Learning About Energy

Some Facts About Radiation

God’s good green earth was created out of the radioactive waste products of the great nuclear reactions that spawned the galaxies and the planets. Life arose out of, and adapted to, a much higher level of natural radiation than exists today. Nuclear radiation (ionizing radiation: alpha, beta and gamma radiation) is essential to Life; without it, organisms wither and die.

Despite all the radioactive material we create, this radioactivity is nowhere near enough to keep up with the decay of the earth’s natural radioactivity, which becomes inexorably smaller every day. Thus, most populations today are “under-dosed” and would benefit from more irradiation in the range of interest. The argument that humanity can only be harmed in some way by such radiation is simply untrue. There is no scientific basis for such a claim.

Just as we no longer have to wait for lightning to strike a tree in order to make use of fire, we have learned to produce some types of nuclear radiation “artificially.” The claim that “human-made” radiation is somehow more harmful, or should be minimized because it can be, is also an argument without merit. Neither the organism being irradiated, nor the instrument measuring the amount of radiation, can distinguish between “natural” and “human-made” radiation.

This brings us to the acronym “LNT,” which stands for “linear, no threshold.” This term was invented to describe what was intended to be a conservative model of radiation damage that could be used for regulation of radiation protection. It was observed that at high radiation levels, the damage to organisms was linear: double the radiation dose and you double the damage to the irradiated organism. So, the argument went, if we assume for regulatory purposes, that this linear relationship of radiation dose to organism damage continues all the way down to zero radiation dose, then we should have a conservative premise for radiation protection.

No one claimed the LNT model represented scientific reality; in fact, its defenders called that possibility “vanishingly small.” It was merely said to be “conservative.” So we must examine what “conservative” means in this context. Consider an example: Werner Heisenberg, arguably one of the best analytical minds in human history, reportedly did a calculation in his head shortly after he learned about the discovery of nuclear fission. He concluded, conservatively, that to make a single fission bomb would require a large number of tons of pure U-235, and therefore a program like the US Manhattan Project could not be successful. That answer is not “conservative.” It is simply wrong. As a result, Nazi Germany never undertook a serious atomic bomb program.

In a world in which natural radiation was a large and highly variable reality, how did phobic fear of radiation become such an overwhelming issue? That is a subject involving many overlapping stories, each with its own organizations, incentives and problems. And there are other forces at work that continue to play a part. I will touch on several of them.

First, the weapon. The desire to characterize any new weapon as uniquely and unprecedentedly fearful is natural and understandable. In the A-bomb case, both sides had an additional incentive to give the Japanese, who had sworn to fight to the last man, an excuse to surrender. No mere mortal could be expected to fight bare-handed against the force that held together the very fabric of the universe. And so, the Emperor stepped in, and the idea of nuclear being uniquely fearsome was promoted.

Then, MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. The fragile peace was sustained by repeatedly scaling up the hypothetical scenarios of destruction of civilization and desolation of cities and farmlands that would supposedly result if either side dared initiate military action against the other. The fear of radiation, and its postulated potential for irrevocably fouling the human gene pool – and perhaps of all Life itself! – was repeatedly nurtured and expanded.

Fallout from weapons tests threatened the environment.  Could power plants do the same? Earth Day became an anti-nuclear focus. Fear of spreading nuclear weapons technology became an anti-nuclear-power argument. In 1982, U.S. nuclear weapons labs developed scenarios for hundreds of thousands of deaths from hypothetical meltdown accidents in nuclear power plants, even though TMI had shown that meltdown presented negligible public hazard. Anti-war arguments led to anti-nuclear power concerns. The nuclear community itself did little to refute these fears; in fact, the anti-nuke rhetoric was answered by description of the many PRAs (probabilistic risk assessments) being undertaken, which had the understandable effect of strengthening the concerns that led to such studies. Thus, the nuclear community contributed significantly to its own fearsome image.

