More Atomic Tales: Uranium with juice at Dimona and other stories
Last August, Haaretz revealed that workers at the [Israel’s] Dimona nuclear reactor had been required to participate in an experiment in which they drank a certain quantity of uranium mixed with juice… After drinking the liquid, workers were required to give urine samples which were then sent for testing at the lab. The aim of the experiment was to examine how uranium is excreted through the urinary tract.
Without authorisation, and ‘in gross violation of the Helsinki Committee rules - which stipulate when and how it is possible to carry out experiments on human subjects’, two scientists took it upon themselves to give the workers radioactive liquids. We suppose they should be grateful they were told what they were drinking, unlike the unfortunate crew at India’s Kaiga Generation Station who last year had their water cooler spiked with tritium.
The official inquiry into the Dimona experiments submitted its findings last week. They included…
…a recommendation that new and clear procedures stipulating when and how it is permissible to carry out medical experiments on workers be established.
You read that right. The scientists at Dimona need to be told when and how it’s ok to make workers drink uranium.
What’s the opposite of a renaissance, do you think? Denaissance, perhaps. We ask because in France, the supposed cradle of the rebirth of the nuclear ‘renaissance’, things seem to be sliding backwards rather than striding forwards.
According to the grid operator RTE, electricity generation from the country’s 58 nuclear reactors fell by 6.8% in 2009, marking a ten year low point. This shortfall meant France was a net importer of electricity for 57 days.
President Nicholas Sarkozy’s nuclear bandwagon is said to be leading the world. Just where it’s leading us however is more difficult to say. It seems to be travelling in the general direction away from a bright future of clean and secure energy supplies.
Finally, it’s over to Turkey where it looks as if our grisly prediction of last November is in danger of coming true. The country’s bid to build its first nuclear reactor – killed so many times we’re in danger of losing count – may be clawing its way from the grave once more.
This week ‘Russia and Turkey have signed a joint statement here Wednesday on the construction of a nuclear power plant on Turkish soil’. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia has ‘significant advantages’. He wasn’t kidding…
"We provide loans and equipment, and we give local construction companies ... a share of 20-25 percent or even 30 percent in the entire volume of contracts," he said, "We provide nuclear fuel and are ready to take back spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing."
The whole package, in fact. Russia will even provide the scientists to give the workers juice laced with uranium (we imagine).
There’s no date for when then first reactor of four will be operational but then why should it be any different from any other reactor? At this early stage the project is estimated to cost ‘between 18 and 20 billion US dollars’. What’s a couple of billion dollars between friends?
Still, it sounds like a plan of a fashion. Turkey, in order to ensure its energy security, wants its first nuclear reactors designed, built and fuelled by Russia. Look, you’ll just have to get someone from the nuclear industry to explain the logic of it to you, ok?
Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:
