Ivan Quail’s Submission – a devastating fact-filled critique of the costly, dangerous unhealthy nuclear industry.

France’s troubled nuclear fleet a bigger problem for Europe than Russia gas. France caps its consumer power bills – to maintain the myth of “cheap” nuclear and to protect French pride .

In 100,000 years’ time the planet would still not have recovered from Mayak, Chernobyl, Doenreagh, Hanford, Rocky flats, Marshall Islands, Montebello, Maralinga and Fukushima; to name a few.

Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022

Submission No 61 [This submission contains numerous links which are all visible on the original, but not all here]

A few words about myself on this issue. I have been studying the Uranium fuel cycle,
nuclear energy and the biological and genetic effects of radiation for over 40 years. I
have read a dozen or more books and hundreds of scientific and medical papers on
the topics.

1) France’s troubled nuclear fleet a bigger problem for Europe than Russia gas
Giles Parkinson 5 August 2022 29
France has been delivering just a fraction of its energy production potential in recent months, and overnight the situation got worse when French power producer EDF announced another three power plants would curtail output because of rising temperatures. Rivers have become too hot in the latest heatwave to be used to cool the reactors. The majority of France’s 56 nuclear reactors are currently throttled down or taken offline due to a combination of scheduled maintenance, erosion damage (worryingly, mostly at the newer plants of the ageing
fleet) and cooling water shortages due to recurring heatwaves and droughts.

It does not matter whether the heat comes from coal, gas or nuclear.
Steam boilers are intended to run continuously. They can be ramped down by 30% without
reducing their life expectancy so every night between 10pm and 6am they are ramped down
which is not enough for the decrease in demand, so they turn a boiler off for up to 4 hours and
then do a warm start and turn another one off. They have been operating this way for over a
century. Now they have to do that twice a day because of solar PV during the day and the life
expectancy of the boilers is halved.
The boilers are the Achilles heel. It is called metal fatigue. Steam generation is yester years
technology and like the steam locomotive is doomed
The steam loco did not die because of the price of coal but because of the 4 hours of paid labour
to get it up to temperature and pressure

2) France caps its consumer power bills – to maintain the myth of “cheap” nuclear and to protect French pride –

the cost to EDF of making up the difference is now estimated at more
than €24 billion ($A40 billion) 2022… the soaring cost of 2023 electricity futures contracts
for the French market – the highest in Europe and recently priced at more than €600/MWh –
or nearly $A1,000MWh for “baseload”.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/frances-troubled-nuclear-fleet-a-bigger-problem-for-europethan-
russia-gas/

Lazard investment firm provides these figures in its October 2021 report on ‘levelised costs of
electricity’: • Nuclear US$131‒204 (A$196‒305) • Wind ‒ onshore US$26‒50 • Solar PV ‒
utility scale US$28‒41
There is no economic case for nuclear power in Australia. The July 2022 CSIRO-AEMO
GenCost report showed that nuclear power is nowhere near being competitive with
renewables. The report provides these 2030 cost estimates for Australia: • Nuclear (small
modular): A$136-326 / MWh • 90 percent wind and solar PV with integration costs
(transmission, storage and synchronous condensers) necessary to allow these variable
renewables to provide 90 percent of electricity in the National Electricity Market: A$61-82 /
MWh. Half the cost of nuclear power.

3) Health: The main driving force behind evolution is radiation and radioactivity. It has been
going on for millions of years. The more radioactivity in the biosphere the greater the rate of
genetic mutation and incidence of leukaemia, cancer and other disease.
Health consequences: Embryos 50 times more vulnerable to genetic mutation than adults
Children; 10 times more vulnerable to genetic mutation than adults
Latency period for tumour formation and leukaemia shorter in children than in adults. And
shorter still in embryos. Genetic mutations passed on to succeeding generations.

