Radiation Exposure

March 15, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Spikes in Radioactive Emissions from Nuclear Power Stations

These data were from Gundremmingen, a boiling water reactor in Southern Germany. The chart shows that normal emission concentration (of noble gases) during the rest of the year was about 3,000 Becquerels-per-cubic-meter (3kBq/m³), but during refueling on Sept. 22, 2011 this sharply increased to ~700 kBq/m³, with a peak of 1,470 kBq/m³, in other words a “spike.” This data shows that NPRs emit much larger amounts of radioactive noble gases during refueling than during normal power operation. From the new data, Nuremberg physicist and statistician, Dr. Alfred Körblein, estimated … that about two thirds of the NPR’s annual emissions occur during refueling.

By Dr. Ian Fairlie

Up until very recently, it was impossible to obtain information on the time release patterns of radioactive emissions from nuclear power reactors (NPRs). Despite requests, British nuclear utilities and UK government regulators repeatedly refuse to publish any time-related data. Averaged annual emissions were released. But not monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly real-time emission data.

I [believe] most radioactive emissions from nuclear reactors are not spread evenly across the whole year, but happen during short refueling periods which occur about once every year or two and which last a few days or so.

These short spikes could explain a matter which has puzzled radiation protection agencies for decades: the reason for apparent increases in childhood leukemias near NPRs all over the world. Governments have insisted that these increased leukemias could not be caused by radioactive emissions from NPRs, because their estimated radiation doses were 100-1,000 times too low. But these estimates are riddled with uncertainties, and they don’t take the time patterns of radioactive emissions into account.

In September 2011, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in Germany released a press notice which contained data on half-hourly releases of radioactive noble gases from an NPR for the very first time anywhere in the world. This information is shown in the chart below for seven days in September 2011.

How was this data released?

In May 2011, German Green Members of Parliament entered the Bavarian State Parliament for the first time where they formed the Government in coalition with the Socialist Party. After several requests, the new Bavarian Government insisted that the state nuclear regulator release non-averaged data on emissions. The highly reluctant nuclear regulator was compelled to respond. In other words, the Green MPs obtained the data because they had the political power to force its release: there is a lesson here for environmentalists.

Why is this data important?

In order to refuel, reactor pressure vessels must be opened up. This releases large volumes of radioactive gases and vapors to the local environment. These include noble gases, H-3 (tritium), carbon-14, and iodine-131. Until now, nuclide amounts had only been published as annual averages throughout the world. Now, non-averaged values have been made available for scientific evaluation for the first time.

Could these spikes explain leukemia increases near reactors?

Yes. People living near nuclear power stations and downwind from them will be exposed to high doses of radiation during these emissions spikes—much higher than from releases during the rest of the year. Estimates range from 20 to 100 times higher. Recently the British National Dose Assessment Working Group published guidance on “Short Term Releases to the Atmosphere.”

This states that “…doses from the assessment of a single realistic short-term release are a factor of about 20 greater than doses from the continuous release assessment.” An older German study indicated that these doses could be a factor of 100 greater. …

Therefore higher doses from emission spikes could go a long way to explaining the increased incidences of child leukemias near NPRs shown by KiKK (2007 German government report) findings. IPPNW Germany warns of the probable health impacts of such large emission spikes. “Especially at risk are unborn children,” the physicians said..

“When reactors are open and releasing gases, pregnant women can incorporate much higher concentrations of radionuclides than at other times, mainly via respiration,” said Reinhold Thiel, member of the German IPPNW Board. “Radioactive isotopes inhaled by the mother can reach the unborn child via the blood and placenta with the result that the embryo/fetus is contaminated (‘labelled’) by radioactive isotopes. This contamination could affect blood-forming cells in the bone marrow later resulting in leukemia. This provides a plausible explanation for the findings of the KiKK study published in 2007 and 2008—that [children under five] living near nuclear power plants are considerably more at risk of cancer, particularly leukemia, than children living further away,” Thiel said.

—Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment, was head of the Secretariat of the British government’s Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters. He posted a longer version of this article Jan. 19, 2012.

January 12, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Radiation Exposures, Voluntary and Otherwise

**The Nuclear Fix: A Guide to Nuclear Activities in the Third World, by Thijs de la Court, Deborah Pick, & Daniel Nordquist, page 8, World Information Service on Energy (WISE), The Netherlands, 1982**

By John LaForge

There is no safe exposure to ionizing radiation — the alpha, beta, and gamma and X-rays given off by radioactive materials used in medicine, the military, industry, and nuclear power. The US National Academy of Sciences’ 7th book-length study on the biological effects of ionizing radiation, BEIR-VII, declared that any exposure, regardless of how small, may cause the induction of cancer, birth abnormalities, and/or other diseases. And every US government agency that regulates industrial releases or the medical uses of radiation makes the same warning, based on BEIR-VII.

