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Our  Nuclear  Future  

A nuclear-free future will not come about through the dissemination of facts or the ratification of treaties or the coordination of movements.  

It will come about through a transformational change in the way people think.

A nuclear-free world must be humanity's most important goal, a goal that we must make progress towards immediately.   However, humanity hasn't concluded, as it should, that manmade radioactive elements created, used and spewed far and wide from global nuclear activities - past, present and future - is the biggest danger to life on this planet.  

Decades ago, Albert Schweitzer tried to warn us of the perils of this ignorance:  "That radioactive elements created by us are found in nature is an astounding event in the history of the earth and of the human race. To fail to consider its importance and its consequences would be a folly for which humanity would have to pay a terrible price."   

Whereas humanity should fear all forms of manmade radioactivity (alpha-, beta-, and gamma- radiation) as both the earth's and their own individual worst enemy, most people don't think very much about "all things nuclear."

Whether we are talking about a world free of nuclear weapons, power plants, commercially made nuclear products or more nuclear waste, the obstacle that stands in our way of making progress is one and the same: the public perception of the health dangers from radioactivity is conflicted.   The biological effects of radiation - whether it is  radiation associated with releases from nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons production plants, depleted uranium weaponry, waste depositories, or the fallout from past nuclear testing - aren't fully known in the realm of science.  There have not been sufficient long-term health studies and a corresponding large body of scientific research into the long-term health effects of low-level ionizing radiation.  The scientific question into whether low levels of radiation exposure can cause harm remains a controversy.   Scientists continually disagree whether there is high risk or extremely low risk from exposure to low level radiation.   Correspondingly, the dangers of radiation are not fully understood and accepted by the masses.   

Not only are there unknowns in science about the effects of low-dose radiation, there also hasn't been sufficient studies completed into the specific health effects or whereabouts of different radioactive elements that were spewed into our environment.  Take, for instance, Cold War testing fallout.  The whereabouts and extent of contamination from most of the elements in the nuclear testing fallout isn't known in the U.S. and overseas.  Scientists also don't understand fully which radioactive elements cause which specific health problems.   U.S. governmental health agencies have only researched the health effects of Iodine-131, which comprised just 2% of the fallout from Cold War testing.  Those findings about Iodine-131, which found that the short-lived radioactive element is linked to occurrences of thyroid cancers and diseases, were known but kept from the public for eight years.  Furthermore, U.S. governmental health research into the long-term health effects of other fallout elements that will take hundreds or thousands of years to safely decay, such as Strontium 90, Cesium 137 and Plutonium 239, has not been pursued by Congress.  In 1990, when the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed - which has awarded an average of less than $45,000 to less than 26,000 persons in the U.S. who met a strict set of guidelines and geographic limits for qualification - Congress concluded that Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 are responsible for some of the illnesses connected to Cold War fallout but they didn't proceed further.  There is a big question mark about what those and other (i.e., Plutonium 239) fallout elements really did and still do to people.  These fallout elements from Cold War testing are everywhere in the living environments - in the air, water, soil and food -  of the Northern Hemisphere and in many regions of the Southern Hemisphere.  

At Idealist.ws, our contention is that an out-of-whack public perception about the dangers of radiation has been masterfully crafted.  Although the low-dose controversy is beleaguered by the complications of that kind of health research - such as the length of time these studies take, the relatively small populations of living atomic veterans/downwinders and the difficulty in comparing such studies - we do know that governments and corporations have tried their best to cover up the dangers of low-dose radiation and the effects of nuclear testing by halting or repressing long-term health studies, cutting their funding, repeatedly lying to the people, etc... 

People have been kept from realizing that enormous quantities of long-lived radiation spewed and dispersed across the globe from worldwide nuclear activities will kill hundreds of thousands, if not hundreds of millions, of innocent people in the long run.   Meanwhile, radioactive toxins are continually being added into our living environment by nuclear power plants, national research lab emissions, resuspension from nuclear waste areas (such as the Nevada Test Site and LANL), etc....These activities are allowed to continue without scientific knowledge of the effects of low-dose radiation.  While people are dying of cancers and other diseases that are probably related to our past and current nuclear mistakes, the world remains unconvinced of any linkage because scientific proof is lacking.    This danger compounds another danger that has remained since the 1950s: a global nuclear war; there are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons still armed and ready to fire within minutes.

