Below is a collection of selected stuff from websites. It may include repetitious references, as time is limited. but either refs or actual copies are quite useful and include:

dangers of nuclear power, costs, people involved, reasons for opposition or support, alternatives. There is lots of written stuff and many relevant videos.

My conclusion at this point: All forms of energy are supported by proponents who exaggerate benefits and underestimate costs, financial, political and biological. To get a real hold on the overall issue, a lot more detail on specifics of all related issues is necessary. As we are unlikely to get this research done in 2 weeks, we need to note that this is a very large & complex issue an no one interviewee has anywhere near the whole truth. More specifically:

The coal, oil & nuclear advocates point out that solar, wind & conservation account for a very small portion of current use & conclude that they will not solve the problem(s). but they do not consider that nuclear will not either without very large govt. investment and over a very long period. Such investment in renewables might very well make solar & wind competitive or better.

Coal & oil are bad for global warming, but have large and considerable financial interests in continuance and will resist change. Nuclear is relatively new (again) & since the movement of the '70's is now almost dead, has little current opposition and growing govt. investment. Investment in conservation is minimal, as well as in solar & wind as there is less obvious commercial reward for these.

Nuclear waste growing steadily and is as dangerous as 50 years ago with no solution in sight. Accidents have been rare but widely deadly and always possible, especially now with the new 'terrorist' and proliferation threats.

And any radical change in lifestyles will appear threatening in any case, leading to considerable foot-dragging. Who will give up their cars or pay more for electric power?

The role of the Reactor in all of this is that it's main role is research on new electric power sources. Its medical uses are probably minimal and less controversial.
____

http://www.clamshell-tvs.org/nuclear_relapse/index.html

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Chernobyl%
Caldecot’s opposition to nuclear revival.
20AND%20mediatype%3Amovies

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/05/03/dicum-caldicott/

http://www.clamshell-tvs.org/nuclear_relapse/index.html

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Chernobyl%
Caldecot’s opposition to nuclear revival.
20AND%20mediatype%3Amovies

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/05/03/dicum-caldicott/
** Meanwhile, the enrichment of uranium is responsible for [over 90 percent] of the CFC-114 gas released into the air in the U.S. Now, CFC is banned internationally under the Montreal Protocol because it destroys the ozone layer, one. Two, CFC gas is 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent as a global warmer and heat trapper than CO2. So the nuclear industry is lying. And advocates for nuclear power have fallen for the nuclear industry's lies. Not propaganda, but lies.

Of course we've got to stop burning oil and coal. Those grotesque vehicles that get 10 miles to the gallon should be banned! Americans have no idea about conservation. Europeans have the same standard of living as you and they use 50 percent less energy because they turn their lights off and they conserve. We are actively killing the earth by the way we live.

Main Dish
No Nukes Is Good Nukes
An interview with longtime anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott
By Gregory Dicum
03 May 2005
Read more about: energy | interview | nuclear power | all of these topics
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Helen Caldicott.
Helen Caldicott.
Photo: Greg Barrett.
In 1971, Helen Caldicott had an epiphany: all life on earth could end at any moment, simply because a few pig-headed people imagined they could "win" a nuclear war. A decade later, she had given up her promising medical career to devote her life to nothing short of saving the world.

Her urgent Australian twang became a sane voice in a world gone mad. In 1985, the Caldicott-inspired International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War won the Nobel Peace Prize. The organization beat out Caldicott herself, who had been nominated by Linus Pauling, the renowned chemist, anti-nuclear activist, and 1962 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

By the end of the Cold War, Caldicott had attempted a quiet retirement in Australia. But that didn't last. Today, with a renewed push to develop nuclear weapons in the U.S. and other countries and nuclear energy slithering back onto the table, the threat is as present as ever, as she writes in The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex.

With her latest endeavor, the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, Caldicott seeks to counter the media offensives of the nuclear industry. Meanwhile, she's working on a new book -- her sixth -- about the psychopathologies of nuclear decision makers.

