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ALEC and Nuclear Industry Fighting Against Renewables in Illinois

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2014

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois — A May 29 voice vote of the Illinois House passed pro-nuclear resolution HR-1146, a bill that would provide massive subsidies to the state’s unprofitable nuclear power reactors and curb the growth of truly “clean,” renewable energy sources. Watchdog groups have reason to believe the bill, introduced by House Speaker Michael Madigan, was largely written by Illinois nuclear utility giant Exelon Corporation as part of a larger effort organized on the national level by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

“This Resolution is not just a pro-nuclear resolution. It is an overt effort to destroy renewable energy statewide, a way to keep dirty coal plants running, and a way to continue and make permanent the outdated system of ‘centralized baseload power,’” said David Kraft, Director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) in Chicago.

Exelon is now investing $12-15 million per year, along with other ALEC members, in a pro-nuclear industry front group called Nuclear Matters. ALEC’s July 2014 Energy Task Force Meeting, where the Environmental Protection Agency’s new carbon rules were a focus of discussion, included a presentation from Nuclear Matters. In the last two years, ALEC has focused on attacking renewable energy standards in at least sixteen states, but, despite its massive financial investments, these efforts it has been largely unsuccessful. It did succeed in freezing the Ohio renewable energy standard for two years earlier this year. The Progressive magazine has launched an “ALEC Exposed” campaign, with more information available at www.progressive.org. — NEIS Press Release, May 29; Energy and Policy Institute Briefing, July 2014

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Savannah River Site Becoming World’s Nuclear Dump

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2014

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — As the Department of Energy (DOE) comes closer to finalizing plans to accept highly radioactive used commercial reactor fuel from Germany at its Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, watchdog groups are becoming increasingly concerned that SRS is quietly becoming the world’s nuclear dumping ground — despite serious safety and contamination concerns.

In addition to the potential transport of German waste to the site, SRS is slated to receive or has already received waste from Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, and perhaps other countries yet to be identified, such as Japan. According to the group SRS Watch, SRS will soon import almost 7,000 gallons of liquid high-level waste from the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada, adding to an already volatile liquid waste tank system onsite. The Ottowa Citizen discovered secret shipments of foreign plutonium to the site in February and March of this year. Japan is planning to transfer highly enriched uranium and plutonium to the US, and with the closure of the WIPP cite in New Mexico and no plans for a high-level waste disposal facility, that waste is likely to be dumped at SRS as well.

SRS is located on an earthquake fault and a large aquifer, with sandy soil and high levels of rain. SRS Watch Director Tom Clements, who claims the waste is a DOE strategy to keep the SRS open, says, “The SRS already has more nuclear waste than it knows how to deal with.”

— Atlanta Progressive News, June 9, 2014

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Slow-Motion Cancer Pandemic 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2014
By Harvey Wasserman

In the 35 years since the March 28, 1979 explosion and meltdown at Three Mile Island, fierce debate has raged over whether humans were killed there. In 1986 and 2011, Chernobyl and Fukushima joined the argument. Whenever these disasters happen, there are those who claim that the workers, residents and military personnel exposed to radiation will be just fine.

Of course we know better. We humans won’t jump into a pot of boiling water. We’re not happy when members of our species start dying around us. But frightening new scientific findings have forced us to look at a larger reality: the bottom-up damage that radioactive fallout may do to the entire global ecosystem.

When it comes to our broader support systems, the corporate energy industry counts on us to tolerate the irradiation of our fellow creatures, those on whom we depend, and for us to sleep through the point of no return.

Case in point is a new Smithsonian report on Chernobyl, one of the most terrifying documents of the atomic age.

Written by Rachel Nuwer, “Forests Around Chernobyl Aren’t Decaying Properly,” cites recent field studies in which the normal cycle of dead vegetation rotting into the soil has been disrupted by the exploded reactor’s radioactive fallout.

“Decomposers — organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay — have also suffered from the contamination,” Nuwer writes. “These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil.”

The Three Mile Island nuclear reactor complex in Middletown, Pennsylvania, shown here in 2011, continues to generate electricity with its Unit 1 reactor. TMI was the scene of the 1979 meltdown of Unit 2, one of the worst nuclear power disasters in United States history.
Photo by Bradley C. Bower/AP.

Put simply: The micro-organisms that form the active core of our ecological bio-cycle have apparently been zapped, leaving tree trunks, leaves, ferns and other vegetation to sit eerily on the ground whole, essentially in a mummified state.

Reports also indicate a significant shrinkage of the brains of birds in the region and negative impacts on the insect and wildlife populations.

