Posted on 01/31/2002 12:09:53 PM PST by DCBryan1
Naturally, no one wants to have the nuclear waste in their state, which means Nevada will get stuck with it. There has been a very political 'scientific' selection process which has only been looking at one site - Yucca Mountain. The Department of Energy has now recommended it for approval, but there will be other hoops to jump through. Once it finally gets approved and is ready to accept waste, a day which is years away, it will take many more years before all the waste sitting in more than a hundred sites across the nation to get packaged up and shipped by truck to Nevada.
This is not a problem which is going away any time soon.
Seems to me we should not be making it a bigger problem. Sounds like it is time to stop making waste until we can clean up what is built up.
In some respects, it is a self-created problem. Some other nations reprocess their fuel, extracting the still useful elements, including plutonium, for further reactions. This reduces the waste stream. The opposition to re-processing stems from the fact that, if adopted by the rest of the world, it would be easier for nations to get ahold of plutonium, a useful component of atomic bombs.
Ok, so let's say nuke plants are run by highly trained people and they don't fail very often. 25 years ago I was saying that nuclear power was not a good idea from a national security standpoint and today we finally hear that they've been targeted (we didn't hear about all the times prior to now that they were threatened and nothing happened for whatever reason). Are we going to station a slew of marines inside sandbag walls with anti-aircraft missiles and shoot-to-kill authority around every nuke plant? Well, that's essentially what they do at the plant that decommissions chemical weapons that I worked at in the south pacific. This place is 750 miles south west of Hawaii in what has to be one of the most remote places on earth. A crappy (literally, it was mined for the phosphates in bird s**t) little bump in the middle of an authentic nowhere and they surrounded it with multiple layers of barbed wire, vicious guard dogs on the loose, 20mm cannons on APC's, military dudes with M16's and no sense of humor - signs all over the place that said "KEEP OUT - Use of Deadly Force Authorized" - and they meant it. Shoot first, ask questions later. They were perfectly prepared to waste the 737 full of people that I rode in on the instant anything deviated the plan.
On the other hand, we have nuclear power plants around the corner from major population centers all across the U.S. and they're protected by a few fat-a$$ed, Wackybutt Rent-A-Cops? That sounds like a good idea. Let's build more of them and maybe put them upwind of Disneyland.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can have a blind faith in an entity (a corporation) whose SOLE motivation is spending the least amount of money to make the most amount of profit and where individual initiative, caution, and the health of employees and the public are very often viewed as nothing but profit sinks.
Ah, I see what the problem here is. You heard something on the radio and are assuming that if your source is quoted in the popular media that qualifies it as expert in a scientific discipline.
Well, since you asked, here are a few references for background information on the subject under discussion:
Click here for a better source of information about radiation risk
And here is another:
Another perspective (pretty good)
A better source from a scientific credibility viewpoint would be NUREG-0558, authored by L. Battist, et al., wherein is cited (if you are not too lazy and take the time to read it), the findings of the Ad Hoc Interagency Dose Assessment Group, which found that the maximum total exposure for an offsite individual was about 83 millirems, and this was based on TLD (do you know what that is) information, and would have occurred if this individual was located on the east bank of the Susquehanna River for the entire duration of the accident, which no one was.
The President’s select commission (Kemeny Report – go read it, its good) came up with a similar estimate, but somewhat lower, in the range of 20 to 70 millirem, which takes into account occupancy time (i.e., accident duration) and dosimeter overresponse.
In either event, anybody that sticks around to be exposed to radioactive effluvia from a melting nuke at any level is an idiot.
Well, maybe, but someone who takes something they heard on the radio as a credible source of scientific fact is worse than an idiot. Anyone who isn’t brain dead can at least do some research on their own using reputable scientific sources and learn some of the facts before running amok, spewing nonsense on a public forum.
On the other hand, 150mR/hr x 24hrs x 7days = 25.2R. You must know that effects noticeable to the untrained occur in 50% of the exposed population at 50R.
You attempt at math is incorrect because you know nothing of the accident dynamics. The exposure rate was not constant. It had a time variance. For example, I’ll bet you didn’t know that the peak exposure rates for offsite locations did not occur immediately after the initial accident. Rather, they occurred at a point a few days later, when there was some difficulty with management of material incorrectly transferred to the auxiliary building from containment (sump), and a puff release occurred because of the opening (again incorrectly) of a valve. Now, if you know anything about puff releases, these are often modeled in dispersion calculations as a delta function (Know what that is? Look it up.) For this functional form, while the peak is very high, the integrated function is often quite miniscule. Applying the source term to any kind of reasonable meteorological dispersion model, which will account for adiabatic lapse rate and incorporate some form of Gaussian dispersion in the downwind radial and axial directions, you again end up with ground-level exposures in the millirem per hour range, for short periods of time (i.e., hours or minutes).
But, even if we give you your faulty math, you come up with 25 rem. Seems we have come a long way down from your earlier “pompous imagination” story about something like an “x-ray booth” for a week being the baseline for assessing dose. You could at least be a man and admit that this was a figment of your “pompous imagination". But, asking you to be a man is probably asking more than you can give, so we’ll have to go with it.
