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Test Drilling for Possible Rad Waste Disposal, Rejected in North Dakota, Faces Opposition in South Dakota

Energy Dept. Eyes 26 States for Potential “Deep Borehole” Experiments
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2016
By John LaForge

The US Department of Energy (DOE)—always looking to dispose of radioactive waste—was recently told to leave Pierce County, North Dakota where the agency had proposed one of its current radioactive waste experiments.

The DOE wants to drill large-diameter boreholes more than three miles into the earth to evaluate rock formations for potential deep disposal of high-level radioactive waste left from nuclear weapons production.

A February 16 public hearing in Rugby, the county seat, was attended by almost 300 opponents—both residents and political officials—who demanded guarantees that radioactive materials would never be a part of the test drilling.

The Battelle Memorial Institute, Inc.—with 22,000 employees at 60 sites worldwide—was awarded a $35 million taxpayer-funded contract to oversee the experimental attempt to cut straight down 16,000 feet (three miles) into granite bedrock.

Also hired were Schlumberger, an oil and gas drilling firm from Houston, Texas, and Solexperts of Switzerland, which does highly specialized field tests on tunneling and nuclear waste repositories.

The tiny, isolated town of Rugby, North Dakota, population 2,876, is on US Highway 2, about 35 miles south of Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation and 130 miles north of Bismarck.

The journal Science reports that DOE scientists “need to figure out how practical and how expensive it will be to drill a [17-inch]-wide hole that deep.” And the department wants to test ways “to ensure the surrounding rock at the bottom of the hole is solid enough, and that any water there can’t travel up toward the surface.” DOE has hired the giant company, which manages a number of DOE research labs, to lead a five-year-long, $80 million experimental “pilot” deep borehole drilling test to answer such questions.

Even after Battelle and agency officials promised the community that no nuclear waste would be involved, Pierce County Commissioners unanimously agreed to reject the project and place a moratorium on any such experimental drilling in the county. On February 18, the Pierce County Planning and Zoning Board unanimously endorsed the commission’s moratorium.

For the North Dakota test, Battelle had teamed up with the University of North Dakota’s Energy & Environmental Research Center, which had agreed to do the drilling.

North Dakota out, South Dakota on the hook

Almost immediately after the Pierce County, North Dakota Commission rejected the test drilling, the Energy Department and Battelle hurriedly moved their focus to a remote East-Central South Dakota site near Redfield.

Rod Osborne, with Battelle, told South Dakota Public Broadcasting (SDPB) on May 12 that the geology near Redfield, population 2,333, in Spink County, South Dakota is great for testing to see whether deep boreholes are possible and to figure out how to make them.

Robert MacKinnon, a technical manager on the project at DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, told the Salt Lake Tribune, “It’s to confirm the viability and concept.”

The research team will analyze the deep rock body for water permeability, stability, geothermal characteristics and seismic activity.

The Department of Energy is considering drilling three-mile-deep boreholes to test the viability of granite bedrock as a potential disposal method for high-level radioactive waste.

But at meetings May 11 and 17 in Redfield, South Dakota, Spink County residents spoke against the proposal. Local television reported, “Opponents … are organized and letting commissioners know what they think.” The critics have formed “Citizens for a Non-Nuclear South Dakota” and are working to make sure their county commissioners deny a drilling permit.

“What we are doing is testing the idea of drilling a very straight hole, fairly sizeable in diameter, eight and half inches, 16 thousand feet into the granite,” Battelle’s Osborne told SDPB. “So the combination of the depth, the very straight hole, and the diameter into granite is pretty unique. So we’re going to have to develop new tools, new methods, [and] new pieces of equipment to be able to do this kind of a test. And that’s really as much part of the project as actually getting the actual rock data.”

If nearby earthquakes occur, the crystalline rock could slip and allow for water and radioactive materials to migrate away from the site, according to Stephen Hickman, director of the US Geological Survey’s Earthquake Science Center, who spoke to the Salt Lake Tribune. Other potential problems with crystalline rock disposal are cavities, lava tubes and other voids in rock that could facilitate movement of water that could carry contaminants beyond the boreholes.

