In the backdrop of the prolonged protest against the KKNPP, even if my sympathies were and are with the local people, even if I was and am strongly against nuclear power; I have written nothing against nuclear energy, because as far as nuclear science is concerned I am an ignoramus. As I passionately hate the corporate servile policies of our Left, Right and the Centre of the Right governments and politicians that destroy the Environment and the habitats of the wild animals and the marginalized people, I read everything Arundhati Roy writes and I think if those in power read her works like The End of Imagination, The Greater Common Good and Broken Republic, India will certainly be a better nation as far as the real Indians, the poor and the displaced people, are concerned. And it was through Arundhati Roy, I have come to know about the wonderful writer and Environmental activist Derrick Jensen and his two-volume book Endgame, which begins with the premise: “Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.”
Jensen made me confident to write against whatever that is nuclear. Still I don’t claim that I have understood all the nuances of the nuclear science. And Endgame is not about nuclear science. But to see that the use of the ‘nuclear energy’ has done more destructive work than any creative or useful service to the living world, no expertise is needed. The terrible history of nuclear ‘energy’ starts with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is high time the advocates of the nuclear energy (and nuclear weapons too) learnt that, as Derrick Jensen says, ‘the planet had already come up with the best solution for storing uranium: keep it in its natural state underground.’
It is from natural uranium the fissionable isotope uranium 235 or enriched uranium—the fuel for nuclear reactors—is separated. And what is left of this process of separation is called depleted uranium (DU). Jensen writes: “The term depleted uranium is something of a misnomer in that it implies that the remaining uranium has become significantly less dangerous, more, well, depleted. But depleted uranium—99.8 percent uranium 238—is just as toxic and about 60 percent as radioactive as enriched uranium. And with a half-life of 4.5 billion years, it will truly be one of this culture’s trademark gifts that keeps on giving: it will kill essentially forever.”
If the DU, the left over, is so dangerously radioactive and cancerous, we can simply presume the destructive capacity of the enriched uranium—the fuel we use in the nuclear reactors and its waste. DU and the products from its decay, including other isotopes of uranium, thorium 234, and protactinium release alpha and beta radiation that causes cancer and genetic mutations. Whatever the short term gains of nuclear power, it is stupidity of the highest level to advocate it or to argue for it.
And let us see what the U.S. is doing with the DU. It is better to quote Jensen: “The United States has made a lot of it, well over a billion pounds. Beginning in the 1950s, the feds started trying to figure out what they were going to do with all of this stuff….leaders of government and industry solved the problem of disposing it in typical win-win (for them) fashion by giving it away free to both national and foreign arms manufacturers….The list of countries using or purchasing weapons or shells made with DU is long…Spreading these toxic, radioactive materials around the world is bad enough, but the real danger comes when the weapons are used. And they are used often. In 110,000 air raids against Iraq during the so-called First Gulf War (“so-called” because my understanding is that for something to be called a war the other side has to actually be able to fight back), U.S. A-10 Warthog aircraft fired about 940,000 DU projectiles.”
“When a DU projectile hits a target, about 70 percent of the round vaporizes into (hot) dust as fine as talcum powder…300 tons of DU are estimated to be blowing in the wind from this particular desert storm….As well as affecting U.S. soldiers, DU has probably already harmed 250,000 Iraqis. The same can be said for the residents of Bosnia, and soon we will be saying the same for the people of Afghanistan. Leukemias and cancers have gone up by 66 percent in recent years in southern Iraq, with some locals experiencing a 700 percent increase. And there have been birth defects. One doctor began her report, “In August we had three babies born with no heads. Four had abnormally large heads. In September we had six with no heads, none with large heads, and two with short limbs. In October, one with no head, four with big heads and four with deformed limbs…””
Do we the humans occupy the earth to live or destroy? Is the destructive urge the prominent feature of the human race? Isn't it high time we stopped destructing and killing and started to live and let live? We have been listening for centuries to the so called omnipotent Gods and devastating the living world. We have been listening to the so called Scientific Knowledge for centuries and devastating the living world. Now let’s stop listening to these inherently destructive forces and listen to the Natural world and have a sane and sustainable way of living without abusing the Environment and without violence against the Environment; without abusing the females and without violence against the females, the marginalized, the downtrodden and the poor.
Endgame, which excellently argues for a sustainable way of living and passionately defends the Natural World, concludes thus: “George W. Bush invaded two countries because, he has stated publicly, ‘God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.’
Bush listens to God, I listen to trees. What’s the difference?
...God does actually talk to Bush, and trees actually do talk to me. This leads to another question: Who would you rather listen to, a distant sky God—disconnected from and superior to the earth—who by his own admission is angry and vengeful, and who has preached and justified more rape and rapine than any other god we have ever heard of; or trees, who to the best of my knowledge have never once told any one to go forth and subdue the earth, and to have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth; trees who have never once justified a single act of rape or rapine, trees who have never said that they are jealous, trees who live right next to us, and who are our closest neighbours?”
Who would you rather like to listen to?
