Prof. Gordon Edwards on the perils of nuclear technology, uranium mining, and weapons proliferation

Interviewed by Dr Helen Caldicott
If You Love This Planet radio show

“A nuclear reactor is not really producing electricity so much as it is producing two things: long-lived nuclear waste which lasts for millions of years and plutonium which lasts for many thousands of years. The electricity is just a little drop in the bucket. It’s a little flash in the pan. You get electricity for maybe 20 or 30 years if you’re lucky, then you have plutonium forever.”

Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canada’s best known independent experts on nuclear technology, uranium, and weapons proliferation is also the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR). He was instrumental in bringing about a halt to uranium exploration in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and British Columbia. Dr. Edwards was awarded the 2006 Nuclear-Free Future Award in the Education Category, and in 2009 he addressed the annual meeting of Physicians for Global Survival in Ottawa.

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Show date: March 7, 2011.

Also listen to Dr. Michel Chossudovsky on the issue of global survival and his conversations with Fidel Castro about nuclear war

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Dr. Michel Chossudovsky is Dr. Caldicott’s guest this week. Dr. Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal, Quebec. He has been a visiting professor at colleges in Latin America, Western Europe, and Southeast Asia. Dr. Chossudovsky has also served as economic adviser to governments in developing countries, and consulted for international organizations including the United Nations Development Program, the African Development Bank, the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development, the United Nations Population Fund, the International Labor Organization, and the World Health Organization.
From October 12 to 15, 2010, Dr. Chossudovsky had several extensive and productive meetings with Fidel Castro, discussing nuclear war.

He talks about those meetings and other global issues in this episode of If You Love This Planet. Watch a four-minute segment on YouTube of Castro reading his statement against nuclear war, from the conversations with Dr. Chossudovsky (in Spanish, with subtitle translation).

Show date: Feb. 7, 2011.

March 16 Statement by Helen Caldicott, M.D.

“I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gītā, on witnessing the first atomic bomb test, 1945

As I write this – on the afternoon of March 16 in the United States – the situation at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant No. 1 is, tragically, looking increasingly grim. Radiation levels are increasing, mass evacuations in the area surrounding Fukushima are underway; and experts are speculating – with trepidation, but understandable caution – about how far the radiation will spread, both within Japan and to other parts of the planet.

My heart goes out to the people of Japan who are of course suffering under the double blow of the effects of the earthquake and tsunami, as well as the threat from the Fukushima reactors. They are dealing stoically and with great dignity with conditions that are severely challenging. And I want to pay special tribute to the incredibly brave band of TEPCO workers who are fighting to bring the situation at the plant under control. Their efforts are heroic, their courage beyond measure.

The world is now paying – and will pay however severe Fukushima turns out to be – a grave price for the nuclear industry’s hubris and the arrogance and greed that fueled their drive to build more and more reactors. What’s more, having bamboozled gullible politicians, the media, and much of the public into believing that it is a “clean and green” solution to the problem of global warming, the nuclear industry has operated facilities improperly, with little or no regard for safety regulations, and they have often done this with the connivance of government authorities.

Nuclear power is not the answer to global warming; it is not clean, it is not green; it is not safe; and it is not renewable. It is instead “a destroyer of worlds.”

It is time the global community repudiated it – however economically painful in the short term that taking such a step would be. There is no other choice for the sake of future generations.