While all these terrible problems were being studied in the analytical laboratories, what was happening to the real nuclear power plants out in the hard and unpredictable world? Let us look at some examples:

1. Naval Reactors Radiological Data: 1954-Present. The Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion, four-star Admiral Kirkland H. Donald (USN), has made available for the first time, all relevant radiological data on the more than 200,000 persons exposed to radiation and handling radioactivity in connection with their duty in various aspects of the naval nuclear propulsion program. Each year’s reports accumulate and update the data from previous reports, so there is a continuous record from initial operations in 1954 of the Nautilus prototype reactor, to the date of the latest report, March 2011. This information has always been available to the Congress and other organizations with demonstrated need to know, but was tightly controlled by Naval Reactors. It is now available on a virtually unrestricted basis.

The annual Naval Reactors Reports summarize the history and current status of the various components of the NR Program, its submarines, surface ships, R&D and support labs, nuclear component procurement, nuclear equipment suppliers, shipyards, support facilities and tenders, schools and training facilities, and headquarters. It lists the basic data for each of the 231 nuclear powered ships authorized by Congress, and adds some interesting statistics. The Navy has built 220 of these ships so far, and they have steamed over 145,000,000 miles, with no significant radiological incidents, no radiation deaths or injuries, and no detrimental environmental impact. The 103 naval reactors currently in operation make about 45% of the combat fleet nuclear-powered.

With refuelings, the Navy has operated 528 reactor cores, but current reactors are designed to operate for a lifetime of 30 years or a million miles, without refueling, retaining the “nuclear waste” in the interstices of the fuel (giving an indication of the trivial magnitude of the much-touted “nuclear waste problem” in existing pressurized water reactors.)

One of the Naval Reactors’ series of unclassified handbooks on nuclear technology of interest is the Reactor Shielding Design Manual, published in 1956 by the Office of Technology Services, Department of Commerce, U.S. Government. Commerial editions were then published by McGraw-Hill and VanNostrand, and a Russian language edition by the USSR Ministry of Culture. After several printings of each, these editions all sold out, and poor photo-copies of the American edition were selling for up to several hundred dollars each. So the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has now made down-loadable copies available free at: http://www.osti.gov/bridge/purl.cover.jsp?purl=/4360248-Cr40J8/

This 465-page basic textbook shows how permissible radiation levels were determined and how they were applied to design; how the designs were tested; properties of different shielding materials, including stability under irradiation; and other information of use to radiation protection technology.

2. Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants.  A case can be made that if the Fukushima operators had focused on protecting the reactor and the fuel pools, rather than trying to minimize collective radiation dose, they might have been able to prevent the release of significant quantities of radioactivity.  But that question is moot, and it is more useful to examine the events that did in fact occur. Even with all the radioactivity released, not a single lasting radiation injury occurred. Not one! This includes the dedicated operators who worked in the dark to get the plants shut down and secured in a safe condition. These operators were characterized as a “suicide squad” and are under a cancer scrutiny that might actually worry them into a medical problem. But the fact is, that the radiation doses they received are well within the beneficial range.

The radiation levels in the business and living areas around Fukushima are not particularly high. There are many areas of the world where people live happily and healthily in natural radiation levels many times higher. If radiation protection policy had been set as other protection standards are set – as high as safely tolerable – then radiation would hardly be mentioned in connection with recovery efforts. In fact, the lack of electricity to provide light and heat, run elevators, pump gasoline for cars, and perform countless other functions was a more real problem than radiation during the first weeks and months after the tsunami struck. Yet radiation is still cited as the reason workers and their families can’t return to their homes and productive life.

The measured radiation levels are not the controlling factor. Many of the radiation protection criteria are set far below any reasonable limit. The extra factor of 100 set for children defies the data showing that children are more resistant than adults to radiation damage, not less so. And children are more damaged by forced, unwilling separation from home, friends, and school.

With regard to decontamination, can the soil safely remain as radioactive as, say the soil in Colorado, India, Brazil, or Iran, where the uranium and its decay products run high, and the cancer rates are well below average?