Similar findings surrounded the accident at Three Mile Island. Within a year, a three-reporter team from the Baltimore News-American cataloged massive radiation impacts on both wild and farm animals in the area. The reporters and the Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed widespread damage to birds, bees and large kept animals such as horses, whose reproductive rate collapsed in the year after the accident.

Other reports also documented deformed vegetation and domestic animals being born with major mutations, including a dog born with no eyes and cats with no sense of balance. To this day, Three Mile Island’s owners claim no humans were killed by radiation there, an assertion hotly disputed by local down-winders.

Indeed, Dr. Alice Stewart established in 1956 that a single X-ray to a pregnant woman doubles the chance that her offspring will get leukemia. (See The Woman Who Knew Too Much by Gayle Green, University of Michigan Press, 1999.) During the accident at Three Mile Island, the owners crowed that the meltdown’s radiation was equivalent “only” to a single X-ray administered to all area residents.

Meanwhile, if the airborne fallout from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl could do that kind of damage to both infants and the non-human population on land, how is Fukushima’s continuous gusher of radioactive water affecting the life support systems of our oceans?

In fact, samplings of 15 tuna caught off the coast of California indicate all were contaminated with fallout from Fukushima.

Instantly, as always, the industry deems such levels “harmless.” The obligatory comparisons to living in Denver, flying cross country and eating bananas automatically follow.

But what’s that radiation doing to the tuna? And to the krill, the phytoplankton, the algae, amoeba and all the other microorganisms on which the ocean ecology depends?

Cesium and its Fukushima siblings are already measurable in Alaska and northwestern Canada. They’ll hit California this year. The corporate media will mock those parents who are certain to show up at the beaches with radiation detectors. Concerns about the effect on children will be jovially dismissed. The doses will be deemed, as always, “too small to have any impact on humans.”

But reports of a “dead zone” thousands of miles into the Pacific do persist, along with disappearances of salmon, sardines, anchovies and other ocean fauna.

Of course, atomic reactors are not the only source of radioactive fallout. Atmospheric bomb testing from 1945 to 1963 raised background radiation levels throughout the ecosphere. Those isotopes are still with us.

Burning coal spews still more radiation into our air, along with mercury and other lethal pollutants. Fracking for gas draws toxins up from the earth’s crust.

Industry apologists say reactors can moderate the climate chaos caused by burning those fossil fuels. But fight

The Three Mile Island nuclear reactor complex in Middletown, Pennsylvania, shown here in 2011, continues to generate electricity with its Unit 1 reactor. TMI was the scene of the 1979 meltdown of Unit 2, one of the worst nuclear power disasters in United States history. 

Photo by Bradley C. Bower/AP.

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Childhood Leukemia Cases Up 37% Near Nuclear Reactors

Another Major Study Shows Consistent Correlation Between Cancer Incidence and Proximity to Operating Reactors 
Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2014
By Ian Fairlie, The Ecologist 

Controversy has been raging for decades over the link between nuclear power stations and childhood leukemia. But as with tobacco and lung cancer, it’s all about hiding the truth. Combining data from four countries shows, with high statistical significance, that radioactive releases from nuclear reactors are the cause of the excess leukemia cases.

I can think of no other area of toxicology (e.g. asbestos, lead, smoking) with so many studies, and with such clear associations as those between nuclear power reactors and child leukemias.

In March 2014, after a year-long peer review process, my article on increased rates of childhood leukemias near nuclear reactors was published in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity.1

My previous article — “Childhood Leukemias Near Nuclear Power Stations”2 — discussed the making of the article and its high readership: this article describes its content in non-technical terms.

Before we start, some background is necessary to grasp the new report’s significance. Many readers may be unaware that increased childhood leukemias near reactors have been a contentious issue for several decades.

For example, it was a huge issue in the UK in the 1980s and early 1990s, leading to several TV programs, government commissions, government committees, a major international conference, government reports, at least two mammoth court cases and probably over a hundred scientific articles.

It was refueled in 1990 by the publication of the famous Gardner report on lymphoma in young people near Sellafield, which found a very large increase (seven fold) in child leukemias near the nuclear facility in Cumbria, England.3

Over 60 epidemiological studies confirm the link 

The controversy may have subsided in England, but it is still hotly debated in most European countries, especially Germany.

The core issue is that, world-wide, over 60 epidemiological studies have examined cancer incidences in children near reactors: almost 70% of them indicate leukemia increases.

Yet many governments and the nuclear industry refute these findings and continue to resist their implications. It’s similar to the situations with cigarette smoking in the 1960s and with climate change causation nowadays.

