A Global ThreatFukushima Fallout Damaged the Thyroids of California Babies
by CHRIS BUSBY
A new study of the effects of tiny quantities of radioactive fallout from Fukushima on the health of babies born in California shows a significant excess of hypothyroidism caused by the radioactive contamination travelling 5,000 miles across the Pacific. The article will be published next week in the peer-reviewed journal Open Journal of Pediatrics.
Counter that with this and one can see how people might be torn:
Ontario nuclear reactor shutdown triggers medical isotope shortage
HELEN BRANSWELL
TORONTO — The Canadian Press
An unplanned shutdown of the aging Chalk River nuclear reactor has the country on the verge of a major shortage of medical isotopes, the president of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine said Friday.
Dr. Norman Laurin said the forced shutdown of production at the Chalk River facility comes at a time when two of the world’s three other major producers of medical isotopes are also out of operation.
The Doctor incorrectly identifies the problem as being the shutdowns. A thorough reading of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility’s documents suggests that the larger problem is AECL. Before nuclear fission was discovered, there were other ways to make the radioisotopes necessary for imaging.
…radio-isotopes have been used in nuclear medicine, industry and scientific research, for a very long time, starting around 1900 — half a century before the first nuclear reactors were built.
At first, the radio-isotopes utilized were naturally-occurring ones such as radium-226, radium-224, radon-222, polonium-210, tritium (hydrogen-3), carbon-14, et cetera. Even today, “radium needles” and “radon seeds” are used to shrink cancerous tumours, and polonium-210 is used in industrial devices to eliminate static electricity. These naturally occurring radioactive substances have nothing to do with the operation of nuclear reactors.
Later, in the 1940s, when the first particle accelerators were built (beginning with the cyclotron of Ernest Lawrence in California) a host of artificial radio-isotopes became available — produced not by the fissioning of uranium, not by neutron bombardment inside a nuclear reactor, but simply by colliding a beam of accelerated subatomic particles with various target materials.
And as Politics’n’Poetry has discussed in the past, other new, non-nuclear ways have since been developed. But the nuclear industry’s stranglehold on the market prevails.
Politics’n’Poetry has discussed the Chalk River facility in the past. Visitors may want to refresh their memories regarding it. Of particular interest is the paper presented by Dr. Gordon Edwards to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the body that licenses reactors. Have these been addressed? Ask your MP.
It seems there’s a shortage of isotopes every time the aging facility has to shut down. Isn’t it time to invest in alternatives?
Politics'n'Poetry 