On May 23, Battelle spokesman T. R. Massey said to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, “These wells will not be designed to hold nuclear waste. Period.”

Instead, dummy canisters without radioactive material would be used in the project’s third and final phase.

Waste fuel rods—the vast majority of high-level radioactive waste—“have been ruled out as too big to easily fit in these boreholes,” Science reported.

Warren Cornwall writing for the magazine said, “But [Energy Secretary Ernest] Moniz has said it could be ideal for some kinds of waste, particularly 1,936 slender, half-meter-long tubes of highly radioactive cesium-137 and strontium-90. Those are currently stored in a pool of water at a federal nuclear facility in eastern Washington State.”

These “capsules” of cesium and strontium had been scheduled to be directly disposed of inside Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, but that program was cancelled in 2010. A DOE Inspector General’s report says that these capsules are not to be disposed of before 2048.

16 billion gallons already injected in deep wells

According to the engineers involved with the deep borehole experiment, this sort of drilling test has not previously been attempted.

The “Deep Borehole Field Test” is supposed to combine several complex drilling practices and do something completely new: Drill a wide-diameter hole three miles deep into solid granite. One vexing problem is cutting a hole straight enough to allow the lowering of waste canisters.

“It can’t be off two inches here or three inches there, because the can won’t be able to slide down,” Massey told the Argus Leader.

The Energy Department’s January 5, 2016 press release announcing the deep borehole disposal experiment stated in part: “Over 40 years ago, scientists suggested the idea of disposing of nuclear weapons production waste in holes drilled miles into granite. In January 2012, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future recommended research into the possibility of using deep boreholes…”

Deep well disposal of liquid radioactive waste was practiced in Idaho for more than 18 years but then halted. Some 16 billion gallons of waste water were dumped into the Snake River Aquifer at the Idaho National Engineering Lab (INEL) between 1952 and 1970. Wells were drilled directly into the Snake River Plain aquifer and the wastes were injected into the groundwater. [For perspective, 16 billion gallons would fill 127 football fields including end zones to a depth of 300 feet.] State and public pressure forced the DOE to stop the use of these injection wells in the mid-1980s.*

A 1976 study by EG&G, a prime contractor at INEL, found that radioactive wastes may follow groundwater through fractures and cracks in rock formations. Water may also collect at the bottom of disposal sites, tending to facilitate movement through discrete zones.

Sparsely populated sites targeted

Ranked 46 and 47 out of 50 states in population respectively, South and North Dakota may have been considered by the DOE to be short on public opposition. Over two dozen other states have similar granite bedrock characteristics but have so far not been named as test drilling hosts.

A 2008 DOE study (“Report to the President and the Congress by the Secretary of Energy on the Need for a Second Repository”) identifies 25 states considered potentially suitable for deep disposal of high-level waste. Named because of granite geology, the states are: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, Georgia, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, Texas, Alabama, South Dakota, and Oklahoma.

Seven decades and no answer

Seventy years into the federal experiment with radioactive waste production, the only operational deep hideaway for it—the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, WIPP, in Carlsbad, New Mexico—was abruptly closed in February 2014. The shutdown happened when at least one waste barrel burst apart, spreading plutonium debris throughout the underground chambers, inundating the elevator and air shafts, and sending a plume into the open air above ground. Some 22 site workers were internally contaminated, having inhaled the contaminated dust. The WIPP site has not yet reopened.

*Deadly Defense: Military Radioactive Landfills by the Radioactive Waste Campaign (1988), p. 51; and Killing Our Own by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, (1980), p. 167.

Sources: Argus Leader, May 23; South Dakota Public Broadcasting, May 12; KSBY-TV, May 11; Bismarck Tribune, May 10, Mar. 2, Feb. 2 & 18; Dakota Free Press, Apr. 27; AP, Apr. 21; Science Online, March 23; Exchange Monitor, Apr. 22 & Mar. 4; Salt Lake Tribune, and Minneapolis StarTribune, Feb. 14; Pierce County Tribune, Feb. 5; Columbus Ohio Dispatch, Jan. 24; DOE and Beyond Nuclear, Jan. 5, 2016

 

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Locals “Shouldn’t Fear” Waste from Wisconsin Isotope Factory

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2016

On February 25, 2016, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a construction permit to SHINE Medical Technologies for a $100 million factory in Janesville, Wisconsin to produce molybdenum-99 (moly-99).

