hence why 18 nations of the Pacific Island Forum consider this a transboundary threat to public safety.
There is an alarming trend in the history of the nuclear industry’s public health policy to assume that “if there’s no proof it's bad, it must be good”. It is well-documented that exposure to radiation leads to genetic damage which causes cancer.
The lack of epidemiologic research on chronic low-dose radiation exposure, however, is not evidence of its safety. This dangerous assumption risks the health of communities and plant workers, especially in marginalized communities where workers face pressure to accept any income–even one with a clear and present danger of illness and reduced life expectancy.
A matter of environmental justice, the location of nuclear power plants and their waste has long been a topic for debate. The Chernobyl nuclear accident that occurred due to a mix of operator error and faulty design acts as an incentive enough for most towns to vote against hosting nuclear sites. Health impacts from the disaster were felt throughout Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and other parts of Europe.
The effects of the contamination include cancers and cardiovascular disease, which resulted from both acute exposure experienced by plant workers and firemen at the time, to chronic low-dose exposure over the following years from consumption of contaminated milk and crops affected by radioactive fallout.
Archived records indicate children and pregnant women bore the brunt of the exposure, as they are greatly at risk of developing chronic diseases and cancers.
In Nordic countries, children routinely exposed to Chernobyl fallout present neurological problems which manifested in their behavior, verbal working memory, and executive functioning, as well as significantly lower verbal IQ and poor performance in school.
Nearly 40 years after the worst nuclear disaster in human history, much of the contaminated regions around Chernobyl are still uninhabitable. Organisms living in these areas display classic radiation-based diseases such as an increase in genetic damage and mutation rates and a decline in fertility and lifespan. In places with the highest contamination, many species have gone locally extinct.
While the wilderness of Ukraine and the seas of Japan might seem distant, the aftermath of the nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima reach around the world. Wind and ocean currents, ecological food webs, and human commercial trade show that our world is interconnected, and pollution does not recognize our geopolitical borders.
Many of us today live within reach of either an operational nuclear power plant or a decommissioned plant housing tons of nuclear waste, each capable of the same destruction as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Our Samuel Lawrence Foundation, for example, is located a mere 35 miles from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Its 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste are stored in thin, degrading canisters a mere 100 feet from the ocean. A disaster here would displace some 8 million individuals and leave Southern California uninhabitable for 100,000 years.
We cannot afford to ignore the risks associated with the nuclear industry, from active reactors to spent nuclear fuel. Our health and the survival of our planet’s ecosystems are fragile and must be protected. Logic dictates we must exercise caution with existing nuclear operations to protect public health and safety. Rather than investing further in a failed industry whose golden age has long since tarnished, we must instead focus our energy on creating a safe, clean, renewable future.