Report from Santa Fe; Helen Caldicott

You Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education for Bachelor's, Masters and PhD degrees. New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for 1-800-428-TECH. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe.

Our guest today is Dr. Helen Keldekot, author and activist. Thank you for joining us. I really am honored and delighted to have you because we're going to address one of the most crucial issues of the day since the tragedy in Japan and the tsunami, the earthquake, and then the dangerous situation with nuclear reactors. You are someone who knows probably as much about nuclear energy and radioactivity and on all these important facts, facts. You're a scientist, you're a doctor. And so I welcome you and I also want to mention to our audience, New Mexico is really kind of, as you said, the belly of the beast. But we've played a very important part in the whole history of nuclear energy. And in our state, we have passionate pro-nuke energy people and we have passionate anti-nuke energy people. And I want to have you share your experience and your education with us. But I also want to let people know that your books are full of facts.

And they are all footnoted and they have incredible appendices. So I want to encourage our audience to take the impetus from what you bring. And if they agree or disagree, do their own research. And the best way to do it is to start with your books. I'm going to show them. This one is called Nuclear Power is not the answer. And this one, I really love. It's called, if you love this planet, a plan to save the earth. And you have things about biodiversity, about animals, about plants, about trees. It is a rich, wonderful, wonderful book. Now, I am going to let you talk. I'm just going to say a little about all your awards. So the Smithsonian Institute said that you were proclaimed that you were one of the most influential women in the 20th century. How's that? You were the grand leader of the Physicians for Social Responsibility for years and years. You were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by none other than Linus Pauling, a Nobel laureate himself.

And the organization that you were affiliated with ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. You got the 2003 Lannel Prize for Cultural Freedom. You've been humanist of the Year International Peace Award by your own government because you are Australia. You're the radio host of a wonderful program called If You Love This Planet. I'm almost done. You've got the Academy Award for the best documentary called If You Love This Planet and You're Not Doing. Welcome, I'll shut up now. Thank you. Tell us about your background of being a pediatrician and how you started on this path in the early 70s. Well, it was earlier than that. When I was an adolescent, I lived in Melbourne, Australia. And I read a book by an Australian called Neville Shoot about, called On the Beach. And it was about a nuclear war that occurred by accident in the Northern Hemisphere. And gradually, the radioactive cloud moved down to Melbourne. And it describes the last days of life on Earth with the government dispensing cyanide pills

so that people could kill their babies immediately instead of dying of acute radiation illness, which is what's going to happen to these Japanese nuclear workers. And at the end of the book, the beautiful elegant streets of Melbourne were still there and the trams standing in the center of the street. Bits of paper blowing down in the breeze, a blind gently flapping. And that was the end of life on Earth. And that branded my soul. Then I did first year medicine at the age of 17. And I just loved biology. And I learned about Mulla, who won the Nobel Prize for a radiating drosophila fruit fly, which reproduced very rapidly. So it can get hundreds of generations in one year. And when he radiated them, they developed a gene for a good wing, for instance, that was passed on generation to generation. So I saw what radiation does at damages, genes and causes deformities and cancer. And at that time, Russia and America were going healthily,

the blowing up bombs in the atmosphere. And I must say, being in New Mexico, it gives me the EBGBs. And I couldn't understand, as a young, idealistic medical student, what on Earth these fellows were up to? What were they thinking? And so, when the French, in the early 70s, were doing all there about atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific, the radioactive plume, or it came over Adelaide, which is where I then lived. And we collect rainwater in our tanks from the roof, and the rain was relatively radioactive. And someone leaked a report to me about the radioactivity in the water. I just read Jermaine Greer's book, The Female Unique. So I suddenly realized that I could say, be or do anything I really believed in. And nothing would stop me. So I wrote a letter to the paper saying children could get leukemia and cancer from the fallout, and they didn't publish my letter. So I called the guy and I said, where's my letter?

