[ RadSafe ] Is there an answer to the query on damage to tissue due to tritium decay?

[John Jacobus]

Why anyone would even respond to comments from the
Nuclear Information and Referral Service is beyond me.
 Why waste your time?

> "Muckerheide, James" <jimm at WPI.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Friends,
> 
> Note the following intended use of the explicitly
> fraudulent BEIR VII report:
> 
> 
> But Diane D'Arrigo, a low-level radiation specialist
> with the Nuclear
> Information and Referral Service in Washington, said
> that when tritium enters
> the human body, "if it were to displace a hydrogen
> atom in our DNA we would
> have potential genetic damage."
> 
> Because tritium is almost always found as a water
> contaminant, it goes
> directly into soft tissues and organs, according to
> the EPA.
> 
> Tritium "is very much something that can be taken up
> by the body," D'Arrigo
> said. "It gives off beta emissions, so wherever it
> lodges it will give off
> radioactivity in that region."
> 
> A National Academy of Sciences panel in June said
> that even very low doses of
> radiation pose a cancer risk over a person's
> lifetime. "It is unlikely that
> there is a threshold [of radiation exposure] below
> which cancers are not
> induced," the scientists stated.
> 
> Of course, the electric ratepayers are stuck with
> the $ millions for such
> ludicrous "decisions," continuing to profit the "rad
> protectionists" while
> continuing to destroy the economics of all things
> nuclear.
> 
> Now, maybe we can get $ billions to prevent cosmic
> radiation from constantly
> manufacturing tritium in the atmosphere? Can we
> sequester tritium to reduce
> the world equilibrium tritium inventory of 50
> million curies? (How about
> reducing the legacy of the 2,000 million curies in
> the early '60s from
> above-ground weapons tests - now about 700 million
> curies? :-)
> 
> But we explicitly suppress the data that shows that
> biology ceases to
> function without radiation (including biology
> studies from removing K-40 from
> natural potassium in the Oak Ridge calutrons). 
> 
> All relevant data is discarded by the BEIR VII
> Committee.
> 
> (Note also that these foundations are above a
> "tritium plume" in ground water
> from 1960's leakage from the below-ground spent fuel
> pool.)
> 
> Regards, Jim Muckerheide
> 
> ===================
> 
> 
> 
> 
> More radioactive Yankee Rowe waste to pass through
> Vermont
> 
> 
> By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian
> 
> posted August 19, 2005 
> 
> BRATTLEBORO - As much as 23 million pounds of
> tritium-laced construction
> waste could be trucked through southern Vermont
> within a stone's throw of two
> elementary schools after Massachusetts regulators
> turned thumbs down on a
> request to leave the low-level radioactive material
> on site.
> 
> Officials of the shuttered Yankee Rowe nuclear power
> plant near Rowe, MA, had
> asked the Massachusetts Department of Environmental
> Protection (MassDEP) for
> a "beneficial use determination" (BUD) permit, which
> proposed leaving in
> place building foundations and other underground
> structures of the reactor
> containment building, one of the few structures left
> standing at the site.
> 
> They also asked for permission to fill holes left by
> demolished foundations
> and other excavations with about 20 tons of concrete
> rubble from demolition
> of other structures at the site.
> 
> Yankee Rowe, the nation's third-oldest nuclear power
> plant, began
> decommissioning in 1993. Late last year, officials
> there estimated there were
> about 1,000 shipments left before decommissioning
> was complete.
> 
> But in a July 29 decision, MassDEP said the proposal
> could complicate cleanup
> of soil and groundwater contamination. "MassDEP has
> concluded that the BUD
> approval to abandon-in-place subsurface structures
> and reuse concrete rubble
> as fill shall be limited to only those materials
> with no distinguishable
> plant-related radioactivity above background level,"
> said MassDEP
> Commissioner Robert W. Golledge, Jr.
> 
> "While the risk posed to the public by Yankee's
> proposal may be low,
> tritium-contaminated rubble is low-level radioactive
> waste which cannot be
> left on site. Further interring the material on site
> may exacerbate or
> complicate the clean up of existing soil and
> groundwater contamination at the
> site," he determined.
> 
> Tritium, a known carcinogen, is released in steam
> from commercial nuclear
> reactors and may leak into the underlying soil and
> ground water, according to
> the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It has a
> half-life of about 12
> years.
> 
> The EPA considers tritium one of the least dangerous
> radionuclides 
=== message truncated ===


+++++++++++++++++++
"Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea and never shrinks back to its original proportion." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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