Please respond to Caldicott's letter

[J Hughes <yayaokok@deltanet.com>]

The following is the complete text of the 11/30/97 letter from Helen Caldicott to the LA Times 
(www.latimes.com/)
     
     This is an opportunity for health physicists and other nuclear
     professionals to criticize Calicott's statements. Her opinions
     are accepted as facts by the media, because no one disputes them.
     She has many followers who will repeat her statements word for word, as fact. 

     If you want to make a comment or have your e-mail message
     considered for publication in the newspaper as a letter to the
     editor, send it to letters@latimes.com. You must include your
     full name, street address and daytime phone number.
     =======================================================
     
     [Los Angeles Times] [COMMENTARY]  Sunday, November 30, 1997
     
     COLUMN LEFT/HELEN CALDICOTT
     Nuclear Power Won't Fix Our 'Greenhouse'
     Selling U.S.-made reactors to China is hugely
     dangerous for all the world, far into the future.
     By HELEN CALDICOTT
     
     During and since the recent visit to Washington by Chinese
     Premier Jiang Zemin, two myths have been promulgated by the
     Clinton administration: that the U.S. cares about human rights in
     China, and that the $60-billion sale of about 50 nuclear reactors
     to China would help to alleviate global warming. Let us deal with
     the first myth. If President Clinton and his guests at the dinner
     given to honor Jiang were in any way concerned about human
     rights, then Westinghouse, GE and the other nuclear reactor
     companies would be forced to abstain from their profit-making
     agenda and address the medical, biological and genetic
     ramifications of selling nuclear power to China. These are the
     firms that for months lobbied Congress and the White House for
     this deal, which was approved and consummated during Jiang's
     visit. Nuclear power creates massive quantities of radioactive
     isotopes, which are classified as nuclear waste. Among these
     materials are strontium 90, which remains radioactive for 600
     years and concentrates in the food chain. Like other isotopes, it
     is tasteless, odorless and invisible. It acts like calcium in the
     human body, where it enters bone and lactating breast. It is a
     potent carcinogen, causing bone cancer and/or leukemia and
     probably breast cancer. Another byproduct of the nuclear energy
     process is cesium 137. It, too, remains radioactive for 600
     years, concentrating in the food chain and in human muscle, where
     it can induce rare, extremely malignant muscle cancers called
     sarcomas. Last but not least is the isotope plutonium, which is
     so carcinogenic that, hypothetically, one pound evenly
     distributed could cause cancer in every person on Earth.
     Plutonium has a radioactive life of half a million years. It
     enters the body through the lung, where it is known to cause
     cancer. It mimics iron in the body. Hence it migrates to the
     bone, where it can induce bone cancer or leukemia, or to the
     liver, causing liver cancer; and it crosses the placenta into the
     embryo, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause gross
     birth deformities. Finally, it has a predilection for the
     testicles, thus inducing genetic mutations in humans and other
     animals that are passed from generation to generation for the
     rest of time. Meanwhile, the plutonium itself lives on to enter
     testicle after testicle, lung after lung, liver after liver for
     the rest of time as well. Children are 10 to 20 times more
     susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than are
     adults. It is estimated that nuclear power by the year 2000 will
     have generated 1,139 tons of plutonium, whereas weapons will have
     contributed 250 tons in the same period. Repressive regimes come
     and go, but nothing matches the extraordinary abuse of the
     random, compulsory genetic engineering implicit in American
     business' nuclear deal with China, which will condemn untold
     generations of humans and animals to cancer and genetic diseases.
     As for the second myth that nuclear power is the answer to global
     warming: A Friends of the Earth study showed that a nuclear power
     plant must operate for 18 years before realizing one net calorie
     of energy. This is because of the amount of fossil fuel used in
     the manufacture and construction of the reactor and in the mining
     of the uranium, the milling and enriching of the uranium and the
     fabrication of the fuel rods. This calculation does not include
     transport and storage of radioactive waste or decommissioning the
     reactor. So nuclear power contributes both to global warning and,
     massively, to the global burden of manmade radioactivity. Nuclear
     reactor manufacturers must be forced to desist from their push to
     export nuclear power. If the American people have decisively
     decided that no new reactors will be built in this country, the
     same criteria must be applied to China, Indonesia and the former
     Eastern Bloc countries that are being persuaded by the U.S.
     nuclear industry that nuclear power is the answer to their energy
     dreams. Helen Caldicott, a Pediatrician on Long Island, N.y., Is
     the Founding President of Physicians for Social Responsibility
     and Author of "Nuclear Madness" (W.w. Norton, 1994)
     
     Copyright Los Angeles Times


John Hughes
yayaokok@deltanet.com