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It is Now Time to Close All the Nuclear Power Plants  | | Ben Heine/ MWC NEWS |
Yes, that includes yours. Your local nuclear power plant is on the verge of destruction. Find a local activist and ask them about it. They'll tell you. Yes, radiation kills babies. Find a balanced, properly-funded study and you'll see. Radiation produces direct damage to the DNA, and it produces "free radicals" which are poisonous and may cause more harm than the direct DNA damage. Radiation causes damage deep within your cell structure (the worst place) and does so unannounced. Radiation is odorless, colorless, tasteless, even on a microscopic, or an atomic, level. To your body, a radioactive atom looks just the same as a nonradioactive "isotope" of that same element -- iron, calcium, potassium, whatever. Nuclear operations produce them all (they are called "fission products"). Yes, releasing radiation into the environment is murder. Radiation kills and nuclear power plants all leak all the time, but that doesn't seem to be enough to convince "the people in charge" (whoever they are!) that nuclear power is not an option. Is it because they deny that radiation kills? Yes, many "pro-nukers" (as they are called by themselves and others, but "cold-blooded murderers" is a perfectly acceptable alternative description) believe that radiation "in small doses" (an amount they define as basically any quantity below that which can easily be studied) is good for you! They actually think radiation is like a vitamin because it "stimulates" the immune system, and if we all absorb a little plutonium, it will help us stay healthy! In addition to being radioactive, plutonium, uranium, thorium, etc. are all extremely reactive heavy metals. These atoms have a lot of electrons loosely held in their outer shells, so when they get inside your body, they catalyze pieces of all sorts of complex molecules you've created, which destroys them and can even make them poisonous -- and that's just the heavy metal damage, which happens constantly! At some point in time, every radioactive atom decays into something else -- which is usually also radioactive (most "decay chains" are dozens of steps long, before a non-radioactive atom is reached). When an atom decays, a particle or ray (or both) is usually ejected from the nucleus of the atom. The decay particle or ray can destroy thousands of chemical bonds, thereby destroying useful molecules, including your precious, numerous, and enormous (billions-of-atoms-long) DNA molecules and other cell structures. Also, "free radicals" are created when the decay particle or ray knocks electrons off other atoms. Given that radiation is so dangerous, why do we still have nuclear power? First of all, because, in denying that radiation in so-called "low levels" is dangerous at all, the pro-nukers (aka "cold-blooded murderers") also deny that radiation damage (and, for that matter, heavy metal damage) is particularly bad for fetuses, infants, children, and young adults. Not only is it worse for them, but it's hundreds of times worse for children and infants and Thousands of times worse for fetuses. But all this is denied by the pro-nukers (aka "cold-blooded murderers"). WHY? Because they like to talk. It's called "weaseling out of a situation." If, by denying the obvious, they keep you talking about it, you won't stop them. They'll start by telling you that everything is dangerous, everything is bad for you, everything has risk, nothing is safe, nothing is perfect, we have to make choices, we need energy. All of which is true. But it's a smoke-screen to hide the big picture, which is that little devil which hides in the details: RADIATION KILLS. It destroys atoms and molecules. It kills cells and multi-celled creatures. Keep telling your pro-nuke friends that. Keep telling them radiation kills babies. There's no need to pretend it doesn't. There's no need to pretend there is some sort of fair balance for nuclear power plants wherein the human babies they kill are balanced against the deaths of raptors killed by wind turbine blades which are difficult for the birds to discern in flight, because the blades are not swept-back, nor painted brightly so they are easier to see. There's no need to pretend that nuclear power keeps your lights on, and otherwise, babies will die when the power goes out. It's just not true. Nuclear power's contribution to our energy needs in the United States is only about 7%; its electricity share is under 20%; and more than a dozen states get along fine getting zero percent of their energy from nuclear power. America has not applied even one percent of the conservation and renewable energy solutions available as alternatives to nuclear power. So we can do this. We can shut them all. | | Ben Heine/ MWC NEWS |
We are a country of lazy ne'er-do-wells. We let the rich get richer off our children's future -- off our babies' lives. Off our own cancers. They get rich. We get cancer. Nuclear power is not a solution to global warming, climate change, foreign oil imports, or the deaths of raptors. It takes far more than it gives. Stop nuclear power. Stop the revival. Tell your friends it's over. The world knows better. Nuclear power kills babies even when it's working right, and it's the most vulnerable industry on the planet to terrorism, human error, acts of God or Nature, and every other possible catastrophic event there is. More than a quarter century ago, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had Sandia National Labs prepare what became known as the CRAC-2 report (Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences). When brought up to date for inflation and population increases, the report shows that each plant can, on any given day, cause trillions of dollars in damage and millions of deaths. Even those numbers don't account for all of the real damage that radiation can cause. No amount of radiation is healthy, and every accident poisons the whole planet. But America ignored its own report! Nowadays, a report like CRAC-2 would never see the light of day. That's why it hasn't been updated. Murder is murder is murder . Murderers will lie to their grave to get away with their crime. Radiation kills and nuclear power plants leak it, and then lie about it. all the time. Tell thm it's over. Tell your local nuclear power plant to shut down permanently. If it's shut down right now for refueling (about 10% of them ARE shut down at any one time, either for refueling or for unplanned repairs (all of the "planned" repairs are done during the refueling outages, of course)) tell them never to re-open. This can be done and it should be done and it must be done or you -- millions of you, and maybe me, too -- will be the loser. You don't want to be the next loser in this big gamble, do you? Your local nuclear power plant is betting you don't care enough to investigate them. They are betting they can legally hide their crimes. Nuclear power plants can release radiation every day and if it's below the legal limit (set decades ago in a pro-nuclear environment which denied the dangers from radiation even more than today) they can say it's "zero emissions" which just isn't true. You can't complain when your local nuclear power plant's spokesperson lies to you, to the media, or to anyone else. If you do, the NRC will tell you, as they told me (I have this in writing): "Statements made by the public affairs officer of a NRC licensee are not regulated activities. Therefore, the veracity of such statements will not be investigated by the NRC." You can't complain when the federal regulators refuse to answer your questions. If you manage somehow to get an elected official to listen to your complaint, they'll tell you that you need to talk to the NRC. They might even help arrange that. and you're back to square zero. My elected official -- the one I got closest to actually talking to about nuclear power, since I almost got a meeting with him one day, a couple of years ago, which was then suddenly cancelled -- is now in jail on fraud charges and should be in jail for much worse -- attempted murder. Nothing is more important than realizing, collectively, that nuclear power has seen its day -- a day it never deserved in the first place. Nuclear power is not the solution to war, to famine, to the need for electricity, or to anything. There are NO new nuclear power plants being designed in some office somewhere, which will solve ALL the problems of the previous generations of nukes. They will all still leak, they will all still make waste, and they will all still be terrorists' and nature's targets. You can't get around those facts, and you can't get around the basic fact that radiation kills babies in far greater numbers than any pro-nuker will ever admit. That's why we have no choice but to call them what they are: Cold-blooded baby killers. Ace, an award-winning educational software developer, has studied nuclear power for more than 35 years. His conclusions are based on thousands of interviews with nuclear physicists on both sides of the debate, as well as with thousands of other engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc.. He survived bladder cancer in 2007.
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