.

The majority of people are opposed to nuclear developments even though they don't understand most of the risks involved. They all understand however that a nuclear war could mean the end. Why then do the people not take up their basic democratic right and put an end to this industry via election? Is there something wrong with our democracy?

For democracy to work it requires citizens which accept responsibility and also act responsibly. This has to be based on an adequate level of information, discussion, courage and outspokenness. However, even more than any of these, a high level of personal integrity is required.

While people by and large know what is right and what is wrong, they are usually not prepared to step outside their expected role to follow through with their belief. The expected role is determined by a great variety of subtle pressures from fashion to acceptable topics of discussion. These pressures are imparted by parents, school, workplace and most of all by a largely monopolized media, which mainly represents the interests of those who own it and those who can afford to influence it (obviously the same wheelers and dealers of our society, which are responsible for the suicidal tendencies of our society).

Gradually, people adopt more and more beliefs, which are in tune with society's expectations, thereby selling out not only their personal and collective interest but also their human integrity. Unfortunately, sheep are being shorn, and eventually they end up in the slaughterhouse. For most, this slaughterhouse is the hospital where they suffer and die from the various diseases largely caused by the irresponsible use of technology as it prevails today, and on a more subtle level, by their approach to life and community. In some cases these slaughterhouses are more literal as in battlefields, gas chambers or refugee camps. In case of a nuclear war our whole planet becomes one big slaughterhouse.

There have been several occasions when a nuclear war was averted by the narrowest of margins, some say by luck, others say by God's intervention. Those who take God's intervention as an excuse for complacency usually don't rely on God alone to protect their house and car. Rather they also rely on lock and key and commonsense.

Democracy provides the lock to protect humanity and planet Earth. It is time that we start to use the citizen's key (personal integrity and responsible action) and commonsense.

At the moment our democracy allows the highest bidder to have the biggest influence in society. The elections function as a moderating factor which limits the conflict between government and citizen. This means that our democracy is indeed a plutocracy (rule by the rich) with a feature for political stability (the elections). Stability is very important to business which does not want to see its investments destroyed or confiscated. For big business, today's democracy provides the great certainty that the next government is as corrupt as the current one, which is in stark contrast to dictatorships. This may be good to some extent as it usually avoids the bloodbaths we know from Indonesia and other dictatorships. However, it is not good enough if we look at the enormous powers of technology and their abuse, be it the nuclear madness outlined here or the logging orgy or various other environmental and social issues. And it is not good enough when we look at the missed opportunity to live in a community we are happy to work for.

Both the rich and the poor suffer from the irresponsible approach to life, environment and community. Their suffering may be different, but it is hard to know who suffers more: the poor which have to staff unsafe factories and endure daily defeat, or the rich who have to live a life alienated from human authenticity, scarred by calculation and dishonesty.

The nuclear madness invites us to give meaning to democracy. The choice of our age may well be to love or to die. Both the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless have only one way to a meaningful life, to a happy life, to a life in a safe, beautiful and stimulating environment: to care.

Is it a realistic hope? Here is an example to support hope: For twenty-four years Australian governments of both colors have supported the bloody annexation and repression of East Timor by Indonesia. This support went to such an extent that Australia trained the most murderous section of the Indonesian army, that Australian governments denied the massacres in East Timor despite better information, and that the Special Air Services (SAS) even supported the Indonesian army in their repression.

Shortly after the Independence vote the public outcry in Australia against the Indonesian brutality and the Australian complicity reached such a momentum that the Howard government turned its policy around and started to provide protection for the East Timorese people. In this case the Australian people have dropped their personal and national self-interest (restored their integrity) and they have acted responsibly in a great variety of ways. This is all that is needed. It worked even with the most ruthless government Australia had in decades. Once such an approach is sustained democracy is alive.

Building communities will become the most important practical step. The challenge is to develop new forms of communication and decision making which transform the traditional pecking order with bullies on the top. Out spokeness combined with tolerance and understanding appear to be central. The many grassroots groups working for a better society are the foremost places where this challenge is being faced. Here we have to develop the blueprint for a responsible society.

 7) From Uranium to the Bomb - Overview of the nuclear industry

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