Now, based on what I taught you in my earlier post about LD50/60, is 25 rem a sufficient dose to induce lethal short-term effects? Also, based on what I taught you about latent effects, what would you expect the long-term effects to be in an exposed population group, say of one million people, for this kind of individual dose? As a follow-up question for extra credit, compare your estimate to the latent effects in the same cohort for non-radiation effects.
Frankly, you can have that because I'm not interested.
Well, from your lame attempt at debate and refutation of facts so far, that much is obvious. In fact, it more like the old “my mind is made up so don’t confuse me with the facts” gambit.
If your father worked as a contractor are there dosimetry records available upon which to estimate a lifetime cumulative dose, which show exposures in ranges that might be considered excessive, both acute and long-term? Are other health records available which could to used to establish or at least infer a causal link, such as bioassays, or whole-body scans? Did your mother also work at the plant, or the friends you mentioned? If not, is offsite dosimetry or air sampling information available that could be used as input to a reliable dispersion model? Lacking that, is onsite dosimetry or sampling data available which could be used in a simulation of cumulative offsite doses, both internal and external, using a reliable meteorological model? If not, we are then reduced to stringing together anecdotal data and attempting to find causation where it may not exist.
There is a logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this) that is based upon the mistaken notion that simply because one thing happens after another, the first event was a cause of the second event. Post hoc reasoning is the basis for many superstitions and erroneous beliefs and conclusions. It is an easy trap to fall into.
But often, events follow sequential patterns without being causally related. Here are some examples. You have a cold, so you are told to drink fluids and two weeks later your cold goes away. My, how wondrous. Or, you have a headache so you stand on your head and six hours later your headache goes away. You perform some task exceptionally well after forgetting to bathe, so the next time you have to perform the same task you don't bathe. A solar eclipse occurs so you beat your drums to make the gods spit back the sun. The sun returns, proving to you the efficacy of your action. It must have happened that way because one thing follows another.
The fly in the ointment is that sequences don't establish a probability of causality any more than correlations do. Coincidences happen. Occurring after an event is not sufficient to establish that the prior event caused the later one. To establish the probability of a causal connection between two events, controls must be established to rule out other factors such as chance or some unknown causal factor. Anecdotes aren't sufficient because they rely on intuition and subjective interpretation. A controlled study is necessary to reduce the chance of error from self-deception. Once a controlled study has been performed and validated, its conclusions can be used as a basis upon which to infer events observed in related circumstances under similar conditions. However, one must use caution in that complex systems often have interacting effects, which tend to mask or offset or sometimes enhance effects observed in the controlled study.
The “healthy worker” effect is one. Studies are often done of the workforce for specific nuclear facilities and the results point to a lower incidence of certain deleterious effects when compared with a cohort in the population at large. Now, can one infer that working in that environment leads to more positive health effects? Well, maybe, maybe not. Because other factors are at work. For example, the workforce may have an average educational level than the comparison group because of the nature of their work. Does being more educated make you healthy, then? Well, maybe, maybe not. What it does do is lead individuals, on average, to make different lifestyle choices than the comparison group population. More of them may choose not to smoke, for example, or perhaps, being more well-read, understand the need for moderate physical exercise, or certain stress-relieving techniques. Therefore, the positive effects of these lifestyle choices leads to enhanced well-being.
Since you were kind enough to share some real-life information, I will do likewise. My father died at an early age after working a significant portion of his working days in an office of the NJ Turnpike, just a few hundred yards from the roadway itself. I worked there for my summer jobs while in school and noted now and then that one of the employees would fall ill and perhaps die, usually from cancer, at a fairly young (late 50s or early 60s) age. My Dad passed away at age 65 from cancer and I visited with some of his (and my) friends back at the offices where he worked sometime later, and, sure enough, a good number of the people there had also succumbed to the dreaded illness. Now, one might wonder, is there some link here? Is working at the Turnpike somehow the cause? Well, I did some checking on my own, and, sure enough, all of those who died that I knew of, to a man, were all World War II veterans who died at about the same age. So, was it their war experiences that did them in? Well, yes and no. I also found that because of their stressful experiences, all of them had taken up the smoking habit. And, sure enough, all of the illnesses I became aware of among this cohort group had causal links to controlled studies of smokers. So, it wasn’t the Turnpike so much as the lifestyle choice, if you can call being in the war and being stressed out a lifestyle choice.
Now I will turn to the sad case of my Mom, who in her last years came down with Alzheimer’s, which ultimately led to her early passing. For the years after my Dad died she lived about nine miles from the Oyster Creek plant in NJ. I would visit every year and I noticed that quite a few of her neighbors, it seemed, were experiencing effects of Alzheimer’s. Then she came down with it. Now, are we to infer from this that something from the plant was causing all of the seemingly large number of similar cases? I mean, they had that link in common. Maybe the sequence was something like this: release-->exposure-->Alzheimer’s, with the events following each other in time. Well, again, I did some checking. Many things can cause the appearance of this illness. In my Mom’s case, it was likely the result of the suicide of my sister a few years before. For one of her neighbor’s, it may have been the loss of her husband of over 50 years and the isolation from her children. In the case of my Mom’s friend up the street, well, he was simply at that point in his life (late 70s) where the incidence of the illness is higher, for what reasons we know not.