Today the nuclear military-industrial-medical complex is merely required to keep radiation exposures “As Low As Reasonably Achievable.” I didn’t make that up. This uber-vague, tragi-comic standard is not a medical or scientific concept. It is however the formal admission that radiation’s producers cannot keep worker or public exposures to a level that is safe — that is to zero.

Exposure standards have been established at the convenience of the vast radiation complex, not by medical doctors or health physicists. During the Cold War arms race, the late Dr. Rosalie Bertell reported in her groundbreaking book No Immediate Danger, “[T]he people with the highest vested interest are the ones that are making the nuclear bombs. And it turns out they have complete control over setting the permissible [radiation exposure] levels. If you were to fix radiation limits at levels that were really protective of human health, you couldn’t get anybody to make bombs.” These corrupt old limits are still mostly in effect today.

What the government has declared an “allowable” dose of ionizing radiation has steadily and dramatically decreased over the years — as science has come to better understand the toxic, cancer-causing, mutagenic, and teratogenic properties of even low doses.

In the 1920s, the government set the allowable radiation dose for nuclear industry workers at 75 “rem” per year. In 1936 the limit was reduced to 50 rem-per-year; then 20-to-25 in 1948; 15 in 1954, and finally down to five rem-per-year in 1958. This legal dose limit for radiation industry workers is still in effect — in spite of the fact that the International Commission on Radiation Protection recommended in 1990 that these doses be dramatically reduced (again), from 5-rem, to 2-rem-per-year.

The US just halted its hapless, industry-opposed, 27-year effort to adopt this precautionary standard. (See last week’s column.) Amazingly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) admitted in the Federal Register that implementing the improvement would be too costly, bowing to industry’s lobby efforts rather than adopt a public health standard the rest of the world embraced decades ago.

The general public is officially allowed to be exposed to one-50th of a nuclear industry workers’ radiation dose per year, or 0.1 rem (100 millirem) over a 70-year lifespan. According to research by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, this allowable, 100 millirem public dose, set by the NRC, imposes a “one of 286” cancer fatality risk standard. That is, fatal cancer given “accidentally” to one out of every 286 people is considered “acceptable,” “permissible” and “allowable” by the federal government. You could call this a license to kill. BEIR-VII found that “radiation at this level to women results in one fatal cancer in every 201 women” — acknowledging that a given radiation dose is far more dangerous for women than for men, and, by extension, that women’s lives mean less to Uncle Sam than men’s.

The use of radiation in medicine at least involves the patient’s informed consent regarding the risks. And industry workers can be said to voluntarily accept the risks of workplace radiation exposures. But the public’s involuntary and unbeknownst radiation exposures — via the government’s and industry’s deliberate (and often secret, or misreported, or unregulated, or covered-up) venting, leaking and haphazard dispersal of radioactive gases, liquids and solid wastes — are adding to cancer statistics that grow worse every year. Radioactive emissions from operating reactors, waste fuel pools, fuel and isotope fabrication facilities, unregulated landfills, waste transports, etc., are avoidable, because the industry can be retired, nuclear weapons abolished, and waste sites cleaned up. Call that a national security objective worthy of the military budget.

August 23, 2016 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

“Waste Isolation Pilot” Becomes $2 Billion Waste Dispersal Site

In 1989, the renowned undersea explorer Jacque Cousteau said, “A common denominator in every single nuclear accident — a nuclear plant or on a nuclear submarine — is that before the specialists even know what has happened, they rush to the media saying, ‘There’s no danger to the public.’ They do this before they themselves know what has happened because they are terrified that the public might react violently, either by panic or by revolt.”

On Feb. 14, 2014 a barrel of plutonium-contaminated waste blew apart deep underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The WIPP experiment was an attempt to discard some plutonium wastes left from 60 years of nuclear weapons production. The uncontrolled explosion spewed plutonium particles throughout the vast, mine-like underground chambers and scattered them all up and down the 2,150-foot deep elevator and ventilations shafts, closing the dumpsite indefinitely. This week the Los Angeles Times reports that it will cost at least $2 billion to repair the damage and to attempt decontamination.

Ventilation shaft filtration systems failed to keep the contamination underground, and a federal investigation found two dozen violations of safety procedures, yet even 2.5 years later the government doesn’t know why the barrel blew. “And [the $2B] does not include the complete replacement of the contaminated ventilation system or any future costs of operating the mine longer than originally planned,” the Times reported.

At WIPP, Cousteau’s ‘common denominator’ kicked in as usual. As the LA Times said: “When a drum containing radioactive waste blew up in an underground nuclear dump in New Mexico two years ago, the Energy Department [DOE] rushed to quell concerns in the Carlsbad desert community and quickly reported progress on resuming operations. The early federal statements gave no hint that the blast had caused massive long-term damage to the dump, a facility crucial to the nuclear weapons cleanup program that spans the nation…”

Dispersed plutonium-laden dusts were pulled up the deep shafts by the huge ventilation fans on the surface and at least 13 workers on site that day were exposed.

