There are so many radio active substances in a nuclear power plant which are released into the air and the surrounding atmosphere, which contaminate air, water and soil continuously. When they are absorbed into animal and human body, they become especially carcinogenic and mutable, making good use of favourable conditions existing in animal corpuscles. Vent stacks and drain pipes of the plants carry strontium, tritium, caesium, plutonium, argon, krypton, xenon and carbon this way to the outside atmosphere, eventually causing them to reach where they never shall reach. Every atomic scientist and engineer knows this and that is why stringent regulations have been imposed on the quantity of these materials which can be released from each plant without causing drastic and massive effects of mutation and cancer in biological organisms in and around the plant and in distant populations if the wind is catastrophic. The maximum level of radioactive release through exhaust systems in a single nuclear plant annually is 50 trillion becquerels for tritium, 30 billion becquerels for airborne particles, 10 billion becquerels for radioactive isotope 131 of iodine and one quadrillion becquerels for carbon and inert gases like argon, krypton and xenon. In spite of checking implements installed or not, the regular release of these highly toxic materials into the environment is many times higher in every nuclear plant in the world. It is not practical or feasible for the Atomic Energy Regulation Agency to regularly visit these plants scattered every where and check when and where regulations are violated, so it would always be the plant management seeing to it.
Massive release of these toxins freely to the environment happens daily everywhere and old people, women, children, human embryos and even healthy young men regularly get radiated for no fault of theirs. In assessing the effects of radiation on person caused by the toxic releases from a nuclear plant, the standard adopted at present is referring to a non-existent healthy young man, referred to as ‘Reference Man’. Susceptibility and sensitivity of women, fragile children and human embryos to radiation from toxins is not at all considered and taken into account by the world scientists and statesmen. They pretend that such a factor does not exist at all. Mentioning radiation injuries is taboo in international safety reports on nuclear energy. In their attempts to justify the functioning of nuclear installations, they even refer to mild doses of radiation as having beneficial and curing effects on human body, like small quantities of radiation supposedly curing cancer in the earlier stages. There are enough scientists available and remaining in the world to reiterate that small dose radiation causes no damage or only a minor damage. Many of them remind us of the fact that we already are living under a shower of radiation from the Sun and other cosmic bodies. What they do not tell us is that cosmic radiation from heavenly bodies comes to us from unthinkable distances of millions of light years whereas radiation from their nuclear installations comes to us from metres away. Mankind has known no radioactive particles in the universe whose intensity does not diminish with distance except perhaps the neutrino whose effects are arguably stable but which always has been with us, inside and around us, since the beginning of the universe. Every kind of particle is the strongest and the most intense near its source. And every kind of radiation from a man-made source without the inhibitions of universal balancing is dangerous, mild or strong. That radioactive emission from nuclear installations are utterly harmful and that they are the most intense nearer their source, is evident from the statistically proven fact that the susceptibility of children to cancer is far greater in areas closer to nuclear installations. When we say this, we expect governments to come forward with statistics to prove this, but unfortunately, misled by their desperation and craze for nuclear energy, the first reaction of those in government would be to refute this charge and order classification and hiding of statistics easily available to them. These statistics and safety reports on malfunctioning nuclear installations are almost always classified as military documents, the disclosure or criticism of which made to be warranting arrest and incarceration. The meaning is, governments would even kill, for a few years’ steady flow of electricity from a nuclear source.
Such a sensitive approach..... all the problems connected by a single string... truly depicted. good wishes for the movie
This is no devil's advocacy on my part, but just an honest explanation sought.
When you talk about the key principles, I see no sovereignty being breached with, since the principles, although slightly overboard seem more like the dos and don'ts. Moreover, when the bank talks of each country having its own agenda and/or country-specific issues, even if only in its papers, the point of non-interference gets vindicated all the more. I also know that this might be a questionable stance, since on ground, things might not obey what exists in papers. The point is in the very next paragraph, where you talk of people having dissent with this take on ADB compelling countries to at least adhere by the principles. The reasons why this should be case based on principles are not clearly evidential thereafter. Though, what gets to the limelight is the reification of the river from its ecological state to an economic one, thus trying to absorb the key principles under the economic rubric. All talk of privatization is a ramification of such reifying which I can never doubt.But, still I call this a classic case of Marxian reductionist error, a basin of attraction, where whatever effects and impacts are there to see and feel eventually come to rest at the depth of the basin made of economics.
So, is it not feasible to spell out how are this principles in themselves at cross-purposes with the whole idea of ADB staying away from sharing and extrapolating its technical expertise. Please do that, for I'd love to learn.
The article is alright until the second last paragraph where Dr. Jinghan lumps all the sugars including fructose and stevia as harmful along with the artificial ones.
Calls the research into question.
It's not just tragic but also terrifying to read of these events, and one begins to wonder if the state of affairs in UP and Bihar are any different from when we were yet to be civilized a few thousand years ago. Probably, we were less corrupt in scale then. How do we get rid of this menace? It's scary to envisage that there is no door open for the brave. After all, what more can one do than appeal to the highest authorities of the land, and yet he/she goes unheard and unprotected. What's more, the authorities are themselves the exploiters. My heart goes out to the courageous souls of the most politically and socially impoverished state of the country.
Endosulphan doesn't kill bees, i've seen it with my own eyes in Mango orchards of Lucknow..u spray any other pesticide, bees die and crop fails..
i m not saying endosulphan is not harmful or it should not be substituted with organic pesticide..but banning endosulphan (a cheap generic molecule) and then replace with expensive patented molecule was illogical!
A very refreshing piece of news in a world hopelessly dominated by western corporate aspirations. Latin America was one of the first regions to suffer the new-age experimentation at the hands of the US in the post-colonial, post WW-II era of the 1950s. It is easy to see their rationale behind being averse to everything American, and when such a lack of ambivalence helps preserve your own culture then this disenchantment with the west is a positive channel for disbursement of vexation. We, or more precisely, our "instant-gratification-loving" 'y' generation should be listening, or else, we are just helping the western powers create a substitute for colonialism here in our own backyard.
Dear Barry, I am sorry that this was not clear in this article. I had explained it in the first part of the Ganga saga.
But basically, these are run of the river projects, which would return water back to the river, except that the engineers have designed projects to take all water from the river for diversion for energy generation for and therefore, there are stretches when there is no water in the river. The problem is compounded by the fact that there are many projects which literally start as the last ends and so the dry stretch extends.
I agree. It is critical that we have a strong monitoring system for ecological flow. In the Inter-Ministerial Group report this is the concession that has been made. It has been agreed that there will be an online monitoring system, which will be available in the public domain. I am still not sure how this will be set up, but still it is a step ahead. Lets hope we can get some action, before we end up killing all our rivers.
I agree. It is critical that we have a strong monitoring system for ecological flow. In the Inter-Ministerial Group report this is the concession that has been made. It has been agreed that there will be an online monitoring system, which will be available in the public domain. I am still not sure how this will be set up, but still it is a step ahead. Lets hope we can get some action, before we end up killing all our rivers.
Is Narmada water being made to flow in Sabarmati not supplied to city of Ahmedabad? This has furthered the idea of river...
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