Nuclear Power: It'll Cost The Earth
The following article is reprinted from Spare Rib, No. 91,February 1980.
It's hard to believe that nuclear power is as bad as it is. That governments encourage indeed, finance with billions of pounds - an industry that could have the same effect on
our health as did the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki1. 'Even now, babies are being born with defects and people are dying from the radiation created there in 1945. Nuclear power is creating radioactive substances; for instance, compared to a natural background level of 12 'curies'. Wind scale Reprocessing Plant in Cumbria will let out 230 million curies of a radioactive gas in its lifetime, according to The Ecologist. Even when they're functioning "normally" nuclear plants cause increases in leukaemia - 700% according to one West German study, and a report in the doctors' journal The Lancet in September, gives evidence connecting an increase of leukaemia in Lancashire with the nuclear plants on the Cumbrian coast. Nuclear power stations are being operated with serious defects, like those that led to the accident at Three Mile Island in the USA, when the whole of Pennsylvania came near to being poisoned. The industry is dumping radioactive wastes into the sea, and they're coming back up again ... think of that next time you eat 'sea-fresh' fish.
And the "experts" are deliberately lying to us about these dangers. At Three Mile Island, spokesmen for the company said that the releases of radiation were only at the level you'd get through a dentist's x-ray - and yet workmen on the site later testified that so much radioactivity was let off that the dials all went off the scale. Even while the government denied there was a problem, it evacuated all pregnant women and children. Research scientists have lost their funding, and even their jobs, for speaking out about radiation hazards.
All the decisions about nuclear power have been made by a handful of men, industrialists and politicians - and many of the facts are covered by official secrets acts. Yet it's a matter of life and death for us all. There have been serious explosions at nuclear installations, such as the one in the Russian Urals in 1957 rand there will certainly be more. But what threatens all of us, even if we don't live near nuclear reactors, is the amount of radioactive substances transported around the country and around the world, that are mined under land where people are living and created in nuclear power stations, that are dumped or buried or simply released into the country side.
Recent research shown that women are twice as likely as men to get cancer from radiation, because we are more prone to thyroid and breast cancers that are particularly triggered by it. (Cancer is already the biggest single cause of death for for women over 35.) Foetuses and young children are even more affected, as growing cells are so susceptible to radiation damage affects egg and sperm cells, so that mutation generations. And there's no safe level of exposure to radioactive substance - any increase will cause a corresponding increase in the number of miscarriages, deformed babies and people who die from cancer, according to the latest evidence.
And still the present government plans to expand the nuclear programme as fast as possible...
The use of nuclear power to produce electricity arose from and still connected to, military development. The world's first commercial nuclear power station, opened by the Queen in 1956 at Calder Hall in Cumbria, was intended primarily to supplement the production of plutonium for the British weapons. Before that , the sole purpose of reactors was to make plutonium for bombs. The more nuclear power stations there are, the more plutonium can be extracted from the used for bombs. What is more, What is more, dropping an ordinary bomb on a nuclear reactor would be just as effective as an atomic bomb elsewhere.
No government invests in science out of a pure thirst for knowledge. The Western nations make a great deal of money from exporting nuclear technology to other countries, despite a 'non-proliferation' treaty - the Canadians to India, for instance, and the West Germans to Brazil and South Africa, against the interests of the majority of people in those countries. The "experts" said it wasn't possible to make atomic bombs solely by reprocessing the waste of a reactor - until India managed it in 1974 ... The West makes money, and an increasing number of governments get nuclear weapons. The Stockholm Peace Research Institute has predicted that the world will suffer its first nuclear war within 24 years, as the nuclear capacity spreads to somewhere between 40 and 60 nations; already over 30 have atomic weapons. There is no such such thing as 'peaceful' atomic energy.
Overcapacity
The nuclear power programme in this country has been based on predictions of growth in the use of electricity; these were made some years ago, at a time of ridiculous economic optimism and before there was any official recognition that much energy is simply wasted by inefficient use. Since then growth in consumption has slowed down considerably, but the electricity boards have not substantially revised their plans. The South of Scotland Electricity Board already has the capacity to generate 86% more electricity than it ever needs at once, but it still intends to go ahead with a new Advanced Gas-Cool· ed Reactor (AGR) at Torness. The only answer the industry has found to overproduction is over consumption; they are pushing the equation that happiness ·depends on high living standards which depend on high energy consumption.