It was quite condescending, because Australians are very sexist. But anyway, he published the letter. And that night I was on television. And then I was on television every time French blew up another bomb. What I didn't know was Australians don't like the French. They think they're arrogant. I've got a French son in law, actually, who's account. And they rose up spontaneously. Marches in the city streets, they stopped buying French. Perfume, French wine, French food. The mail workers stopped delivering French mail. And 75% of Australians in nine months were opposed. Our Prime Minister was forced to take France to the International Court of Justice, and she was forced to test on the ground. So I saw what Jefferson said. An informed democracy will behave in a responsible fashion. Well, and so that's been 40 years. And I was doing that. I was working 80 hours a week as a pediatric intern at the Adelaide Children's Hospital. So I would admit a patient, a baby, put a sculpt van in antibiotics, rush up to my bedroom, take my white coat off,

do an interview, rush down. And the hospital was getting more calls about the French tests and they were about the patients. And I was threatened. They were going to fire me. And I said, but are my patients suffering? And they said, no. Well, so that was 40 years ago. Oh, my God. I know. But you've been fighting this fight for so long. And always, you know, with that steely eye of a scientist and with the passion and heart of a pediatrician, a mother, a grandmother. This is a wonderful combination. Yes. And so in light of what's happening with this immediate crisis in Japan, where the nuclear reactors, we're not sure exactly what's going on. Nobody knows. But plumes of smoke coming up from them is not good. Good is an understatement. Yes. So tell us from your point of view and from your scientific perspective, what you think might be going on? Well, I think four of the reactors are damaged.

Number two, I think, has a crack in its containment vessel. It's leaking water and steam, which means it can never be fixed. None of them can. There have been explosions at three of them taking the top of the building off. At the top of the building are the cooling pools, which they transfer 30 tons of radioactive rods from the reactor every year and put them in the cooling pools. So there's three to 20 times more radiation in the cooling pools than in the reactor itself. In the reactor is as much long-lived radiations that produced by the explosion of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. And there are 200 radioactive elements, all of which, if they get inside your body, can cause cancer. But the cooling pools are protected by a sort of a tin roof. And when the explosion occurred, of course, they were damaged. Now, the fuel rods themselves are half an inch thick and 12 feet long and they're covered by zirconium, which if exposed to air ignites.

So they're burning. And when it burns, the little pellets are tremendously hot. Radioactive uranium fall down and then they can melt. And a meltdown in a cooling pool is much, much worse than a Chernobyl accident. And I now refer to this book by the National Academy of Sciences, a report on Chernobyl, where, for the first time, they translated 5,000 Russian articles into English. And it seems like almost a million people have already died from Chernobyl. 40% of Europe is still radioactive. I do not buy European food because you don't know what is radioactive and what is not. You can't taste, smell or see the radioactive elements. And it takes five to 60 years to develop your cancer, once you've eaten or inhaled radioactive material. Now, so the accident in Japan is by orders of magnitude.

Far worse, I mean, fancy building is six reactors, which were not of good design, on a earthquake fault. Well, because they think it'll never happen. No, and then you combine the earthquake and... They're practicing psychic numbing. And I think these men operate from their reptilian midbrains. Well, it's true because the limbic system is in the midbrain. And for men, there's a very interesting book called The Male Brain, looking at the hormone receptors in the brain. And what releases... It's not the endorphins. I can't think it's a substance like heroin, which gives you a little dopamine. Okay, the two... Not instincts, but feelings in men that release dopamine are one is violence and one is sex. Isn't that interesting? And it's not the same in women. So males operate from a different basis of reality

than, I mean, they're here to reproduce, you know, and their fertile almost until they die. Whereas we're only fertile till we reach menopause and we take... We only produce one egg a month and we take nine months to incubate a baby. And we're different. We have a lot of what's called oxytocin, the hormone, which is released after pregnancy and it's a very nurturing hormone. And when there's stress, men tend to secrete testosterone and get aggressive, whereas women tend to secrete oxytocin and so they work together to harmonize things. So we're very, very different. Well, I've heard you do a five-minute summary of the entire situation of all the different kinds of radiation and how it affects a cell. I don't know if we can do it short enough, but I remember you're saying, in effect, that no radiation is safe.

