[TheForge] chernobyl and nuclear reactors

[terry l. ridder]

hello;

i had promised myself i would stay out of this topic but given
some of the information being posted i feel i need to respond.

my family and i were living in austria near vienna when the
chernobyl accident occurred. i was working and doing consulting
work for various united nations agencies located in vienna.
having riden nuclear submarines, having worked at fermi national
labs, and briefly at cern in switzerland and can tell you from
first hand experience that the radioactive fallout from chernobyl
was and is a major health concern in europe.

the night of the chernobyl accident i was listening to the bbc
world service when the first announcements were made concerning
radition alarms going off in parts of europe. roughly an hour
after the first announcements the austrian health ministry announced
that the apline roads were being closed over concerns of radioactive
fallout. having recenting left working for nato, i called several of
my friends asking them what information they had. they said that they
had no better information than was being broadcast on the bbc. i
knew that was a lie since i had worked with them on the various
military satellites. they knew full well what was going on.
the morning following the chernobyl accident i went to the international
atomic energy agency located in vienna. there were no soviets nor
americans to be found. the americans knew what had happened and were
waiting for the soviets to make some form of annoucement so they could
catch the soviets in a lie and the soviets knew the americans knew and
were trying to figure out how to lie and not get caught telling the lie.
that was later verified months later in conversations several of us had
with both the americans and soviets.

the many concern were the radionuclides of iodine and strontium.
if ingested would have long term health concerns. of the two, the
strontium caused the most concern. the human body will use strontium
in place of calcium if ingested. while others have indicated that
strontium has a long half-life and decays by beta decay and therefore
not that hazardous that is definitely not the case. the human body,
upon ingesting strontium-90 is stored in the bones. the radioactive
decay of strontium-90 by beta decay causes serious and permanent damage
to the bone marrow. bone marrow is were blood cells are produced.
this is why there so many adults and children with leukimia in the
area surrounding chernobyl.

in the days following the chernobyl accident the milk supplies in much
of austria were being dumped do to strontium-90 being detected in the milk.
during the course of performing radioactivity surveys of the alpine areas
of austria is was determined that the cows were eating the grass which was
contaminated with both high levels of iodine and strontium radionuclides.

i have worked many years in the nuclear energy field and if it were my
decision i would shutdown every last nuclear reactor on earth. the risks
are too great. especially, now. technology is not the problem, people are
the problem. the more radioactive waste that is generated the more there
is to track. someone somewhere will be bribed to divert some of that
radioactive waste to any number of terrorist groups. there is all ready
enough uranium-235 and plutonium-238 missing from world inventories to build
several small nuclear weapons or many dirty weapons.

even if there were no terrorist concerns i would still shut them down.
not for tehcnological reasons but for the human factor. humans make mistakes.
braidwood nuclear power plant in illinois has had several 'accidental'
releases of tritium into the ground water do to 'operator error'.

as others have pointed out companies have shown that they are
willing place profits before safety.

-- 
terry l. ridder ><>