Did any of you ever watch “The Simpsons”? This is a cartoon where the dad in the family, Homer Simpson, works at a nuclear reactor in his small town and is always managing to carelessly distribute radioactive material around his neighbourhood. He is a bit of a clueless clown – and one would think “Yeah right. As if that would really happen”. Then I picked up a book at the library – a tragic story written by a South African about his terrible drug abuse habit. The story begins with him working at Pelindaba, where he was supposed to be safety conscious, but he says he was “high” most of the time. This is what I think of when nuclear “experts” try to reassure everyone that nuclear is a highly safe scientific process – maybe for the scientists – but what about the average human factor?

When you take a look at the Department of Minerals (DME’s) document titled “Radiation Protection File”, the human factor stands out even more starkly. They show a photograph of a person’s hand – burnt by radiation – with a numbered label attached. They also compare the effects of radiation to a fire – the closer you stand, the more you get burned. But fires don’t leave human bodies with cancers that continue to break down their systems?

Ed Note: Yet NECSA and Dr Kelvin Kemm (paid to speak for NECSA and hijack public meetings) state openly that radiation never hurt anyone.

Billions have been paid to a number of government agencies – all with different names involved with nuclear activities – Necsa, the NNR, Safari I, Vaalputs, Pelindaba and Koeberg etc – for what? Currently 6,5 percent of overall electricity supplied mainly to the Western Cape. It seems like very little electricity for a huge amount of money. And check again next week, because the amount required by the nuclear industry seems to rise almost on a daily basis.

Then there is the uranium process. The uranium ore is mined from the earth and then separated from other minerals using sulphuric acid, leaving slurries that in the Wonderfontein region have been leaching back into community water sources. A nuclear reactor needs 50 000 tonnes of uranium ore each year. It is no wonder that the Chinese have come to the conclusion that nuclear is not sustainable.

The 50 000 tonnes of ore has to be further processed to provide 200 tonnes of uranium oxide. The Radioactivity Protection File states that “At uranium mines, dust is controlled to minimise inhalation of radioactive minerals, while radon gas concentrations are kept to a minimum by good ventilation and dispersion in large volumes of air. At the mill, dust is collected and fed back into the process, while radon gas is diluted and dispersed to the atmosphere.” Uranium is converted into uranium hexafluoride gas. It is horrible that they use the word “milled” (which one would normally associate with grains and flour) as the uranium separation process. And the very dust labourers breathe is poisoned with radioactivity. If they wear masks and protective gear – maybe they are safer than perhaps nearby communities where the dust blows into homes and settles on floors and surfaces.

They mention precautions to be taken to “reduce exposure to internal radiation” as: “minimizing dust in the work place by proper watering, washing down and by good ventilation; wearing appropriate respiratory protection devices in areas where dust is inevitable; ventilation of areas where radon or thoron may build up. This does not normally apply in open cut mines where even a slight wind will disperse the radon; keeping work areas clean. Surface contamination is the start of a pathway that can lead to radioactive materials being re-suspended in the air and inhaled, or transferred from dusty or unclean surfaces to the mouth and ingested”.

The Water Research Commission from last year reported that basically the uranium content of water sources near gold and uranium mines – especially in the Wonderfontein area – were too high. They called on the National Nuclear Regulator to do something. But the Regulator so far has turned a deaf ear and says they will do their own testing. When? Residents of the area now live with a constant hazard.

“Residual wastes from the milling operation contain the remaining radioactive materials from the ore, such as radium. These wastes are discharged into tailings dams. Eventually the tailings may be put back into the mine or they may be covered with rock and clay, then re-vegetated” says the DME report.

“Once uranium has been used to generate electricity in the reactor, it becomes ‘spent fuel’. If it is decided that the spent fuel will not be reprocessed it must be managed as high-level radioactive waste.” The report says that they deal with waste according to “three general principles: delay-and-decay, concentrate-and-confine, dilute-and-disperse. Delay and decay applies to waste containing radionuclides with short half-lives… Once the radioactivity is below clearance levels, the waste can be disposed of as non-radioactive waste… Concentrate and confine implies that the volume of the radioactive waste is reduced but the waste is then isolated from the environment…the disposal site must be designed so that the waste does not pose a significant risk to humans or the environment.

“Dilute and disperse involves release of very low levels to the environment in a controlled manner…for some low level wastes, especially gases which are difficult to confine… or liquid wastes after treatment… Operational radioactive liquid & gaseous effluent (waste discharges) is …released to the environment routinely under the authority of the relevant regulator”.

When spent fuel is removed from a reactor it is “very hot and very radioactive”. It must be “cooled” in cement ponds of water. And “heat and radioactivity decrease over time – after about 40 years they are down to about 1/1000 of what they were when taken from the reactor”. Only 40 years? “As this spent fuel is highly radioactive and generates a considerable amount of heat, it cannot be, and definitely is not, simply dumped. It is temporarily stored in special ponds that allow the fuel to ‘cool down’ and decrease its radioactivity”.

It is this “waste discharge” into the environment that would be regularly done that is also a concern. The “special ponds” are required to cool spent fuel rods in each reactor. This is why reactors are usually sited next to water sources – like dams. So certain “discharges” would be made into water and air. How much water do they use? In Wales, researchers found a “cancer cluster” of people who lived around a dam where a nuclear reactor was sited – and fished, swam regularly in the water.
“A year’s waste from a 1000 MWe reactor is contained in…about 12 canisters 1.3 metres high and 0.4 metres in diameter”. These are transported and stored at Vaalputs – buried underground.

They say: “If the nuclear fuel cycle is not properly regulated and operated, there is potential for a negative impact on the safety of persons and the environment. History has shown that things can go wrong for example the Chernobyl accident in Russia”.

They also list the variety of things that can go wrong, depending on the dosages of radiation – from blood changes, nausea, diarrhoea, fatigue, fever and loss of hair to 50% chance of death within 60 days, 100% chance of death within 10 to 20 days, 100% chance of death within 1 to 5 days, reddening skin, septic burns, tissue dies, permanent sterility, sterility, clouding and cataracts. Here’s an idea – maybe they should put all the prisoners who are in for life to work in nuclear power stations?
They also state: “The risks of children irradiated while in the womb deserve special mention. If an embryo or foetus is exposed to radiation at the time when organs are forming, developmental defects may be caused. If the unborn child receives a dose more than 100 mSv, he may be born deformed or mentally retarded. For smaller doses there is a possibility of chance effects. For this reason a female radiation worker MUST report her pregnancy to her radiation protection officer as soon as she knows she is pregnant so that she can be withdrawn from any occupational exposure”.

Did you know that: “In agriculture, radioactive materials are used to improve food crops, preserve food, and control insect pests. They are also used to measure soil moisture content, erosion rates, salinity, and the efficiency of fertiliser uptake in the soil”.

And after all that – how much does it cost again? Please. Can’t we all just get solar panels legislated? We are in Africa after all where all that sunshine is free – isn’t it?