No. Every dose you receive is cumulative and adds too risk of getting cancer. The National Academy of Sciences produced the BR7 report, Biological Effects of Radiation, said no radiation is safe. Never have an unnecessary X-ray. Never have your teeth X-rayed every year. Do not walk through those X-ray machines at the airport. For each dose you receive, adds too risk of getting cancer. It's not safe. Already the background radiation produces, I think, about 30% of the cancers we already see. You don't want to increase that. Feetuses are thousands of times more radioacensitive than adults. One X-rayed of the pregnant abdomen, double C incidence of leukemia in that child. Children attend to 20 times more radioacensitive. Old people are. And immunocompromised patients are as well. Now, let's look at the Japan situation. Now we're getting reports that the sea water is contaminated that the sea water.

That was just today, I think. Really? Really? Yeah, EP associated press. Yes. That the food further away than they thought it was spinach and milk is contaminated. And what are we going to do? The parallel that I make with Chernobyl, is that one way to handle this, if what they're doing now, doesn't work, is what's called the sarcophagus option. Well, that's what Michio Kaku, who's a very famous physicist, says that's what they need to do. They've got six reactors there. Plus the cooling pools. It will take the years and years and years to carry that. We want to explain to our audience what the sarcophagus option is. Well, what they did at Chernobyl, they were desperate. They got these pilots in helicopters to drop hundreds and thousands of tons of sand onto the reactor to try and prevent the reaction occurring. In fact, Chernobyl, and then they built this concrete sarcophagus over it. But in fact, Chernobyl could still melt down. The sarcophagus is very fragile and it needs to be rebuilt.

And if it collapses on that fuel, it could melt down again. And we haven't learned, and the cover-up, the medical cover-up of this data has been obscene. I have never read anything in medical history, the likes of which this represents. Almost a million people have died. The IAEA has an unholy alliance with the WHO World Health Organization, which says WHO can't ever examine a nuclear accident, unless the IAEA, which pushes nuclear power and promotes it, agrees. This is wicked. And the accident will go on forever, because plutonium has a half-life of 24,400 years. There would have been 500 pounds of plutonium in that reactor, and 30% of the inventory escaped. And that's all over Europe, let alone strontium, which lasts 600 years and causes bone cancer and leukemia.

Season one, three, seven, which causes brain cancers, muscle cancers. It's just beyond my comprehension. Do you know how hard we work to try and save a patient with cancer? I know, but when you say it's beyond your comprehension, to me, one of the fascinating things is, when they have a contest, try to have some kind of image, because human language and forms of communication, written word, that's going to be gone in 24,000 years. How do you create? I don't think we'll be here. Look, we're not even talking about the bombs in this blasted state. And I really mean it. I feel like when I fly in here, and I know there are 24,000, 2,100 or so hydrogen bombs underground at the Albuquerque Airport, and that we've got Los Alamos, which has created the global gas oven up there on the mountain. I called my book years ago, Nuclear Magnus. I would now call it nuclear psychosis. I think in terms of psychoanalyzing a people

that have created the global gas oven and continued to do so, they need medical help. They should be institutionalized and have therapy. I mean, how can we be in the hands of people who seriously have designed a system whereby, in an hour, the weapons cross each other, they're all still on hair trigger alert, and we burn most of the cities on Earth. A huge cloud covers the Earth, blocks out the sun for years, causing an ice age, a nuclear winter and everything and everyone dies. What on Earth? I mean, if anyone sick, these people are sick, and I'm starting to lose my patience. I can tell, you're losing it now, but... Well, I'm a doctor. Yes, exactly, and I know how hard it is to, you know, the effort that goes into saving one life, to think of getting rid of millions. Oh, also deliver a baby. Yeah.