Grist met with Caldicott in San Francisco, where she was planning a fund-raiser around the release of Helen's War, a sobering film about her initial efforts to get NPRI off the ground in the midst of post-9/11 groupthink.

question
*** There's a concerted effort right now to rehabilitate the image of nuclear power. Proponents argue that fossil fuels are more damaging to the environment, as well as being in short supply, and that nuclear is the [best option going forward]. What's going on here?

answer
***The people saying these things are not biologists, they're not geneticists, they're not physicians. In other words, they don't know what they're talking about. And that makes me very annoyed. First of all, every reactor produces about [20 to 30] tons of highly radioactive waste a year. The majority of it is very long-lived and will have to be isolated from the ecosphere for hundreds of thousands of years ... As it leaks into the environment, it will bio-concentrate by orders of magnitude at each step of the food chain: algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish, us.

*** It takes a single mutation in a single gene in a single cell to kill you. [The most common plutonium isotope] has a half-life of 24,400 years. Every male in the Northern Hemisphere has a small load of plutonium in his gonads. What that means to future generations God only knows -- and we're not the only species with testicles. What we're doing is degrading evolution, and not many people understand that.

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/05/03/dicum-caldicott/

Story continues below
ADVERTISING POLICY
question Yet as society begins to recognize that we do have to get away from the petroleum economy, there's a lot of enthusiasm amongst environmentalists for hydrogen -- enthusiasm that's shared by the nuclear industry.

answer Well, of course, they'll do anything. I've been dealing with them for 30 years and they lie -- they frighten me. I can debate with generals about nuclear war and feel much more comfortable because they know that what I'm talking about is true. The nuclear industry just lies its way through the whole thing.

Nuclear cooling towers.
Nuclear power is no answer, says Caldicott.
They say nuclear power is the answer to global warming. Well ... the [Department of Energy] and the EPA [will tell you] that, at the moment, the process of uranium enrichment for fuel for nuclear power releases huge quantities of CO2. And that does not include releases from decommissioning of the reactor and transportation and long-term storage of the waste.

** Meanwhile, the enrichment of uranium is responsible for [over 90 percent] of the CFC-114 gas released into the air in the U.S. Now, CFC is banned internationally under the Montreal Protocol because it destroys the ozone layer, one. Two, CFC gas is 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent as a global warmer and heat trapper than CO2. So the nuclear industry is lying. And advocates for nuclear power have fallen for the nuclear industry's lies. Not propaganda, but lies.

Of course we've got to stop burning oil and coal. Those grotesque vehicles that get 10 miles to the gallon should be banned! Americans have no idea about conservation. Europeans have the same standard of living as you and they use 50 percent less energy because they turn their lights off and they conserve. We are actively killing the earth by the way we live.

question But some European countries derive more of their power from nuclear energy than the U.S.

answer Many countries in Europe are starting to realize that what they've done with nuclear power is ridiculous and immoral. Belgium, Germany, and Sweden have now passed laws to close down the reactors. So they're learning, but a little too late. Where are they going to put the waste?

question Meanwhile, here in the U.S., we're going in the other direction, talking about new nuclear plants and even new nuclear weapons. Why now?

answer Because the nuclear scientists in the labs keep pushing and pushing. They like building and testing their nuclear weapons. They get a lot of money for it, and they're addicted to it.

The generals like their missiles too. One general basically said, "If you threaten our missiles and our early-warning systems, baby, that's threatening the family jewels." Got it? That's the reason they're still there. Missiles are an extension of their sexuality. There's a deep psychosexual pathology inherent in the brains of these men. "Missile erections," "deep penetrations" -- even the language they use is sexual. I've thought, in my more light-hearted times, that maybe they should all be given Viagra, and then they wouldn't need their missiles.

question Although women have also led nuclear-equipped countries, and very aggressively.

answer Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Golda Meir. But you're picking three women out of millions of men. Some women -- very few -- emulate male behavior. Condoleezza Rice is one. The magic number is 30 percent [according to a U.N. report]. Below 30 percent representation [in government], women tend to please the men and vote for missiles. Above 30 percent, they say, "No, you're not getting your missiles -- we're voting for milk for children." So women need to support each other in order to do what they know is correct behavior, and express their nurturing instincts. It's got nothing to do with politics.

question Most of the nuclear-policy focus lately has been on the various dangerous, unpredictable regimes that are busily acquiring nuclear weapons. Why does yours continue to be on the United States?