3. U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plants

We don’t have to speculate about health effects from possible slight increases in radiation levels around nuclear power plants. The Naval Reactors Reports describe a closely monitored population of nearly a quarter of a million people, over a period of two human generations, who live for years within 100 meters of a nuclear power plant. These people wear individual personal radiation dosimeters and have follow-up physical exams and detailed record-keeping. There is no longer any excuse for basing U.S. radiation policy for commercial nuclear power plants on the “Gold Standard” of estimated exposures of unmonitored Japanese A-bomb survivors – a demographically different population exposed to a radically different radiation experience. The best nuclear worker study is the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Shipyard Workers Study, This thirteen-year occupational study of the health effects of low-dose radiation was performed by the Johns Hopkins Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health and Hygiene, reported to the Department of Energy in 1991 and in UNSCEAR 1994. Professor Arthur C. Upton, former Director, National Cancer Institute, chaired the Technical Advisory Panel that advised on the research and reviewed results.

The results of the study contradict the LNT hypothesis. From the database of almost 700,000 shipyard workers, including about 107,000 nuclear workers, two closely matched study groups were selected, consisting of 28,542 nuclear workers with working lifetime doses over 5 mSv (many received doses well in excess of 50 mSv), and 33,352 non-nuclear workers. The data showed that the nuclear workers had a significantly lower death rate from “all malignant neoplasms” though this fact was omitted from the Summary of Findings and not reported in UNSCEAR 1994.

These risk decrements are inconsistent with the LNT hypothesis and do not appear to be explainable by the constantly invoked “healthy worker effect.” The nuclear and the non-nuclear workers were similarly selected for employment, were afforded the same health care thereafter, and except for exposure to shipyard radiation, performed the identical type of work, with a similar median age of entry into employment of about 34 years. This provides evidence with extremely high statistical power that low levels of ionizing radiation are associated with decreased risks.

The 10 million dollar 437 page report was not published. An inquiry to DOE elicited the response, “It wasn’t in the contract.” The report was never submitted to a scientific journal for peer review and publication, as is usual for such reports, though the unpublished report is now in the public domain. This study with internal comparison of nuclear workers with carefully matched non-nuclear workers was designed by the technical advisory panel to eliminate any “healthy worker effect” from the comparison. The non-nuclear workers did not demonstrate “healthy worker effect.”

Nevertheless, the September 1991 DOE press release misleadingly states, “The results of this study indicate that the risk of death from all causes for radiation-exposed workers was much lower than that for U.S. males. These results are consistent with other [sic] studies showing that worker populations tend to have lower mortality rates than the general population because workers must be healthy to be hired, and must remain healthy to continue their employment."

4. Conclusion These are but a few examples of the nuclear community’s repeated efforts to exaggerate the dangers associated with any form of nuclear technology. Some of these efforts originate outside the nuclear community, and can be explained as “bad-mouthing the competition.” But most of the stories follow the tone set by Alvin Weinberg’s characterization of nuclear technology as “a Faustian bargain,” a basically diabolical enterprise. Weinberg justified this model as necessary to scare people into upholding a level of quality control otherwise unattainable. But I find that its main consequence has been to hold off applying engineering solutions as inadequate by definition, allowing scientists more time to think of wholly new, untried solutions.

That is just the opposite of the Rickover approach of setting highly conservative radiation specifications, then starting to build reactor plants, tackling each problem as it arises. That is a primary difference between science and engineering.

For over 100 years, the science has been clear and unambiguous: Low-dose radiation in the range of interest is beneficial, not harmful, and repeated attempts by regulators to hide or deny this fact are indefensible scientifically. The relevant scientific organizations have made this position part of their public policy. The extensive report published in connection with the 2012 ANS President’s Special Plenary summarizes the scientific knowledge on low-dose radiation effects. Regulators owe deference to this fact. Distortion of the science for political purposes is not only harmful to the advancement of nuclear technology; it is harmful to the public health and should no longer be tolerated.

Unable to See the Obvious

 

I don't understand why nuclear people are so concerned about claiming hormesis.  The rest of the world has already pretty much accepted it.  Toxicologists fight with nutritionists over how much selenium we should have.  Too much can be fatal, but a small amount is beneficial.  Today, for instance, I came across the following article on contaminants in food in "The Scientist":

"It should also be noted that all substances are poisons; only the dose differentiates the poison from a remedy. This concept was developed by Paracelsus, a medical doctor in Europe in the 16th century, and it is useful in evaluating risk in our daily lives by considering examples of well-known substances with low and high toxicity consumed today. For example,  water might be considered one of the least toxic substances that we commonly encounter. However, there are many reports of water toxicity in the scientific literature. Too much water can, indeed, be fatal... Even well known carcinogens, such as arsenic or nicotine, are only harmful if exposure is high enough."

So, I respectfully suggest that we stop trying to shield people from a truth that most people have already accepted:

It is possible to get too much radiation, whether sunshine or ionizing radiation, but it's a proven fact that most people would benefit from more radiation in the range of interest.

 

Protecting Us From the Truth

A Brief History

 

The first Environmental Impact Statement for a nuclear power plant was for Calvert Cliffs.  Norm Frigerio started gathering cancer data and natural radiation background levels, as required under the law.  When it became clear that the cancer rate was inversely proportional to the radiation level (more radiation, less cancer) someone decided that this information was unwelcome, and canceled Frigerio’s project.  The report was never published.  Why?

In early 1997, when the Washington Post hired a new environmental reporter named Joby Warrick, I brought him over to my house and spent several hours showing him data on our radioactive, hormetic earth.  He wrote a major article, cited on page 1, describing how participants in open-air nuclear weapons test were outliving their unirradiated companions, nuclear shipyard workers had lower cancer rates than non-nuclear workers, etc.  His article received great international attention, and we planned further pieces.  But then he failed to return my calls, and started writing page-one anti-nuclear pieces, for which he ultimately won a Pulitzer prize.  Why this reversal of the truth?

When Ted Quinn was outgoing ANS President and Andy Kadak was incoming, they and I and others carefully worked out a new ANS Position Statement on low-dose radiation and LNT.  After sending it in to ANS HQ to be published, strongly warning that not a word should be changed, it was canceled without explanation.  We were told merely that others had to be satisfied, but these others were never named, nor required to state their case.  What truth were we being protected from, and why?

Cohen’s radon data are discounted because of generic limitations of epidemiological studies, though in practice, these concerns are not applicable to his specific case.  But, we are told that the only really reliable type of evidence is case-control studies where individuals are followed to their death.  So Otto Raabe gives us a solid population of radium dial painters whose individual body burdens of radium has been measured.  Immediately, funding to follow these individuals further is canceled.  Why is this data not welcome?

Now, today, I am being told that we dare not tell people about hormesis, even though no knowledgeable scientist I know would argue against it.  Why do we try to hide this open secret?  I don’t find, in talking with people in various circumstances, that they find this concept hard to understand or hard to accept.  We can’t stop people from looking at the data, though we seem to be trying awfully hard.  Google will tell anyone who asks that natural radiation levels are high in mountain resorts, where the cancer level is low.  Radon spas brag about their high radioactivity and many governments pay for their hormetic effects.  How long can we hide such information?  Why would we want to?

 

Ted Rockwell

 

 

 

 

Radiation Victims are Not Black Swans

An increasingly used anti-nuclear argument claims “it is impossible to prove the non-existence of something,” therefore we can’t be sure that low-dose radiation is harmless.  Some day we may discover victims of low-dose radiation, just as we one day discovered the existence of black swans – lots of them (in Australia).  We may find circumstances under which irradiated people – perhaps lots of them – are injured by radiation.  So the prudent course, the argument goes, is to assume for regulatory purposes, that radiation is harmful all the way down to zero dose.

 

But this argument is phony.  There is no “non-existence of evidence.”  The evidence that low-dose radiation is harmless or beneficial is all around us.  James Muckerheide wrote a report with the self-explanatory title: “There Has Never Been a Time That the Beneficial Effects of Low-Dose Radiation Were Not Known.”  He documents that over a century ago, during the first decades after the discovery of x-rays, radium, and radioactivity, the beneficial effects were explicitly understood and reported.  The phenomenon of a substance or a process being harmful at high levels and beneficial at low levels is nearly universal and is called “hormesis.”  We see it with sunshine, vaccination, exercise, and other forms of challenging our bodies.  So we were taught “Moderation in all things” and we avoid extremes.

In 1980 and in 1991, T.D, Luckey published two landmark volumes: “Hormesis with Ionizing Radiation,” and “Radiation Hormesis," CRC Press.  With over a thousand references each, these books struck a chord with several Japanese scientists, and they began doing experiments with mice, and then clinical work with humans, demonstrating the beneficial effects of full-body and half-body irradiation for curing cancer.

