[ RadSafe ] [Nuclear News] Swiss Oppose New Nuclear Power Plant

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Swiss Oppose New Nuclear Power Plant
"What if" health scenarios for a "dirty bomb"  
NRC chairman says Indian Point safety review not needed
South Africa Nuclear demonstration plant may cost R16bn 
US ready to help India set up National Nuclear Data Centre
Iran's top ayatollah defends nuclear plan for energy 
Cell phone dangers still argued
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Swiss Oppose New Nuclear Power Plant

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) Feb 18 - Many adults in Switzerland are 
against the construction of a new atomic power plant in their 
country, according to a poll by Isopublic. 60.2 per cent of 
respondents oppose the idea.

Switzerland´s first nuclear power plant became operational in 1969. 
The country´s five existing reactors provide 40 per cent of the 
country´s electricity. In 2003, Swiss voters rejected a proposal to 
phase-out nuclear energy in a nationwide referendum.

In 2006, the Swiss Parliament ended the country´s moratorium on 
building new nuclear power plants, and extended the operating life of 
the five existing reactors.

Last month, Swiss environment minister Moritz Leuenberger said the 
government was "considering" the construction of a new nuclear power 
station, as three of the existing reactors will have to be replaced 
by 2020.

Polling Data

Are you for or against building a new atomic power plant in 
Switzerland?

For: 27.3%
 
Against: 60.2%
 
Not sure: 12.5%

Source: Isopublic
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 605 Swiss voters, conducted 
from Jan. 25 to Jan. 27, 2007. No margin of error was provided.
---------------

"What if" health scenarios for a "dirty bomb"   

(News-Medical.Net) Feb 18 - If a so-called "dirty bomb" exploded in a 
populated area, first responders would have to make immediate 
decisions to lessen health impacts on people who might be exposed to 
radioactive material. 

Brookhaven National Laboratory health physicist Stephen Musolino will 
be among five speakers who will discuss aspects of a response to such 
a scenario at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Francisco. During the 
session, held Saturday, February 17, speakers will offer guidance to 
first responders, planners, and other decision makers for protective 
actions during the first 48 hours after a dirty-bomb - formally known 
as a radiological dispersal device (RDD) -- has been detonated. 

Along with Sandia National Laboratories senior scientist Frederick 
Harper, Musolino will participate in a session titled "Coping with a 
Dirty-Bomb Detonation." Musolino's presentation is "Evacuate or 
Shelter in Place: A Dirty-Bomb Case Study." 

"By the time it is known that an attack has occurred, most likely 
there will have been casualties, all the radioactive material will 
have been released and it will have begun to disperse," Musolino 
said. "The goal of our research is to provide science-based response 
recommendations to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to 
consider for use in community preparedness activities." 

Over the past two decades, more than 600 explosive experiments were 
conducted at Sandia to determine how the radioactive material in a 
RDD would disperse in the environment through aerosolization, which 
forms a cloud of particles. In these experiments, the quantities of 
material used to simulate the radioactive material, the shock 
physics, and the aerosol physics are representative of what might 
occur in the detonation of an actual device. This information was 
then applied to predict the dispersal of actual radioactive sources 
using many different device designs. Harper and Musolino published 
the study's results in a cover article in the April issue of the 
Health Physics journal. 

The research, said Harper, was performed on many different forms of 
materials - including ceramics, metals, powders, and liquids - so 
that the dispersal characteristics of most realistic radioactive 
sources could be predicted accurately. 

"We focused on sophisticated aerosolization techniques to provide the 
responders with guidance based on what is realistically possible," 
Harper said. "We've also performed experiments investigating some of 
the more probable aerosolization techniques that terrorists might 
employ." 

