Posted on 06/05/2002 12:12:30 PM PDT by EggsAckley
Wednesday, June 5, 2002 Residents Near NY Nuke Plant to Get Iodide Pills WHITE PLAINS, New York (Reuters) - Amid fears nuclear power plants could be the target of terror attacks, officials plan to provide residents near the Indian Point installation, just north of New York, with potassium iodide pills to protect against any release of radioactive gases.
West Chester County officials said that beginning on Saturday the pills will be distributed on the first three Saturdays in June at three local schools.
The distribution of the pills, which were provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and are known as KI, comes after federal warnings that nuclear power plants could be the targets of future attacks.
KI helps to prevent thyroid cancer in the event of a radiological emergency, officials said, by blocking the absorption of radioactive iodide, one of the gases that can be released in a nuclear accident.
The county has also stockpiled the KI pills and will distribute them to local schools on request. Forty-six pharmacies in the county have agreed to stock the pills, the Westchester County Health Department said.
Not true. 100% fatality is assured only if you are receiving whole-body exposures that greatly exceed the LD50/60 for human beings. With any reasonable source term, and even rather pessimistic assumptions for dispersion, diluation, and removal coefficients, you aren't likely to approach that.
What uptake of radioiodine does is increase the risk of developing thyroid-related disorders over the long term. Equating increased risk factors to 100% fatality (or foolishness) is an egregious error. As I stated, from an epidemiological viewpoint, it is desirable to evaluate the risks of doing nothing against those that result from taking ill-advised actions. For example, if an exposed population incurs a risk of one excess fatality from a thyroid disorder over a 30-year period, would that be "better" than exposing them to a risk of perhaps 10 in a million who will have a fatal adverse reaction to taking KI? Has such a study been done? What are the relative risks for a large-scale nuclear accident that results in widespread contamination, versus the risks to the public who, in their fear and panic, start taking doses of KI tablets "just in case", and those that are sensitive to it start dropping for no reason at all?
Buy the potassium iodate pills. Medical Corps is the best. In the meantime, consult your physician and/or do some research if you're worried about an allergic reaction. I'm not.
I agree that one should consult one's physician about this matter. Its a simple test to check for adverse reaction, not unlike an allergy test. Chances are, you'll be okay. Better chances are, as a mamber of the general public, that you'll not have to worry about radioiodine uptake in harmful amounts from any kind of nuclear accident.
And this is their chance to blame it on those ME A-rabs. Typical liberals.
AND they can blame Bush for not stopping the A-rabs in time.
It might be ME terrorist though. But it could be either because they didn't say their source. They usually do, don't they?
This is state sponsored terrorism - Ralph Nader style.
I ended mail ordering some to put my mind at ease. Since 9/11 the price has doubled and there are times when its back ordered and there is a wait.
Its better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, IMO.
I'm sure there are many Ukrainians who would wished they had had access to KI back in 1985.
Arrrrnnnttt! Wrong answer. You lose. You're the weakest link. Goodbye! Attempting to equate RBMK-design accidents and their consequences to those involving LWR systems is factually incorrect and a logical fallacy (appeal to emotion).
1) Modeling. There are lots of supercomputers constantly "modeling" the weather. That doesn't mean anyone can tell you if it's going to rain tomorrow... More seriously, some really smart people "modeled" the effects of Iraq igniting the Kuwaiti oil fields. Remember Sagan did the talk show circuit doing the chicken little thing. When the oil fields were ignited, the end effect was little more than a heck of a lot of work for the engineering people to put them out. Modeling is fun, but models aren't reality and computer models of complex things have a pretty iffy public record. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just gagging on your appeal to authority of running simulations.
>Unless you postulate some kind of isotopic separation process occurring, you're not going to be able to assemble an explosively-critical mass in any kind of meltdown scenario.