Average life expectancy in Ukraine and Belarus has REDUCED 4 yrs to age 68. Each year
6000 babies are born with “Chernobyl Heart” Half of them die! Children born since 1986 are
affected by a 200 percent increase in birth defects and a 250 percent increase in congenital birth
deformities.• 85 percent of Belarusian children are deemed to be Chernobyl victims. UNICEF found
increases in children’s disease rates, including 38 percent increase in malignant tumours, 43 percent in
blood circulatory illnesses and 63 percent in disorders of the bone, muscle and connective tissue
system.
Child cancers up fiftyfold after Fukushima disaster Cases of thyroid cancer among children living
close to the Fukushima nuclear power plant have increased fiftyfold since the meltdown in 2011,
according to Japanese scientists. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article4579144.ece
Alpha particles can rip through 2000 DNA Helixes, 200 nerve cells & 39 sperm cells.
Beta particles can rip through 43 Human egg cells, 838 sperm cells, 4,300 nerve cells and
43,000 DNA helixes! Gamma Radiation is worse still.
Additional cases of cancer, leukaemia and genetically induced disease. Treatment paid for by
Taxpayers or additional private health premiums. Sickness benefit paid for by Taxpayers or
increased insurance premiums. Carer benefit paid for by Taxpayers

Poisoned Power Gofman & Tamplin Ch2 p57
Manufacture of plutonium-239 and its widespread use in nuclear electric power may
represent man’s most immoral act.
Geesaman and Tamplin have shown that such fine particles, referred to as “hot” particles
because of their extremely high alpha particle emission in a localized region, may be 10 to
1000 times more effective in producing cancer than would be expected if the same number of
rads were delivered in a more diffuse manner to an organ, such as the lung. It is this “hot”
particle problem associated with plutonium-239 that makes the contemplated, future,
widespread use of this radionuclide as a fuel in the nuclear-electricity-generation plants such
an unmitigated nightmare for mankind. Not only may the hot particles of plutonium oxide be
super cancer producers, but with a half-life for plutonium-239 of 24,000 years, such plutonium oxide can be spread about the earth, re-suspended in air, and produce lung cancers
in generations of humans for 100,000 to 200,000 years.

One year of operation of a single, large nuclear power plant, generates as much of longpersisting
radioactive poisons as one thousand Hiroshima-types atomic bombs. There is no
way the electric power can be generated in nuclear plants without generating the radioactive
poisons. Once any of these radioactive poisons are released to the environment, and this we
believe is likely to occur, the pollution of our environment is irreversible. They will be with
us for centuries. It is important that people learn how they are likely to be exposed to such
poisons and how death-dealing injury is thereby produced in the individual and in all future
generations.
https://ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PP/chp2.htm

In 100,000 years’ time the planet would still not have recovered from Mayak, Chernobyl,
Doenreagh, Hanford, Rocky flats, Marshall Islands, Montebello, Maralinga and Fukushima;
to name a few. Plus 44 sq km’s of radioactive Uranium tailings containing Thorium 230 and
its daughters or progeny lying out on top of the land at Olympic Dam in SA. Plus, Ranger and
other Uranium mine sites. The thorium and Radon gas decay into Polonium210 which is
more radioactive than Plutonium239 used as fuel in reactors and in bombs.
Polonium is highly dangerous and has no biological role.[14] By mass, polonium-210 is
around 250,000 times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide the LD50 (lethal dose) for 210Po is
less than 1 microgram for an average adult (Invisible to the naked eye) compared with about
250 milligrams for hydrogen 16 cyanide[68]). The main hazard is its intense radioactivity (as
an alpha emitter), which makes it difficult to handle safely. The median lethal dose (LD50)
for acute radiation exposure is about 4.5 Sv. [73] The committed effective dose equivalent
210Po is 0.51 μSv/Bq if ingested, and 2.5 μSv/Bq if inhaled.[74] So a fatal 4.5 Sv dose can
be caused by ingesting 8.8 MBq (240 μCi), about 50 nanograms (ng), or inhaling 1.8 MBq
(49 μCi), about 10 ng. One gram of 210Po could thus in theory poison 20 million people of
whom 10 million would die. A milligram of 210Po emits as many alpha particles per second
as 5 grams of Radium 226Ra.[1] A single gram of 210Po generates 140 watts of power.[2]
210Po is extremely toxic, with one milligram being enough to kill the average adult (250,000
times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide by weight). ½ life 138.376 Days. X 10 = 1383 days
(3.78 years) for 99% of it to have decayed into stable lead 206.
It should not be thought that after 3.78 years that is the end of the story. That applies only to
the Polonium210 created today. Polonium210 created tomorrow or this day next year will
again last for 3.78 years and so on for as long as Uranium, Thorium and Radon exist on the
surface of the planet. Every last gram of Uranium in the earth’s crust will go through this
decay process. The question is whether this will happen securely sequestrated under- ground
or on the surface of the planet? Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) are not
normal radiation as it has been removed from its secure location under-ground.
The polonium 210 coats grass, leaves, vegetables and fruit which we and our livestock eat
thus entering our food chain.