Press coverage of the permit caught our attention because the firm’s promotional materials promise that its production method “generates less waste” than other methods.

Moly-99 decays to “technetium-99m,” which is used in medical scans to identify the stages of certain cancers, to diagnose heart disease, and in other diagnostic procedures. SHINE, headquartered in Madison, expects to produce over one quarter of the global demand for moly-99, and the Janesville factory will provide a US source of the medical isotope. Such a source will help avoid supply problems like the current suspension of imports from Canada and The Netherlands, which have both shut down production reactors because of leaks and other safety violations.

SHINE’s public information says the company’s process involves the use of neither a nuclear reactor nor highly enriched uranium (HEU)—used in most current production methods—eliminating the risk of diversion or theft of weapons usable nuclear materials. Notwithstanding these benefits, there appears to be little advantage over current methods of production in terms of liquid, post-reprocessing radioactive waste.

SHINEmed.com says the firm “was founded to deploy a safe, cost-effective and environmentally friendly technology to produce medical isotopes.” It boasts a “patented, proprietary manufacturing process” that it says “uses less electricity [and] generates less waste” than conventional production methods. Additional radioactive materials produced by SHINE will include iodine-131, iodine-125, and xenon-133.

While SHINE’s production of moly-99 will employ low-enriched uranium (LEU), its radioactive waste materials mostly are the same, along with attendant risks of accidents along transportation routes. Low Enriched Uranium will arrive at the southern Wisconsin facility and SHINE’s new system will produce moly-99 using an “ion-beam” or “gas target neutron generator.” The neutrons will be used to fission uranium atoms, producing a host of “fission products” (broken bits of uranium atoms) including moly-99, iodine-131, and xenon-133.

The Janesville Gazette’s editorial board said on the opinion page that, “Residents shouldn’t fear the small amounts of uranium waste.” But according to Dr. Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, additional radioactive wastes from the process include cesium-137, strontium-90, plutonium-239, and the radioactive varieties of krypton and argon gas. Neither the radioactive or toxic character of the generated waste, nor its volume, is explained on SHINE’s website.

SHINE’s factory will be across Highway 51 from the Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport, according to the Gazette. “Isotopes disintegrate quickly—thus SHINE’s desire to build across from the airport so it could speed its product to market,” the paper reported.

SHINE declined to answer Nukewatch’s questions about the source of its LEU and the nature and volume of its radioactive waste. Spokesperson Katrina Pitas wrote in an email, “It appears our two organizations have directly opposing goals. Because of this, we respectfully decline to provide comment for your article.”

SHINE has benefited from generous funding from the federal government including $15 million from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration to produce radioisotopes without weapons-grade highly enriched uranium. The City Council of Janesville approved a $9 million incentive package for SHINE in 2012.

SHINE hopes to open its factory in three years pending NRC approval of an operating permit. There are other methods for producing medical isotopes that do not require the use of uranium at all, whether LEU or HEU and that do not produce highly radioactive waste containing fission products.

—KL & JL

—Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility emails June 14, 7, & May 25; SHINE Medical Technologies, email, June 2; Janesville Gazette, Mar. 2; Minneapolis StarTribune, Feb. 26; & SHINE press release, Feb. 25, 2016; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oct. 26, 2015, & Mar. 28, 2010. 

 

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North Korea Pledges No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons, Following China and India—So Could Obama

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2016

North Korea’s May 7 declaration that it would not be first to use nuclear weapons was met with official derision instead of relief and applause. Not one report of the announcement I could find noted that the United States has never made such a no-first-use pledge. None of three dozen news accounts even mentioned that North Korea doesn’t have one usable nuclear warhead. The New York Times did admit, “US and South Korean officials doubted that North Korea has developed a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile that would deliver a nuclear payload to the continental United States.”

Nuclear “first use” means either a nuclear sneak attack or the escalation from conventional mass destruction to the use of nuclear warheads, and US presidents have threatened it as many as 15 times. In the build-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf bombing, US officials including then Def. Sec. Dick Cheney and Sec. of State James Baker publicly and repeatedly hinted that the US might use nuclear weapons. In the midst of the bombardment, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas both explicitly promoted nuclear war on Iraq.