The DOE now says 13 workers present during the radioactive release “were tested for internal radioactive contamination” (emphasis added) and that “Initial fecal samples measured some radioactivity above normal background levels.” This admission is vanishingly rare and extremely serious for the victims, considering the inability to decontaminate your insides.

The DOE also says that 140 workers were exposed to radiation the following day (it doesn’t use the word “plutonium” much), and that “… 22 were notified that their exposure was below the 10 millirem level, which is about the same exposure a person would get from a chest x-ray.”

Regular readers will recall that for the government to compare internal radiation exposure to X-rays is deliberate, sophisticated disinformation, because X-rays only dose the target with radiation externally. The difference is highly significant. Dr. Chris Busby, of the Low Level Radiation Campaign (llrc.org), says it’s the difference between sitting in front of a warm fire, and popping a hot coal from the fire into your mouth. (The Energy Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the National Nuclear Security Administration all use this magician’s trick: getting us to look at the wrong thing.)

WIPP’s worker exposures were internal or breathed-in exposures, in which hot particles can lodge in tissue or bone and then for long periods of time bombard surrounding cells with deadly radiation.

The pro-nuke lobby will chant that ‘nobody died at WIPP’ because of the 2014 disaster. But radiation shortens lives and causes dozens of debilitating diseases and disorders short of death including nose bleeds, bleeding gums, joint pain, hair loss, liver disorders, elevated blood pressure, gastro intestinal problems, muscle pain, headaches, fatigue, skin rashes, respiratory problems, heart problems, miscarriages, stillbirths, infant mortality, birth abnormalities, and cancers.

The so-called Pilot Project at Carlsbad had been promoted as the disposal answer for plutonium-tainted nuclear weapons waste, and was “designed to last 10,000 years.” But as Santa Monica, Calif. activist Myla Reson reports, “The dump failed 9,985 years ahead of schedule.”

And we’re safer for it, Reson says, “because justification for approval of the dump relied on a fabricated site characterization and analysis” which made continued use of the dump potentially catastrophic — either through onsite explosions, long-term ground water contamination, or transportation disasters involving crashes en route from Hanford, Washington and the Idaho National Lab, and a dozen other H-bomb production sites from Livermore, Calif., to Oak Ridge Tenn.

March 2, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Authorities Dismiss Coldwater Creek Cancer Cluster

February March 2013 Nukewatch Quarterly

When it comes to understanding the incredible concentration of cancers, birth defects, and other serious ailments related to a Manhattan Project-era radioactive waste dumping ground in north St. Louis County, Facebook has proven a far better resource for current and former residents than the State of Missouri.

A report released by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services in March concluded that elevated cancer rates near Flourissant, Missouri, are probably not linked to the radioactive waste dumped in the area from 1947 through the 1970s. Researchers studied the prevalence of 27 types of cancer among those who lived within six zip codes surrounding Coldwater Creek from 1996 to 2004. Though epidemiologists did identify an elevated incidence of some cancers among the population, they attributed those higher rates to socioeconomic factors such as smoking, lack of exercise, poor diet, and diabetes.

Flourissant natives Janell Rodden Wright and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, who are part of the Facebook group that connects residents of the Coldwater Creek area affected by illness, called the study “completely uninformative” in a recent piece published in the St. Louis Beacon. They point out that according to the American Community Survey from 2007-2011, over 75% of those who live in one of the zip codes studied moved there after 1990 – when clean-up efforts were already underway. The study did not account for any cases of cancer in those who were diagnosed after they moved outside the area, which Wright and Schanzenbach say is the case with most of their classmates. State cancer registries only record a patient’s address at the time of diagnosis. Also ignored by the Department of Health report were the many cases of cancer among current residents diagnosed after 2004, as well as many non-cancer health issues.

When Wright, Schanzenbach, and their childhood friends swam in Coldwater Creek near their homes in Flourissant, MO, in the 1970s and 1980s, they had no idea they were immersing themselves in water tainted with radioactive waste. In fact, until Wright and her classmates began to investigate the strange prevalence of rare cancers and other diseases among their peer group in 2011, they had no idea the area where they grew up had served as a dumping ground for radioactive waste produced by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works at its downtown St. Louis plant, which purified uranium that the U.S. used to create atomic bombs in the 1940s.

Wright became suspicious when two of her friends were diagnosed with appendix cancer within a few months of each other. Both were told this disease is very rare, afflicting one in a million people. She reached out to others who grew up in the area through Facebook, and the results are astonishing. Among those who had lived within a four square mile area near the creek, over 2,000 cases of cancers, autoimmune disorders, thyroid disease, birth defects (including three cases of conjoined twins), and health issues among children (including seven children of Wright’s classmates who had their thyroid removed before age 10) have been reported. Twenty-two cases of appendix cancer have now been reported.

