Column: End entire nuke industry

by Colin Donoghue

Daily Lobo columnist

If you're reading this at UNM, you are about three miles from the largest stockpile of non-deployed nuclear weapons in the world at Kirtland Air Force Base. It's estimated the stockpile consists of more than 2,500 nuclear warheads. Does that make you feel safe? Is it not unwise to place such a large amount of nuclear warheads in a city of more than 500,000 people? An attack or accident could spread toxic radiation over the entire city and throughout the state.

If that doesn't bother you, maybe the radionuclides in your drinking water will. Sandia National Laboratories, right here in Albuquerque, develops, engineers and tests the components of nuclear weapons. The waste from this research and manufacturing ends up in a landfill a few miles from the South Valley. The radioactive materials in this landfill are free to travel into our groundwater supply, thanks to the lack of any protective liner. Additionally, radioactive contamination from Los Alamos National Laboratory has been found in the Rio Grande, which will most likely be used for Albuquerque drinking water in the near future, due to our diminishing aquifer.

Our soldiers in Iraq are also being exposed to radiation from the depleted uranium weapons they are using. These weapons are most likely responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the regions where they are used. Even worse, the Pentagon is drafting plans for the use of nuclear weapons in future pre-emptive military strikes. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States is obligated to work toward the elimination of all its nuclear weapons. Yet the United States is maintaining its arsenal of more than 10,000 nuclear weapons rather than dismantling them, and creating new nuclear weapons called bunker busters.

So while the Bush administration fights this war supposedly against the use of weapons of mass destruction, it develops new ones and talk publicly of using them. This hypocrisy is not missed by the other nations of the world, who don't see why they should agree to not have any nuclear weapons while this country violates its own disarmament obligations. America is completely undermining the international effort to control nuclear weapon proliferation and development.

Perhaps you're against the development of more nuclear weapons, but think nuclear power is acceptable. Perhaps you've heard it's a clean energy source that can help us end the acceleration of global warming. Don't be fooled. Nuclear power is extremely unclean, producing massive amounts of extremely toxic waste that stays toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. The long-term radioactive waste storage problems of nuclear power have never been solved. Are we to just continue filling the earth with this toxic legacy for future generations to deal with?

Instead of spending billions more on nuclear power, our tax dollars could go to much better alternatives. These include increasing energy efficiency, solar and wind power, ethanol fuel, geothermal power, hydropower and fuel cell technologies. These industries could create millions of new jobs and would effectively weaken global warming without all of the dangers and waste of nuclear power.

Amazingly though, President Bush is calling on the Department of Energy to decrease funding in its 2006 budget for environmental cleanup of radioactive sites, as well as energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. Bush is also asking for an 18 percent increase for fossil fuels and subsidies for nuclear power. New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici has been a leading supporter of increasing the number of nuclear power plants in the United States, as well as calling for increased nuclear weapon development in New Mexico at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

As we mark the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks this week, shouldn't we look to ways we can increase the safety of Americans? The airliners that hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon could have been directed at one of New York's nuclear power plants instead. Thousands of square miles could have been saturated with toxic clouds that could then spread via the jet stream, and eventually cover the whole planet with radiation. If the Bush administration were serious about the war on terrorism, they would shut down all nuclear power plants because of the threat they pose to the public.

We should not risk our health and safety for an industry that is completely unnecessary and extremely dangerous. We should close down all existing nuclear power plants, end all further nuclear weapons production and instead invest in real clean energy technologies. This is the sane alternative that we can - and, for the sake of all life on earth, should - take.