[cdn-nucl-l] "Nuclear Energy: An 'atomic' dream or a nightmare"

["Jim Muckerheide" <jmuckerheide@cnts.wpi.edu>]

Friends,

This report, from Bhutan, on the "nuclear debate" again reflects the
significance of the issue of the "unsafe and the growing radioactive waste
problems," and "an increasingly informed and skeptical global community"
against nuclear power.  The nuclear industry continues to make it difficult
to state, with any credibility, that nuclear energy is safe, and that
radioactive waste is not an enormous cost and hazard instead of an enormous
profit opportunity to achieve extreme "radiation protection" limits.  

We need to undertake a substantial effort to provide the credible bases to
apply realistic assessments of nuclear safety and radioactive waste, to
implement results and standards that apply the knowledge of the safe
handling of radioactive materials and the effects of medical and background
radiation to the assessment of nuclear safety and consequences.

Note that the nuclear issue will be addressed in this int'l conf on Wed.

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
========================

Nuclear Energy: An 'atomic' dream or a nightmare
Posted on Monday, September 06 @ 13:28:02 CDT BST  
 
   6 September 2004 - Nuclear power as a source of energy is a controversial
issue that will be widely discussed among global energy 'hot shots' who have
gathered at the 19th World Energy Congress in Sydney, Australia. 

In a press release from the World Energy Council, the sponsor of the
congress, the nuclear issue would be kept as an 'all options open' approach
while discussing the future energy policy. 
Developing nations like India and China with their mammoth-sized population
and increasing demand for energy see that nuclear power would secure their
future supply of energy.

Many feel that nuclear will play an important and a major role in delivering
sustainable energy in both the developed and developing nations in the
world. 

'We have to stop fretting about last minute statistical risks of cancer from
chemicals or radiation", said British scientist Professor James Lovelock to
the Independent newspaper whilst calling for the energy industry to use the
best technology, including nuclear energy.

However, if there are nuclear energy supporters there are also a group of
people among the congress delegates who are vehemently against the use of
nuclear power.

Their reason is straight and simple, nuclear power is 'unsafe' and their
strong evidence is the 1986 Chernobyl power plant disaster. 

The uneconomic, unsafe and the growing radioactive waste problems, the
reality of nuclear weapons proliferation and an increasingly informed and
skeptical global community are some of the other arsenals that people carry
against nuclear energy.

A Sydney resident said that nuclear energy should be promoted since it
provided a secure and optimum supply of energy for the future but 'first the
technology should be safer so that people do not lose lives in the quest for
easy means of energy.'

The verdict whether nuclear energy is an 'atomic' dream or a nightmare will
be out when the discussion session titled 'Nuclear Energy: Inevitable or
Irrelevant' would be held on September 8 under the chairmanship of the
director general of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, Luis Echavarri.

By By Kinley Y Dorji in Sydney, Australia
kins@kuensel.com.bt