Between 1982 and 2010, the number of new cancer cases in Australia more than doubled
(from 47,388 to 116,580 cases).
In 2012, cancer was estimated to be the leading cause of burden of disease in Australia,
accounting for approximately 19 per cent of the total disease burden
In 2010, the five most commonly diagnosed cancers in Australia were prostate cancer
(19,821 cases), bowel cancer (14,860 cases), breast cancer (14,308 cases), melanoma (11,405
cases) and lung cancer (10,296 cases).1,4

Cancer and other neoplasms $3,000 million Source: AIHW disease expenditure Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare 2016 (since rewritten. I wonder why? And at who’s request)

4) Honesty, truth and integrity. No Nuclear Generation System in the world runs without
almost total taxpayer support from scoping to decommissioning. US nuclear reactor
development was part of the USN nuclear submarine programme. US nuclear power, together
with US Defence are greatest consumers of government largesse, really the taxpayers.
Christopher Crane, Senior Vice President of Exelon, April 2007 address the US Congress
said that loan guarantees for new power plants must cover 100% of project debt, as otherwise
financing of new power plants would be extremely difficult. Nuclear power is competitive
only if the financial/insurance costs are assumed by the public purse.
Actuaries make their living by ascertaining risk. No insurance would be available for nuclear
reactor sites in the US if not for the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act which
covers all non-military nuclear facilities constructed in the United States before 2026.
It established a no-fault insurance-type system in which the first $10 billion is industryfunded
according to a scheme described in the Act (any claims above the $10 billion would
be covered by ˜the US Federal government (viz. taxpayer from where “government money”
comes.)

Initially the Act was considered necessary as an incentive for the private production of
nuclear power, because investors were unwilling to accept the then-unknown risks of nuclear
energy without limitations on their liability. And it seems that they are still unwilling to
accept the KNOWN risks. So, the Australian taxpayer would cough up again, just as they did
for Hardies Asbestos Fund.
TOKYO (Reuters) Dec.16 – Japan’s government on Friday nearly doubled its projections for
costs related to the Fukushima nuclear disaster to 21.5 trillion yen (US$188 billion)

We went to the town of Hirono, which is fairly close to the Daiichi reactors… Eiko found a place for
us to stay there which was basically a dormitory for these workers. All of the deaths which have
happened with subcontractors, which allows Tepco — which basically owns the place, manages it, but
they work through subcontractors – and then when somebody dies, Tepco can say, ―None of our
men have died, of course not.! 4,000 Missing TEPCO Nuclear Plant Workers – Presumed To Be
Dead, Fukushima Radiation Caused Death Toll Is Rising Fast. The contractors employed workers
from the Philippines and Bangladesh and issued them with next to useless paper facemasks. Not to
keep them safe but to conceal their ethnicity, but they did the right thing and paid the workers airfare
home if they got sick.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said that radiation emitted by
contaminated water leaking from storage tanks was around 100 millisieverts an hour. The new
measurements, using better equipment, showed radiation levels of 1,800 millisieverts an hour – a level
that could kill an exposed person in four hours.

Who is tracking deaths of Tepco workers, both foreign and domestic? It turns out, no one is, and
anyone trying to do that is pressured, intimidated and harassed. Multiple layers of subcontractors
organized by the Japanese mafia helps this process along.

Fukushima: The plant is on a bluff which was originally 35 meters above sea level. During
construction, however, TEPCO lowered the height of the bluff by 25 meters to save money
on pumps and piping. In 1990, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) ranked the
failure of the emergency electricity generators and subsequent failure of the cooling systems
of plants in seismically very active regions one of the most likely risks. The Japanese Nuclear
and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) cited this report in 2004. According to Jun Tateno, a
former NISA scientist, TEPCO did not react to these warnings and did not respond with any measures.[34] In 2018 it was announced that the clean-up costs at Fukushima had exceeded
US$200 billion. This was paid for by Japanese taxpayers.

Chernobyl: Of the estimated 830,000 people conscripted to do the work, by 2005, some 125,000 – 15
percent – were dead, mostly from circulatory and blood diseases and malignancies.

5) Thorium and Small Modular Reactors claim to be designed with a containment vessel
beneath to capture and hold the contents of the reactor in the event of a malfunction. So, then
we would have a nuclear waste dump in our backyard for 51,000 thousand years. Whatevidence is there that the containment vessel would last that long? If not, would the
radioactive material then contaminate our underground water supplies? Perth gets half of its
water from underground supplies.

Thorium reactor fuel contains close to 75% Thorium 232 and 25% Uranium 238 which has
been enriched up to 20% U235. The fissioning of the U235 which generates 25% of the heat
also converts Thorium 232 into Uranium 233 which in turn fissions to generate the remaining
75% of heat which boils water to generate steam to drive the turbines. Having the facility and
capacity to enrich to 20% is a major step toward being able to produce nuclear weapons as
evidenced by the recent outcry over Iran’s plans. A 1000MW Uranium reactor contains a
typical fuel load of 200 tons Uranium 238 enriched to 4% U235. An equivalent Thorium
reactor would still contain 40 tonnes of Uranium 238 with all the consequences, waste
storage and side effects of a conventional Uranium reactor.

In addition, the fission products of Uranium 233 (derived from Thorium 232) and its daughter
Thorium 229 (1/2 life 7340 yrs) are as radioactive and damaging to living cells (5.168 Mev)
as Plutonium239 used in bombs and reactor fuel. Thorium occurs in nature almost entirely as
the “fertile” 232Th isotope. The two synthetic fissile isotopes, 239Pu (1/2 life 24,000 years)
and 233U, are usually produced by neutron capture reactions of 238U and 232Th.

Thorium – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-andpharmaceutical
science/thorium

Thorium229 is almost entirely a man-made element. It would have to be safely and securely
stored for 51,360 years for 99% of it to have decayed into its daughter Radium225 which
emits Beta particles (1/2 life 14.9 days). It would be an ideal material for a dirty bomb or
other act of sabotage so would need to be guarded as well. Australia is a geologically
relatively stable continent with few earthquakes in the present era but as the earth’s mantle is
constantly moving who could guarantee that this will remain so for the next 51,000 years?
From Thorium-based nuclear power (see link below): the presence of uranium-232 tended to
“poison” the uranium-233 in two ways: intense radiation from the uranium-232 made the
material difficult to handle, and the uranium-232 led to possible pre-detonation. Separating
the uranium-232 from the uranium-233 proved very difficult…Breeding in a thermal neutron
spectrum is slow and requires extensive reprocessing. The feasibility of reprocessing is still
open.[30] There is a higher cost of fuel fabrication and reprocessing than in plants using
traditional solid fuel rods.[17][28] Thorium, when being irradiated for use in reactors, will
make uranium-232, which is very dangerous due to the gamma rays it emits. This irradiation
process may be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The irradiation would then
make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232, which can be used in nuclear weapons to make thorium into a dual-purpose fuel.[31]

However, in 2010, the UK’s National Nuclear
Laboratory (NNL) concluded that for the short to medium term, “…the thorium fuel cycle
does not currently have a role to play,” in that it is “technically immature, and would require
a significant financial investment and risk without clear benefits,” and concluded that the
benefits have been “overstated.”[17][28] Monazite is a good source of REEs, but monazites
are currently not economical to produce because the radioactive thorium that is produced as a
by-product would have to be safely stored indefinitely. This makes manual handling in a
glove box with only light shielding (as commonly done with plutonium) too hazardous, and
instead requiring complex remote manipulation for fuel fabrication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

The hazards are significant even at 5 parts per million. Implosion nuclear weapons require U-
232 levels below 50 PPM… “Standard weapon grade plutonium requires a Pu-240 content of
no more than 6.5%.” which is 65000 PPM.
β BETA particles – can only be stopped after traveling through about 10 feet of air, less than
2 inches of water.