Decrying the fear-mongers, Rosalyn Yalow, Nobel Laureate in Medicine, asserted:

No reproducible evidence exists of harmful effects from increases in background radiation three to ten times the usual levels. There is no increase in leukemia or other cancers among American participants in nuclear testing, no increase in leukemia or thyroid cancer among medical patients receiving I-131 for diagnosis or treatment of hyperthyroidism, and no increase in lung cancer among non-smokers exposed to increased radon in the home. The association of radiation with the atomic bomb and with excessive regulatory and health physics ALARA practices has created a climate of fear about the dangers of radiation at any level. However there is no evidence that radiation exposures at the levels equivalent to medical usage are harmful. The unjustified excessive concern with radiation at any level, however, precludes beneficial uses of radiation and radioactivity in medicine, science and industry. (Mayo Clinic Proc  69:436-440, 1994)

Hugh F. Henry at Oak Ridge summarized the low dose data in the Journal of the American Medical Association: (JAMA176, 27 May 1961)

A significant and growing amount of experimental information indicates that the overall effects of chronic exposure (at low levels) are not harmful…The preponderance of data better supports the hypothesis that low chronic exposures result in an increased longevity… Increased vitality at low exposures to materials that are markedly toxic at high exposures is a well-recognized phenomenon.  

 

The legendary Lauriston S. Taylor, chair of the first radiation protection societies, stated:

“Today, we know about all we need to know to adequately protect ourselves from ionizing radiation... No one has been identifiably injured by radiation while working within the first numerical standards set first by the NCRP and then the ICRP in 1934 [about 35-fold higher radiation level than the present recommendations]. Let us stop arguing about the people who are being injured by exposures to radiation at the levels far below those where any effects can be found. The fact is, the effects are not found despite over [75] years of trying to find them. The theories about people being injured have still not led to the demonstration of injury and, if considered as facts by some, must only be looked upon as figments of the imagination.” Taylor, L.S. “Some Non-Scientific Influences on Radiation Protection Standards and Practice,” Health Physics, 39 851-874 (1980)

                                          ___________________________

The Strange Story of Radon                 

In the environmental movement of the early 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency was formed to stop technological Man from bulldozing the Garden of Eden.  As the 1980s dawned, some scientists began to point out that in its zeal to eliminate all traces of radioactivity, EPA was now requiring nuclear power plants, nuclear medical facilities and industries using radiation, to monitor, control, and reduce radiation levels below the natural background radiation people were exposed to in their own homes from radon, a natural decay product of uranium.  When forced to face this inconsistency, EPA performed a remarkable turnabout: Instead of admitting that its radiation protection standards were unrealistic, EPA announced it would regulate Nature.  The environment, so poignantly portrayed as the innocent victim, was now to be seen as a merciless, silent killer. 

Thousands of radon detectors were issued to school-children, who were told to measure the threat and to pressure their parents to do something about it.  On February 19,1998, the National Research Council announced in report BEIR-VI that radon in homes causes 15,400 to 21,800 deaths each year in America, despite the fact that no evidence has ever directly demonstrated that radon in homes is harmful. The report noted that about 90% of the deaths attributed to radon occurred in smokers, and “most of the radon-related deaths among smokers would not have occurred if the victims had not smoked.” One reporter noted, “Only an EPA analyst would assume smokers begin smoking at birth.”

In the mid 1980s EPA began issuing pamphlets warning against the “colorless, odorless killer,” and running TV ads showing a typical American family sitting happily in their living-room while a dire warning is intoned against funereal background music.  The skit ends as the parents, then the children, and finally the dog, turn to skeletons.  The predicted annual death rate from radon was said to equal the death rate from automobile accidents.

There is actually a great deal of good data on radium and radon in homes. The most extensive and the most thoroughly analyzed is a series of measurements and calculations by the late Dr. Bernard L. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Pittsburgh.  Prof. Cohen supervised the measurement of radon levels in about 350,000 American homes and compared the radon levels, county by county, with the lung cancer mortality in each county (since lung cancer is the only potential health effect that radon might cause).  Cohen surveyed nearly 2000 counties housing more than 90% of the U.S. population and therefore has excellent statistical precision. He found exactly the opposite of what he and the EPA expected.  He found that the counties with the highest radon levels had the lowest lung cancer mortality and those with the lowest radon had the highest lung cancer.  He then turned off his radon-removal system.

