Nuclear power is not green. . .

[Oscar]

Nuclear power is not green. . .

Sent to: paul.varga@pentictonherald.ca

Penticton Herald,

January 19th, 2007

To The Editor,

[Note: In yesterday's version of this letter, I gave the Canadian tritium standard as 3X the U.S. EPA's standard and stated that the CANDU reactors release more than ten times more tritium than American reactors. In fact, the Canadian standard for drinking water, 7,000 Bq/L, is almost 10 times the U.S. standard for drinking water, and the reactors produce about 30 times more tritium, and release about 20 times more tritium, than a typical U.S. reactor. Also, I have changed calling tritium a "daughter product." It is more accurately called an "activation product" (at least when coming out of a CANDU reactor) but I have simply eliminated either term from the letter and called everything "radioactive elements" which should suffice. A corrected email appears, below. I apologize for these errors. -- Ace]

Canada cannot solve its own energy problems by poisoning the rest of the world, and just because we -- your neighbor to the south -- have made a foolish decision about nuclear energy is no reason for you to do so, too. Learn from our mistakes: Someone should!

Any statement anyone ever makes claiming nuclear power is "green" is a half-truth, but the most offensive statement in the article in today's Penticton Herald was the claim that nuclear power is "emission-free." That's certainly not true when an accident occurs, and it's not true any other time, either.

For example, a radioactive substance called tritium is released from every reactor, in quantities nuclear proponents call "minute" but which should be called "enormous," as my in-depth look at tritium reveals (see URL, below). Furthermore, pro-nukers call this substance "harmless" but again, a little research reveals that to be an UTTER FALLACY. Or an outright lie.

Canada's CANDU reactors are by far the WORST tritium polluters, releasing about twenty times more tritium each year than typical American reactors do.

And its no wonder that Canada's tritium standards are correspondingly lax, although they apparently could not get away with having them twenty times more lax; they are "only" about ten times more lax (7,000 Bq per liter of drinking water, versus the US EPA's stricter standard of 740 Becquerel of tritium per liter of drinking water).

Were Canada's standards more strict, the CANDU reactors could not operate. The standard is set where it is to ALLOW the CANDU reactors to operate, NOT to protect the public!

In reality, both the American standard and the Canadian standard are way too lax. And in reality, tritium is only one of a RAINBOW of radioactive elements which are released from every reactor, either on a daily basis or during "unusual" venting operations -- these "unusual events" occur with regularity; they are, in reality,nothing more than PLANNED RELEASES.

Nuclear power is extremely expensive, extremely dangerous, extremely unreliable, and can only be supported by misinformation. The public must be constantly fooled or they WILL turn against nuclear power. Why?Because the more you know about radiation, the more likely it is that your survival instinct will take over.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
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Tritium Explained (why "Low Level Radiation" can be disproportionately harmful):
http://animatedsoftware.com/environment/tritium/2006/
EPATritiumStandard.htm

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Please visit these additional web sites (all created by "Ace" Hoffman):
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POISON FIRE USA: An animated history of every major nuclear activity in the continental United States, including over 1500 data points, accurately placed in time and space:
www.animatedsoftware.com/poifu/poifu.swf

How does a nuclear power plant work? Animations of PWRs and BWRs, praised by BOTH pro-nuker and anti-nuke experts for their technical accuracy:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/nukequiz/
nukequiz_one/nuke_parts/reactor_parts.swf

Internet Glossary of Nuclear Terminology / "The Demon Hot Atom,"
a look at the history of nuclear power:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/index.htm

List of every nuclear power plant in America, with history, activist orgs,
specs, etc.:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environ ... kelist.htm