Health and Safety risks

+ Medical implications of radiation

No dose of radiation is safe. Each dose received by the body is cumulative and adds to the risk of developing malignancy or genetic disease.

High doses of radiation received from a nuclear meltdown or from a nuclear weapon explosion can cause acute radiation sickness, with alopecia, severe nausea, diarrhoea and thrombocytopenia.

Children are ten to twenty times more vulnerable to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults. Females are more sensitive compared to males, whilst foetuses and immuno-compromised patients are also extremely sensitive.

Ionising radiation from radioactive elements and radiation emitted from X-ray machines and CT scanners can also be carcinogenic. The potential time period where people exposed to radiation can develop cancer is 5-10 years for leukaemia and 15-80 years for solid cancers. If we increase the level of background radiation in our environment from medical procedures, X-ray scanning machines at airports, or radioactive materials continually escaping from nuclear reactors and nuclear waste dumps, we will inevitably increase the incidence of cancer as well as the incidence of genetic disease in future generations. (Caldicott, 2015)

+ Health and safety risks of mining uranium

Workers who mine uranium or who work in the control rooms and other roles are required to wear a device that measures their exposure to radiation due to the constant risk of air, dust and surface contamination.

Short-term exposure can lead to acute effects such as nausea or fatigue, but some of the effects of long-term exposure include cancer. For example, thyroid cancer was the most serious problem occurring at Chernobyl, affecting long-term workers.

At the now closed Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory there is a long history of environmental contamination events. Environment Australia (an agency of the Government of Australia) have documented over 200 environmental incidents at the mine since 1979.

In May 2005, the company was convicted for breaching environmental guidelines - the first such prosecution of a mining company in the Northern Territory, relating to accidental radiological exposure to employees. Radiologically contaminated process water had contaminated the drinking water supply and some workers drank and washed in the contaminated water.

At South Australia’s Olympic Dam mine, there have been multiple reported exposures of workers to uranium. (Govt of South Australia, 2020) While the company dismisses these claims as ‘no abnormal’ exposure to radiation, workers are nevertheless exposed and the long-term health effects will not be known for decades.

In 2010, a worker was sufficiently concerned about occupational health issues at Olympic Dam that he leaked information to the media showing that BHP Billiton uses manipulated averages and distorted sampling to ensure its official figures of worker radiation exposure slip under the maximum permissible levels set by government. The BHP whistleblower said: "Assertions of safety of workers made by BHP are not credible because they rely on assumptions rather than, for example, blood sampling and, crucially, an assumption that all workers wear a respirator when exposed to highly radioactive polonium dust in the smelter." -Hendrick Gout (2010).

Aside from exposure to radiation, there are other safety risks of mining to consider. In 2015 a dam wall collapsed in Brazil, prompting a risk assessment in Australia that identified that tailings facilities at Olympic Dam in South Australia are at extreme risk of potentially killing at least 100 workers, by BHP’s own engineers’ assessment. (BHP, 2019)

The ETU remain deeply sceptical about the safety of the extraction of uranium. Mining is an inherently dangerous industry and the failure of governments to regulate the industry thus far does not give us any hope.

+ Health and safety risks for workers at a nuclear reactor

Just like in mining, workers in a nuclear reactor are required to wear a device that measures their radiation exposure due to its constant presence, particularly in certain sections of a nuclear power plant or during shutdown and maintenance works.

In Australia, the only nuclear reactor is the Lucas Heights research reactor facility in NSW. The Lucas Heights facility produces nuclear isotopes for medical imaging and treatment, not energy. Though it is a small reactor, it has had many dangerous incidents involving workers, the community and the environment being unnecessarily exposed to radiation risks.