The first figure below shows EPA’s basis for its conclusions.  The tall vertical lines show the uncertainty of each of the data points.  The second graph shows Cohen’s data, with much less uncertainty because of the large amount of data he amassed.  EPA's data is miners; Cohen's is people in their homes.  Which data do you find most convincing?

 

 

Nuclear Warships Prove Effective in Battle

Nuclear Warships Prove Effective in Battle

 

U.S. nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers have participated in many important military operations.  Details of these operations are necessarily classified, but some declassified statistics reported in the 2011 Naval Reactors report demonstrate the battlefield effectiveness of nuclear-powered ships.  The nuclear aircraft carrier “Enterprise arrived within striking distance of Afghanistan within 11 hours” after getting the news of the 9/11 strike on the twin towers of New York.  In Operation Enduring Freedom, over 70% of all precision strike missions flown into landlocked Afghanistan were launched from Navy nuclear aircraft carriers and about a third of all Tomahawk precision missile strikes were launched from nuclear-powered submarines.” 

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, nuclear-powered submarines accounted for about a third of the more than 800 Tomahawk missiles launched against Saddam  Hussein's regime, and nearly 8000 combat and support sorties had been from nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.”

This is just a few examples from one report, which concluded by noting the impressive work of the nuclear carrier USS Ronald Reagan in providing support and rescue work to the people impacted by the earthquakes and tsunami in the Fukushima area of Japan.

 

China to Drop Solar & Wind to Focus on Nuclear Power

In a government report published March 5, 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced that China will "put an end to blind expansion in industries such as solar energy and wind power in 2012."

The most interesting part of the report to me was the last two sentences, that deserve careful reading, in view of some of the glowing promises and predictions that have been written about solar and wind during the past several decades.  A great deal of important information is revealed in just these few words:

"The operating hours of wind power generating units plunged by 144 hours in 2011, despite an increase of 48% in on-grid wind power output."

"The operating hours of solar power generating units also declined, in spite of the tripling of installed capacity of solar PV power."

How about THAT?!

Ted Rockwell

Windpower Can Not Add to Our Energy Supply

There is a lot of chatter about how fast windpower is growing.  We're told that windpower is the fastest growing source of electricity, and that we could live on nothing but breezes and sunshine forever, if we really wanted to.  

But let’s not get so involved in the various specifics as to lose the basic truth here: windpower needs spinning backup, ready to leap in at any instant.  Therefore, the only way that windpower can sell electricity is to replace a source that was already reliably doing the job, and make that reliable source less efficient.  This is true whether that reliable source is coal, gas, hydro or nuclear.  Windpower can never add to our energy supply.

DON'T CENSOR THE INTERNET!

I'm not smart enough to figure out how to shut down my site for a day, but let me just say here:  IT IS ESSENTIAL TO THE BASIC CONCEPT OF THE INTERNET THAT IT NOT BE CENSORED OR INTERFERED WITH BY ANY OUTSIDE AUTHORITY.  

This is the citizen's last chance to communicate freely.  It must not be abridged!

 

Ted Rockwell

The 

How Are Permissible Radiation Limits Set?

[This is an up-date on some previous discussions we've had here]

How Much Is Science, How Much “Prudence”?

U.S. Regulatory Report NCRP-136 examined the question of establishing  permissible radiation limits.  After looking at the data, it concluded that most people who get a small dose of nuclear radiation are not harmed by it, and in fact are benefited.  That’s what the science said:  Most people would benefit by receiving more radiation. 

But curiously, the report’s final conclusion was just the opposite.  It recommended that our regulations should be based on the premise that any amount of radiation, no matter how small, should be considered harmful.  It made that recommendation just to be “conservative” or “prudent.”

Let’s think about that.  Why is it prudent do just the opposite of what the science indicates?  Why is exaggerating a panicky situation considered prudent?  I’ve never seen a good answer to that question.  Whatever the reasoning, that’s where we’ve ended up.

