As world attention is focussed on the severely damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan it become apparent how little is known about the radioactive substances being released and their impacts on life.
Helen Caldicott says that 200 new elements are made inside a nuclear reactor, all intensely radioactive, some lasting seconds, some 17 million years. Many of them are carcinogenic, some are mutagenic. In this speech she explains how radiation induces cancers and mutations, and describes the effects of the four most significant isotopes present in nuclear power plants: radioactive iodine-131, cesium-137, strontium-90, and plutonium-239.
This a an extremely timely excerpt of a one hour lecture given in 2009. Helen Caldicott was then campaigning against the pro-nuclear power stance of the Obama administration. She spoke to create awareness of the terrible danger from nuclear reactors and demanded that no new plants be built and the existing one's be closed.
For almost 40 years the Australian physician Dr. Helen Caldicott has campaigned against nuclear weapons and nuclear power. In 1971 she led her first successful antinuclear campaign that stopped French atmospheric testing in the Pacific. She came to the US in 1977 and worked and taught at Harvard Medical School and Boston's Children's Hospital. Physicians for Social Responsibility, the organization that she founded, received a Nobel Peace Prize.
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