Dr. Conrad Miller appeared on worldwide internet radio on April 1, 2010 at 6:35 PM Eastern Time; 3:35 PM Pacific Time, with the Puffman, Jerry Puffer on KSEN-AM 1150 Radio in Shelby, Montana. The show was hearable at http://www.ksenam.com/onair_page.php?id=5 but is not stored, regrettably. However:
You CAN hear the following podcast anytime you wish from the ‘Dresser After Dark’ Interview of March 22, 2010 Click here to listen: Conrad Miller3-22-2010
Both the Puffman and the Dresser interviews were listenable via the miracle of the internet anywhere on Earth with internet access. Generation of electricity and the promising non-toxic alternatives esp wind and solar were discussed, vs the dangerous nuclear push being engineered by President Obama.
Although the current President is now telling the world that nuclear power is ‘safe and clean,’ there are stirrings in America, and many facts showing
adverse health effects from nuclear power plants to contradict such a claim.
Americans should know that our country has been called ‘The Persian Gulf Of Wind.’ In fact, by installing 10,000 new megawatts of windpower in 2009 [an average nuclear plant generates about 1000 megawatts], we are ahead of former #1 wind power nation Germany, that country installing about 1500 new megawatts of wind power annually. China has quickly become number 3, with 25,104 total megawatts of wind installed.
But who is publicizing this?? Plus the overwhelming relative safety of wind
vs. nuclear?
A new nuclear plant may take 6-8 years to come online, at an estimated real cost of $10-$12 billion. Then there is the unsolveable problem of where to store the most toxic waste on Earth, radioactive waste. Just think, in say seven years, even if we stayed at the current rate of installation, we should have `70,000 new megawatts of safe wind power – installing 10,000 megawatts per year.
With 33% calculated average ‘capacity’ for wind, that would equal the output of 24 nuclear plants before any one nuclear plant would even come online.
Dr. Miller. 6:35 EST April 1, 2010 on the Shelby, Montana station KSEN-AM 1150, for about 25 minutes discussed nuclear power vs alternative safe power at a time when studies are coming out showing increased cancer rates surrounding nuclear plants. Americans should also know that 30 of our 104 nuclear plants have leaked. A few weeks ago, the Vermont Senate voted 26-4 to close the Vermont Yankee reactor when its license expires in 2012. Why? Because Entergy, the corporation that owns the plant had been lying about a most recent tritium water leak occurring, and also lying about the existence of any possible pipes where the leaks could have originated from.
However, when the truth unavoidably emerged, Entergy did admit there were indeed pipes and they were leaking, which enraged Vermont citizens. In addition, another leak that evaded publicity, was denied ever occurring, also was revealed to have occurred starting back in 2005.
Same type of story in the town of Godley, Illinois. There for nine years the Braidwood nuclear reactor, it was finally revealed, had leaked 6 MILLION gallons of tritium tainted water radioactively polluting the town’s salty wells. After finally admitting that they had lied, Exelon, now the biggest nuclear power corporation in America with 17 reactors in our country, started delivering bottled water to local residents. Here is a brief statement about tritium so you can get the picture:
Tritium is an ‘activation product’ resulting from fissioning of uranium in
what was supposed to be Godley’s “cream of the crop”[i] nuclear reactor.
Tritium can pass through our skin while we are showering or even washing our dishes. According to the Grandfather of Health Physics, the late Karl Z. Morgan, tritium “is the only radionuclide for which we assume as much is taken into the body via skin penetration as by inhalation. It is the MOST invasive of all radionuclides and distributes itself rather uniformly to all organs and all body tissues on a microCurie per gram basis. It presents a somatic, genetic and teratogenic [cancerous] risk. It cannot be separated from liquid waste by evaporation, a process used to concentrate most radionuclides [especially in nuclear reactors].”[ii]
——————————————————————————–
[i] Joe Cosgrove, Director, Parks Department, for Godley, Illinois;
telephone conversation June 19, 2006.