Based on the experiments, Harper and Musolino recommended 
establishing a "high zone" with boundaries of 500 meters in all 
directions from the point of detonation. Because there is a good set 
of experiments behind this recommendation, first responders can 
follow it without radiation measurements if they know there is 
radiation associated with the explosion. Responders are advised to 
evacuate this "high zone" and control access to prevent 
uncontaminated people from entering the affected area. "These new 
strategies will speed up lifesaving efforts to aid the injured 
victims and minimize the overall radiation dose to the public,' 
Musolino said. "I hope a terrorist act with a RDD never happens," he 
continued. "But if it does, we want the first responders to have the 
best science behind the tough decisions they will make in those first 
critical hours." 

The research was funded primarily by the Department of Energy and the 
Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Recently, the 
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission contributed to the work, with DHS coordinating the 
outreach effort with the first responder community.
----------------

NRC chairman says Indian Point safety review not needed

(The Journal News) Feb 17 - The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission has defended his agency's decision not to conduct a 
special inspection of Indian Point, saying there is already enough 
oversight of the nuclear power plants.

In a letter to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, Chairman Dale E. Klein 
said a revamped reactor inspection program is more effective than an 
"Independent Safety Assessment" because it is continuous, while the 
special review would be a "snapshot" of conditions at the plants.

"(The) NRC staff is essentially performing the inspection elements of 
an ISA at each operating nuclear power plant in the country on a 
routine basis," Klein wrote Thursday.

Klein sent the letter to Hinchey, the Ulster County congressman who 
originated a bill last year requiring the NRC to conduct an ISA of 
Indian Point. Klein also sent copies to Reps. Eliot Engel, D-Bronx, 
and Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, who co-sponsored the legislation.

Hinchey's bill and a similar one introduced by U.S. Sen. Hillary 
Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., failed last year. Updated versions of both 
bills were reintroduced this week in the new, Democratic-controlled 
Congress and have received the ceremonial support of the county 
legislatures of Rockland, Putnam and Westchester.

The ISA is crucial for the public to be comfortable that the Indian 
Point nuclear power plants operate safely, Hinchey said.

"They are completely fallacious in what they're presenting as their 
rationale for not allowing this independent safety analysis," he said 
of NRC officials. "They have not engaged in the proper oversight of 
this facility, and they are apparently incapable of doing so."

The agency's oversight is too superficial to provide the in-depth 
inspection needed, Hinchey said, especially considering there are 
strontium 90 and tritium leaks at the plants, unplanned shutdowns of 
the reactor and other operational concerns.

Indian Point officials maintain that an ISA is unwarranted and that 
the plants are safe. They also think that should such an inspection 
be required, the plants would perform well, though they are skeptical 
even an exemplary rating would satisfy opponents.

"We're saying let's take a look at this place in a serious way," 
Hinchey said. "It needs that kind of examination so that we can have 
enough information on which to base a kind of decision like that."

Riverkeeper's Indian Point campaign director, Lisa Rainwater, said 
that even if the ISA showed the plants were operating safely, her 
organization could not support its continued presence in such a 
densely populated area.

"It's still the wrong plant in the wrong place at the wrong time," 
Rainwater said yesterday.

Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the owner and operator of Indian Point, 
plans to seek 20-year license renewals for the two working reactors 
at the site. If the NRC approves those applications, the company 
could generate electricity there through 2035.

Company officials have said the relicensing process would require 
more inspection, adding to what is already being done on the 
radiological leaks.

Hinchey said new leadership in Congress increases the chance that the 
special review will be required.

Engel said anything short of an ISA is inadequate.

"Now the NRC wants us to trust their judgment in assessing Indian 
Point," Engel said. "They claim it is safe while practically every 
week we hear of another shutdown or another leak."
-------------

South Africa Nuclear demonstration plant may cost R16bn 

Johannesburg Feb 18  - The construction of the demonstration reactor 
of the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) at Koeberg in the Western 
Cape and pilot fuel plant at Pelindaba in North West could cost R16 
billion.