2) But if you have a meltdown scenario, almost by definition you are going to have, to use every day language, really, really hot stuff coming into contact with stuff that is -- comparatively -- really, really cold. As the hot stuff causes the "cold" stuff to get volatile, vaporise, the sudden pressure changes might not be an "explosion" per se, but they possibly could have similar effects to an explosion, and disperse bad stuff over a wide area.
-- KotS
Its more appeal to facts rather than appeal to authority. Modeling of complex phenomena which contain poorly known mechanisms, inherently chaotic processes, or have incorporated data which is somewhat "noisy" (as is the case of those instances you mentioned) can lead to imprecise results. The phenomena involved in modeling dispersion of the types we are considering here are actually fairly well understood and thus the modeling is relatively straightforward. Furthermore, quite a bit of work was done at Sandia, Battelle, ORNL, and elsewhere, to benchmark the models against real-world experiments. In the main, the predictions were remarkably precise. One practical result was the dosimetry reconstruction projects for TMI, the Marshall Islander resettlement efforts, and the research accident at Vinca, Yugoslavia. In all those cases, model estimates were proven to be very accurate regarding observed biological effects, environmental measurements, and dosimeter records.
2) But if you have a meltdown scenario, almost by definition you are going to have, to use every day language, really, really hot stuff coming into contact with stuff that is -- comparatively -- really, really cold. As the hot stuff causes the "cold" stuff to get volatile, vaporise, the sudden pressure changes might not be an "explosion" per se, but they possibly could have similar effects to an explosion, and disperse bad stuff over a wide area.
FReeper Hellraiser was asking about a nuclear explosion and again, the physics of a LWR, the nature of its fuel, the amount of neutron-absorbing materials nearby, all of these add up to one thing: it won't go BOOM in a nuclear sense. What you're postulating again is an externally-driven dispersion event. That does cause localized contamination, but it is quite limited in extent. What causes widespread contamination is the result of volatile, non-reactive materials (i.e., things that don't settle out, or plate out, or condense out) being energetically dispersed by release of large amounts of stored energy.
Here's an example that will help you visualize the process. Imagine that you light a firecracker. POW! It goes off. Stuff sprays everywhere. You get a lot of smoke and the air is tinged with the smell of gunpowder. That reaction involves a certian amount of energy release. It comes from the internally-stored energy of the compounds that make up the device, rapidly released by the explosive chemical reaction.
Now imagine a similar amount of energy delivered to the firecracker by an external force. Its actually pretty easy. Just get a heavy enough sledgehammer and get it moving with sufficient velocity. SPLAT! Sure, you sure do a lot of damage to the firecracker. You flatten it. Maybe you splatter a little of the material around where you hit it, or on your sledgehammer. But you sure don't get the same dispersion, do you?
Make sense? Yes? No? Anybody home?
Bingo and a bump
Radiation is the emission of energy. Contamination is the presence of radioactive material in places where it is undesirable for one reason or another. We are discussing, for the most part, the latter.
Accidents involving widespread contamination depend on the accident dynamics and the system design. Often, the latter strongly influences the former. This is especially true for incorrect attempts to equate accident scenarios possible for the RBMK design to those of LWR systems. Its like comparing the damage potential of a blockbuster to that of a wet firecracker. You can try it, but you'll come off looking somewhat foolish and ignorant.
You said that. I said that its very unlikely, especially the doomsday scenarios floating about lately, involving millions of square miles of contaminated lands unhabitable for geological epochs, and billions of fatalities within the first few seconds of the accident. This is the kind of stuff the anti-nook kooks are pushing, and its surprising and extremely disappointing to see that so many FReepers have evidently bought into it.
Do some study on your own and get back to us. I suggest as a start the seminal study in the field of power reactor safety, designated as WASH-1400. Ever heard of it? Check out the probability estimates of risk of fatality for a member of the general public from a nuclear plant accident compared with other risks, some accepted without a second thought as part of everyday life, others more exotic, such as your risk of dying from a meteor impact. Here's a hint: the meteor has your number ahead of the nuclear plant.