In April 1996, President Bill Clinton’s deputy Defense Secretary Herald Smith publicly threatened to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear Libya—which was a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty—for allegedly building a secret weapons plant. When Clinton’s Defense Secretary William J. Perry was questioned about this threat he repeated it, saying, “[W]e would not forswear that possibility.” (The Nonproliferation Treaty forbids a nuclear attack on other state parties.)

In “Presidential Policy Directive 60” (PD 60) of November 1997, Clinton made public the nuclear first use intentions of his war planners. US H-bombs were now being aimed at nations identified by the State Department to be “rogues.” PD 60 alarmingly lowered the threshold against nuclear attack possibilities. The Clinton doctrine “would allow the US to launch nuclear weapons in response to the use of chemical or biological weapons,” the Los Angeles Times and New York Times reported. (Arguing that we need H-bombs to deter chemical attacks is like saying we need nuclear reactors to boil water.) Throwing deterrence policy under the bus, Clinton then “ordered that the military … reserve the right to use nuclear arms first, even before the detonation of an enemy warhead.”

Clinton’s order was an imperious rebuke to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)—the nation’s highest scientific advisory group—which recommended six months earlier, on June 18, 1997, that the US, “declare that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in war or crisis.” In April 1998, Clinton’s US Embassy reps in Moscow coldly refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iraq, saying, “…we do not rule out in advance any capability available to us.”

Again, in January and February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell and White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer declined to explicitly exclude nuclear weapons as an option in a war on Iraq, saying US policy was not to rule anything out, Wade Boese of the Arms Control Association reported. Additionally, Def. Sec. Donald Rumsfeld said at a Feb. 13 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that official policy dictated that the US, “…not foreclose the possible use of nuclear weapons if attacked.”

Putting an end to these ultimate bomb scares would bring US action in line with Presidential rhetoric, which has regularly denounced “nuclear terrorism.” An international agreement on “non-nuclear immunity,” adopted by five nuclear-armed states May 11, 1995, has not quelled charges of hypocrisy made against them. The pact is full of exceptions—including PD 60—and is nonbinding. Only China has made this unequivocal pledge: “At no time and under no circumstances will China be the first to use nuclear weapons and [China] undertakes unconditionally not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries and nuclear-free zones.” India has made a similar no-first-use promise.

A formal US renunciation of first use would let cooler heads prevail by ending the debate over so-called “threshold” use of the Bomb. It would also end the blatant public duplicity of proclaiming that nuclear weapons are only for deterrence while preparing for attacks before the detonation of an enemy warhead.

Pledging “no first use” would save billions of dollars in research, development and production, as well as the cost of maintaining first-strike systems like B61 gravity bombs, Trident submarine warheads, Cruise and land-based missile warheads.

Significantly, nuclear war planners who have used their first-strike “master card” believe they were successful—the way a robber can get a bag of cash using a loaded gun but without pulling the trigger. They want to keep their ghastly “ace” up their sleeve, and they have manufactured a heavy stigma against formally renouncing nuclear first use, since to do so might further call into question the official “winning” reasons for having tested radiation bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The US should embrace China’s unambiguous language and promise never to use nuclear weapons first or against non-nuclear states.

If President Obama wants to ease world tensions before leaving office, he should do as the United States demands of other states, and replace Clinton’s presidential directive with his own declaration that the US will never again be the first to go nuclear.

—JL

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EPA Proposes Shocking Thousand-Fold Increase in Radioactivity Allowed in Drinking Water

Proposal Would Permit Radiation Exposures Equal to 250 Chest X-Rays per Year
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2016

WASHINGTON, DC—On June 6 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) quietly issued proposals to allow radioactive contamination in drinking water at concentrations vastly greater than allowed under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The new “Protective Action Guides” (PAGs) would permit radiation exposures equivalent to 250 chest X-rays a year. Environmental groups called the proposal “shocking” and “egregious.”