In early 2007, the debate was partly rekindled by the renowned KiKK study4 commissioned by the German government, which found a 60% increase in total cancers and 120% increase in leukemias among children under five years old living within five kilometers of all German reactors.

What is “statistically significant”? 

As a result of Germany’s surprising findings, governments in France, Switzerland and England hurriedly set up studies near their own reactors. All found leukemia increases, but because their numbers were small the increases lacked “statistical significance.” That is, you couldn’t be 95% sure the findings weren’t chance ones.

This does not mean there were no increases. Indeed if less strict statistical tests had been applied, the results would have been “statistically significant.”

But most people are easily bamboozled by statistics — including scientists who should know better — and the strict 95% level tests were eagerly grasped by governments wishing to avoid unwelcome findings. Indeed, many tests nowadays in this area use a 90% level. In such situations, scientists need to combine data-sets in a meta-study, to get larger numbers and thus reach higher levels of statistical significance.

Governments wouldn’t study it — so we did 

The four governments refrained from doing this because they knew what the answer would be. Namely: statistically significant increases in cancer cases near almost all reactors in the four countries. So Alfred Korblein and I did it for them.5 Sure enough, there were statistically significant increases near all the reactors. Sure enough, there were statistically significant increases. The table on page 6 reveals a highly significant 37% increase in childhood leukemias within five kilometers of almost all power reactors in the UK,Germany, France and Switzerland.

It’s perhaps not surprising that the latter three countries have announced reactor phase-outs and withdrawals. It is only the UK government that remains in denial.

So the matter is now beyond question. There is a very clear association between increased child leukemias and proximity to reactors. The question remains: What causes them?

Observed risk 10,000 times greater than “expected” 
Playing and fishing near California’s shut-down San Onofre reactors, where 2,600 highly radioactive waste fuel assemblies now crowd a cooling pool built for 1,600. Photo: Allan J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times

Most people worry about radioactive emissions and direct radiation from the reactors, however any theory involving radiation has a major difficulty to overcome: How to account for the large (about 10,000 fold) discrepancy between official dose estimates from reactor emissions and the clearly-observed increased risks?

My explanation does involve radiation. It stems from KiKK’s principal finding that the increased incidences of infant and child leukemias were closely associated with proximity to the reactor chimneys.

It also stems from the KiKK study’s observation that the increased solid cancers were mostly “embryonal,” i.e. babies were born either with solid cancers or with pre-cancerous tissues which, after birth, developed into full-blown tumors: this actually happens with leukemia as well.

My explanation has five main elements:

  • First: The cancer increases may be due to radiation exposures from radioactive emissions to air from reactors.
  • Second: Large annual spikes in reactor emissions may result in increased dose rates to populations within five kilometers of the reactors.
  • Third: Observed cancers may arise in utero in pregnant women.
  • Fourth: Both the doses and their risks to embryos and to fetuses may be greater than the current estimate.
  • Fifth: Pre-natal blood-forming cells in bone marrow may be unusually radiosensitive.

Together these five factors offer a possible explanation for the discrepancy between estimated radiation doses from reactor releases and the risks observed by Germany’s KiKK study. These factors are discussed in considerable detail in the full article.

No errors or omissions have been pointed out 

My article in fact shows that the current discrepancy can be explained. The leukemia increases observed by the KiKK study and by many others may arise in utero as a result of embryonal/fetal exposures to incorporated radionuclides from reactors’ radioactive emissions.

Large emission spikes from reactors [as during refueling operations] might produce a pre-leukemic clone, and, after birth, a second radiation hit might transform a few of these clones into full-blown leukemia cells. The affected babies are born pre-leukemic (which is invisible) and the full leukemias are only diagnosed within the first few years after birth.

To date, no letters to the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity have been received pointing out errors or omissions in this report.

— Dr. Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment, was Chief Secretariat of Britain’s CERRIE group which examines internal radiation risks. 

Notes 

1 Fairlie, “A hypothesis to explain childhood cancers near nuclear power plants,” Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, Vol. 133 (2014). <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265931X13001811>

2 Fairlie, “Childhood Leukemias Near Nuclear Power Stations” (July 25, 2014). <www.ianfairlie.org/news/childhood-leukemias-near-nuclear-power-stations-482-downloads>

3 Gardner, et al, “Results of case-control study of leukaemia and lymphoma among young people near Sellafield nuclear plant in West Cumbria,” British Medical Journal, Vol. 300 (1990); and Bunch, et al, “Updated investigations of cancer excesses in individuals born or resident in the vicinity of Sellafield and Dounreay,” British Journal of Cancer (July 22, 2014). <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25051410>

4 Kaatsch, et al, “Leukaemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants” (the KiKK study), International Journal of Cancer, Vol. 122, No. 4 (2008) <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.23330/full>

5 Körblein and Fairlie, “French Geocap study confirms increased leukaemia risks in young children near nuclear power plants,” International Journal of Cancer, Vol. 131, No. 12 (2012).

