by Olivier Simon
Daily Lobo columnist
Since the dawn of the Atomic Age, nuclear-energy issues, carrying the terrifying implications that they do, have always been simmering in one way or another, whether it's Chernobyl, the doomsday clock making its march toward midnight or frustration about uranium isotopes seeping into aquifers that cute 5-year-olds drink from.
Lately, though, the nuclear beast seems to be growling louder than usual. Foremost on the news is Iran's theocratic president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's push to enrich U-235. The U.S. administration, without a care for its military debacle in neighboring Iraq and with characteristically self-defeating tactlessness, has answered this threat by brandishing ominous declarations that "all options are on the table."
His determination thus stoked like that of a willful child denied dessert, Ahmadinejad has replied by waving new samples of U-235 in front of TV cameras, and more recently, by lecturing the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on the right to enrich.
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Another enemy we've helped to inflame who aspires to have nuclear capabilities is North Korea's dear leader and would-be matinee idol, Kim Jong Il. Jong Il, after his saber rattling with blank missiles failed to win much attention last July, has recently vowed to replay the stunt with loaded ones.
If his nuclear tests are successful, it is likely to set off a new nuclear arms race in the region, as South Korea, Japan and others quickly gear up their own deterrents. For this, we can partly thank our long-standing, absolute refusal to speak diplomatically with North Korea.
In fairness, we should consider whether nuclear weapons are truly 100 percent bad. Surely, there must be bright spots.
For example, a few months ago, scientists reported in the journal Cell that, using radioactive isotopes littered throughout the atmosphere by 1960s-era hydrogen bomb testing, they have been able to confirm that human brain cells do not replicate after early childhood. Also, without atom bombs, we may never have produced an element to name after Einstein. An entirely new mineral, trinitite, was produced in the first nuclear explosion and is now available in some online stores, thus giving mineral hounds who had long tired of dreary natural stones a new reason to live. And, of course, without warheads, many people at this very University would be out of a job - as anti-nuclear protester Robert Anderson found out all too well.
Somehow, all of that's not very compelling when you think of cobalt-60 raining on your loved ones.
Although even mining uranium is an ecological nightmare, the best documented mess stems from an inevitable by-product of all nuclear enrichment - depleted uranium. Constituting more than 99 percent of all uranium on Earth today, it's a heavy, poisonous, radioactive metal and all but useless for reactors and weapons. Over the years, as other topics have grabbed most people's attention, hundreds of thousands of tons of it have quietly built up.
Our government can't figure out what to do with the stuff - except, cleverly, to burn it, always on foreign soil, as a tank-penetrating weapon. The result? Tons of tiny, airborne, radioactive oxide particles.
The environmental consequences of this and other weaponry used in Iraq, as well as the looting of nuclear sites, have been felt in the form of a two to six-fold increase in birth defects and an even greater rise in childhood cancers since invasion. "Iraq is the worst case we have assessed and is difficult to compare," said Pekka Haavisto of the U.N. Environmental Program.
Perhaps the most disturbing under-discussed nuclear possibility is a future in which nuclear energy is forced to become the savior of modern life. Perhaps the one nice thing about nuclear reactors is that they produce no greenhouse gases whatsoever. Hence, the reasoning goes, in order to save the world from a climate catastrophe without reducing our consumption and addressing population growth, hundreds of shiny new nuclear power plants may soon be popping up the world over.
How did making tons of new plutonium waste and trying to hide it for 24,000 years become preferable to turning off lights, better insulating our houses and encouraging family planning?
Here's my simple prescription to the leaders of the world: nuclei, if left alone, are basically peaceful. So let's leave them alone. Let's just agree they're not fair game - not only because of what happens when they get out of control, but because of what happens when the people controlling them get out of control.
Olivier Simon is a senior majoring in biochemistry and president of the College Greens at UNM.