PBMR Company's chief executive, Jaco Kriek, said this week that PBMR 
was preparing for the construction of the demonstration reactor at 
Koeberg near Cape Town and the associated fuel plant at Pelindaba in 
North West.

A PBMR spokesperson, Tom Ferreira, said approval of the environmental 
impact assessment (EIA) had been received at the Pelindaba plant.

However, the process of getting approval for the firm's EIA for its 
demonstrator reactor had started afresh after the Cape high court 
ruled in favour of Earthlife Africa in January 2005 and set aside the 
approval for the demonstration reactor EIA.

Public participation meetings must still be held about the Koeberg 
demonstration reactor.

The department of environmental affairs and tourism has to issue a 
positive record of decision before the company can start 
construction, which is expected to start this year.

The demonstration plant could commission in 2012 from the previous 
target of 2011. The commissioning of the first commercial pebble bed 
plant was scheduled for 2016.

Kriek said PBMR had more than 700 full-time staff and more than 2 000 
contractors working full time on the programme. Seventy-six 
international patents had been registered for pebble bed technology.

The minister of public enterprises, Alec Erwin, two years ago said 
the government was looking to produce 4 000 megawatts to 5 000MW of 
power from pebble bed reactors, which equates to between 20 and 30 
modular reactors of 165MW each.

The chief executive of the Nuclear Energy Corporation of SA (Necsa), 
Rob Adam, said the government could build about 24 reactors by 2030.

Ferreira said the actual number of reactors built would depend on 
future electricity demand and the success of the demonstration 
reactor plant.

The pebble bed technology is the first of its kind and many of the 
components involved in building a reactor needed to be custom built.

The shareholders in PBMR are the government, the Industrial 
Development Corporation, Eskom and US nuclear plant manufacturer 
Westinghouse Electric. The government has budgeted to spend R9 
billion on the development of the reactors, from the original budget 
of R2 billion.

Kriek said the advantages of a pebble bed reactors was that extra 
modules could be easily added and it could be constructed in two 
years. Also they were small at 165MW for each module, had a low 
impact on the environment and they had a low proliferation risk.

Adam said the export of pebble bed technology was likely to match 
domestic capacity over the next 20 years.

On top of the 24 reactors, Necsa expected 12 extra conventional 
nuclear power stations to be built by 2030, adding to the 1 800MW 
Koeberg power station, said Adam.

Construction on Koeberg started in 1976 and the station started to 
supply power to South Africa's grid from April 1984.

Kriek said 30 nuclear plants were being built in 12 countries and 
more than 100 were being planned.

Westinghouse Electric's chief executive, Stephen Tritch, said he 
expected South Africa to add between 10 000MW and 20 000MW of nuclear 
power capacity over the next 20 years.

The 20 000MW of extra nuclear power would translate into 18 new 
nuclear power stations, each with a capacity of 1 100MW, he added.

The move to raise conventional power stations was aimed at reducing 
the reliance on coal-fired power stations, which generate close to 95 
percent of the country's electricity.

The minister of minerals and energy, Buyelwa Sonjica, said South 
Africa needed to cut its reliance on coal as a source of energy.

However, Earthlife African Cape Town spokesperson Maya Aberman said 
there was a need for a vigorous debate about energy choices, 
especially nuclear energy. There was no safe solution for storing 
high-level nuclear waste and dealing with high-level waste was the 
Achilles heel of nuclear energy generation.
--------------

US ready to help India set up National Nuclear Data Centre

MUMBAI, FEB 18 (PTI) - The United States is ready to help India set 
up a National Nuclear Data Centre (NNDC) and train nuclear and IT 
scientists to make it an international facility, an American 
scientist has said.

India has the capability to be a world leader in nuclear data in the 
coming decade and the "US is willing to help in setting up the 
centre", said David Winchell, the database manager of Brookhaven 
National Laboratory, which conducts research in cutting edge areas 
like nano-technology and homeland security.

"Setting up of the NNDC is not easy as it is labour- intensive and 
needs long-term commitment. It also has to be sustained on a long-
term basis," Winchell, here on vacation, told PTI.

Since India has highly qualified IT professionals, the US is willing 
to train them and young nuclear scientists to set up this important 
centre, he said.

The NNDC can assist users in determining characteristics and 
performance of nuclear reactors and permit improved nuclear power 
plant operations by reducing and eliminating certain types of 
uncertainties.

Normally, the International Atomic Energy Agency helps in setting up 
such centres but Brookhaven's facility of Nuclear Science References 
(NSR) is more advanced and has nuclear data dating from 1910 to the 
current era.
--------------

Iran's top ayatollah defends nuclear plan for energy 
 
Tehran, Iran (AP) Feb 18 - Iran's top leader said Saturday that the 
country's oil and gas reserves will eventually dry up, and he 
defended the drive to produce nuclear fuel, claiming it was the only 
way to avoid depending on the West for energy. 

"Oil and gas reserves won't last forever. If a nation doesn't think 
of producing its future energy needs, it will be dependent on 
domination-seeking powers," state television quoted Ayatollah Ali 
Khamenei as saying. 

Iran produces 4.2 million barrels of oil per day, the second-largest 
exporter of crude among the Organization of Petroleum Exporting 
Countries, and possesses the world's second-biggest natural gas 
reserves in the world. 

The country's recoverable oil reserves are estimated at 137 billion 
barrels, or 12 percent of the world's overall oil reserves. Iran's 
gas reserves are believed to stand at 28 trillion cubic meters. 

The United States and its European allies have disputed Iran's 
nuclear program, which Tehran says is only for fuel-producing 
purposes, and not nuclear bomb-making. 

Tehran plans to produce 20,000 megawatts of electricity through 
nuclear power plants in the next two decades. 

Khamenei said those who say Iran does not need nuclear technology are 
"shallow-minded." 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week that Iran has 
achieved full proficiency in nuclear technology. 

However, the president said the nation's nuclear advances will only 
gradually be made public, in the course of the next two months. 

Last February, Iran announced it has enriched uranium for the first 
time using two cascades of 164 centrifuges, a sophisticated 
technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel or materials for 
a nuclear bomb. 

Iran was expected last week to announce the start of the installation 
of 3,000 centrifuges at its uranium-enrichment plant in Natanz, 
central Iran. 

This, however, did not happen, leading to speculation that the hookup 
was delayed or that Tehran sought to avoid the political 
ramifications of such an announcement. 

As the country's supreme leader, Khamenei has final say on all policy 
and although he too advocates the pursuit of nuclear technology, 
which in Iran is a source of national pride, he has recently echoed 
the criticism of other conservatives, and even some moderates, of 
Ahmadinejad's nuclear diplomacy tactics. 

In late December, the U.N. Security Council imposed limited sanctions 
on Tehran for its refusal to halt the enrichment program. 

It also issued a binding resolution Dec. 23, demanding Iran stop 
enrichment within 60 days or face more sanctions. 
-------------

Cell phone dangers still argued

Radiation, heat worries dismissed, then resurface

(Chicago Tribune) Feb 18 - Investigators at an eminent research 
clinic in Cleveland concluded last fall that excessive cell phone use 
could damage a man's sperm. Then last month, a major European study 
found that long-term cell phone use appeared to increase the risk of 
developing a head tumor.

Wait a second. Wasn't the cell-phone-can-hurt-you issue put to rest 
long ago?

In fact, no. In what is something of an oddity for a common consumer 
product, the mobile phone developed into the world's most popular 
personal electronics device without the scientific community ever 
unanimously declaring that it is fully safe to use.

Health concerns over the effects of radiation waves or the heat 
generated by cell phones in close proximity to the head continue to 
be shot down by respected scientists and then raised again by others, 
more than a decade after phones went into general use.

