Keeping it in perspective

The risks of nuclear radiation are not great

  • The Register reports that based on the Chernobyl accident, it appears that the only possible public danger comes from the radioactive isotope iodine-131. Children and young adults who ingested small amounts of this in milk during the weeks following the Chernobyl incident subsequently had a slightly enhanced risk of thyroid cancer.
  • Chernobyl released very large amounts of iodine-131 into the atmosphere. The IAEA estimates that some eighteen million young boys and girls across the region consumed dangerously contaminated milk as a result – milk containing iodine levels thousands of times higher than those seen now in Japan. The Register’s Lewis Page calculates that as a result, these youngsters’ chance of getting cancer increased from about 25 percent (the normal average for adults coming down with cancer) to 25.02 percent. Death rates did not rise correspondingly as thyroid cancer can normally be cured.
  • Only tiny amounts of iodine-131 have escaped in Fukushima, carried by cooling steam.
  • Moreover, iodine-131 has a half-life of only eight days, after which it declines to negligible levels.

Lewis Page concludes:

Barring some new and unforeseen event at the power plant, it seems clear that there will be no measurable radiological effects on anybody as a result of the quake and tsunami. Unfortunately the psychological consequences — almost entirely a result of fear-mongering and bad reporting in the media worldwide — seem set to be measurable. Mainstream media finally have some decent analysis here and there, but every minor development in the case is still reported on breathlessly, in a panic-stricken tone.

The question we should ask about nuclear power is not whether or not it has risks. Every mode of power generation comes with its own risks. Rather, the questions we should are: How do the risks of nuclear power measure relative to the risks of other power generation methods? Was the disaster in Japan proof that nuclear power plants are riskier than we thought – or did the disaster provide evidence for the opposite conclusions: aging plants absorbed unprecedented blows – a double whammy of an 8.9 earthquake, followed by a massive tsunami; a series of mistakes by plant operators – mistakes which came on top of years of wrong decisions about back-up systems and redundancy – and yet, the plants survived: there was no meltdown; there was but little release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Some would be moved to say this is a pretty good record under the circumstances.

 

When we take into account the fact that new reactor designs – we should mention just one feature: passive rather than active cooling systems – would make reactors much safer, then the rush to pass judgment about the viability and safety of nuclear power generation in the wake of Japan’s disaster does appear to be just that: a rush to judgment.

2. The UN in perspective: Pull the plug on the UNHRC

Let’s see:

  • Colonel Gaddafi’s forces are shooting at hospitals and schools, and his snipers are taking down civilians in rebel-controlled areas one by one.
  • Syrian security forces have been using live fire – and help from Hezbollah – in an on-going attempt to suppress anti-regime demonstrations in the southern parts of the country. So far this week, between 100 and 150 civilians have been killed
  • China is continuing its ghoulish practice of executing people for a host of minor offenses to harvest internal organs: For instance, you can get sentenced to death for cheating on your taxes. Even after you get sentenced, you do not get executed right away. Rather, the authorities circulate a list of your organs to hospitals around the country – and when a hospital reports to the prison that there is a patient for whom the convicted man’s (or woman’s) organs would be suitable, the prisoner is rushed to the prison’s yard, get shot in the head, and his organs harvested and shipped to the hospital.
  • Iran continues to execute homosexuals. It recently hanged – publically – two teenagers, one eighteen the other sixteen, accused of being gay lovers.
  • Have we mentioned the continuing maltreatment of the Tamils by the Sri Lankan government? The continuing heavy-handed treatment of the Chechens by the Russians? The Chinese suppression of Tibet?

We could have filled pages listing human rights abuses, but the list would not make too much of an impression on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC)– especially since many of the atrocities are committed by members of the council m(here is a short list: Angola, Burkina Faso, Libya, Mauritania, Nigeria, China, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba).

As the council wraps up its sixteenth session Thursday and Friday, it is set to pass thirty-eight resolutions, out of which fourteen deal with individual countries.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the fourteen resolutions dealing with individual countries break down this way:

  • UNHRC is expected to pass resolutions criticizing human rights in:
    • Myanmar
    • North Korea
    • and Cote d’Ivoire
  • The council also has resolutions dealing with change in:
    • Burundi
    • Tunisia
    • the Republic of Congo
    • and the Republic of Guinea
    • Regarding Iran, the council will pass a short resolution which calls for the creation of a special rapporteur to look at the situation of human rights. It does not condemn any human rights violations in that country.

The list above contains eight resolutions – but we said the UNHRC is set to pass fourteen resolutions referring to specific countries. Which countries are we talking about?

 

Only one country – Israel. The council will issue six resolutions targeting Israel:

  • one resolution is on the Golan Heights
  • another on last May’s Gaza flotilla incident
  • a third on the Palestinian right to self-determination
  • two resolutions deal with the Israeli presence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem
  • and the sixth is a resolution based on the work of the panel which monitors Israeli compliance with the 2009 fact-finding mission into Operation Cast Lead, otherwise known as the Goldstone Commission.

Four of the resolutions speak of illegal Israeli activity and human rights violations.

The Post reports that within the resolution on the Goldstone Report on Gaza is a call by the UNHRC for the General Assembly to reconsider that report, which strongly attacks Israeli for grave human rights violations and possible war crimes, during its 2011 session.

It asks that the General Assembly refer the Goldstone Report to the Security Council for further action.

Additionally, it asks that the Security Council consider referring the situation in the “occupied Palestinian territories” to the International Criminal Court.

The nongovernmental group UN Watch, which monitors the Human Rights Council’s activity, says that prior to its sixteenth session, the council had approved fifty-one resolutions dealing with individual countries, out of which thirty-five were about Israel.

Israel is not, and should not, be immune from criticism. Its forty-year policy of settling Israelis on Palestinian lands in the West Bank and, until 2005, in the Gaza Strip, has been, and is, a blunder of monumental proportions. The occupation and settlement policies are a strategic, economic, political, and moral mistake which distort the country’s development priorities, weaken the Israeli military, isolate Israel diplomatically, and make it impossible to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world.

That being said, the UN Human Rights Council wants us to believe that 69 percent (thirty-five out of fifty-one) of the world’s human rights problem requiring the UN attention are the result of Israel’s actions.

The proper response to this bizarre contention is: hogwash.

The UNHRC was created in 2006, after the previous organization – the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) – was disbanded by the UN for being too anti-Israel.

It is now time to pull the plug on the UNHRC and send the sorry lot packing. To save itself some work, the UN bureaucracy may use the very same paper work it used in 2006, and list the very same reasons, for explaining why the CHR successor is now being disbanded. All they have to do is change the date on the letterhead.

If the UN does not disband this corrupt outfit, then the United States should give up its membership and leave the organization, as it did under President George W. Bush. The Obama administration had rejoined the UNHRC in the hope of curing the organization’s pathological obsession with Israel, but after two years it is clear that the administration has failed.

If the administration refuses to abandon the commission, Congress should move to cut the U.S. contribution to the UN by the amount of money from that contribution that the UN allocates to the HRC. That American tax payers should continue to fund this travesty is unseemly.

Ben Frankel is editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire