CANE - Coalition Against Nuclear Energy South Africa

Dear Ed,

Andrew Kenny deserves a prize for the most contrived and specious piece of nuclear greenwashing (Cape Times 25/09/2007) yet published in the daily press. To say there has only been one nuclear accident “in which five or more people died”, and by implication that there was only one accident at Chernobyl, is to discount the hundreds of thousands of victims of the disaster.

In 2006 a Greenpeace report revealed that the full consequences of Chernobyl could top a quarter of a million cancer cases and nearly 100,000 fatal cancers. The report involved 52 respected scientists and challenged the UN International Atomic Energy Agency Chernobyl Forum report, which predicted 4,000 additional deaths attributable to the accident “as a gross simplification of the real breadth of human suffering”.

The new data, based on Belarus national cancer statistics, predicts approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl. The report also concludes that on the basis of demographic data, during the last 15 years, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000.
It is only via a perverse form of intellectual tinkering that nuclear industry pundits such as Andrew Kenny and John Walmsley, manage to disregard the cumulative effect of low-level ionizing radiation, since such radiation does not carry a signature - manufactured by Three Mile Island. Their technocratic obfuscations are thus legendary and sure to enter the anti-nuclear lobby ‘hall of infamy’.

It is ludicrous to suggest, as Kenny does, that less than five people died in any one of the accidents which “occurred in the West” since epidemiologists are still counting the costs of Sellafield and the Windscale Fire of 1956, both of which happened in the United Kingdom, and whose culmulative effect are essentially off the register of scientific knowledge.

Then there is the recent Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant accident in Japan. An earlier “criticality incident” at Tokaimura in which a nuclear fuel-processing plant went critical resulting in contamination, saw hundreds of residents being evacuated. At a distance of two kilometers (1.24 miles) from the plant, radiation was measured at 10 times normal level.

Despite assurances, there is no possibility of guaranteeing safety when it comes to nuclear power - our City continues to lack a coherent evacuation policy in the event of a meltdown at Koeberg and insurance assessors are therefore loathe to provide cover to the industry. Laws are consequently needed to indemnify nuclear plants (and nuclear-related disasters) against liability claims, contradicting those who seek to promote the industry as clean and carbon-friendly. Perhaps somebody should insure Kenny against the likelihood he will eventually arrive at the proposition that nobody died at Chernobyl?

Both Kenny and Walmsley continue to dine at the table of nuclear fatuousness, while ruling out the possibility of low-ionising radiation, and seemingly ignoring the problem of routine emissions of Strontium90 and Ceasium137 from South Africa’s own Koeberg facility. Despite legal safety limits continually having to be raised to accommodate these emissions, (which have been given the stamp of approval by the Department of Environmental Affairs & Tourism) the plant does not operate within the parameters for which it was designed, and the debate about low-level ionizing radiation and baseline thresholds refuses to go away.

While the pro-nuclear camp filibusters on the issue of renewable energy, ignoring geothermal, kinetic ocean energy, and hydrogen fuel cells, we are sacrificing our Swartland wheat and dairy and West Coast fishery, creating a cycle of contamination that accumulates up the food chain, arriving in our daily milk and cereal, and all because nuclear engineers want to conserve jobs. Paid nuclear advertorials by the pronuclear lobbey are less than ingenious since the appearance of debate undermines the role of other sectors in determining a sustainable energy future.

What do doctors, lawyers, religious leaders and independent scholars have to say about nuclear energy? Can we really accept the narrow opinions of those who refuse to accept the evidence of damming recklessness and intellectual corruption such as the Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation (HEIR) Reports put before the US Committee for Nuclear Responsibility and our own portfolio committee on environmental affairs?

The public have a right to demand an impartial and independent inquiry into the threat posed by radioactive emissions, in particular communities affected by radioactive tailings from slimes dams such as Wonderfonteinspruit and Tweelopiesfontien. Our government’s nuclear energy ambitions should not be seen as a foregone conclusion but rather as an invitation to rise to the challenge of supplying alternative energy sources that meet the needs of environmentally-friendly growth and development.

Yours truly

David Robert Lewis

Founding member, Coalition Against Nuclear Energy

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