The proposed PAGs would allow the general population to drink water hundreds to thousands of times more radioactive than is now legal. For example, radioactive iodine-131 has a current limit of 3 pico-curies per liter (pCi/L) in water, but the new guides would allow 10,350 pCi/L, 3,450 times higher. For strontium-90, which causes leukemia, the current limit is 8 pCi/L; the new proposed value is 7,400 pCi/L, a 925-fold increase.

“Clean water is essential for health. But just like lead, radiation—when ingested in small amounts—is very hazardous to our health. It is inconceivable that EPA could now quietly propose allowing enormous increases in radioactive contamination with no action to protect the public, even if concentrations are a thousand times higher than under the Safe Drinking Water Act,” said Dr. Catherine Thomasson, Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility in a press advisory issued with Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and Food and Water Watch.

The Bush Administration in its last days unsuccessfully tried to put forward similar proposals, which the incoming Obama Administration pulled back. Now, in the waning months of the Obama Administration, EPA’s radiation office is trying again.

“All of this is extraordinary, since EPA has recently accepted the National Academy of Sciences’ most current risk estimates for radiation, indicating radiation is considerably more dangerous per unit dose than previously believed,” said Diane D’Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director at NIRS.

“These levels are even higher than those proposed by the Bush Administration—really unprecedented and shocking,” D’Arrigo said.

The Bush Administration proposal for strontium-90 was 6,650 pCi/L; the new proposal is 7,400 pCi/L. For iodine-131, the Bush proposal was 8,490 pCi/L; the new proposal is 10,350 pCi/L. For cesium-137, the Bush proposal was 13,600 pCi/L; Obama “beats” Bush with an allowable limit of 16,570 pCi/L.

All radionuclides can cause cancer and other health and reproductive problems. There is no completely safe level of exposure. Strontium-90 causes bone cancer and leukemia. Women, infants and, children are at greater risk than adult males.

PAGs apply not just to emergencies such as “dirty bombs” or Fukushima-type nuclear power meltdowns, but also to any radiological release for which a protective action may be considered—even a radio-pharmaceutical transport spill. The proposed drinking water PAG would apply not to the immediate phase after a release, but rather to the intermediate phase after the release has been stabilized and lasting up to several years thereafter.

Radiation doses (in rems) cannot be measured but are calculated based on some measurements and many assumptions. Current Safe Drinking Water Act radiation limits are based on an allowable dose of 4 millirems per year. The new PAGs would allow 500 millirems per year for the general population. A single chest X-ray gives about 2 millirems. Because of the way EPA is changing the definition of “dose,” for many radionuclides, the allowable concentration would be thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions of times higher than presently set under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Internal EPA documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the EPA itself concluded that the proposed concentrations “would exceed MCLs [Maximum Contaminant Limits] by a factor of 100, 1000, and in two instances, 7 million.” The EPA’s internal analysis showed that for one radionuclide, “drinking a very small glass of water of approximately 4 ounces … would result in an exposure that corresponds to a lifetime of drinking … water … at the MCL level.”

“Pushing allowable concentrations of radioactivity in drinking water up orders of magnitude above the longstanding Safe Drinking Water Act levels goes in exactly the opposite direction than the official radiation risk estimates go,” D’Arrigo said.

“Under these proposals, people would be forced to get the radiation equivalent of a chest X-ray 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for up to several years, with no medical benefit or informed consent, just from drinking water. This is immoral,” D’Arrigo said.

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Radiation Harm Deniers?

Pro-Nuclear Environmentalists and the Chernobyl Death Toll
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2016
By Dr. Jim Green 

When it comes to the long-term death toll from the1986 reactor meltdown at Chernobyl, most self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalists conflate uncertainty with a mortality rate of zero. Denying the deadly impact of a nuclear disaster because the exact science is uncertain is a position just as indefensible as denying the existence of climate change for similar reasons.

Before considering the pro-nuclear environmentalists’ misinformation, here is a brief summary of credible positions and scientific studies regarding the Chernobyl cancer death toll (for detail see the April 26, 2014 article in The Ecologist).

Epidemiological studies are of course important, but they’re of limited use in estimating the overall Chernobyl death toll. The effects of Chernobyl, however large or small, are largely lost in the statistical noise of widespread cancer incidence and mortality.