The 'Think Electric' campaign would have us invest in consumer non-durables such as electric potato peelers and tooth brushes. Women, forced back into the thrilling confines of the nuclear family 'when they lose their jobs to electric-powered microprocessors (see Spare Rib 83), and fail to get the new skilled or security jobs in nuclear power plants, could at least measure out their happiness in electric coffee spoons. It is in the industry's interests - not ours - to get us as major consumers hooked on electricity.
For domestic heating, electricity is an expensive and inefficient form of energy. Moreover, nuclear power produces electricity which can't be switched on and off according to
need. But people use electricity most when they come home from work and in the winter. So unless - or until - they can persuade us to cook in the middle of the night, nuclear power will never be able to replace coal or oil even in producing electricity, because these will have to continue to be used for peak times. And, contrary to what the industry says, there are detailed proposals for alternative, safe, cheap energy sources that could more than meet even capitalism's industrial "needs". For a start, power stations that produce both electricity and hot water for heating could save us up to half the coal dug in Britain each year.
The cost of nuclear power
The pro-nuclear lobby claims that the disadvantages of nuclear power (such as death) are outweighed by the cheaper electricity they say it produces. But in their analysis of its price they conveniently forget to include many of the costs. Delays and inflation have contributed to soaring costs in the construction of stations. In 1964, five AGR nuclear power stations were planned for Britain at an estimated £ 600 million. Only two of these are as yet producing any power and already they have cost £ 900 million above the estimate. The price of the uranium fuel has tripled, and can only continue to get ever more expensive. It's a non-renewable resource that costs more to mine as they have to dig it out of more inaccessible and poorer sites, the easy and richer sites being used up. The costs of maintaining security guards, and of 'decommissioning' a
nuclear station after its maximum useful life of 30 years - because it's far too radioactive just to be switched off and abandoned - have not been taken into account. And, unbelievably, the industry has not added in the costs of transporting and disposing of nuclear wastes - perhaps because so far they have not worked out what they will do with the wastes.
Accidents like that at Three Mile Island, Harrisburg - when, on March 28, 1979, the nuclear reaction went out of control - are paid for by increases in the electricity bills,£ 16 million a month, in that case. At Hunterson in Scotland sea water was accidentally let into the new AGR, and the: estimated costs of repair and alternative generation of electricity have run to over £ 50 million. This will go on the Scottish bills. According to the "experts", accidents are only meant to happen every so many thousands of years. In the first quarter of 1979 there were 17 separate "incidents" - that's the industry's term for problems - in Britain alone, and from December 1976 to December 1978 there were no fewer than 75 incidents at Windscale. There have been explosions at nuclear power stations, and some spectacular near-misses - see, for instance, We Almost Lost Detroit by John Fuller, In short, they have lied.
It'll cost the earth
Money, however, is not the only cost. Operation of nuclear reactors produces large quantities of radioactive wastes (see technical box). No solution has been found over the past 30 years of research for disposing of this waste, nor for completely isolating it from the environment. Yet the waste poses an enormous health hazard. In the meantime, it is being produced and stored "temporarily" in tanks that are leaking and stretched to overcapacity.
The used reactor fuels are the "hottest" and most dangerous waste. If a used fuel rod was lying without its shielding and you went past at 90 mph on a motorbike, you'd still die of radiation - in this case not through cancer, but from the direct effects of radiation poisoning: your body literally falls apart in a few days. These used fuel rods are transported from the power stations all round Britain to Windscale, Cumbria, for reprocessing, usually in goods trains and regularly through the middle of cities. After reprocessing, which separates out the plutonium and unused uranium, the remaining radioactive waste is stored as a liquid porridge in double walled steel tanks.
These have to be kept refrigerated in case they boil and explode - on no account can there be a power failure. These tanks corrode and eventually leak. Leakage into the ground - or worse, into the underground water supplies - eventually gets into our food and drink.
