OK, I'll bite.
Radiation emissions from civilian nuclear reactors are vast, continuous and covered up.
Evidence of this cover up?
A serious threat to all life arises from the very physical nature of radiation as it doesn't mysteriously disappear or get turned into heat. Instead, it accumulates into the environment.
This doesn't really make sense. Radiation can't accumulate, it is a short-lived phenomenon.
Radioactive material could certainly accumulate, but saying that radiation builds up makes no more sense than saying light builds up. In fact, a fair amount of radiation
is light.
I suspect this is down to misunderstanding (I'm being generous here) the concept that damage caused by radiation can build up. This is certainly true, which is why there are strict limits on how much radiation a person can be exposed to over certain periods of time. However, the radiation levels around nuclear plants are not any higher than normal background radiation, so that's not something to worry about.
Radiation dose we receive from natural sources has increased ten times since the pre-nuclear era.
Firstly, this is simply not true. Secondly, if it actually
were true, then surely we should be far more worried about whatever is causing this natural increase, rather than attacking nuclear power?
This is something everyone can observe and verify whether this is to be taken seriously. Sky is getting increasingly pink at sunset (or sunrise).
This is just bizarre.
The phenomenon is resulting from the global growth in ionizing radiation which in turn creates more ionization in the atmosphere.
No, it doesn't. The only part of the Earth's atmosphere that is significantly ionised is the aptly names
ionosphere. This is the very upper part of the atmosphere and is ionised mainly by radiation from the Sun, with some small contribution from cosmic rays. Any ionisation caused by radiation at ground level is utterly insignificant and neutralised almost immediately. In any case, this has exactly nothing to do with the colour of the sky.
Sky appears blue or the sunset yellow and red because of the oxygen and nitrogen molecules. They consist of two atoms and are just the right size to scatter the blue wavelength. Single atoms are too small to affect visible light when separated, and that is what ionization does. So more ionization, more blue is getting through in addition to yellow and red when the sun is shining from a low angle.
No. Just, no. The colour of the sky has absolutely nothing to do with ionisation. The colour is actually caused by
scattering of light. Short wavelengths of light (blue) are scattered more than longer wavelengths (red). This means that during the day, when light from the Sun comes straight down through the atmosphere, most of the red light takes a straight path, while blue light is scattered and appears to be coming from all directions. At sunrise and sunset, the light is coming at a low angle and passes through much more of the atmosphere, which means the red light is scattered as well and the sky appears red/yellow rather than just blue.
Importantly for the claim here, if this scattering did not occur, the whole sky would appear black and the only light would be directly from the Sun. Obviously if the claim that ionisation reduces scattering were correct, the effect would be apparent during the whole day, not just at sunrise and sunset, and would make the sky darker, not make "psychedelic tones" appear.
The present palette of colours has occurred before only with the maximum in solar activity which is not at hand earlier than the year 2012.
Solar activity varies over an
11 year cycle (technically the cycle in the Sun is 22 years, but the effects on Earth vary over 11 years), so maximums are actually quite common. The next maximum will probably be around 2010, although since the cycles are not entirely regular it is possible, but very unlikely, it could be as late as 2012. Note that the cycle was first discovered in 1843, rather too early for it to have anything to do with nuclear power.
The extra radiation load from utilizing nuclear power might be sufficient to collapse our protective system against the solar wind
There are two things that protect against the Solar wind. The main mechanism is the
Earth's magnetic field. Charged particles encountering the Earth's field are directed along the magnetic field lines and mostly become trapped in the
Van Allen belts, well above the atmosphere. When there are a particularly large number of particles reaching the Earth, some will manage to get through to the atmosphere causing
aurora. Due to the magnetic field, these occur in the upper atmosphere above the poles.
The other protective mechanism is simply the atmosphere. As previously noted, the ionosphere is the region of the upper atmosphere that absorbs a lot of the radiation from the Sun. By the time the Sun's light gets down to ground level, virtually all the ionising radiation has been absorbed.
Obviously, neither of these mechanisms can be in any way influenced by the presence of radiation on the Earth's surface, since they both act hundreds, or even thousands, of miles above the Earth.
but perhaps you are more familiar with the destruction in ozone layer. It is happening again altought the CFC-compounds have been banned for decades.
