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Nuclear Wastelands: Book Review

NUCLEAR WASTELANDS BY A. MAKHIJANI, HOWARD HU AND KATHERINE YIN (EDS.), SPONSORED BY A SPECIAL COMMISSION OF INTERNATIONAL PHYSICIANS FOR THE PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR WAR AND THE INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH; CAMBRIDGE, MA: MIT PRESS.

This encyclopedic work (666 pages) covers the development of nuclear weapons by every nuclear weapons state, including those who are covertly pursuing access to nuclear weapons. It details the health and environmental problems associated with the entire nuclear fuel cycle from the mining of uranium to the production of warheads. It is an invaluable tool for scholars, students, peace and environmental activists, journalists and policy makers in the relevant areas. Its country-by-country treatment covers the US, Russia and the territories of the former Soviet Union, the UK, France, China and the near-nuclear and de facto nuclear weapon countries, as well as the proliferation problem. Among the latter group of countries, Chapter 11 deals in some depth with North Korea, Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa.

Surprising omissions are Libya, Iraq and Iran, critical states in the search for an "Islamic bomb". Another surprising omission is Japan, the country which is most actively pursuing a plutonium fuel cycle for its civil reactors, with several reports of a clandestine weapons program. However, by far the most serious omission is Canada, the largest uranium exporter in the Western World. We will return to this later. Finally, it should be noted that Chapters 3 and 4, which deal with nuclear weapons production and associated environmental and health hazards, should have used flow charts of the full nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to warhead production. This is the best way to communicate the impacts.

The book does justice to the history of distortions, deceptions, cover-ups and illogical rationalizations of the civil and military nuclear establishments of the world, whether the institutions were involved in production, protection or regulation. However, the book fails to indict the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is also guilty of many of these "conspiracies of the like-minded" (see my book, Nuclear Energy: The Unforgiving Technology; Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1976). IAEA violates the integrity of regulation by being an uncompromising and uncritical "pusher" of nuclear power. In effect the world's technical corps of nuclear scientists and engineers are the equivalent of a cadre of theologians, an example of nuclear fundamentalism with untarnished faith in the face of tarnished failure.

While not diminishing the immense value of this book to all those interested in the nuclear age, the most significant failure, and one which applies particularly to Canadian uranium exports, is the failure to deal with the diversion of enriched uranium which ends up in nuclear weapons and in particular to deal with the role of "depleted uranium" or U-238 produced in the world's enrichment plants. This isotope is used as "target rods" in special reactors, such as those at Hanford, Washington, to produce weapons grade plutonium. It is also used in the construction of thermonuclear weapons, whereby it effectively produces up to 50% of the yield. As it has not been properly safeguarded, we can say with confidence that there is a little Canadian uranium in the thermonuclear arsenals of virtually all the nuclear weapon states, particularly those of the US, UK and France. Canada knows this and has violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) through this contribution to vertical proliferation.

For the greater part of the nuclear age, there have been no military uranium mines, only civilian ones. Yet the arsenals of the nuclear weapons states have continued to grow. I was sorry to see that the authors had not dealt with Canada, which has played such a dangerous role in the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons (see my book, America, God and the Bomb: New Star Books, 1987).

I recommend this book very highly, as I do two previous books in this series, Radioactive Heaven and Earth and Plutonium: Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age. One final comment is that the book was not able to deal with the final NPT review, held this year, and the decision to proceed with an indefinite extension, a free gift to the nuclear weapons states, who can continue to develop new and more effective weapons even while reducing actual numbers.

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