Mazloom
October 4, 2006
iranian.com
Because I am not very smart, don’t have a Ph. D, and have never done any research at Harvard University, I looked up the meaning of the word “adventurism” in the dictionary, and here is what it says: “Involvement in risky enterprises without regard to proper procedures and possible consequences”
Well, to me, that is a good description of what Akbar Ganji describes in his “Letter to America” article that was published in the Washington Post, and what Kaveh Afrasiabi criticized in his article, “What nuclear adventurism?”
Let’s examine the words in the definition of “adventurism”:
Involvement: I have no doubt that every one believes the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is definitely involved in a nuclear “enterprise”; but for the sake of argument, let’s accept that IRI is only interested in the development of nuclear industry for peaceful proposes.
Risky: Since I don’t have a Ph. D. to be able to memorize everything, I did a quick “google” search for nuclear accidents and disasters, and here is a small sampling of what I found (if you get bored with the list just skip to the end of it):
Dec. 12, 1952, Chalk River, nuclear reactor. Ottawa, Canada: a partial meltdown of the reactor's uranium fuel core resulted after the accidental removal of four control rods. Although millions of gallons of radioactive water accumulated inside the reactor, there were no injuries.
Oct. 7, 1957, Windscale Pile No. 1, north of Liverpool, England: fire in a graphite-cooled reactor spewed radiation over the countryside, contaminating a 200 square miles area.
Winter 1957-1958 South Ural Mountains: explosion of radioactive wastes at U.S.S.R nuclear weapons factory 12 miles from city of Kyshtym forced the evacuation of over 10,000 people from a contaminated area, although no casualties were reported by U.S.S.R. officials.
Jan. 3, 1961 Three technicians died at a U.S. plant in Idaho Falls in an accident at an experimental reactor.
July 4, 1961, The captain and seven crew members died when radiation spread through the U.S.S.R Union's first nuclear powered submarine, because a pipe in the control system of one of the two reactors had ruptured.
Oct. 5, 1966, The core of an experimental reactor near Detroit, Michigan, melted partially when a sodium cooling system failed.
Jan. 21, 1969, A coolant malfunction from an experimental underground reactor at Lucens Vad, Switzerland, released a large amount of radiation into a cave, which was then sealed.
Dec. 7, 1975, nuclear reactor. Greifswald, East Germany: the radioactive core of the reactor in the Lubmin nuclear power plant nearly melted down due to the failure of safety systems during a fire.
March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island, nuclear reactor. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: one of two reactors lost its coolant, which caused the radioactive fuel to overheat and caused a partial meltdown. Some radioactive material was released.
Feb. 11, 1981, Eight workers were contaminated when more than 100,000 gallons of radioactive coolant leaks into the containment building of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah 1.
April 25, 1981, Officials reported that around 45 workers were exposed to radioactivity during repairs to a problem-ridden plant at Tsuruga, Japan.
Aug. 10, 1985, An explosion in Shkotovo-22 ship repair facility in U.S.S.R., which repairs nuclear-powered vessels. Ten people were killed and many died later from radiation exposure.
April 26, 1986, Chernobyl, nuclear reactor. Kiev, U.S.S.R.: explosion and fire in the graphite core of one of four reactors released radioactive material that spread over part of the U.S.S.R., Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and later Western Europe. 31 claimed dead. Total casualties are unknown and estimates run into the thousands. Worst such accident to date.
March 24, 1992, Radioactive iodine and inert gases escaped into the atmosphere after a loss of pressure in a reactor channel at the Sosnovy Bor station near St. Petersburg in Russia.
November 1992, In France's most serious nuclear accident, three workers were contaminated after entering a nuclear particle accelerator in Forbach without protective clothing. Executives were jailed in 1993 for failing to take proper safety measures.
November 1995, At Chernobyl, serious contamination occurred when fuel was being removed from one of the reactors. One person received the equivalent of a year's permitted radiation.
December 8, 1995, Several hundred Kg of sodium coolant leaked out and upon contact with air ignited and produced temperatures as high as 1500 degrees Celsius that melted several steel structures.
March 1997, A fire and explosion at the state-run Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation reprocessing plant at Tokaimura, Japan, contaminated at least 35 workers with minor radiation.