No, you attempted to make a shoot-from-the-hip connection between Chornobil-class reactor designs and their accident potential to that of LWR technology, and I called you on it. Let me put on my professor's hat for a minute and give you some study questions to ponder that might shed some light on the subject:
1. First, compare the design characteristics of the RBMK system to a typical LWR, including differences in operating characteristics, inherent stability under various transients, and the degree of reactivity coupling in the core lattice.
2. Contrast the differences in containment systems between the RBMK and a typical LWR, and the effect these have on:
a. The accident source term.
b. The release term.
c. Release mitigation mechanisms and systems.
3. The RBMK is a dual-purpose system, producing plutonium for the Soviet/Russian weapons program as well as being a power producer. Discuss how this affects the radionuclide mix present in and around the core, and the effects of this on the potential for contamination.
4. Under what conditions is the overall reactivity feedback term for an RBMK positive? For an LWR?
5. Compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantges of using graphite as a neutron moderator. What effect do the graphite follwers on the RBMK control rods have on reactivity insertion in a SCRAM situation?
There ya go. Five beginner's questions to ponder. Maybe these will get you started on a fruitful journey of self-taught knowledge building...
Yup, this is just the usual suspects making another run at Indian Point. The fact that the county government in Westchester would distribute a pharmaceutical just to score cheap political points just highlights their complete and utter irresponsibility.
How many braind-dead Westchester Soccer Moms are going to start giving their precious kiddies a daily dose of KI, "just in case"? This moronic action by the county just gives them the green light.
The leader on this latest charge is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Riverkeeper Foundation. In between heroin binges, RFK Jr. is trying to position himself as a political force to be allied with the NY Hillary! Axis-of-Shamelessness. Fear mongering on Indian Point is just a way to keep his worthless mug on the front page of the paper.
This is not about Indian Point or nuclear safety. It is about crass self-promotion for a bunch of green weenies in general, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in particular.
This is exactly my concern. Thank you for stating it so clearly. The overall risk to the public in this case may actually go up as a result of needless actions undertaken by the uninformed or misled sheeple.
Here's the worst-case, highest-risk scenario. The sheeple of Westchester County are stampeded by the self-serving 'Rats into believing that Indian Point represents an "imminent danger". A significant percentage of the sucker moms take it upon themselves to start dispensing KI tablets to their sprogs "just in case". Now, most of them will be okay, and all the sucker Moms will be doing in that instance is wasting family resources that might be better spent on something else. But, hey, it makes them "feel better", because they're "doing something about it". But a (perhaps) small percentage of the population will suffer ill effects from this added burden (epidemiologists would call it an "insult") to their bodily systems. Who knows, maybe the suckers will panic and, "just to be extra safe", increase the dose beyond that recommended, say maybe ten pills a day, instead of one, thinking, "Hey, ten pills, ten times the protection, right?" And those kids die of KI poisoning. Meanwhile Indian Point is humming along nicely as usual, producing no harmful effects in the environment or among the general populace. The responsibility for the harm done in this case lies not with the nuke, but with those fear mongers who stampede the sheeple into needlessly risky action.
I dress up like a Greenie. I go to one of the Westchester County distribution centers. I grab one of the reporters that will certainly be there observing this fiasco. I tell him that I have some shocking news to reveal. She follows me to the table where the KI is being distributed. I hold the meter (which is set on its most sensitive scale, with fast counts and with the count volume turned way up) against the bottle of KI pills on the table. Because potassium is naturally radioactive, the meter will suddenly make all sorts of clicking noises and it might even peg and alarm. I then shout out to all in the room, "Westchester County is distributing radioactive potassium iodide!" and then walk out.
What do you think?
That would have to be a serious security breach where they somehow got large amounts of explosive all the way into containment. The best terrorists could probably hope for is to do enough damage to cause a release of radioactive steam.
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