The most up-to-date scientific review is the TORCH-2016 report written by radiation biologist Dr. Ian Fairlie. Dr. Fairlie sifts through a vast number of scientific papers and points to studies indicative of Chernobyl’s impact:

  • An increased incidence of radiogenic thyroid cancers in Austria;
  • An increased incidence of leukemia among sub-populations in ex-Soviet states (and possibly other countries—more research needs to be done);
  • Increases in solid cancers, leukemia and thyroid cancer among clean-up workers;
  • Increased rates of cardiovascular disease and stroke that might be connected to Chernobyl (more research needs to be done);
  • A large study revealing statistically significant increases in nervous system birth defects in highly contaminated areas in Russia, similar to the elevated rates observed in contaminated areas in Ukraine; and more.
So what else have we got?

Without for a moment dismissing the importance of the epidemiological record, let alone the importance of further research, suffice it here to note that there is no way that one could even begin to estimate the total Chernobyl death toll from the existing body of studies.

Estimates of collective radiation exposure are available. For example, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates a total collective dose of 600,000 person-Sieverts over 50 years from Chernobyl fallout. And the collective radiation dose can be used to estimate the death toll using the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model.

If we use the IAEA’s collective radiation dose estimate, and a risk estimate derived from LNT (0.1 cancer deaths per person-Sievert), we get an estimate of 60,000 cancer deaths. Any number of studies (including studies published in peer-reviewed scientific literature) use LNT to estimate the Chernobyl death toll. These studies produce estimates ranging from 9,000 cancer deaths (in the most contaminated parts of the former Soviet Union) to 93,000 cancer deaths (across Europe).

Those are the credible estimates of the cancer death toll from Chernobyl. None of them are conclusive—far from it—but that’s the nature of the problem we’re dealing with.

Moreover, LNT may underestimate risks. The 2006 report of the US National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) states: “The committee recognizes that its risk estimates become more uncertain when applied to very low doses. Departures from a linear model at low doses, however, could either increase or decrease the risk per unit dose.”

So the true Chernobyl cancer death toll could be lower or higher than the LNT-derived estimate of 60,000 deaths—a point that needs emphasis and constant repetition since the nuclear industry and its supporters frequently conflate an uncertain long-term death toll with a long-term death toll of zero.

A second defensible position, taken by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), is that the long-term Chernobyl cancer death toll is unknown and unknowable because of the uncertainties associated with the science.

Pro-nuclear environmentalists

A third position—unqualified claims that the Chernobyl death toll was just 50 or so, comprising some emergency responders and a small percentage of those who later suffered from thyroid cancer—should be rejected as uninformed or dishonest spin from the nuclear industry and some of its scientifically-illiterate supporters.

Those illiterate supporters include every last one of the self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalists. We should note in passing that some pro-nuclear environmentalists have genuine environmental credentials while others—such as Patrick Moore and Australian Ben Heard—are in the pay of the nuclear industry.

James Hansen and George Monbiot cite UNSCEAR to justify a Chernobyl death toll of 43, without noting that the UNSCEAR report did not attempt to calculate long-term deaths. James Lovelock asserts that “in fact, only 42 people died” from the Chernobyl disaster.

Patrick Moore, citing the UN Chernobyl Forum (which included UN agencies such as the IAEA, UNSCEAR, and WHO), states that Chernobyl resulted in 56 deaths. In fact, the Chernobyl Forum’s 2005 report estimated up to 4,000 long-term cancer deaths among the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations, and a follow-up study by the World Health Organization in 2006 estimated an additional 5,000 deaths among people exposed to lower doses in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

Australian “ecomodernist” academic Barry Brook says the Chernobyl death toll is less than 60. Ben Heard, another Australian “ecomodernist” (in fact a uranium and nuclear industry consultant), claims that the death toll was 43.

There doesn’t appear to be a single example of a pro-nuclear environmentalist—or a comparable organization—providing a credible account of the Chernobyl death toll. They’re perfectly entitled to follow UNSCEAR’s lead and argue that the long-term death toll is uncertain. But conflating or confusing that uncertainty with a long-term death toll of zero clearly isn’t a defensible approach.