September 30, 1999, Tokyo, Japan: Workers added uranyl nitrate solution containing about 16.6 Kg of uranium, which exceeded the critical mass, into a precipitation tank. Radiation was released to the surrounding areas. Three workers performing the operation were exposed to high levels of radiation and two of them died. One hundred sixteen workers were exposed in total.
One may argue that some of these cases are irrelevant to the nuclear industry that is under construction in Iran, but that is not the point, the point is nuclear accidents happen.
Nuclear Power Plants cause between 600-1000 deaths a year per million people. The vast majority of them, 80%, are to the plant workers.
The distance from a nuclear power plant also has a direct affect on things such as breast cancer. In an extensive study it was found that, women living near a nuclear reactor had an average of 26-28 deaths from breast cancer per 100,000 women. Women living far from one averaged 22-23 deaths per 100,000.
According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, one of the most prominent anti-nuclear industry Australian physician, “children and the elderly are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of radiation than others. The incubation time, the time between exposure and the manifestation of symptoms, for cancer is five to 60 years; no tumor, though, appears with a "caused by" sign attached. Furthermore, the effects of radiation are cumulative. Each dose received adds to the risk of developing cancer or producing genetic disease in the offspring of those exposed to it. That's why we advise people not to have more medical or dental X-rays than are absolutely necessary.
Yet nuclear power plants routinely discharge millions of curies of radioactive elements into the air and water. The so-called "noble" gases (krypton, xenon, and argon) are readily absorbed by humans through the lung and deposit in the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, where they irradiate the testicles and ovaries with high-energy gamma radiation. Tritium, radioactive hydrogen, is also routinely released.”
So, it appears that the nuclear industry is in fact a risky business, even though there has not been a (reported) major accident since 1999; or maybe that is what IRI is counting on, no more disasters.
Enterprise: I am sure that there are some people who agree that the corrupt government officials in Iran have lucratively benefited (accepted bribes) in the wheeling and dealing of the nuclearization of Iran; however, I have no proof of it. I am going to be “irresponsible without empirical evidence” and appeal to my own personal life to make a point that IRI is corrupt:
My brother once paid an IRI official 600,000 Toman to get permission to import 6,000,000 Toman worth of medical supplies into the country during Iran-Iraq War. In another occasion we had to pay 5,000,000 Toman to a judge in IRI Revolutionary Court to get permission to sell my diseased mother’s property. In one of my trips to Iran, I was stopped by a traffic police officer for a few moving violations and lack of proper driving license in Tehran. I nervously pulled out my wallet and saw that I only had one hundred dollar bills, so I offered one of them to him. He responded, “No, idiot, hundred dollars is too much.” I looked again and managed to put twenty dollars together and gave it him.
Up to this date, it’s taken an estimated cost of 4-6 billion dollars to build Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant; and only their God knows how much money they have made with this “enterprise”, not to mention all the other nuclear facilities.
But let’s be clear here, since I am not bound by “peer review” as Kaveh Afrasiabi is, I can speculate all day, and anyone who reads this article can take it and say he is right, or say “No! Mullahs are honest people.” or like the police officer, they don’t take too much bribes to contaminate their country.
Without: That means void of, lacking participation, omission of, and excluding. I would say IRI’s nuclear power plant industry is void of the people’s representative approval. It lacks participation of independent investigators, contains omission of opposing views, and excludes democratic checks and balances.
Proper procedure: Is there a proper procedure in place for when and if there is a nuclear melt down in Bushehr, Esfehan, or Natanz? Has anyone outside the IRI government scrutinized it, or does the public not need to know?
Possible consequences: Has IRI prepared us for the worst possible consequences of above-mentioned types of accidents or disasters; and are we as a nation willing to accept those consequences? What if there is disaster in the nuclear facilities in Esfehan and prevailing winds carry radioactive clouds to the historic part of the city. Are we willing to accept the consequences, and not visit nagsh'e jahan for let’s say, the next 10,000 years?
According to the way the word “adventurism” is defined in the dictionary, I would say Akbar Ganji was right on the money when he said “We hope that the regime will not be allowed to... continue with its nuclear adventurism.” If I were a teacher in a university, as Kaveh Afrasiabi is sometimes, I would give Akbar Ganji an A+ for the proper use of the word “adventurism”. Comment