My point in all this is to show that if there is credible causation for the particular case, and if that was a result of malfeasance by any individual or group, there is justification for remedial actions, whatever those might be. But, lacking that, it’s a tough one to beat.
My parents death in and of itself was not unusual. Everybody dies. It was what killed them that interested me.
The Hanford study is the basis that we use today for many models that predict effects of low level radioactive contamination. Since it was the nations source of plutonium and other substances for our nuclear warfare programs of the 40s, it has particular significance.(since it is a breeder)
My own feelings about this do not over-ride my support of the need for nuclear powered reactors. However, I am very conserned about the need to find a way to permanently dispose of the waste. The moon sounds like a answer to me.(currently too expensive though)
Also, they are much harder to hit. The are very low, compared to the WTC. They would have to skim the trees. Much more difficult flying.
Well, those are thoughtful comments. Thank you. The problems of a materials production facility are, in some ways, of a different nature than those you might encounter at a nuclear power facility. I mean, radiation is radiation and dose is dose, but often the nature of the materials and pathways are different. For example, release of a noble gas, such as krypton, in a fuel damage event in a power reactor, generally results in a submersion dose only. The materials doesn't accumulate in organs, and the normal ventilation process through the lungs prevents concentration of any large volumes of materials within the body cavity itself. However, for a materials production facility, you have different issues. Internal doses over time loom as a more significant issue because some things done at those places can accumulate and cause higher long-term exposures.
Regarding the waste disposal issue, what are your thoughts on the results of the studies of Yucca Mountain? The data I have seen so far looks very promising. You're looking at very stable formations at depth, with erosion rates of the strata on the order of centimeters per geological epoch. Not much there to move things around, and even if there were it wouldn't go very far. On the time scales they were indicating, the half-life of 239Pu was insignificant. It worked it out to something like an activity reduction factor of 1.0E67. Essentially you get down to one radioactive atom left.
I have always been concerned about a belief that massive amounts of radioactive waste could somehow inter react to create a cascade nuclear fission reaction on it's own. Sounds tinfoil but what are your thoughts about this and can dampers be installed to prevent this from occuring.(even if theoretical)
A sci-fi buff before sci-fi was cool!
Well, certainly you want to avoid accidental criticality. Not a lot of people know this, but in addition to the consideration or critical mass (which everyone seems to have heard of), there is the other half of the equation, that being critical geometry. In fact, there is a whole subfield of the engineering discipline devoted to criticality safety.
Now, that said, certainly steps are taken to prevent credible accidents leading to this. That involves placement of materials in such a way that accidental rearrangement of them does not lead to a critical assembly. Often, this is simply a matter of separation. Not 20 feet from where I am sitting now there is a subcritical graphite assembly with no control rods. Subcriticality is maintained by the pitch of the fuel rods being greater than a specified distance. So, imagine a series of physical separations between groups of fissile materials being emplaced to effect a safe geometry.
Of course, an added level of criticality safety can be had by incorporating neutron-absorbing materials in the separations. This can be very simple stuff, like natural boron or boron-bearing materials (e.g., boral plate). The Yucca Mountain designs feature both.
But, imagine if these safeguards broke down, and, by some chance, moderating material was introduced in and around the stored fissile materials (which the Yucca Mountain studies show hasn't happened in those formations for hundreds of millions of years). In spent fuel, after a long decay time, assuming the 3% enrichment typical of commerical fuel, it is likely that the fissile form of interest will be 235U. Its half-life is on the order of 700 million years, so its going to be around longer than 239Pu with its relatively insignificant (in terms of geologic time) half-life of 24,000 years. So, what would happen? Well, you certainly would not have a nuclear explosion, the fuel density and of course any reasonable means of attaining symmetric compression of the mass is just not credible. But, you could end up with a situation similar to the fossil reactors discovered in Gabon. There are several at Oklo and another at Bangombe. These operated off and on for millions of years in earlier geologic epochs, owing to the higher natural abundance of 235U in those earlier ages. The uranium in those formations underwent fission and, horror of horrors, actually produced fission products in water-bearing strata. Now, did the continent of Africa become a barren, radioactive wasteland as a result of the release of these uncontained, unregulated fission products? Hardly. In fact, last I checked, the place was downright verdant. Why? Because these fission products, even when uncontained in rock formations with lots of water flowing through them, only migrated a few centimeters from the site of the fission process. These are elements that just don't get out much. They tend to stay put and undergo their slow decay process, giving off an alpha or beta particle now and then, minding their own business, bothering no one.
So, bottom line, the Yucca Repository designs certainly allow for the chance of something happeneing, but even if everything went to pot, Hillary! would not have to have anyone around to do something "for the children" about it.
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