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The Death of Future Generations
By Barbara Backman
It is difficult to respond simply to an issue that is so complex as the ecological effects of nuclear energy. But I must take severe issue with Kirk D. Sinclair’s premise that production of electricity by nuclear power is less harmful than production by fossil fuels [Fewer Ecological Risks with Nuclear Energy, February 14]. Regardless of the horrors created by coal mining, oil spills, gas explosions and combustion by-products, the insidious and blatant damage created by radiation has those disasters beat, hands down. There is no ecological risk with nuclear energy, just ecological certainty.
It starts with the uranium mining process, and it never ends. You cannot scrub away or safely wait for the power of a radionuclide to diminish. And our ecology, which includes you and me, is the final resting place for its effects.
Don’t even think about the accidents which have or have not happened yet. Just think about the nuclear power plants constantly dispersing these radionuclides as "planned releases," a necessary part of the nuclear process (it could be in the air as dust, mist, gases, or as effluent discharge in the cooling water). According to the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, in Connecticut our dear Millstone I and Haddam Neck plants belched out (by permit) over 7,000,000 curies of radioactive gases over their lifetimes. Now, the Chornobyl accidental release was ten times greater than that over a ten-day period, and thousands have died. But the latest epidemiological research finds that continuous low-dose exposure is actually more harmful than high-dose exposure.
Can a high dose of radiation kill you? Of course. But low-dose radiation causes genetic damage. And genetic damage may not show up for several generations—what a time bomb! At the same time, we are putting still more radionuclides into the atmosphere, earth and water. Just like the cumulative damage of mercury and PCBs, the longer half-life radioactivity accumulates and impacts the genetic material of every living thing on earth. This is insane. Altering the collective gene pool of life on earth is not an experiment that is reversible. This is not the death of an individual, it is the death of our future generations.
Barbara Backman is Vice President of PACE (People’s Action for Clean Energy).
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