Although many governments try to convince their respective subjects that atomic energy is an acceptable alternative to the burning of fossil fuels, no government has taken the least trouble to explain the dangers. Perhaps they are unaware of them. Whatever the reason, the public must learn by experience, even though this experience may be catastrophic.

While it is true that nuclear reactors do not produce visible smoke, it is certainly not true that they do not pollute. And the pollution they produce is much more insidious precisely because it is invisible.

During the cooling of nuclear reactors, large quantities of water become radioactive. There is no way of making this radiation inert. Whatever you do to Carbon 14, its half life is always six thousand years. However you treat Iodine 129, it will still have a half life of 17,250,000 years.

However inconvenient it may be for governments to publish all the facts, they have no moral excuse for not doing so, even if they think they are acting in our best interest. At least some of the facts are known, even though they are not widely reported.

Nuclear reactors produce radioactive water and gases in vast quantities (for example, it requires 18 million gallons of water per day per ton of fuel to dilute the radioactive gas tritium, and even then 20% escapes into the atmosphere). What happens to all this waste? It is put into concrete tanks and stored on tank farms. It is stored in disused salt mines. It is run into fractured rock, it is buried, it is transported about in special trains. But even when dumped, it has to be kept cool by sprinklers to stop it boiling. And the contents of the tanks are, of course, extremely corrosive. The effects of a fracture in the tank or a failure of the cooling system would be disastrous.

While every effort is made to ensure that radioactive wastes do not escape into the sea or into supplies of drinking water, such a leakage would be too horrible to contemplate. But even then, governments would presumably continue to belittle the hazards.

It seems that as long as governments can get away with not telling the truth, they will continue to keep silent. Nevertheless the people have a right to know the full facts. Do you know what happens to the radioactive waste in your country? No?
WELL—FIND OUT!