The group’s google map showing the residence or former residence of those who have died or fallen ill shows an alarming cluster of cases around Coldwater Creek and the St. Louis Airport Site (SLAPS), Hazelwood Interim Storage Site (HISS), Futura Property, and West Lake Landfill where waste was dumped or stored. Once elevated levels of radioactive materials were discovered in Coldwater Creek in 1989, the Army Corps of Engineers was charged with its clean-up, which they report is nearly complete. As Nukewatch reported in the Winter 2012 article “Cold War Era Dumps Heating Up St. Louis,” the West Lake Landfill, where 20 acres of radioactive waste was illegally dumped in 1973, contains over 15 feet of radioactive waste, and its temperature is rising at an alarming rate. The landfill’s neighbors complain of terrible smells and emissions that burn eyes and cause headaches. Current and former residents of the Coldwater Creek area had hoped that a conclusive cancer cluster study would help them qualify for the same “downwinder” status granted to those affected by atomic bomb testing in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, which would have given them access to medical assistance.

Three separate groups of affected residents have brought lawsuits against Mallinckrodt Chemical, which is now owned by Covidien Pharmaceuticals, seeking damages comparable to those awarded to the company’s former St. Louis plant workers, who are eligible for coverage of medical expenses plus $150,000. On March 27, a federal judge dismissed seven of the suits’ eight claims. The single remaining claim will require residents to prove their injuries occurred no more than five years before the suits were filed, based on Missouri’s statute of limitations laws. Still, the groups’ lawyers are optimistic that justice will be served. In a statement released after the judge’s dismissal, lead counsel Marc Bern said, “We expect to prevail for these innocent victims and end this terrible nightmare for so many people.”

Though their plight remains unrecognized by the government, those affected by the Coldwater Creek radiation are taking grassroots action to uncover the truth and serve as resources for each other. Their Facebook page, “Coldwater Creek – Just the Facts Please,” is a testament to the power of grassroots organizing: its members share legal and medical resources, coping strategies, action alerts, and an unwavering commitment to helping each other deal with an enormous tragedy that comprises only a very small portion of the U.S. government’s atomic bomb legacy.

Sources: KSDK News, St. Louis, Feb. 1; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 21, Mar. 29; St. Louis Beacon, Mar. 26

December 2, 2012 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Cold War Era Dumps Heating Up St. Louis

Winter 2012 Nukewatch Quarterly

By Bonnie Urfer

Imagine living next to a landfill containing household garbage, industrial chemicals and jet fuel. Then picture an unlined radioactive waste dump next to and on top of the landfill. Finally, consider that the landfill’s temperature is unnaturally rising and that the heat may affect buried radioactive material.

This is the situation at the 200-acre West Lake Landfill (WLL) in Bridgeton, Missouri, northwest of Lambert Airport in St. Louis. The West Lake Co. accepted waste from the Hazelwood area east of the airport in the early 1970s in a typical industry shell-game. Mallinckrodt Chemical Co., Contemporary Metals, the Cotter Corporation, Dow Chemical and other firms were involved in Cold War uranium processing here and dumped their wastes haphazardly.

Neighbors complain of terrible smells and emissions that burn eyes and cause headaches. An investigation has not uncovered the cause of the problem, although authorities report that the dump’s temperature is rising and threatens to disturb the radioactive waste buried there. Phoenix-based Republic Services now operates the landfill and has drilled wells to allow gases and vapors to escape, but the same wellheads show a dramatic increase in temperatures over the past four months. WLL, with its mass of radioactive and toxic waste 15 feet deep, is just two miles from the Missouri River and sits in its broad flood plain.

Residents of Bridgeton have met to determine what can be done about the 20 acres of radioactive refuse dumped illegally in 1973. The Environmental Protection Agency promises public meetings in January to address the situation. The EPA and Republic favor keeping the dump as is, since the contamination is so widespread that any attempt to move it could make the situation worse and cost $400 million.

Other dumps around St. Louis facing lawsuits over cleanup include the Madison Site, just across the Mississippi River in Illinois; the North St. Louis County Site; the St. Louis Downtown Site; the St. Louis Airport Sites and Coldwater Creek.

— KMOV TV, Oct. 29; KTVI News, St. Louis, Nov. 13; St. Louis Post Dispatch, Mar.14, 2012; Washington University, Feb. 18, 2010; Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources, “West Lake Landfill,” Hazardous Waste Program, undated report.

Radiation Exposures, Voluntary and Otherwise

“Waste Isolation Pilot” Becomes $2 Billion Waste Dispersal Site

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