Shaky understanding

Evidence of pro-nuclear environmentalist ignorance abounds. For the most part, pro-nuclear environmentalists had a shaky understanding of the radiation/health debates (and other nuclear issues) before they joined the pro-nuclear club, and they have a shaky understanding now.

James Hansen’s understanding of the radiation/health debates is shaky, to say the least. He falsely claims there is a “generally accepted 100 millisievert threshold for fatal disease development.” But the accepted scientific position is that there is no threshold. Thus, a 2010 UNSCEAR report states that “the current balance of available evidence tends to favour a non-threshold response for the mutational component of radiation-associated cancer induction at low doses and low dose rates.”

Barry Brook is another example of someone whose understanding was shaky before and after he joined the pro-nuclear environmentalist club. Brook says that before 2009 he hadn’t given much thought to nuclear power because of the “peak uranium” argument. By 2010, Brook was in full flight, asserting that the LNT model is “discredited” and has “no relevance to the real world.”

In fact, LNT enjoys heavy-hitting scientific support. For example the US National Academy of Sciences’ BEIR report states that “the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and … the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.”

Likewise, a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states: “Given that it is supported by experimentally grounded, quantifiable, biophysical arguments, a linear extrapolation of cancer risks from intermediate to very low doses currently appears to be the most appropriate methodology.”

Conspiracy theories

On Chernobyl, Brook said: “The credible literature (WHO, IAEA) puts the total Chernobyl death toll at less than 60. The ‘conspiracy theories’ drummed up against these authoritative organizations rings a disturbingly similar bell in my mind to the crank attacks on the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA and World Meteorlogical Organization in climate science.”

But the WHO, IAEA and other UN agencies estimated 9,000 deaths in ex-Soviet states in their 2005/06 reports, and more recently UNSCEAR has adopted the position that the long-term death toll is uncertain.

Brook repeatedly promotes the work of Ted Rockwell from “Radiation, Science, and Health,” an organization that peddles dangerous conspiracy theories such as this: “Government agencies suppress data, including radiation hormesis, and foster radiation fear. They support extreme, costly, radiation protection policies; and preclude using low-dose radiation for health and medical benefits that apply hormesis, in favor of using (more profitable) drug therapies.”

Brook promotes the discredited “hormesis” theory that low doses of radiation are beneficial to human health. …

Good for wildlife?

If Brook and contrarian scientists are right, Chernobyl (and Fukushima) have been beneficial by spreading health-giving, life-affirming ionizing radiation far and wide. And according to some pro-nuclear environmentalists, Chernobyl has been a boon for wildlife and biodiversity.

The region surrounding Chernobyl is one of Europe’s “finest natural preserves” according to Stewart Brand. Pro-nuclear environmentalist Mark Lynas says the Chernobyl “explosion has even been good for wildlife, which has thrived in the 30km exclusion zone,” and he says that restrictions on fishing around Fukushima “will improve the marine environment there.”

James Lovelock says the land around Chernobyl “is now rich in wildlife” and he follows this asinine argument to its logical conclusion: “We call the ash from nuclear power nuclear waste and worry about its safe disposal. I wonder if instead we should use it as an incorruptible guardian of the beautiful places on Earth. Who would dare cut down a forest which was a storage place of nuclear ash?”

According to most pro-nuclear environmentalists, radiation exposure from Chernobyl has been harmless (except for those exposed to extremely high doses), and according to some it has been beneficial to human health. And Chernobyl has been good for wildlife and biodiversity (mutations aside). Follow the pro-nuclear environmentalists down these rabbit-holes and you come up with Hansen’s claim that the nuclear industry’s safety record is “superior to any other major industry,” or Lynas’ claim that nuclear power is “extraordinarily safe,” or Brook’s claim that “nuclear power is the safest energy option.”

Nuclear power the safest energy option? Safer than wind and solar? To arrive at that conclusion, Brook and others understate the death toll from Chernobyl (and Fukushima) by orders of magnitude. They conflate an uncertain long-term Chernobyl death toll with a long-term death toll of zero, ignoring the science every bit as much as do climate change deniers.

—Dr. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter. This article, which has been edited for length,was written for the April 7, 2016 edition of The Ecologist.

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