The World is still not prepared to deal with Nuclear Energy

The Nuclear Energy Agency recently said that existing uranium reserves could widely supply electricity to the entire world. Nevertheless, there are tragic examples in which both the people and environment have been seriously affected by accidents. Until nuclear power is made safe, the world should stop using it –or at least stop building more nuclear plants.
Nuclear power has constituted a threat to humanity so far. The construction, manipulation and storage related to these plants have given rise to multiple tragedies. In 1957, in Russia's Ural Mountains, some hundred miles from Moscow, buried nuclear waste exploded, killing more than 50 people. Almost 30 years later, in 1986, a worse disaster took place in Ukraine. In this incident, a large amount of radiation escaped from one of the reactors of Chernobyl Plant. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people suffered terrible injuries in their bodies. In the next years, many Ukrainians may die of cancers brought about by this accident. The accident at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI 2) nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979, was the most significant in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history. Dr. John Clearwater, a Canadian political scientist, recently revealed several incidents involving nuclear weapons in Canada wherein thousands were severely affected. Just about all the countries using nuclear energy have reported fatal and near-fatal accidents.
If victims do not die during or immediately after a nuclear accident, they will inevitably suffer consequences the years to come. The 442 global nuclear power plants manipulate four of the most dangerous elements in earth, which produce irreparable injuries in the human body, among them: cancer and genetic diseases. Lodine 131, which was released at nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the US, enters the human body via the gut and the lung. Then it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, inducing thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2000 children have presented cases of thyroid cancer. Strontium for instance, lasts for 600 years; it accumulates in the human breast during lactation, and in bone, where it can later generate breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia. Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, penetrates muscles and induces a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma. Plutonium 239, the most dangerous, is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, leading to liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can also lead to bone cancer and blood malignancies. Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years transmitting genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.

But human beings are not the only victims. The ecosystem is one as well. In the US for instance, the enrichment of Uranium releases large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible, in part, for global warming and for 93% of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the US. The production and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is mainly responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Nuclear power is not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors in the rest of the world consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These unregulated releases include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon. Their radioactive elements, which emit high-energy gamma radiation, mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm inducing genetic disease in any animal.

Nuclear power might be a helpful alternative in the face of an imminent shortage of electricity. However, we cannot afford the continued loss of innocent lives and destruction of our environment. The scientist community should firstly find ways to limit the dangers construction, manipulation and storage of this material before the use of nuclear power is resumed. Leaders around the globe, for their part, should keep striving to regulate programs adequately. When we are out of danger, the world may step forward.