Even less attention has been paid to the management of those wastes · innocuously termed "low level", but the concentration of plutonium in them may be even higher than in the 'high level " wastes. 4000 tons of low level waste has been dumped by Britain· concrete drums in the Atlantic. Some have come back up, some have leaked, and some have been hauled in by fishing boats. The industry maintains that low level releases are diluted to "insignificant" levels in the sea. Apart from the question of wether any amount can be called insignificant, because the evidence shows that any level - including background cosmic radiation- is likely to cause some fraction of the population to get cancer or give birth to deformed babies, radioactivity becomes concentrated rather than diluted when it gets caught up in the food chain in the sea
concentrate radioactive substances between 500 and 200,000 times, depending on the substance.Eskimoes nowhere near atomic tests or reactors were found to have high body radiation levels, because the fallout from nuclear test got into the lichens, caribou ate the lichens, and eskinoes are caribou. Someone eating half a pound of
fish a day from the Irish Sea - the most radioactive sea in the world - could be getting a third of the current "permitted" dose from that alone.
In the "normal" operation of nuclear power stations, nothingcan be done with some of the radioactive gases produced, so they are released into the atmosphere. Windscale alone releases i15 million curies of Krypton 85 a year (the background level is 12 curies). It takes ten years to decay to half of its original radioactivity; it's heavier than air, so it sinks and builds up close to the ground and the growing plants. Radioactivity builds up most in the outer, nutritionally rich parts of grain, so that wholemeal bread and brown rice, for example, are more affected than refined foods.Leakage from nuclear power station is monitored by testing the milk from local cows, in which radioactive strontium 90 builds up - you see, the authorities are actually quite aware that radioactivity concentrates in food. Back in 1957, an accident - ops, sorry incident - at Windscale released 20,000 curies of radioactive iodine 131 into the air; and in an area 200 square miles downwind of the reactor 450,000 gallons of milk had to be poured
away.
The Stable Society- social and political consequences
So who controls this costly and deadly form of power in Britain? All the electricity-producing establishments are owned by the Central Electricity Generation Board. It's a highly capital-intensive hierarchy in which a few men at the top make all the decision - despite the fact that it's a nationalised industry, they're not going to ask us what we think. Of course, that is a reflection of how society is run - everyone to their niche in the heierarchy, and "naturally" it is predominantly men at the top and women at the bottom.
Nuclear power is just not possible on a small, local scale; even a tiny nuclear power station would cost hundreds of millions of pounds to build, and they are far too dangerous to be near centres of population. But feminism is about individual and local decisions. The will to have control over our own lives - and nobody else's - is fundamental to Women's Liberation. To us, this necessarily implies decentralisation of all forms of power, without orders from above - whether they come from capitalist or socialist men.
Increasingly, the establishment's solutions to the problems posed by nuclear power threaten freedom of speech, association, discussion and privacy. Because the transport, use, disposal of nuclear materials is so potentially dangerous, the security forces will be greatly reinforced, and in the name of "national security" all kinds of restrictions will be sanctioned. What the government presents as hazardous is not the chance of a serious accident through technical failure or human error - they seem to have convinced themselves that this won't happen - but that plutonium, the material of the bomb, will get into the "wrong" hands. (As though their hands could be trusted!).
Whatever form accidents take, the effects would be the same. Disastrous. Already, the "rigorous" accounting procedures have lost track of pounds of plutonium around the world and a whole boatload of uranium was stolen at sea ... The more radioactive substances are transported around Britain, the greater the official paranoia. The threat of terrorist misuse of plutonium is used to ensure that nuclear establishments are well guarded .
The most frightening threat is not terrorist attack but the erosion of civil liberties. Fear of sabotage is and will be used by the government as an excuse to restrict political dissent. Under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, authorised officials may enter any premises without a warrant and without giving notice to the occupier, if they suspect atomic energy work is proceeding there. The nuclear police force have the power to arrest on suspicion and are not directly accountable to any government minister. Because of all the money and prestige invested in the nuclear power programme, and its enormous risks, the industry wants to silence any criticism of it by whatever means - from calling any opposition ignorant or anti- "progress', to tapping their phones and opening their mail, to killing them. Union organiser Karen Silkwood was
poisoned and then run off the road to prevent her handing over evidence about s<1fety infringements at the plant in Oklahoma, USA, where she worked.
