Published: Wednesday, 16th July, 2008 23:55
Is Arran called Cancer Island?
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The Aborigines in Australia’s Northern Territory have a legend from the beginning of their history. Up in Jabiroo where uranium ore is mined, their’Dreamtime’ story tells them, when the yellow earth is taken, then that is the beginning of the end of the world.
Now Cochrane’s Column tells us nuclear energy is a gift from God and a wonder of nature. On the contrary, nuclear energy is man made and is produced by highly controlled atomic fusion. The first self sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved by Enrico Fermi in 1942, leading to its first application as an ‘atomic bomb’ used in the first world war in the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nine years later the first nuclear reactor for electricity generation was opened in the USA.
Production starts with mining, Urunium ore is extracted, turned into a stable form such as yellowcake (note the colour) then enriched and made into highly radioactive fuel rods. These spend roughly three years inside the reactor when the spent rods are moved to a spent fuel pool and after five years can be put into storage casks or reprocessed.
Yes, nuclear waste already exists, but no one, anywhere in the world knows how to store it safely in the long term. A large nuclear reactor produces 25 to 30 tonnes of spent fuel each year. In 2005 there were 441 commercial nuclear generating units throughout the world of which 111 reactors have been shut down. Eighty per cent of reactors are more than 15 years old, hence Governments pressing to replace these old reactors.
Cochrane’s Column continues: “ We are clever enough to deal with it.” Spent nuclear fuel must be stored, in shielded basins of water, or in dry storage casks or vaults until its radioactivity decreases naturally or decays to safe levels. This can take up to thousands of years depending on the type of fuel basically, in other words, for all time coming. Most waste is currently stored in temporary storage sites requiring constant maintenance. The current solution of government everywhere, pass on the problem to future generations.
Critics of nuclear power who may not necessarily oppose it as a viable source of energy, point out that also safety regulations are often not up to par, risking severe radioactive contamination by an accident as in the past, i.e Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the danger through exposure to serving military personnel in war was ( let alone civilian population).
Are more nuclear power stations really what the anti wind farm protestors and the Conservative and Labour groups on North Ayrshire Council really want? They want to save the view at Kelburn and Muirshiel Park and protect the environment for their grandchildren. They want their lights to come on. What, at any cost to humanity? Do they really want to pass on to these same future generations a legacy of safety compromises, costs related to construction and operation of nuclear power plants, including costs for spent fuel disposal and radioactive waste storage for periods longer than our existing recorded history? These costs include bills for £1.5 billion to build each new plant, further bills of billions to decommission each reactor every 25 years or so and clearing up afterwards. Are they prepared, for instance, to accept sleucing the supposedly ‘cleared’ Hunterston’s decommissioned plant into the Clyde as discussed by British Nuclear Fuels at recent decommissioning meetings on Millport?
Isn’t the local name for Arran, directly opposite Hunterston ‘Cancer Island’ because of the apparently high incidence of cancer in the population there?
Uranium is a toxic chemical element like lead, mercury, cadmium and chromium. hence the current discussions on Gulf War Syndrome, deaths of Iraqui children weekly from strange and new cancers, the huge clear up of eastern Europe and the Danube after the devastating conditions after the wars there.
Wind farms and hydro electric power stations are much quicker to build and install and get working, sometimes in less than a year. Nuclear power stations can often take up to ten years to get up and running. With climate change becoming an increasing problem, a quicker and safer resolution would be a better inheritance for future generations and would better serve Cochrane’s Column wish for the immediate future of energy supplies in this country.
Lorna King, Largs
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Watching the Watchmen