We’ve had three uncontrolled releases of radioactivity from serious malfunctions of nuclear power plants: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima.  In each of these, fear of radiation proved to be much more harmful than the effects of radiation itself.  And announcing that no amount of radiation is small enough to be harmless was certainly effective in creating and nurturing phobic fear of radiation, when none was justified by the facts.

In addition, the problem is aggravated by the fact that we’ve been told for sixty years (two human generations) that nuclear terror is infinitely more dreadful than any non-nuclear threat, particularly when you blur the distinction between power plants and bombs.

But what Fukushima tells us is that this abstract, academic position looks very different when you’re telling people they can’t go home – perhaps for years, because, well, it seems more prudent that way, even though radiation hasn’t actually hurt anyone there.

Radiation expert Professor Wade Allison, author of “Radiation and Reason,” has cast the question in a new light.  He suggests, let’s set the permissible radiation limit the same way we set all other safety limits.  Not by asking how little radiation we can get by with, but how much can we safely permit?  There’s no intention of lowering the safety margin, and it will not be lowered.  That’s not the issue.  It’s a matter of working with the scientific data, rather than from a generic fear not supported by the science.

Prof. Allison concludes that setting the permissible radiation limit, with a good margin of safety, results in an annual permissible level about 1000 times the current figure.

To see a brief video of Prof. Allison’s talk to the Japanese people, click on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj8Pl1AiOuA&feature=youtu.be

 

Ted Rockwell

A Plea for Common Sense on Fukushima

 

New lessons are beginning to emerge from Fukushima.  Each new concern leads to additional safety requirements.  But some contradictions are beginning to raise questions:  Amid tens of thousands of deaths from non-nuclear causes, not a single life-shortening radiation injury has occurred.  Not one!  And while some people in the housing area are wearing cumbersome rad-con suits, filtered gas-masks, gloves and booties, there are many people living carefree in other places like Norway, Brazil, Iran, India where folks have lived normal lives for countless generations with radiation levels as much as a hundred times greater than forbidden areas of the Fukushima homes.

At Fukushima this is no abstract issue.  People are being told they cannot return home for an indeterminate period – perhaps years.  And efforts to decontaminate their home sites may require stripping off all the rich top-soil and calling it RadWaste.  People who were evacuated have been reduced to economic poverty, clinical depression, and even suicide.

There is good scientific evidence that, except for some hot spots, the radiation levels at these home-sites are not life-threatening.  The current restrictions are based on a desire to be “conservative.”  No matter how well intended, this “conservatism” is cruelly destructive.  The respected radiation authority Wade Allison, author of Radiation and Reason, has proposed that the current annual radiation dose limit be raised 1000-fold, which he says is still well below the hazard level of clinical data on which he bases his proposal.  Other radiation protectionists are beginning to feel unhappy about the harm their rules have caused and are joining in the cry for quick action as the Japanese head into winter.

It’s time that the draconian measures be revoked.  A simple declaration of the known health facts about radiation from the proper authorities would be a good first step.

      Ted Rockwell

The Nuclear Power Safety Record

As of March 2011, U.S. Naval Reactors have run 6300 reactor-years, driving 528 reactor cores on 220 ships over 145,000,000 miles without a single radiological incident  or injurious radiation exposure to crew or public.  Because of the shielding from the hull and the seawater, crews at sea generally get less radiation, living within 100 meters of an operating nuclear reactor, than their families at home.  All of the radiological information about the ships and associated shore facilities is released to the public in documents in which the detailed data are accumulated without a break since 1954.

With respect to the international nuclear power industry at large, John Ritch, the Director-General of the World Nuclear Association, made the following statement to the science editor of station NDTV on 24 October 2011:  “Perhaps I would think this problem is more serious if we had been besieged by many large fatality accidents in nuclear power. But I think I am correct in saying that in fourteen thousand five hundred reactor-years of civil nuclear power production we have not seen a fatality apart from the limited number of deaths that occurred as a result of the Chernobyl accident...Very few industries have produced such beneficial results with such an extremely low toll of damage to the environment or the public.  This industry has an amazing record of safe performance and beneficial contribution. That basic fact is much too little appreciated by the public.”