What can we do?  Can we wait?  If scientific progress takes a generation or two or more, it may be too late.  We won't be able to stop the corporations and governments who are responsible for the millions of people worldwide who have died, are dying, and will die from exposure to the radioactivity that contaminates our planet.  

So, how do we go nuclear-free without the arsenal of scientific health studies that are needed to persuade the masses that our present nuclear world is killing us and that we need to adopt the goal of a nuclear-free future now?  

The only way is to fuse empiricism with its nemesis: intuition.   

Intuition, in this case, is the belief that radioactivity in our environment is and will continue to be the greatest threat to the survival of life on the earth.

While intuition comes easily to most anti-nuclear activists, most people within the Western world rely on logic, empirical data, the scientific method, etc... and are resistant basing conclusions on intuition.

Let's explore this because this may be our only way to go towards a nuclear-free world.

If, let's say, my intuition (feelings) leads me to believe something that goes against what the scientific world is telling me, which is really correct?  Science is not perfect, and skepticism is a crucial part of the growth of science.  However, there is no mechanism in our day and age to test the veracity of emotion.  There is no way to tell if my intuition about the reality of a situation has any merit.  Why?  Because intuition is the realm of naysayers, fortune tellers, and so on, according to the scientists.  There is no basis for proving that my intuition that so and so is true is true. 

Science is confounded by our communal reluctance to accept certain truths.

What does this mean?  Let's say that I don't want to accept a certain truth, like the world is round because I have written manuscripts declaring that the world is flat, and my reputation and world view is tied to that one hypothesis: that the world is flat.  Is it possible that scientists could falter in their pursuit of the truth on the very basis of emotional experiences such as fear and faith?  You bet.  The progress of science over the past few millennia has been the victim less of the rigors of the scientific method than scientific and other groups' reluctance to give up claims that they have attached to personal sentiment.  Take the immense debate over evolution or if the world was flat or if the earth was the center of the universe.  Science is not the unerring pursuit of truth as long as we are human and also have in our lives religion and other doctrinal paradigms.

So, what if we are up against another ceiling for which our penetration is hindered by personal prejudices?  Surely this CAN be true.  Why?  Decision makers scoff at claims of anti-nuclear activists - such as 'there is no safe level of radiation exposure' - using the argument that there is lack of a large body of science to support those claims.  Yet this snubbing of anti-nuclear activists is partly rooted in science and partly in prejudices and personal leanings that are deeply rooted and based in non-scientific faiths or in the interests of money and power.

The person who has deep personal beliefs of basic truths NOT proven by science is ostracized from most realms of our world until they present proof - proof that is convincing to the scientific community and also to our 'global mind,' which only finds acceptance of science when it fits what is acceptable.  Therein is the beauty of it: that we won't accept science unless it fits our unscientific doctrines, whether based in religion or other faiths or interests.

So, our argument is that our scientific societies are only as dedicated to the pursuit of truth as long as our faiths and doctrines in our societies allow that progress.  

We believe that the "proof/truth" regarding the health effects of global nuclear contamination will never be allowed to see the light of day and therefore science will not lead us to what we intuitively sense is the truth.   What is the truth?  It is that our earth is sick from nuclear poisoning and we must stop and remove this poisoning which will cause her death.   We must believe this truth without the full support of science while still borrowing from science what basics about radioactivity that science has proven - such as the physics of radioactive decay - to conclude that radioactivity's various forms are a constant danger to us and all life on this planet.   

We must believe intuitively/religiously that ridding the world of nuclear contamination is the most important goal for the Western world to achieve.  And as we wait for science to follow in the footsteps of doctrine, we can, in the here-and-now, help humans reclaim humanity and begin to remove the radioactive poisons that threaten us and our mother earth.

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Idealist's public document archives: 1. 2.

U.S. NUCLEAR tests: 128 A + 899 U in NV,
1 A in NM, 10 U (in NM, CO, AK, MS, central NV),
100+ A, U in Pacific, 3 A in S. Atlantic
(A=aboveground; U=Underground)

'The greatest irony of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that 
the only victims of U.S. nuclear arms since World War II have been our own people.' 
- Forgotten Guinea Pigs Report, 1980

In 1986, the U.S. Dept. of Energy used the cover of the Chernobyl fallout cloud over the United States to release huge amounts of radiation into the air from a failed underground Nevada nuclear test. It was called Mighty Oak.

learn more on our global fallout page

 

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