Loading ...…and it is time to end the ban on reprocessing nuclear fuel . Thorium exposed to neutrons – particularly slow neutrons as in CANDU heavy water systems can be a source of fissile uranium as a daughter product . Uranium fuel can be reprocessed to harvest plutonium to enrich thorium fuel .
I have worked in tobacco fields as a primer ( picking prime ripe leaves to be dried for cigar production ) and got tobacco poisoning ( similar to poison ivy ) – a possible precursor to skin cancer .
I have worked in the chemical industry where I was exposed to benzene , was gassed by a chlorine gas release , and have spent days on end scooping sludge out of a huge water tank , which yielded over 10 one hundred gallon drums of mercury .
I have worked in nuclear plants on four continents , and was at one time the only person in the world at the time scraping crud from spent nuclear fuel bundles at several US plants . Some of filtered samples would peg a G-M meter on the highest range setting , yet I held them briefly in my hand to load them into a lead cask ; and can honestly say my nuclear experience was the safest industry I have worked in.