As nuclear power comes increasingly to be relied on, society will have to adapt to its demands. Any measure could become legitimate in the name of safety. As feminists we're attacking the stability of the system by challenging the power of a few men to hold all the money and power. We'll have to be silenced ...
Co-operation or conquest?
The technology of our male culture is based on the imposion of the technologist's skill on the material with which he is working, with no concern for whether that materials
alive or inanimate. Those of us who live in inner cities are particularly struck by the extent to which this technology is out of harmony with the living world, and many of us are aware of how we reflect this noisy, dirty and brutalising environment in our relationships with each other. Nuclear power is the extreme manifestation of a technology that relies on subjugation and exploitation. Its historical beginnings lie in the search for a more powerful weapon; the nuclear fuel cycle starts with companies robbing Native Americans and Australian Aborigines of their land to mine uranium.
Far from being the answer to rapidly decreasing fuel reserves, stocks of uranium are only expected to last for slightly longer than those of oil. Throughout the process we are in constant danger of being blown up or contaminated with radioactivity, with no possibility of recycling or adaptation. We are left with grisly monuments, concrete-entombed, radioactive disused power stations round our coastline, waiting for 20 odd years to cool down before they can be dismantled, and waste products that are totally outside the birth and death cycle of our ecology, many of them remaining deadly for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.
In contrast, there are sources of energy that could be used which are renewable, do not pollute, are adapted to nature, to the locality and the people living there and SAFE for us and future generations to come - wind, sunlight, waves or dammed rivers, alcohol, methane gas, heat from within the earth. These could provide diversified forms of energy which would be small, decentralised and easily understood and controlled by everyone. Use of these sources together with better insulation of buildings and general conservation would also provide many more jobs than nuclear power can. This is in keeping with the way we as feminists are aiming to work: co-operatively, sensitively and without power structures.
Better active today than radioactive tomorrow
The accident at Three Mile Island discredited the 'experts',showing them to be both scared and lying. It caused a major surge in the anti-nuclear movement. The China Syndrome, which prophetically came out in the States nine days before that "incident" it even contains a line that a nuclear accident could devastate -"an area the size of Pennsylvania" - has gone on mass distribution worldwide. As costs of maintaining the nuclear industry become ever more crippling; as safety measures are shown to be totally inadequate; as the realisation grows that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation, the industry is losing support from the public, These factors and the recent occupation by anti-nuclear activists of the proposed nuclear reactor site at Tornesshave made a significant swing in public opinion in the surrounding area,
for example: a poll in the local paper showed that 90% were against the proposed reactor and more local people are now prepared to be active in opposing it.
Nuclear power is a threat to us all. If we allow it to develop it will affect our political structures, our civil liberties, our food, even the air we breathe. Stopping nuclear power will not automatically bring us control of our lives, our immediate environment, or our bodies but success in this is an essential step towards the future that we as feminists want to build. It is our energy against their power ...
Sheryl Crown, Lesley Merryfinch, Bee Pooley, Rosie and Joi a, and Jill Sutcliffe.
Want you can do
Contact - Feminists Against Nuclear Power, Sheryl Crown 58 High Lane, Manchester 21 (061-881 1788), or Jola, 24 Rancliffe Rd, London E6 (01-471 5711).
Friends of the Earth, who are holding a national demonstration in London on March 29 to 'celebrate' the first anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident; they have local branches in many towns, 9 Poland St, London W1 (01-434 168/ 437 6121).
World Information Service on Energy (WISE) has a WISE women's project, collecting every thing that's written around the world by women on nuclear power. WISE, c/o 34 Cowley Rd, Oxford (0865 725354).
READ - Undercurrents for regular news on the fight against nuclear power (27 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1 - this is also the address for the new Anti-Nuclear Campaign); SCRAM Energy Bulletin (Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace, 2a Ainslie Place, Edinburgh 3). Both available at alternative bookshops or from PDC, 27 Clerkenwell Close.
Nuclear Power by Walter Patterson.
Nuclear Power for Beginners by Stephen Croall and Kaianders Sempler.
And encourage all your friends and relatives to see the film The China Syndrome.
Available from : Spare Rib, 27 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R OAT, England.