"Two Cas in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish"

This is the title of a Simpson’s episode in which Lisa and Bart go fishing in the river next to Springfield’s nuclear power plant and catch a fish with three eyes. Homer tries to argue that the fish’s appearance is due to evolution but everyone knows it’s a mutation due to the radioactive waste from the power plant. This episode struck me as interesting because the negative effects that nuclear power plants have had on the environment in the United States is real. One particular case that is rather recent is the Yakama Nation situation in 2003 the tribe filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy; contending that the DOE has failed to protect the Columbia River from pollution from the Hanford nuclear reservation. That the declining Northwest salmon populations in the last 50 years are due to the radioactive materials like uranium and strontium that remain in the river sediment while other radioactive hazards and wastes that were buried or dumped at Hanford years ago have worked their way into the groundwater.

Another example is the Beaverlodge Uranium Mill where millions of tons of liquid and solid waste were directly dumped into Fookes Lake (early 1980s). This is a totally blind long-nose sucker fish caught downstream from the Beaverlodge uranium mill. This fish is a casualty of radioactive and heavy metal pollution — the eyes have no pupils. Blindness in fish is a known result of radioactive contamination from uranium mines; fish accumulate so many radioactivities in their bodies that in some areas immediately downstream from uranium mines, they present a health hazard if eaten regularly. These are just two examples of the dire effects that nuclear power can have on the environment when the strictest safety regulations are not adhered.

While there is much promise in the future of nuclear science its past is ugly and full of skeletons, that won’t go away. In places outside the USA like Chernobyl where it is estimated that 17,000 people will die from cancer caused by the Chernobyl fallout over the next 50 years. The film “Chernobyl Heart” is a sobering look at the fallout effects from 1986 that are literally killing babies in the womb. Only a 5% of children living in the Chernobyl region are healthy and the children are particularly susceptible to radiation-induced illnesses. Many have Leukemia, cancer of the thyroid and other cancers. Brain tumors are also now greatly increased. Babies are born with many different deformities. These kid are born without a chance at a successful or healthy life a quote that really made an impact on me is from humanitarian Adi Roche: “Children are being exposed to it particularly through dairy products, they are being exposed to it in the water; you know when they swim or fish in their streams or their rivers, even though they're not supposed to, but you cannot tell people they cannot do these things when children play in un-sandy roads or in their back yards or in sand pits in their school yards; they cannot avoid the fallout. When kids are going to dig and they’ll play and then of course the farmers are constantly out and plowing up the land and their plowing up the radioactivity and it gets back into the food chain – whether you’re a vegetarian or not – it makes no difference because it’s in the vegetables as much as it is in the animal life.” To think that this horrific accident was due largely because of human err and folly makes one think. Indian Point Energy Center is a three-unit nuclear power plant station located in Buchannan, NY just 24 miles of New York City. Anything is possible. Would we be ready if a calamity like Chernobyl occurred?