DANGEROUS RELEASE

In the story, Nuclear energy attitudes mixed, (SP, May 13), a local survey found that “56 per cent judge nuclear power as being clean.”

That’s a surprising find because there are many pollutants emitted routinely into the air and water from Canadian nuclear reactors during normal operations. They are known hazards to the environment and to human health. Some are carcinogenic.

These pollutants are tracked by The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI). They are cadmium, lead, chromium, ammonia, hydrazine, radioactive particulate and some gaseous and liquid radionuclides including carbon14, iodine 131, tritium, and the noble gases argon, krypton, and xenon. Noble gases later become even more dangerous cesium 137 and strontium 90.

Nuclear reactors are but one link in the nuclear fuel chain. Uranium mining, milling, refining and fuel fabrication routinely release many pollutants into the environment including heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, sulphur dioxide, acid drainage, hexachlorobenzene, dioxins, furans, and nitrates. Radioactive pollutants released are uranium 238 and its decay products radium 226, radon 222, polonium 210, bismuth 210, protactinium 234, and many others.

The CNSC permits a certain amount of such radioactive discharges, but that doesn’t mean they’re safe. The CNSC’s permission seems at odds with the latest Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) report recommendations and those of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). Both state that any, even small, extra amount of radioactivity humans are subjected to is unsafe.

By any measure, nuclear power is not clean. David Geary Saskatoon