6 Spycher, et al, “Childhood cancer and nuclear power plants in Switzerland: A census based cohort study,” International Journal of Epidemiology (July, 12, 2011). <http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/07/11/ije.dyr115.full>

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Radioactive Fracking Waste Dumped Illegally

States Struggle to Address a Growing Problem
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014
By Arianne Peterson

 

Radioactive filter “sock” waste produced by the oil and gas fracking industry has been dumped illegally in North Dakota. Unbagged filters were discarded at the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation (above left), and broken bags of the filters (above right) were left outside at a facility operated by RP Services near Watford City. McKenzie County Landfill Director Rick Schreiber said his operators tested filter socks “so hot our [radiation] meters maxed out [at 1,000 picocuries per hour].” Photos by Lauren Donovan for the Rachel Maddow Show, March 12, 2014.
North Dakotans are finding radioactive waste illegally dumped — in abandoned gas stations, in parking lots and on an Indian Reservation — thanks to the state’s booming oil and gas industry. The waste, including radioactively contaminated “socks” used to filter sediments out of wastewater, is part of the radioactive legacy of the hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” process companies are using to extract oil and gas throughout the United States. North Dakota’s Bakken oil field alone produces nearly 75 tons of cancer-causing radioactive waste daily, according to a study by the Dakota Resource Council. And though the problem of illegal dumping has existed in North Dakota for at least three years, state officials have been slow to react with policy changes to protect public safety.

Fracking companies use a drill to cut horizontally through shale deposits, then send highly pressurized liquid streams to pulverize the rock. The process brings radium-contaminated liquids to the surface. As Nukewatch reported in the Summer 2013 Quarterly (“The Long-Lived Legacy of Fracking”), ingested radium acts like calcium in the body and can cause cancer, asthma, aplastic anemia (when blood cells are not replenished) and other health problems. With Congress’s 2005 exemption of the fracking industry from the Safe Drinking Water Act, radioactive liquid fracking wastes have been a major cause for concern among citizens and political representatives, and now the solid waste issue is becoming more visible as well.

According to the North Dakota Department of Health, the abandoned filters found spilling out of plastic garbage bags at a former gas station February 28 near Noonan registered at 40 microrems of radiation, or about eight times the area’s “background level.” With Congress granting the fracking industry several regulatory exemptions and the US Environmental Protection Agency claiming they don’t have enough evidence to say what level of radiation is safe, responsibility for regulating the fracking industry’s waste falls largely to individual state governments. It seems North Dakota has encountered the illegal dumping problem in part because it does have some (faulty) regulations in place, as its landfills have radiation detectors installed that can thwart industry’s attempts to dispose of waste that exceeds state radiation limits. The state penalty for illegal disposal is a $1,000 fine per sock filter, a price which has prompted the companies (or their contractors) to either truck the waste to states with fewer regulations or, apparently, find an out-of-the way location and illegally just toss it.

West Virginia’s state government on March 31 enacted a requirement that landfills install radiation monitors and build separate, lined cells for radioactive fracking debris. The law also raises the limit on the amount of fracking waste landfills are allowed to accept. Pennsylvania’s fracking companies sent 16,000 tons of radioactive material to landfills in 2013, and the state also allows the firms to bury some waste on-site in lined pits. Texas, which produces more oil and gas than any other state, has virtually no regulation on radioactive fracking waste disposal and no plans to revise its regulations, according to a state official interviewed by Bloomberg News. Companies in Texas may take their waste to a landfill, bury it on-site or mix it with soil near a well — provided its radiation levels are below a set standard.

North Dakota does not have any storage facilities capable of handling radioactive waste. Though the Dakota Resource Council and others had been pushing the state Department of Health to act on the illegal dumping problem for over a year, the state had not made an effort to track the disposal of the radioactive fracking waste at all before this year. After discoveries of illegal dumps gained more attention in early spring, the state passed regulations in April that forced the shale-oil industry to temporarily store the socks in sealed containers on-site at the state’s 500-600 injection wells starting June 1. What will happen to the waste next is unclear.

— McKenzie County Farmer, Mar. 4; ThinkProgress, Mar. 12; Wall Street Journal, Apr. 15; Bloomberg, Apr. 16; ProPublica, May 16, 2014

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