DEAR News Of The Area,

WHO gave Ted O’Brien, Opposition energy spokesman, permission to select former coal power station sites as “strong contenders to locate new small modular reactors”? (Daily Telegraph, February 27 and 29.)

Did he ask the residents of the Hunter Valley or Lake Macquarie whether they want dangerous nuclear reactors in our region?

Nuclear reactors routinely emit radioactive gases into the surrounding air and waterways and farmlands, especially carcinogens like Strontium-90, Iodine-131, Caesium-137, Tritium (H3), Carbon-14.

In 2008 the KiKK study, published in Germany, revealed an unsettling 1.6-fold increase in all cancers and a 2.2-fold increase in leukaemias among children under five years old living within five km of operating nuclear power plants.

In general, the incidences were higher the closer the children lived to the nuclear plant.

Similar studies in 2010, 2007 and 1993 backed up these findings.

Another serious problem is the tonnes of dangerous high-level radioactive wastes generated every year by all types of nuclear reactors.

Irradiated nuclear fuel is millions of times more radioactive than the original uranium ore.

Radioactive waste will remain lethal to humans for hundreds of thousands years, but there is no proven safe site anywhere on Earth capable of securely storing and isolating it away from the environment and human interference.

So the waste is inevitably stored on-site at the nuclear plant for decades to come.

We don’t need hazardous nuclear reactors in our neighbourhoods.

There are better, cleaner and cheaper power sources available to Australia.

Regards,
Kenneth HIGGS,
Raymond Terrace.