NUCLEAR technology is extremely dangerous.
It relies on dwindling supplies of uranium reserves and massive government subsidies the 30 most industrialised nations were estimated to have spent £318 billion on nuclear energy research and development by 1992.
Since nuclear fusion as opposed to fission is back on the agenda, don't be fooled: In 1973, the America Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) raised major concerns about fusion energy these still seem valid today.
The AAAS said the hazard of a magnetic system accident would be considerable.
A greater hazard would be a lithium fire releasing energy of up to 14,000 tons of TNT.
But the greatest hazard would be the release of the volatile radioactive fuel tritium into the environment.
Tritium is a minute atom. It can slip right through the metal of some containers.
It can become incorporated into water, making the water weakly radioactive. Radioactive water poses a hazard to all living things.
Tritium is radioactive for 120 years after it is created.
The AAAS estimated each full-scale fusion reactor would release some tritium through routine daily leaks even assuming the best containment systems.
An accident could release much more because at any time inside each full-scale reactor there would be almost four times as much tritium as in the atmosphere.
Suggestions spent nuclear fuel can be recycled are a costly curved ball drums of radioactive sludge and spent fuel rods have been routinely dumped into the North Atlantic, the North Pacific and the Arctic; "depleted uranium" incorporated into munitions used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A nuclear fusion reactor presents a target with holocaust consequences for all mankind.
Our energy solutions are complex post 9/11, wind, wave, hydro and photo-voltaic roof tiles are key parts of that solution.
Glyn Myerscough, Foxwood Hill, York.
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