Global Ecological Problems and Issues

One small part of the problem are the nuclear reactors themselves. Some of the companies that are currently operating nuclear power plants have reserved nominal amounts of money for dismantling the nuclear reactors after they are no longer in use. However, in the few instances in which old nuclear power plants have actually been dismantled the costs have been 15-20 times larger than the overly optimistic calculations produced by the nuclear industry. For instance in Britain it has now been estimated that the dismantling of the nuclear power plants and other radioactive clean-up will cost at least 63 billion pounds and possibly much more. It is now openly admitted that all this money has to come from public sources, from the tax-payers' pockets, there is no chance that the near-bankrupt nuclear industries would be able to contribute much.

The mildly radioactive waste produced by uranium mines is another serious problem. Uranium mining typically removes roughly 15 per cent of the radioactivity of the uranium ore deposits. This means that on average 85 per cent of the radioactivity is left behind in huge masses of slightly radioactive soil and rock. The amount of this low-active radioactive waste is so huge that nobody has been willing to consider what should actually be done for it: individual mining areas can contain billions of tons of such slightly radioactive material. For instance in India the waste from uranium mines has been stored in middle-sized earth dams. The dams leak and the rivers below them are becoming, little by little, more radioactive.

The production of nuclear fuel leaves behind seven tons of depleted uranium (DU) for each ton of enriched nuclear fuel. A 1000 megawatt nuclear power plants produces about two hundred tons of depleted uranium per year, and the manufacturers of nuclear fuel have already accumulated almost one million tons of DU. Also the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel produces smaller amounts of depleted uranium.

Depleted uranium is only half as radioactive as natural uranium because it only contains 0.3 per cent of the more radioactive uranium 235 isotope. In natural uranium there is, on average, 0.7 per cent of U235. However, DU is still a mildly radioactive toxic waste, the storing of which causes major additional expenses for the nuclear industries.

To reduce the costs of storing their waste materials the nuclear industries give depleted uranium to the armament industries for free. Because of this almost unlimited free supply depleted uranium has become extremely popular among the manufacturers of military ammunition. Uranium is 1.7 times denser than lead, and projectiles made of DU can pierce otherwise impenetrable armour.

Depleted uranium burns on impact, and produces small particles of uranium oxides, between 0.1 and 10 micrometers wide. These particles can be inhaled and they seem to be highly insoluble. The alpha radiation caused by natural uranium or by depleted uranium cannot penetrate any kind of clothing, human skin or even paper. However, the inhaled particles can expose vulnerable tissues to alpha radiation. This should increase the risk of cancer and other health problems. For instance a modern 30-millimetre Gatling gun used in battle helicopters and in fighter planes can fire 3900 rounds of ammunition in a minute. Every DU round that hits a hard target explodes into a mildly radioactive uranium oxide aerosol.

In the First Gulf War the US forces fired, in a very short period of time, almost one million rounds of ammunition that contained alltogether about 260 tons of depleted uranium.

According to Jawad Khudim al-Ali, director of the cancer ward of the teaching hospital of Basra, cancer rates in Basra are 11 times higher than before the First Gulf War. Also many other Iraqi doctors have reported about anomalous rates of cancer and birth defects. Even the US government has admitted that these claims seem to have something to do with the reality, but they say that the astonishingly high rates of cancer and birth defects have probably been caused by chemical weapons and not by depleted uranium. Most Iraqi people are blaming the Americans.

Also about four fifths of the soldiers fighting in the Allied troops were exposed to high doses of depleted uranium. The level of uranium in the urine of some of them was, three years after the war, still 4000 times higher than the US safety limit for adults. According to the studies of the German professor, biochemist Albrect Schott the British veterans of the First Gulf War have on average five and a half times more than the average number of chromosome abnormalities. Some of the veterans have 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities in their genes. According to Schott this should increase the probability of cancer, deformed babies and other genetic conditions. According to professor Malcolm Hooper of England's Sunderland University, the exposure to depleted uranium may cause between 22 000 and 160 000 extra cancer deaths among the US and British troops that fought in the First Gulf War. The chemical toxicity of the substance is already causing serious health problems to many Gulf veterans. Of the 504 047 registered American veterans of the First Gulf War, 29 per cent have been officially classified as invalids.

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