[Dryerase] Dr. Helen Caldicott heads conference on nuclear radiation, health issues

[Asheville Global Report]

Dr. Helen Caldicott heads conference on nuclear radiation, health issues

By Liz Allen

Asheville, North Carolina, Oct. 21 (AGR)— The Radiation and Health in the 
Nuclear Heartland Conference, held at the University of North 
Carolina-Asheville Oct. 11-12, focused on educating activists and the 
interested public on the issues, terminology and dangers affiliated with 
the use and proliferation of radioactive materials.
“I wanted the choir to come together to learn to sing better,” said Mary 
Fox Olsen, conference organizer and director of the Nuclear Information and 
Resource Service (NIRS) southeastern office.
Her hope is that activists will now be better equipped to interpret 
technological jargon, directly refute officials when they present false or 
incomplete information, and to help the public realize that nuclear 
radiation is a health issue. Specifically, she is concerned about standards 
allowing the public to be exposed to “safe” amounts of radiation.
“Those standards do not protect anybody but the adult male in the prime of 
his health
it does not say a bloody thing about your infant child or 
grandchild
 everything that comes out of the government’s mouth is 
completely irrelevant towards most people and amounts to a lie,” Olsen 
explained.
The conference included a keynote address on Friday evening by Dr. Helen 
Caldicott, author of several books about nuclear arms including Missile 
Envy and most recently, The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military 
-Industrial Complex.
Caldicott, in an interview filmed at the conference for a documentary with 
the working name “Warriors of Love,” says she first became concerned about 
nuclear weapons when she read On the Beach by Nevil Shute about a nuclear 
disaster occurring in Melbourne, Austria, where she lived at the time.
Caldicott describes the current world situation as a “Hot War and not a 
Cold War because no one knows that they can be vaporized every second of 
everyday,” and warns, “If we continue in the direction the Cheney 
Administration is leading us, I predict we will have Nuclear War in three 
years.”

She believes people living in a democracy need to “educate themselves and 
have a revolution of sorts
the media is determining the fate of the Earth.”

Caldicott pointed out the irony that on the same day former US president 
Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace prize, Congress voted to go to war with 
Iraq. Caldicott believes “The world is in the emergency room and may be 
terminally ill,” and a part of the solution is women taking over because 
right now it is men leading the world into disaster.
To support her assertion she explained that when men get mad they produce 
more testosterone, the hormone for killing, and women get mad they have 
increased levels of oxytocin, the nurturing hormone that contracts the 
uterus in labor. She reminded everyone that “‘The only way for evil to 
prevail is for good people to nothing,’” and “You can be as powerful as the 
most powerful person who ever lived if you tap into that love in your belly 
and become a warrior.”

Discussion sessions and presentations were held throughout the day on 
Saturday, with representatives from, among others: Carolina Peace Resource 
Center, Georgians for Nuclear Energy, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense 
League, the NIRS and Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance.
Issues covered ranged from the use of plutonium and mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, 
nuclear weapons, to the “recycling” of nuclear waste into consumer products.
Weapons-grade plutonium, primarily made of plutonium­239, which has a 
half-life of 24,000 years and remains hazardous for 240,000 years, is not 
able to penetrate the skin but is highly carcinogenic.
According to a report by the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize winners, Physicians for 
Social Responsibility, “Most dangerous is inhalation of small particles of 
plutonium. Inhalation of as little as one-hundredth of an ounce of 
plutonium can cause lung cancer with nearly 100% probability.”

Plutonium can cause mutations in future generations by disrupting 
reproductive cells and is highly flammable when exposed to air, with fire 
converting it into small airborne particles. This is most troubling for 
those concerned with accidents occurring during the transport of plutonium.
Shipping high-level nuclear waste, “spent fuel” like plutonium, to a waste 
repository like the proposed one in Yucca Mountain, Nevada will occur in 
barbell-like containers. The containers have been tested with hypothetical 
computer-generated situations, called the “Modal Study,” to predict 
responses to accidents, but the casks have never been fully physically tested.
Currently, with several nuclear sites within 100 miles, Asheville residents 
are affected by the transport of nuclear waste and can expect an increase 
in shipment and exposure. A recent article in the Mountain X-press reported 
that emergency response systems are not adequately prepared to deal with 
accidents involving radioactive materials and that radiation exposure sans 
an accident can equal the equivalent of one chest x-ray an hour within 
close proximity to a canister.
There are two ways to deal with plutonium taken out of dismantled 
Cold-War-era nuclear weapons: immobilization or converting it into MOX fuel.
Immobilization treats the plutonium, a few pounds of which can be made into 
a nuclear bomb, as waste. It is sealed in large canisters, mixed with other 
solid materials and buried underground below mounds of dirt for protection 
against exposure, theft or attack. The threat of terrorism has drawn 
attention to the vulnerability of nuclear sites and transport; the sites 
can be blown up or materials can be stolen and made into “dirty bombs” 
(radioactive materials dispersed via conventional explosives)
MOX is a weapons-grade fuel that contains more quantities of radioisotopes 
and releases more high-energy particles than uranium fuel, causing a higher 
rate of damage to primary reactor parts by increasing the core temperature. 
An accident at a MOX fuel nuclear reactor could cause 20-25% more deaths by 
cancer than an accident at a uranium reactor.
A pilot MOX fabrication plant in Japan “lost” enough plutonium for eight 
bombs and still had at least one bomb’s worth missing after a $100 million 
dollar cleanup. Plutonium pits or “triggers” provide the catalyst fission 
explosion to create the thermonuclear explosion in nuclear weapons.
The US government has plans to build pit production facilities in New 
Mexico at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, while the Savannah River Site 
in South Carolina is also under heavy consideration.
Olsen says the Department of Energy (DoE) announced that the reason for new 
plutonium pit production is because the triggers in the old bombs are 
decaying. “We know better, they are going to put them in new bombs at the 
Y-12 plant [in Oak Ridge, TN],” Olsen said.
She described the production of the pits, the tritium, and the uranium 
enrichment as parts “of a monster with many heads,” the monster being “the 
Bush administration making new bombs,” with many presumably slated to be 
placed in outer space.
Another major concern for the public is that radioactive materials are 
being “released” and “recycled” to make household products.
The United Steelworkers of America Local 12106 in Minneapolis, MN passed a 
resolution calling on the Department of Energy not to allow radioactively 
contaminated material to be released into consumer goods. The resolution 
states that they are an unprotected labor force without hazardous duty pay 
and they feel “Steelworkers should not be forced to choose between 
radioactive exposure and job security.”

The conference was held in honor of Dr. Alice Stewart, a British 
epidemiologist, whose work exposed the health effects of low-level 
radiation as far more serious than officially admitted. She also linked an 
increase of childhood leukemia to mothers receiving x-rays while pregnant. 
In Britain she was subjected to professional isolation and deprived of 
research support although her views were gaining acceptance elsewhere. 
Stewart died in June at the age of 96.