@bedifferent
(Here's a long one for ya. Not sure if anyone will read it, but I liked writing it)
The reason you got a negative vote is that you only quote this one article from Dr. Helen Caldicott, and that source is not very good (the article is not good, I am not commenting on her credentials here).
Note that the article you linked to did not have any sources attributed to it saying where the data came from. This makes the numbers quoted suspect. 95.648% of all un-sourced quantities in articles are made-up
. Contrast this with an article on
Skeptical Science; you see quotes, data, charts, pictures, and other quantifiable, provable data. In that article, you just take her (the author's) word.
Additionally, the article uses many tricks to skew perspective. Example:
I will describe four of the most dangerous elements made in nuclear power plants.
Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the US, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk.
...
Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years.
...
Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years
...
Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic
The article places Iodine first, stating that it WAS released. The other, longer lasting, more severe isotopes are then placed after Iodine, insinuating that they were also released to the same extent. Also, Iodine is less severe compared to the others, and with preparation and direction (like using Iodine pills after an incident), the affects can be drastically mitigated (something not done at Chernobyl); this was not mentioned.
Take also the cost section:
The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for. The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidized by the US government. The true cost of the industry's liability in the case of an accident in the US is estimated to be $US560billion ($726billion), but the industry pays only $US9.1billion - 98per cent of the insurance liability is covered by the US federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing US nuclear reactors is estimated to be $US33billion. These costs - plus the enormous expense involved in the storage of radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years - are not now included in the economic assessments of nuclear electricity.
True, nuclear power is subsidized by the government, but so is coal, gas, wind, solar, and so on. Also note that no value is given for the subsidy.
The liability cost is said to be $726 billion. Where does this number come from? What kind of accident? How many plants must fail at once for this number? What has to happen for an incident of this level to occur? By not stating what kind of accident(s) would cause a $726B cost, it seems like any accident at the facility would cost that much. (Also, the cost doesn't exist until an accident happens.)
The decommissioning costs are misleading, too. The costs for decommissioning are paid by the licensee, not the government. Putting the cost of decommissioning ALL plants (not just one at a time) right after stating the government subsidizes costs makes one think that the government (and by proxy, the citizens) pony up the cash. Plus, the commissioning cost IS accounted for prior to allowing the plant to start, so the statement that these costs are not accounted for is at best a mus-understanding and at worst a straight lie.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/decommissioning.html
There are other examples, like the CFC gas emissions, which are just red herrings.
Additionally, there is no perspective with the radioactive isotopes. Tritium, Xenon, and and Argon are thrown into the article, but little perspective is given on the actual levels produced, what has historically been released, what damage that can occur (based on the radiation type released, penetration distance, documented safe exposure limits, and the method of exposure), and what would have to happen for the radiation to be released. Take Tritium for example: you know those awesome watches that continuously glow? The things that divers routinely use? That's not magic, that's Tritium.
Google rebuttals to Caldicott's work. She is bias, just like the other side of the argument is likely bias. However, she will cherry pick data which does not agree with the consensus of scientists. She thinks the World Health Organization, the U.N. Scientific Committee on Atomic Radiation, and the IAEA have conspired to lie about the affects of radiation. She quotes a single source, a New York Academy of Sciences report, as her sole justification that the numerous studies performed by the other organizations are invalid. This is akin to a Global Warming denier quoting a solitary study that says the earth has been cooling for the last 50 years and dismissing all the other evidence as a giant Eco-conspirasy.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/30/prescription_for_survival_a_debate_on
If you want a good (equally biased) counter point, try this link:
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2007/08/re-running-caldicott.html
The NEI Nuclear Notes site has many rebuttals of her work, going into actual numbers, sources, and many counter points to the article you posted. (In fact, she actually grabs a couple of numbers from that blog's site, so it's good enough resource for her
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2006/09/dr-caldicott-vs-nuclear-power-round_26.html)
(note that most of the articles are greater than 6 years old, so a good bit of the links back to the NEI main site are broken.)
-Edited to state I was addressing "bedifferent" (good name by the way)
