Monday November 22 2010:
"US nuclear weapons convoy drivers have been arrested for being drunk and getting involved in bar brawls during their overnight stops, a report has revealed.". You can look up the whole report under Warning on nuclear drivers arrests on the internet. I couldn't find it in any of the main English newspapers online, which probably shows how inept I am. Thank you to London Glossy for this.. and to the Irish Independent News.An even more important report came from part of a letter to the Western Morning News, which I have no hesitation in bring to your attention.
Dear WMNews,
At a recent Division in the House of Commons, our 600 or so MPs were lobbied to vote in favour of building more nuclear power stations. So they did - 570 in favour, less than 30 against, completely without any discussion in the House about the issues involved (and a week of discussions on this issue would hardly be enough). Also, this is without either of the proposed designs having been given a licence to proceed with construction, owing to still unresolved safety issues. Like lambs to the slaughter, you could say.
.........." perhaps I can quote a few facts from a recent report titled "Health Risks of Nuclear Power", written by Professor Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen in Eindhoven, Holland. This was published on 22nd November and is available on-line, all 76 pages of it"..........
1) There are 440 nuclear power stations running in the world, plus 250 research reactors and 180 in ships and submarines.
2) Each one of them generates as much radioactivity, every single year, as is contained in 1,000 exploded nuclear bombs of 15 kilotonnes, which was the size dropped on Hiroshima.
3) All of this radioactivity is lethal to man. Radioactivity cannot be de-activated except by the passage of time. Lots of time. So it needs to be kept away from any contact with man for at least a thousand and possibly more like a million years.
4) To keep it away from contact with man, it must be contained in a secure depository, buried in a supposedly "geologically safe" underground area. No such depository has yet been completed anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, it is being stored in hundreds of "pools" and "ponds" all over the world, supposedly protected and guarded but easily subject to terrorist attack or environmental disruption by earthquake or tsunami or volcano.
5) The cost of a depository for the waste from just one power station for one year is estimated to be over £1 billion and rising. This will be an ongoing annual cost, for as long as each power station is running.
6) The cost of a depository for the results of dismantling just one power station is estimated to be at least £4-5 billion. This is a one-off cost, but a cost for each power station.
7) So when all the current power stations have been closed down - and their life is no more than about 60 years each, remember - disposing of the waste will cost the world at least £2,000 billion, and the cost for treating 60 years of radioactive waste considerably more than that again.
8) Considering the total estimated cost of all these safety-measures, it is evident that the world will be struggling to generate enough capital to finance costs on this scale. Capital, I should point out, that will have absolutely NO return whatever on the investment. Added to which our supplies of energy for building these underground warehouses are based predominantly on machinery driven by oil and gas, supplies of which are certainly not guaranteed for 1,000 years, or even 100 years. Then what? Can we build these depositories, and maintain their integrity, with picks and shovels?
Even if we closed down every nuclear power station tomorrow, these costs will be burdening the world for generations to come. Just closing down the Sellafield plant in the UK has been estimated will cost £60-120 billion, which is more than the entire cost, from start to finish, of the American Apollo project.
But who cares as long as there's a football match on Saturday and the pubs are still open tonight? It is quite evident that our MPs don't give it a single thought.
Sincerely, peter russell, earlswood, plymouth.
To be honest, I am more concerned with the human face of this, the sickness, the water and land contamination and possible mutations which future generations will be faced with for thousands of years... see my earlier blog.. Oct. 1st. 2010/
So Why Would Twenty Quebec Doctors resign en mass?
However, if you really think that the fiscal cost of all this nuclear power won't fall in part, on you in your lifetime, who else do you think is going to pay for it? The energy producers and suppliers have a ready made means of recouping their costs, yes.. and if you have an electricity bill and haven't switched to green energy.it's probably you.
Thank you Peter Russell and to the professor.
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