Gamma Radiation
A gamma ray, or gamma radiation (symbol γ or ), is a penetrating electromagnetic radiation
arising from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. It consists of the shortest wavelength
electromagnetic waves and so imparts the highest photon energy. In 1903, Ernest Rutherford
named this radiation gamma rays based on their relatively strong penetration of matter.
Gamma rays from radioactive decay are in the energy range from a few kiloelectron volts
(keV) to approximately 8 mega- electronvolts (~8 MeV), corresponding to the typical energy
levels in nuclei with reasonably long lifetimes. Gamma rays are ionizing radiation and are
thus biologically hazardous. Due to their high penetration power, they can damage bone
marrow and internal organs. Unlike alpha and beta rays, they pass easily through the body
and thus pose a formidable radiation protection challenge, requiring shielding made from
dense materials such as lead or concrete.
Gamma rays are given off by radioactive atoms. The extremely high energy of gamma rays
allows them to penetrate just about anything. They can even pass through bones
(/c/biology/bones) and teeth. This makes gamma rays very dangerous. They can destroy
living cells (/c/biology/cells), produce gene mutations, and cause cancer (/c/biology/cancer).

Hazards of Gamma Radiation Since gamma rays penetrate more deeply through the body
than alpha or beta particles, all tissues and organs can be damaged by sources outside of the
body. For example, 2-1/2 inches (6 cm) of dense concrete will absorb approximately 50
percent of typical gamma rays. Five inches (13 cm) of water is just as effective. Several feet
of concrete or a few inches of dense material (such as lead) are able to block these types of
radiation.
γ GAMMA: To reduce typical gamma rays by a factor of a billion, thicknesses of shield need
to be about 13.8 feet of water, about 6.6 feet of concrete, or about 1.3 feet of lead.
http://nuclearconnect.org/know-nuclear/science/protecting

6) Time: March 22: The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor went online in Finland on Saturday, 12
years after its deadline, and around €8bn over its original €3bn budget. The work was carried
out by French engineer Areva and Germany’s Siemens. Construction began in 2005 and was
to be completed four years later.
May 22: Britain’s new nuclear plant faces more delays and costs.

LONDON/PARIS, May 19 (Reuters) – A new nuclear plant in southwest England has been
delayed by another year and will cost an extra 3 billion pounds ($3.7 billion), its developer
warned. The Hinkley Point C plant is now expected to start in June 2027, a decade later than
originally envisaged, with the project spend estimated between 25 billion and 26 billion
pounds, France’s EDF said.

The UK had to agree to give the operators of the Hinkley Point B a sum of 97.50 pounds per
megawatt hour indexed for inflation for the 30 year life of the plant so that converted to
Australian dollars today is $171.60/MWh

The true cost of nuclear power must include all of the above including health costs and safe
storage of radioactive nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years.
Please do not think that I am antinuclear energy. I am a staunch supporter

Please do not think that I am antinuclear energy. I am a staunch supporter of it.
You see, solar, wind, wave and most importantly plant energy are all derived from nuclear
fusion energy from the sun and nuclear fission energy inside the earth is geothermal energy.
The vast bulk of Uranium and its progeny were put underground where they decay/fission to
generate heat to melt rocks and create lava which keeps our planet warm and prevents us
from living on snowball earth.

Finally, a quote from: Dr. Edward Teller, often called the father of the hydrogen bomb
(fusion) and one of the most outstanding supporters of the AEC, (US Atomic Energy
Commission) has stated:
A single major mishap in a nuclear reactor could cause extreme damage, not because of the
explosive force, but because of the radioactive contamination. . . . So far, we have been
extremely lucky . . . But with the spread of industrialization, with the greater number of
simians monkeying around with things they do not completely understand, sooner or later a
fool will prove greater than the proof even in a foolproof system.[6] (Chernobyl, Fukushima,
Mayak, Rockyflats, Colorado River, Maralinga, Dounreay etc)

Please find a more comprehensive submission to the prerequisites for nuclear energy in
Australia 2019 enquiry here: Submision 253 page 13 of submissions.
https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=50ce9ca5-6a02-4c7d-ab07-
ef360c59018f&subId=670422

March 23, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics

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Antinuclear

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