An energy option best not taken
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Ameer Hamza
Nuclear energy should not be an option for a stark poor country like Bangladesh where proper up-keep of even low-tech installations is not up to standard. It is worrying indeed that on the pretext of meeting people's demand for electricity ---- for homes, factories and irrigation ---- the Prime Minister has been brainwashed into taking the nuclear option. There are very potent reasons why anti-nuclear activists all over the world cry themselves hoarse trying to drive sense into the very powerful nuclear power plant manufacturers and their advocates. For the accident record in the world, ever since atomic power started being used, is far too grim and should deter every right-thinking government in Bangladesh.
Canada, the UK, the USA and Switzerland, who were among the pioneers of nuclear energy, had all experienced major reactor accidents by the 1960s. According to one US Senate report, over 150 nuclear reactor accidents of various degrees ------ including Chernobyl in April 1986, the worst so far ---- were reported to the international atomic energy organisations in at least 15 countries. Yet, it was not until the meltdown at Chernobyl that the nuclear industry finally started admitting that there had been so many mishaps!
Mis-information and 'technical' lies are the forte of the nuclear industry even now and they go on denying outright that anyone had ever died directly from a nuclear accident! Deaths and debility from cancers and congenital defects, after all, are not considered direct causes!
Mind you, the dangers of atomic energy are unique and inherent in the very nature of the element involved. This has been revealed by major disasters and research on all levels of radioactive fallout, be it from leaks in civilian reactors, medical use, bombs or bullets. But sales agents have too often been heard to dismiss the fear of accidents, claiming that all mills and factories have some amount of risks, and development projects cannot stop just because of that!
How can anyone who really understands the risks of nuclear power trivialize them or equate the health effects with those of non-nuclear installations? The Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, a Boston-based group of scientists, that has been relentlessly trying to raise awareness, states categorically that even perfectly functioning nuclear power plants are 'committing pre-meditated random murder ...... because some risk is associated with any dose of radiation, however small.'
Radiobiologists suspect that emission from nuclear reactors in Canada, India, the US and Britain may be linked to birth defect clusters and leukemias in the neigbourhood. In India's Rajasthan, high levels of congenital malformations have been reported among babies born in the villages near the heavy water nuclear reactor at Kota. Studies of Chernobyl victims over the years have also been revealing that even low-level radiation have been causing mutations in their DNA, the molecule that carries information on to generations after generations. Therefore, the real hazard of radioactive contamination is not in the actual numbers dying, but in the insidious genetic injury to the human race as a whole, according to Dr Gofman, a medical physicist-turned-activist.
The Roopur project is a remnant of the Pakistan period, and it has had several interest groups vying to revive it over the past decades. This time round the wheeler-dealers seem poised to gain from the crisis in the energy sector (part created, part mis-management and corruption over the years) and may well succeed in selling a notoriously capital-intensive atomic plant to land-scarce and low-tech Bangladesh of nearly 150 million people. The overwhelming majority have no access to either gas or oil-based electricity yet. So, shouldn't Bangladesh rather invest the millions in manageable renewables and also make good use of our own coal? Shouldn't we persuade ecologically enlightened investors and advanced 'donors' to help finance sustainable energy projects that would not be such a huge burden?
No nuclear power has yet devised a foolproof method of safe waste disposal. They have tried burying it in secret sites, recycling it or dumping it in deep sea, but the problems arising out of such overt and covert 'disposals' are just too horrendous. Do we know that the accumulation of high and intermediate level radioactive poisons have been persuading many advanced governments to call for a total phase-out of nuclear power ? That has of course not stopped nuclear plant manufacturers from trying to sell small and medium sized reactors to Third World countries like Bangladesh! Kickback- hungry agents do frenzied lobbying and nay-sayers are trashed! A nuclear reactor means cushy jobs for industry insiders and windfalls for contractors. According to nuclear-phaseout activists in Canada, the sellers are allegedly not beyond 'offering lucrative support services in the desperate attempt to secure sales.' May Allah save us from the greed of unnecessary- irrelevant- project makers who enrich themselves simply by shortchanging the people of Bangladesh!
