Dr. Gordon Edwards
March 4, 2008
Stuart Mills is correct to point out that radon gas is eight times heavier than air, but is wrong to say it is not poisonous – it is the second leading cause of lung cancer in North America.
He is also wrong to suggest that unplugged boreholes (drilled to explore for uranium deposits) pose no threat to the surface environment. The World Health Organization reports that “Water from deep drilled wells normally has much higher concentrations of radon than surface water.
“Radon released from underground waters easily permeates through the rock to the surface and into buildings. Radon gas enters houses through openings such as cracks at concrete floor-wall junctions, gaps in the floor, small pores in hollow-block walls, and through sumps and drains”¦.”
In the South of England, private water sources have been contaminated with radon due to boreholes.
As for routine radioactive emissions from CANDU reactors, the Lepreau reactor releases more than 40 trillion becquerels of tritium (radioactive hydrogen) into the air every year, and a comparable amount into the water.
Mr. Mills mentions that a fresh uranium fuel element can be held safely in the hands. True. But the Lepreau reactor discharges irradiated fuel elements, which are so radioactive that just one discharged fuel bundle will give any unprotected human being a lethal dose of radiation in 20 seconds at a distance of one metre. Citizens have a right to know about the dangers that the nuclear industry exposes them to – and keeps them ignorant of.
GORDON EDWARDS
Hampstead, Que.
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