Nuclear Waste Dump Research Articles

A new species of trouble: explorations in disaster, trauma, and community

Sociologist Kai Erikson visited seven man-made disasters around America including a mercury spill which displaced a Native American tribe from its homeland; Three-Mile Island, where nearby residents feared exposure to radiation; and Yucca Mountain, Nevada, where the American government proposes to build a vast nuclear waste dump. He discovered that all these communities had in common a chronic dread and helplessness caused by radiation and other toxic substances. The author argues that this is a new and insidious type of trauma and this book is his plea that we do more to protect people from it.

Radioactivity in polar regions—Main sources

The common source of anthropogenic radioactivity of the polar regions has been global fallout from nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere. The depositions from this source are at a minimum in the polar regions. Nevertheless polar ecosystems may contain relatively high levels of radioactive contamination. This is true, in particular, for the Arctic regions, which beside global fallout have received significant amounts of radioactivity from a number of other sources. Some of the sources viz discharges from nuclear reprocessing in Western Europe and the Chernobyl accident are well described. Others, such as local fallout from the Novaya Zemlya test site, discharges from nuclear facilities to the Siberian rivers Ob, Yenisey and Lena and dumping of nuclear waste in the Barents and Kara Seas are less well documented, but may contribute significantly to the observed and future contamination of the Arctic.Although the radioecological sensitivity of food products from Arctic regions tend to be higher than we know it from temperature regions, the very low productivity of Nordic regions imply low collective doses from these regions. However, high individual doses from radioactive contamination may be seen in the Arctic as it has been observed for, e.g. reindeer breeders. Radiocaesium is concentrated from lower to higher trophic levels. The marine animals contain orders of magnitude lower 137Cs levels than terrestrial animals in Arctic regions and the transfer of 137Cs is one to two orders of magnitude greater than that of 90Sr to meat of animals.The Antarctic continent is apparently characterized with extremely low levels of anthropogenic radioactive contamination. However data are sparse compared to the Arctic.

Education for Action: A Practical Demonstration of Reflected Action on the Urban Environment

Concern about the quality of our environment has been given increasing prominence by public, private and voluntary bodies alike. We are advised through newspapers and the media on such matters as lead in petrol, the waste on non-renewable resources, the greenhouse effect, extinction of wild flora and fauna, the dumping of nuclear waste, which are all threatening the future of our planet. There is a strong emphasis on checking and reversing the deterioration and destruction of may aspects of our world.The word “environment”, however, has come to mean to many the natural or rural, not the human or urban. Little attention is paid to the urban environment, yet in Britain most people live in towns or cities where vast changes are taking place with dramatic effect on those who live there. We are faced with poverty, unemployment and disadvantage, as well as derelict, degraded and inhuman environments. The scale of change and complexity of issues in the urban environment demands a deeper understanding and more positive action. (Kean, 1991)

Mostly on Mother Country

TIR: We thought we'd begin with Mother Country. Do you want to talk about Sellafield in general? MR: Well, Sellafield is a nucltar fuel reprocessing plant and nuclear waste dump on the west coast of England. It's near where Wordsworth lived . . . very near. The nearest landmark for Americans would be the Lake Coun try. It's an old weapons production plant that the British made a nuclear site at the end of the Second World War when they were in competition with the United States and the Soviet Union toward developing nuclear weapons, atomic weapons. It was built to extract plutonium and uranium 235, which is the bomb-grade uranium isotope from the nuclear fuels that are removed from nuclear reactors after they are, as they say, spent ?after they're too fissile to be used any longer as fuel for reactors. It's just plain nuclear waste is what it is. That's what we normally call it. They use a very very old process that was also developed at the end of the Second World War. They break down the nuclear waste with nitric acid and extract the isotopes that they want; and what the British have done is dump the rest of the waste into the Irish Sea through a pipeline that's about two miles long. They've done this at a signifigant rate since the mid fifties. And the rate has been increasing constantly, especially in the seven ties and eighties. They import spent nuclear fuel from Japan, and Ger many, and Swizerland, and Sweden, and Italy, and other countries, and they store what they can't use. They extract plutonium and uranium from what is appropriate to be used in that way, and they continue to dump the rest of the material into the Irish Sea.

Organization of African Unity: Council of Ministers Resolution on Dumping of Nuclear and Industrial Waste in Africa

Organization of African Unity: Council of Ministers Resolution on Dumping of Nuclear and Industrial Waste in Africa

Nuclear waste dumping ban to stay

Nuclear waste dumping ban to stay