The ozone layer is actually involved with ultraviolet light. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the kind of radiation produced in nuclear power plants. As for the destruction continuing, that is partly true. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that CFCs are not the only compounds that damage the ozone layer, and there are many chemicals still in use that can also cause problems. The second is that CFCs are very long lived. Even though we have mostly stopped using them, there are still CFCs left floating around in the atmosphere from decades of use. The good news is that while the ozone layer does not seem to be recovering particularly quickly, it is at least
not getting worse any more.
Reddish glowing air above a nuclear power plants is called a beta-flare.
This is simply a lie. There is no reddish glowing air seen above nuclear plants, and no such thing as a beta-flare.
The energies involved in beta-flare are sufficient to kill birds mid-flight. Or bring down airplanes if they defy the restricted area.
Again, nonsensical lies. It's not even worth trying to address the mangled science attempted as an explanation, because it is obvious that this is just made up with no attempt to support the claim.
The amount of rainfall is dramatically decreased in the areas containing nuclear power. Even some 100 km radius can receive 30% less rain than it used to! It is shockin especially when the global warming should have increased rainfall the same amount.
Again, nonsense with no attempt to provide evidence in support. I will note, however, that global warming certainly does not predict that rainfall will increase everywhere by 30%. In fact, although predictions are not completely reliable, it is expected that global warming will result in severe droughts in many places. Australia and sub-Sarahan Africa, for example, are expected to face serious problems in the near future.
The mechanism is ionization which prevents the clouds from forming.
Far from preventing cloud forming, ionisation actually provides a nucleus for condensation and would be expected to
increase the formation of clouds. This principle has been used since the early 1900s in
cloud chamber particle detectors.
In the following video rain clouds literally disappear when they reach the vicinity of a nuclear power plant.
It may be interesting to note that the JREF Million Dollar Challenge
specifically excludes claims of cloud-busting for precisely this reason - you can imagine clouds to be doing just about anything you like if you watch them for long enough.
In a nuclear reactor every fission produces 2-3 neutrons but only one is needed to sustain the chain reaction. So it's evident that most of the neutrons escape into the environment.
That's not evident in the slightest. In fact, it's another lie. Firstly, the majority of the neutrons are absorbed by the fuel rods themselves. Virtually all kinds of power plant use uranium as part of a compound, so the majority of atoms in the fuel rod are not uranium. Even out of those atoms that are uranium, only a few percent are usually uranium-235, with the rest being non-fissile (meaning they don't take part in the nuclear reaction) uranium-238. In addition, the reaction is controlled by
control rods that are used to absorb excess neutrons.
As if that weren't all enough, the reactor core is enclosed in a
reactor vessel which will stop any un-absorbed neutrons. As noted in that article, only one kind of reactor actually has any significant radiation at the vessel. Finally, there will be a large containment vessel (usually the whole building) to prevent any release of radiation in an accident. This will be up to several metres of concrete, and will likely be built to withstand things such as aircraft crashes as well as an internal accident.
The only way radiation can get out of a nuclear plant is when old fuel rods, moderators and other working parts are removed for reprocessing. Nothing just leaks out.
The 30 year maximum operating time, however, derives from the fact that then the whole power plant structure along with the soil underneath becomes neutron-saturated
With regards to the structure itself, this is almost true. Over 30 years, a lot of the mechanisms within the reactor core will become irradiated. In the interests of safety, they must be shut down well before there is any chance of them failing due to damage, and since this effectively means dismantling and replacing a large portion of the core, it is easier and cheaper to decommission the whole thing rather than attempting to service it as you would a car.
However, claims that the whole structure or surrounding environment become irradiated are completely wrong, as explained above.
Neutron flux is hardly measured at all. Partly because they are hard to detect (as the speed varies from a floating stage to few kilometres per second).
Actually,
yes it is. Neutrons are not as easy to detect as some forms of radiation, but they're really not all that difficult. In fact, measuring neutron flux is one of the main ways of measuring the power output of a nuclear power plant.