The miracle out of this amorphous mass comes this perfect thing. And we're not the only species that have babies. We cohabit the planet with 30 million other species, all of which have genes, all of which can get mutations, get cancer, and they're all at risk. I mean, I think we're an evolutionary aberrant, but I also think... Well, women make up 53% of the population, and we're absolute whims. We need to step up to the plate and use our oxytocin for nurturing and save the children and all future generations. Why are we so pathetic? Well, on your radio show, if you love this planet, you recently had an interview with Chris Hedges, and he has an essay about this whole thing, saying, this time, we'll take the whole earth with us. Yes. And that was just chilling, chilling, chilling. No, but you know that. You've known that all your life. Yes. But the way... No, since I was 15.

And I've never... I'm not a person who can use psychic numbing or denial. I can't. And I can sort of see what's going to happen in the future. I'm a bit prophetic like my mother was, but... and I can't understand how people can practice psychic numbing. If they love their children, you know, when children are dying, their fathers fall into my arms weeping, or if men are on their deathbed. Their souls open up like a rose, but and they tell me all the wicked things have done. But it's too late. They know what they're doing. Do you... Do you blow up the earth to make money, to feed your children? Well, let's talk about what this push is now. The push is now that nuclear until the Japan incident was that nuclear power was clean and green, and it was going to... Sustainable. Yeah. Well, not... Yeah. And so there's this big push on, from governments and so... This is a wicked industry. It's a carcinogenic industry.

Nuclear power makes massive quantities of radioactive waste. There is no container you could put it in that would last longer than a hundred years. Cement, steel, titanium, it will leak. And it's leaking already at Hanford, at Savannah River, all over the world. It's leaking. Russia, China. And as it leaks, it will get into the water supply, plutonium, strontium, amamorestium, cesium, you name it. And it bioconcentrates by orders of magnitude at each step. Algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish, us. Because we're at the apex of the food chain. And so the solution to pollution by dilution when it comes to radiation is fallacious because of the biological bioconcentration in the food chain. That's why you're finding... They're finding I-131 in the spinach and the cesium in the spinach and they're going to find it in the fish. And you can't... We didn't evolve. So our senses could detect radiation in the food.

You don't say, mmm, I can taste the strontium-19, this Hershey's milk kiss. Why? Three mile island is 15 miles from Hershey's. So much radiation got out. The monitors went off scale the first few minutes. No one knows how much, but there's so much radioactive iodine in the milk. Hershey's powdered the milk for six weeks till the iodine decayed. And then they used the milk for the chocolates. But hundreds of other isotopes got out too and we don't know the ground measurements where the cows still graze. Well, after fighting this fight for 40 years, I want to know how you're feeling because I know how you're making me feel. And I really, really want to know what can we do individually and politically? What is your solution? I came to this country in 78. A young medical doctor. I was an alien. I was a female. I had stopped uranium mining in Australia by talking to the unions, basically,

about the medical effects of radiation upon their testicles. And that really worked with our unions. And so I came and I thought, well, I can close down the reactors. So I flew down to meet with George Meni at the AOCIO. That didn't work, but I'm naive. I don't have a sort of radar detecting. So I think I can do anything, which is probably pathetic. But I'm a doctor. And if the doors close, I break it down. I go and I met with Reagan. I met with Trudeau. And I think, you know, I've been successful in a way. Some people say, I stopped a nuclear war on the 80s. Who knows? We didn't have one. I think I helped and millions of others helped to stop the Cold War. How am I feeling now? Incredibly frustrating. Clinton had the opportunity to get Yeltsin to sign a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. There was a precedent for that. For Gorbachev and Reagan almost agreed at a weekend in Reykjavik in 1987 to do just that. And then we've got global warming.