Nuclear energy should not be an option for a stark poor country like Bangladesh where proper up-keep of even low-tech installations is not up to standard. It is worrying indeed that on the pretext of meeting people's demand for electricity ---- for homes, factories and irrigation ---- the Prime Minister has been brainwashed into taking the nuclear option. There are very potent reasons why anti-nuclear activists all over the world cry themselves hoarse trying to drive sense into the very powerful nuclear power plant manufacturers and their advocates. For the accident record in the world, ever since atomic power started being used, is far too grim and should deter every right-thinking government in Bangladesh.
Canada, the UK, the USA and Switzerland, who were among the pioneers of nuclear energy, had all experienced major reactor accidents by the 1960s. According to one US Senate report, over 150 nuclear reactor accidents of various degrees ------ including Chernobyl in April 1986, the worst so far ---- were reported to the international atomic energy organisations in at least 15 countries. Yet, it was not until the meltdown at Chernobyl that the nuclear industry finally started admitting that there had been so many mishaps!
Mis-information and 'technical' lies are the forte of the nuclear industry even now and they go on denying outright that anyone had ever died directly from a nuclear accident! Deaths and debility from cancers and congenital defects, after all, are not considered direct causes!
Mind you, the dangers of atomic energy are unique and inherent in the very nature of the element involved. This has been revealed by major disasters and research on all levels of radioactive fallout, be it from leaks in civilian reactors, medical use, bombs or bullets. But sales agents have too often been heard to dismiss the fear of accidents, claiming that all mills and factories have some amount of risks, and development projects cannot stop just because of that!
How can anyone who really understands the risks of nuclear power trivialize them or equate the health effects with those of non-nuclear installations? The Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, a Boston-based group of scientists, that has been relentlessly trying to raise awareness, states categorically that even perfectly functioning nuclear power plants are 'committing pre-meditated random murder ...... because some risk is associated with any dose of radiation, however small.'
Radiobiologists suspect that emission from nuclear reactors in Canada, India, the US and Britain may be linked to birth defect clusters and leukemias in the neigbourhood. In India's Rajasthan, high levels of congenital malformations have been reported among babies born in the villages near the heavy water nuclear reactor at Kota. Studies of Chernobyl victims over the years have also been revealing that even low-level radiation have been causing mutations in their DNA, the molecule that carries information on to generations after generations. Therefore, the real hazard of radioactive contamination is not in the actual numbers dying, but in the insidious genetic injury to the human race as a whole, according to Dr Gofman, a medical physicist-turned-activist.
The Roopur project is a remnant of the Pakistan period, and it has had several interest groups vying to revive it over the past decades. This time round the wheeler-dealers seem poised to gain from the crisis in the energy sector (part created, part mis-management and corruption over the years) and may well succeed in selling a notoriously capital-intensive atomic plant to land-scarce and low-tech Bangladesh of nearly 150 million people. The overwhelming majority have no access to either gas or oil-based electricity yet. So, shouldn't Bangladesh rather invest the millions in manageable renewables and also make good use of our own coal? Shouldn't we persuade ecologically enlightened investors and advanced 'donors' to help finance sustainable energy projects that would not be such a huge burden?
No nuclear power has yet devised a foolproof method of safe waste disposal. They have tried burying it in secret sites, recycling it or dumping it in deep sea, but the problems arising out of such overt and covert 'disposals' are just too horrendous. Do we know that the accumulation of high and intermediate level radioactive poisons have been persuading many advanced governments to call for a total phase-out of nuclear power ? That has of course not stopped nuclear plant manufacturers from trying to sell small and medium sized reactors to Third World countries like Bangladesh! Kickback- hungry agents do frenzied lobbying and nay-sayers are trashed! A nuclear reactor means cushy jobs for industry insiders and windfalls for contractors. According to nuclear-phaseout activists in Canada, the sellers are allegedly not beyond 'offering lucrative support services in the desperate attempt to secure sales.' May Allah save us from the greed of unnecessary- irrelevant- project makers who enrich themselves simply by shortchanging the people of Bangladesh!