Lucas Heights has a concerning record of safety breaches. Here are some key breaches:

• In March 2019, three staff were taken to hospital and decontaminated after being exposed to sodium hydroxide in the nuclear medicine manufacturing building.
• In August 2017, a worker dropped a vial of radioactive material and was contaminated through two pairs of gloves. The contamination was deemed the most serious in the world in 2017 according to the International Nuclear Event Scale - the global grading system for nuclear incidents.
• In June 2006, a technician ingested radioactive material - iodine-123. The incident was one of four reported in a week.
• In April 1992, a radiation leak occurred, and four workmen were exposed to as much radiation in 20 seconds as they would normally receive in a year.
• In May 1984, a ruptured pipe joint released about 100 litres of radioactive sludge into stormwater drains. Two operators were contaminated.

+Other industries that use nuclear energy

In Australia, all the current mined uranium is exported overseas. The little that is used domestically is used at the Lucas Heights reactor in NSW which produces nuclear isotopes for medical imaging and treatment. As well as providing about 85% of the nuclear medicine products used in Australian hospitals, it also exports to international patients. It doesn’t require any new uranium to be mined to keep doing this and there are increasing technological breakthroughs meaning radioisotopes created through nuclear reactors are not the only way these medicines can be developed.

+Health effects of past nuclear meltdowns

Chernobyl

In April 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded, creating what many consider the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen.

Twenty-eight of the workers at Chernobyl died in the first four months following the accident, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Within three months of the Chernobyl accident, a total of 31 people died from radiation exposure or other direct effects of the disaster. Between 1991 and 2015, as many as 20,000 cases of thyroid cases were diagnosed in patients who were under the age of 18 in 1986, according to a 2018 UNSCEAR report. Radioactive fallout from the disaster will cause around 9,000 fatal cancers in the most contaminated parts of the former Soviet Union according to the World Health Organisation, while estimates of the death across Europe range from 16,000 to 93,000.

To this day, the plant, the ghost towns of Pripyat and Chernobyl, and the surrounding land make up a 2600 square kilometre "exclusion zone," which is restricted to everyone except designated scientists and government officials.

Fukushima

In March 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami initiated a severe nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. A tsunami was a known risk for the plant and the tsunami emergency planning was deficient. This was known to the nuclear plant operators before the incident. Releases of radioactive materials contaminated land in Fukushima and several neighbouring prefectures. The accident prompted widespread evacuations of local populations (160,000 in total) and distress of the Japanese citizenry, large economic losses amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, and the temporary shutdown of all nuclear power plants in Japan. (As of 2021, only nine of the pre-Fukushima fleets of 54 reactors were operating, and over 20 had been permanently shut down.)

The World Health Organisation estimates that for people in the most contaminated areas in Fukushima Prefecture, the estimated increased risk for all solid cancers will be around 4% in females exposed as infants; a 6% increased risk of breast cancer for females exposed as infants; a 7% increased risk of leukaemia for males exposed as infants; and for thyroid cancer among females exposed as infants, an increased risk of up to 70%. Radiation biologist Dr Ian Fairlie estimates a long-term death toll of around 5,000 people.

The Fukushima meltdown disaster is not over and will never end. The radioactive fallout which remains toxic for hundreds to thousands of years covers large swathes of Japan and will never be “cleaned up.”

Despite it being 9 years since the disaster, the full effects are still not known due to secrecy by the company owners and Japanese Government. (Caldicott, 2015, p.3)

+ References

Caldicott, H., 2015, Submission to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, last accessed 3 December 2020, <https: data-preserve-html-node="true"//www.helencaldicott.com/submission-to-the-nuclear-fuel-cycle-royal-commission/>

Gout, H.,4 June 2010, 'Roxby's radioactive risk', Independent Weekly, <www.archive.indaily.com.au data-preserve-html-node="true"/default.aspx?xml=mob&iid=36944#folio=008>

Government of South Australia, Department for Energy and Mining, Olympic Dam mine spill incident summary since 2003, last access 3 December 2020 https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/minerals/mining/mines_and_quarries/olympic_dam/olympic_dam_uranium_incident_reports

BHP, 2019, ESG briefing: Tailings dams, last accessed 8 December 2020, https://www.bhp.com/-/media/documents/media/reports-and-presentations/2019/190607_esgbriefingtailingsdams.pdf?la=en