[ii] ‘Why EPA’s Tritium Standard For Drinking Water
[20,000 picocuries per liter] Is Undoubtedly Way Too Lax, & A Suggested
New Standard,” Jan 17, 2006 by Russell Ace Hoffman.
************************************************************************
The latest from Joe Cosgrove down in Will County, south of Chicago, from
President Obama’s home state is:
“In November of 2008, Exelon – Braidwood Nuclear Station
donated $11,500,000.00 dollars to the Godley Public Water
District to install a municipal water system for 225 households.
The donation was a gift, while they clearly stated that it had nothing
to do with the releases of radionuclides to the ground water, but
just wanted to be a “good neighbor”.
Bottled water is still be supplied to residents until such time
that the system goes on line.
In 2006, The Illinois Attorney General, Illinois EPA and the Will County
States Attorney filed a lawsuit for numerous violations by Exelon,
namely the discharge of contaminants to the groundwater, without permit.
This case has been on going and is now set for trial in May. So far,
besides the injunction to clean up the contamination, no Consent
decree has been entered.
We still look forward to updating the Federal study concerning
health statistics in proximity to nuclear plants. There is movement
by the NRC to do this and to have the same opened for peer review.”
Of course, there have been numerous studies in other countries showing
increased cancer rates surrounding nuclear plants.
Also, we should be aware that over 500 radionuclides are produced
by fissioning uranium to make heat and then steam to turn a turbine
and produce electricity, which can be done infinitely more safely
with a wind turbine or solar/photovoltaics. Each of these dangerous
radionuclides can emit radioactive rays or electrons that can
strike our DNA to cause mutations and cancer. Plus many are very
long-lived: Cesium has a half life of ~30 years and a hazardous life
during which we have to worry about it, lasting 300-600 years.
Plutonium-239 has a 24,000 year half life and thus a 240,000 – 480,000
year hazardous life.
Just a microgram of plutonium can cause lung cancer. That means,
if vaporized in an accident (e.g., like Chernboyl) just 20 pounds
of plutonium could be dispersed around the world and theoretically
possibly cause lung cancer in every human being on Earth (454 grams
in one pound; 454 MILLION micrograms in one pound). Remember,
not 31, but more than 300,000 people have died prematurely with
cancer from Chernobyl’s radioactive contamination, as stated by
biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, president of the Center for Russian
Environmental Policy in his 2007 book.
In addition, the Westinghouse AP-1000 new wonder nuclear plants that
President Obama is pushing to be built in Georgia have been
rejected as unsafe by the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] already!!
Meanwhile, the utilities in Georgia and Florida are sucking up
their ratepayers by increasing their rates NOW to ratchet up moneys
to pay for these new nuclear plants in advance. AND, the Congressional
Budget Office has stated that ~50% of the nuclear loan guarantees will go
into default, so the US taxpayer will end up picking up the bills on
the bad loans.
Also, concerning the $8.3 Billion nuclear loan guarantees, the
Department of Energy has not been able to spend its existing
loan guarantee authority, and since actual guarantees can’t be
granted until a reactor receives a license from the NRC, it will
be years more before any actual guarantee can be issued.
‘Every one of the proposed new reactors in the U.S. already has
experienced delays, and every one has a combination of design,
safety, economics and radioactive waste problems that make them
highly speculative at best’ >> according to the Nuclear Information
and Resource Service [NIRS] in Washington D.C..
The Clipper 2.5 megawatt wind turbine can supply 675 homes with
electricity. 112,000 of these can supply all of America’s homes
with electricity. This would create a vast amount of jobs,
and a vital future industry that will be sustainable to aid
a rapidly growing population on this Earth. And then there’s solar
power, which Dr. David Goodstein of CalTech states can power
all of America’s homes within a decade, utilizing an area equivalent
to 80 square miles in one of our southwestern deserts.
OTHER HOT NUCLEAR POWER NEWS:
A few weeks ago in West Virginia, a bill to repeal that state’s
ban on new nuclear construction was defeated in the state legislature.
See more at
http://www.wboy.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=75844 ]
In Arizona, a bill to classify nuclear power as renewable energy was
withdrawn [ http://bit.ly/93YHyf ] following heavy lobbying from the
solar power industry and environmental community.
