Unclean satanic mills

Albert Cilia-Vincenti admonishes Arnold Cassola for "raving and ranting" against nuclear energy and adds that nuclear power provides the "cheapest and the only emissions-free electricity". He lauds France for its extensive use of nuclear energy and its high standards of safety and blissfully overlooks too many facts. Unfortunately, nuclear energy is neither cheap nor clean.

Like too many aspects of economic activity carried out by huge industrial interests, the environmental impact of nuclear energy is not factored into the equation. When it comes to commercial and security interests, politicians and the military-industrial establishments are notorious for being economical with the truth.

As it is mainly used in the development of nuclear weaponry, information on the deadly consequences of nuclear technology is more difficult to access and assess.

It is shrouded in secrecy. Information on stockpiled nuclear weaponry and its concomitant waste is outside public scrutiny.

Thankfully, nuclear energy plants used for the production of electricity are now increasingly coming under the spotlight of public opinion.

The tragedy of Chernobyl was a grim reminder of the vulnerability of this once much-vaunted industry.

In the last six months, eight nuclear incidents were reported in Europe. Six occurred in France, four of which at the same plant of Tricastin in south eastern France. The industry in France and elsewhere, which is plagued by routine and accidental radioactive pollution, is tarnished by lack of transparency and indifference to the risks of nuclear waste management and what it euphemistically terms the decommissioning of power plants that have had a relatively short operating life span of 40 odd years.

The nuclear establishment advertises itself as the producer of "green" energy, completely ignoring the non-green effects of the manufacture and eventual disposal of reactors, their fuels and their radioactive products. Also, a power reactor at the end of its life has manufactured lethal radioactive products equivalent to those from several thousand nuclear bombs.

Indeed, if governments and utilities have had a difficult time justifying the cost of building and operating nuclear reactors, closing them down could be an even harder sell. The problem of coping with the toxic waste of our nuclear legacy is already out of control. Yet, it would seem that, as always, short term-commercial interests trump all other concerns.

In a study released as recently as September of this year, the Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire, or IRSN, reported that French nuclear installations are affected by downstream pollution and groundwater contamination at nearly all sites.

More worrying is the fact that the study pointed out that old waste storage sites are a source of leakage and pollution. Worse still, the French regulatory authority could not comment about a mound of nuclear waste buried at Tricastin since the 1970s, as it was a military issue, outside the regulator's control.

Military security cloaks realities that are probably just the tip of an iceberg of sinister facts kept hidden from public inspection.

Yet, despite these realities, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is the world's most aggressive salesman of nuclear power and is making deals with various countries such as India, China and Muslim countries, which include the globe's biggest oil producers, in his attempt to peddle French nuclear technology and make multi-billion-dollar deals.

The countries where France is planning to build new plants are mostly non-democratic regimes or dictatorships.

In these countries, public opinion will be even less able to evaluate the risks and shortcomings of this technology.

Their introduction will be able to proceed unhindered with all the concomitant risks of being used nefariously.

Last year, Keith Barnham, emeritus professor of physics at the Imperial College of London, when referring to nuclear technology, wrote in The Guardian that "Plutonium will be a problem for thousands of years. I consider it immoral that we should leave more than 10,000 generations to deal with the waste of the three generations who will have consumed the world's exploitable uranium reserves.

For a start, how will they know where the plutonium is buried, when the store must survive intact for more than 100 times the age of Stonehenge? Rather than developing transmutation or fast-breeder schemes which may not work, and which involve the transportation of large amounts of plutonium, the highest priority of the nuclear industry should be to solve the long-term waste storage problem".

Damaged gene pools and cancers, and a ruined environment, will be our legacy to future generations if we continue to build nuclear reactors and nuclear armaments. How many of our grandchildren are we willing to sacrifice for the continuation of nuclear electric power and nuclear war?

Public fear and rejection of nuclear power are not only rational but sensible. In the light of these facts, it is no wonder that the late renowned economist E. F. Schumacher labelled nuclear power stations as Satanic Mills.