Georgia Nukes

I have yet to read a convincing argument for the continuation of nuclear energy. Yet nuclear power plants continue to be built in the USA. Nuclear is not Green.

Breitbart: Westinghouse strikes deal to build US nuclear power plants

Westinghouse Electric, a unit of the Japanese Toshiba Corp., said Tuesday it had struck a deal with Georgia Power to build two nuclear power plants in the southern United States, the first such projects in 30 years.

Common Dreams: Nuclear Power is the Problem, Not a Solution by Helen Caldicott

It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.

In the US, where much of the world's uranium is enriched, including Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Kentucky, requires the electrical output of two 1000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50per cent of global warming.

Nuclear reactors consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry considers these particular radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential. This is not so.

These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon, which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near a nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty tissues of the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit high-energy gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm and cause genetic disease.

But the long-term storage of radioactive waste continues to pose a problem.