And then we've got this Congress full of dopey people who know no science, Exxon's funding, the think tanks to put doubt and skepticism into the debate. There is no debate. But it's not a belief system. It's happening. That's what the tobacco companies did. You know, smoking probably doesn't cause cancer. But that disinformation. And what concerns me the most is that science, because I've come from a very scientific medical background. And some facts are irrefutable. They have been proven. And yet there's absolutely no interest in science at all, no interest, no curiosity. They have no scientific background. Most politicians are scientifically and medically illiterate. Now in this day and age where we've used science inappropriately in many areas, I mean we live in a chemical cocktail of 80,000 chemicals every day in common use. Most of which have not been tested for carcinogenicities. Some which have, and they are carcinogenic,

science, it's imperative to understand science and biology and how single cell functions and how mutations occur and how cancer can occur and how radiation can damage the genes and the eggs and sperm. And this radioactive waste that leaks and concentrates will over time, you can imagine women waking up generations hence the breast milk already radioactive. Their babies are already being born deformed from exposure in utero, like they are in flouture. 80% of the babies born in flouture are terribly deformed with no brains, single eyes, no arms, so the doctors have told the mothers in flouture not to have any more babies, but the uranium that the Americans have used at Half-Life is 4.5 billion years. So you extrapolate that to generations hence with the radiation getting into the food and the breast milk, children getting cancer at the age of six. There are 2,600 genetic diseases,

all of which will increase in frequency causing random, compulsory genetic engineering. That's the legacy we're leaving, just for nuclear power, let alone weapons. Now, Dr. Caldecott, you have outlined things that can be done. So it's hard enough for us to get our minds around the horror that you've described. No, it's so. You can do it. I human beings, they're very resilient. Look what the people went through during the Holocaust. Well, we can do anything we decide to do. Well, what do you recommend that we do? It's time we abolish nuclear weapons. Clearly, Obama is not going to do it. He's in the pocket of the Pentagon, which makes me very annoyed. We have to do it. Now, look what I did. I led the movement. I helped to recruit almost single-hand at 23,000 doctors. We led the nuclear weapons. Physicians for social responsibility. One person can save this country. If this country doesn't change,

the earth is doomed, doomed. And don't tell me you haven't got the ability to do that. It doesn't mean sitting at your computers doing a Facebook. That won't fix it. Think of Wisconsin. Think of Egypt. You've got to take over millions of you, your Congress. You own it. You're money-built. Those Congress people are your representatives. They're not your leaders. Have some guts and courage. How much do you love your children? If I tell her mother, her child has leukemia. She becomes a lioness to protect her cubs. She'll sell her house. She'll take the child to Germany or Mayo Clinic to get the very best treatment. And if the child dies, she never recovers. Use that love that you have inside you and you belly to save the children and all life. I'm going to leave it there with that passion plea.

I want to thank you, Dr. Helen Caldecott, and I want our audience to look for these books. If you have been provoked, intrigued, tantalized, scared, or fascinated by the things you've brought up, first I want to show this book, Nuclear Power is not the answer. And this is science. You have thousands of papers cited. There's nothing in here that isn't backed up, and I urge people who are concerned to start doing their own research with using this as a springboard, and then to end on a positive note. If you love this planet, a planet... We can stop global warming. One more thing. I commissioned this study, carbon-free, nuclear-free. We have enough renewable energy now, and it's cheap to supply all the energy American needs by 2040 with no carbon and no nuclear, and it's a very excellent, in-depth study. All we need is the politicians to stop being funded by the oil companies, the coal companies and the nuclear companies. I've got to stop being corporate prostitutes,

which is what they are. And if they're not, we have to kick them out. Well, this study downloaded at iER.org. Here's the answer. Sorry, abolish nuclear weapons, but close down all the reactors, and we... Why isn't New Mexico full of solar collectors? Why isn't every house a solar house? Right. Okay. Thank you so much, our guest, Dr. Helen Caldecott. Thank you. Clearly a woman without opinion. I thank you. I thank you for your passion. Thank you. And I hope our readers now... Our audience now does their work. Thank you, Laurie. So, I just wanted to thank our audience for being with us today on this very stimulating edition of Report from Santa Fe. I'm Lorraine Mills, and we'll see you next week. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education for bachelor's, and PhD degrees.

New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-TECH. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Taos, New Mexico. Thank you. You