During the same period, the following non-nuclear accidents occurred:

Banqiao Dam Failure:  One of 62 hydroelectric dams in Zhumadian Prefecture in China that failed catastrophically or were intentionally destroyed in 1975 during Typhoon Nina.  An estimated 172,000 people were killed, 11 million people lost their homes, and about one-third of the electric power capacity of the national grid was destroyed.  The resulting damage to the farmland is not reported.

Bhopal Pesticide Factory Release:  A leak of methyl isocyonate gas from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India in 1984 led to 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary and partial, and 3900 severely and permanently injured.  An estimated 3000 died within weeks and another 8000 have since died from the incident.  Some believe these official estimates grossly understate the situation.

Deaths from Coal:  From coal’s air pollution alone, there have been 30,000 deaths per year in the US, 500,000 per year in China.  These figures do not include deaths of coals miners, the destruction of stream beds destroyed by pushing mountain-tops into stream beds, the effect of mercury and other toxins on fish, etc.

BP Oil Spill:  The environmental and health impact of this event has not been estimated.  And there are many other spills that have received little attention.

The fact is that it is simply not true that nuclear radiation is uniquely hazardous, even when totally uncontrolled releases occasionally occur.

Another fact is that unwarranted fear of harmless levels of radiation has caused unprecedented damage.  People are afraid to return to their homes and businesses.  They’ve terrified themselves, their friends and their children.  The health effect of such widely enforced terrorism is itself devastating.  The effect on the economy is paralyzing.  

In Fukushima, amid thousands of non-nuclear deaths, international investigation under IAEA concluded:

"To date no health effects have been reported in any person
as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident"

But the Government is concerned about letting people return to their homes.

There is no defensible scientific basis for discouraging people from living where radiation levels are “high,” when they are still lower than the highest natural radiation levels in Iran, Brazil, Norway, India, China and other regions where people have dwelt healthfully for countless generations with backgrounds hundreds of times higher than deemed “permissible.” 

More fundamentally, why should radiation level be the prime consideration as to where and how one chooses to live?  Many people make decisions that increase their radiation dose many-fold by moving to mountainous regions, or by cladding their houses in brick or stone, or by visiting radioactive health spas.  By what authority do the radiation protection police have their particular concern outrank all others?  Are we going to let them strip the natural soil off the ground in Japan, to lower the radiation background to some arbitrary number?

Why should we fear “nuclear waste”?  The only way it can harm anyone is if it is eaten.  It is not in soluble form, so we store it in shielded cans until it is needed to be recycled as fuel in a reactor designed for that purpose.  This is not difficult; the process has been demonstrated, but it Is currently cheaper to just store the used fuel until needed.  Non-nuclear industry produces millions of times more lethal doses of other poisons.  The main difference is that the nuclear material gets less toxic every day, and after a few hundred years, becomes no more toxic than some natural ores.  But the non-nuclear wastes maintain full toxicity forever.  Fukushima and 9/11 have shown that we should design the plants to perform under even more extremes of conditions, and these improvements have been underway in America since immediately after 9/11.

Putting radiation numbers in perspective:

Marshall Brucer, “the father of nuclear medicine,” in his canonical Chronology of Nuclear Medicine, shows how widely radiation backgrounds vary.  On page 323, he lists various radiation background levels (with cosmic ray contribution removed) from New York City at 0.62 mSv/year to SW France up to 876; to the potash fertilizer area in Florida up to 1750.  He notes, “If you live in one place on earth, your background may vary from day to day by a factor of ten, or even 100…The inside exposure rate can change by a factor of 10 within hours, just by opening windows.”  He notes that building with brick, rather than wood, can nearly double your daily radiation dose, but that the radioactivity of  bricks and concrete is also highly variable: from 0.05 to 4.93 mSv/yr for bricks, and from 0.29 to 25.4 for concretes.  “A factor of 10 daily variation [in radiation dose] marks the diets of most people.”  [mR in original, converted here to mSv]

People have lived healthily for millennia with natural radiation up to following mSv/yr:

Ramsar, Iran (260), Kerala, India (35), Guaripari, Brazil (35), Yangiang, China (5.4)