Letter: We do not need nuclear power, and Fukushima indeed is killing us

David Twining’s March 20 letter needs correction on Fukushima and small modular reactors (“Saving energy, small nukes might be our best energy option now”). He wrote:

“No one died because of the damaged reactor, nor has anyone in the United States died from a nuclear accident in our 60-year history of commercial nuclear power.”

“Damaged” reactor? Fukushima is a triple melt-through (not just meltdown) of three destroyed reactors and thousands of tons of spent fuel fissioning into the atmosphere 24/7.

Fukushima is not a Japan-only catastrophe. Radioactive contamination knows no boundaries. The cancers, miscarriages, autoimmune diseases, sudden cardiac arrest increasing here have no “Made in Fukushima” sticker.

Nuclear advocates hide behind the fact that you can’t see, taste or smell fission byproducts. They say nobody died from Three-Mile Island, presumably meaning nobody died at the site during the meltdown. They ignore all health-effect studies.

It’s safe to say fission byproducts have contributed to, conservatively, millions of deaths worldwide and will for thousands of years, from Fukushima to operating nuke plants to many lesser-known historical “accidents.”

NuScale has it all figured out now, though. Their “innovative” nuclear waste-generating machines to boil water aim to continue the legacy of nuclear pollution in our biosphere and therefore our bodies.

Even if their design is less prone to meltdown than GE’s boiling-water reactors of Fukushima, they are not fail-safe, far from economical as they claim, and still produce spent fuel, which is far more radioactive than the reactor fuel.

Same old story, newest version.

Deron Kosoff