So, although the bully pulpit is being occupied by Obama and his push
for nuclear power, the American people are having their say contrary
to his audacious advocacy.
One last vision of where this is all coming from: Karl Grossman in
his Nuclear Obama Counterpunch article available on the internet:
Steven Chu, Obama’s ‘Department of Energy secretary typifies the
religious-like zeal for nuclear power emanating for decades from
scientists in the U.S. government’s string of national nuclear
laboratories. Chu was director of one of these, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, before becoming head of DOE.
First established during World War II’s Manhattan Project to
build atomic weapons, the laboratories after the war began
promoting civilian nuclear technology—and have been pushing it
unceasingly ever since. It has been a way to perpetuate the
vested interest created during World War II. The number of
nuclear weapons that could be built was limited because atomic
bombs don’t lend themselves to commercial distribution, but
in pushing food irradiation, nuclear-powered airplanes and
rockets, atomic devices for excavation and, of course, nuclear
power, the budgets and staffs of the national nuclear laboratories
could be maintained, indeed increase.
That was the analysis of David Lilienthal, first chairman of the
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which preceded the Department of
Energy. Lilienthal in his 1963 book Change, Hope, and the Bomb
wrote: “The classic picture of the scientist as a creative
individual, a man obsessed, working alone through the night,
a man in a laboratory pushing an idea—this has changed.
Now scientists are ranked in platoons. They are organization men.
In many cases the independent and humble search for new truths about
nature has been confused with the bureaucratic impulse to justify
expenditure and see that next year’s budget is bigger than last’s.”
Lilienthal wrote about the “elaborate and even luxurious [national nuclear]
laboratories that have grown up at Oak Ridge, Argonne, Brookhaven”
and the push to use nuclear devices for “blowing out harbors, making
explosions underground to produce steam, and so on” which show “how
far scientists and administrators will go to try to establish a nonmilitary
use” for nuclear technology.
Chu, like so many of the national nuclear laboratory scientists and
administrators, minimizes the dangers of radioactivity. If they didn’t,
if they acknowledged how life-threatening the radiation produced by
nuclear technology is, their favorite technology would crumble.
A major theme of Chu, too, is a return to the notion promoted by
the national nuclear laboratories in the 1950s and 60s of “recycling”
and “reusing” nuclear waste. This way, they have hoped, it might not
be seen as waste at all. The concept was to use radioactive Cesium-137
(the main poison discharged in the Chernobyl disaster) to irradiate
food, to use depleted uranium to harden bullets and shells, and so on.
In recent weeks, with Obama carrying out his pledge not to allow Yucca
Mountain to become a nuclear waste dump, Chu set up a “blue-ribbon” panel
on radioactive waste—stacked with nuclear power advocates including Exelon’s
John Rowe—that is expected to stress the “recycling” theory.
“We are aggressively pursuing nuclear energy,” declared Chu in
January as he announced DOE’s budget plan—which included an increase
in the 2011 federal budget in monies for nuclear loan guarantees to
build new nuclear plants cited by Obama Tuesday. “We are, as we have
repeatedly said, working hard to restart the American nuclear power industry.”
The $8.3 billion in loan guarantees Obama announced Tuesday is to come
from $18.5 billion in guarantees proposed by the George W. Bush administration
and authorized by Congress in 2005. “My budget proposes tripling the loan
guarantees we provide to help finance safe, clean nuclear facilities,”
said Obama Tuesday, referring to the DOE plan which would add $36 billion
and bring the loan guarantee fund to $54.5. And this despite candidate
Obama warning about “enormous subsidies from the U.S. government” to the
nuclear industry.’
See more at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/grossman02172010.html
Lots going on here. Lots of money at stake. While kids get cancer living
around nuclear plants. And John Rowe and Steven Chu attempt to further
nuclearize our world, when we have the means with truly safe wind and sun
to provide the electricity for all USA homes within a decade.
Listen in….6:35 PM Thursday April 1, 2010 East Coast Time
C March 31, 2010 Conrad Miller MD