They are moderated to travel under the escape velocity of earth (11 km/s) so they can't escape all the way to space as gravitation pulls them back.
Since all the neutrons are absorbed before they can even leave the reactor vessel, the escape velocity of Earth is utterly irrelevant. It's also worth noting that not all kinds of nuclear plants use moderated neutrons, some allow them to stay at high speeds.
The nucleus of every atom (expect basic Hydrogen) can get charged and carry this charge for a wide range of times.
This is just plain nonsense. All nuclei are always charged, including hydrogen.
Most of them are short but some are metastable in the sense that they need an another hit from gamma radiation to release their energy.
This charge is not visible to any measurement until it's discharged. So particles, even air itself, can contain energy that is released as a quantum of gamma or röntgen after they have found their way out from the power plant.
What this person is probably trying to talk about is exciting the nucleus of atom, not charging. However, excited nuclei tend to decay very quickly. A more sensible point to make here would be the transmutation of nuclei due to absorption of neutrons. In this situation, a perfectly stable and safe atom can become radioactive when hit by radiation. This is precisely why decommissioning nuclear plants is so tricky and expensive - as already noted, all the material becomes damaged and potentially radioactive due to radiation and must be looked after and disposed of very carefully. However, again as already noted, this stuff does not simply float around the place and escape from the plant during operation.
As for the idea of a "quantum of Rontgen", the
Rontgen is a unit of measurement. The phrase makes no more sense than saying a "quantum of kilogram". It should be noted that the Rontgen is an outdated unit and is no longer generally used.
As radiation is being artificially produced more than it escapes the earth, it's just a matter of time when the atmosphere will set on fire, burning nitrogen into carbon.
At this point I'm really not sure what to say other than what the ****? Even if every single thing said in the rest of the article were true, this is just plain nonsense. No matter how much radiation you release into the environment, you can't suddenly start nuclear fusion in the atmosphere. Not with hydrogen, and certainly not with heavier elements such as nitrogen.
To start with, nuclear reactions are extremely difficult to initiate for most elements. Even just "burning" hydrogen and helium requires the massive temperatures and pressures found in the centre of the Sun. The
production of heavier elements only happens in much bigger stars or when a smaller star has used up all of its hydrogen and helium fuel and collapses in on itself, creating temperatures and pressures extreme even for a star.
However, even under these conditions, it is carbon that is burned to produce nitrogen. The reaction just doesn't occur in the other direction because energy is not released that way around. And these reactions simply cannot occur in out atmosphere. We may one day be able to replicate them on small scales in a laboratory, but the extreme conditions required would mean we'd all be dead and the entire planet vapourised long before they could occur by accident.
It was speculated whether it would happen already with the first atomic test explosion.
This is almost true. It was not speculated that nitrogen would burn to carbon, since as explained above that is nonsense. However, at the time of the first atomic tests we understood much less about nuclear physics and some people did speculate about the possibility of a chain reaction occurring. As we can see, many nuclear bombs have now been set off, and that has rather obviously not happened.
And the bees? Added ionization alters the electromagnetic field bees use to navigate. They fly off too high and the colonies are getting lost.
As far as I am aware, bees navigate simply use their vision. Even if that were not the case, as has been explained in detail above, there is no effect of small amounts of radiation on the Earth's magnetic field. Unfortunately we still don't really know the cause of
colony collapse disorder. At the moment, the most likely explanation is that there is really no such thing, and that the decline in bees is the result of several unrelated factors in combination. Certainly no-one in any position to know what they are talking about has considered blaming radiation, because such a claim would be complete nonsense.
So, yeah. I can't really comment on whether the author actually believes some of what he says, but at least a portion is obviously deliberate lies, and all of it is complete nonsense. To be honest, I'm not really sure why I just went through and did that. You say that this guy has a fair amount of support, but I really struggle to think of a significant number of people being stupid enough to fall for this crap.
) which I will send to the guys themselves, as well as the subscribers of their "monthly newsletter". I personally know many of the people supporting this stuff, so I believe I can make my statement in a way that will benefit all sides. I don't think they're as crackpots as the website makes them look. I think they're just uneducated, worried silly, people who're trying to make a (in their view) positive difference. 