Regulators in this country and throughout the world say cell phones 
don't pose a health risk. And studies have piled up over the past 15 
years concluding that wireless phones don't affect biology, human or 
otherwise.

But at the same time, many studies also have concluded cell phone 
radiation perhaps can produce biological effects, including possibly 
harmful ones.

An immense amount is at stake for the wireless industry if cell 
phones were ever found to be hazardous. About 1 billion of them were 
produced globally last year.

To the cell phone industry, the radiation issue appears settled.

"The overwhelming majority of studies that have been published in 
scientific journals around the globe show that wireless phones do not 
pose a health risk," according to a statement by CTIA-The Wireless 
Association.

Health regulators and the American Cancer Society agree, the CTIA 
noted.

Yet respected scientists continue to study the devices, and some are 
raising questions. The contentiousness of the issue goes beyond the 
research itself into who funds it. The wireless industry, including 
Schaumburg-based Motorola Inc., the world's second-biggest cell phone-
maker, has long funded academic research on phone radiation.

A recent study by a team of Swiss academics found that industry-
funded research was less likely to find that cell phone radiation 
could cause biological effects--results favorable to the industry's 
own products.

Worries about phone radiation started not long after the mobile 
market took off in the 1990s. The radiation issue died down, but 
still pops up when new studies are released.

For example, Ashok Agarwal, research director of the Cleveland 
Clinic's Reproductive Research Center, unveiled research in October 
that showed a significant decline in sperm health for men who use 
mobile phones frequently.

Agarwal was soon touring the morning TV talk shows, talking about 
potential fertility problems for hard-core cell phone users.

But there's a pingpong nature to phone radiation research. Six weeks 
after Agarwal's work was released, a study led by the Danish 
Institute of Cancer Epidemiology found no cause for worry.

It culled health data on 420,095 Danish cell phone users and found no 
evidence that phones were linked to a higher risk of leukemia or 
cancers of the brain or nervous system.

The Danish report is "epidemiological," meaning it involves studying 
disease patterns among people. Several such studies have been done in 
Europe, and most haven't found a higher tumor risk among cell phone 
users--but not all of them.

Last month, a pan-European study concluded that people who'd been 
using mobile phones for at least 10 years appear to have a slightly 
increased risk of a cancerous tumor on the side of their head where 
they held their phone.

There is an accumulation of research probing cell phone radiation--
over 300 studies by the count of Henry Lai, a bioengineering 
professor at the University of Washington.

Just over half show radiation having some sort of potential 
biological effect--though not necessarily harmful--while just under 
half show no effect, Lai said.

Most of that research has been done in laboratories such as Lai's. He 
and fellow scientist N.P. Singh were the first in the 1990s to find 
that microwave radiation, which is akin to phone radiation, could 
lead to DNA damage in a rat's brain cells.

DNA carries genetic information, and many scientists believe that 
cancer is caused by some sort of DNA disturbance. A major European 
study, the "Reflex" report, found results similar to Lai's.

But several researchers also tried and failed to get the same 
outcomes as Lai and the Reflex study, said Dariusz Leszczynski, a 
biochemist who worked on the latter.

Leszczynski is head of radiation biology at Finland's Radiation and 
Nuclear Safety Authority, and a leading phone-radiation researcher.

Last year, his lab found that phone radiation caused changes in the 
activity of genes and proteins derived from human blood vessels. 
Cells essentially recognized radiation as a stress.

It's possible that such small biological effects might become 
significant for human health if exerted over a long time--such as 
decades of cell phone use, Leszczynski said in an e-mail interview.

But he's ready to admit there's no conclusive evidence from his work--
or anybody else's--that cell phones are a health hazard.

To make matters murkier, scientists face a big challenge in 
explaining why phone radiation would cause biological effects such as 
DNA breaks.

Scientists agree that the low-energy radiation from cell phones can 
have a "thermal" effect, heating tissue. But they also agree that 
such a heating effect is simply too weak to actually hurt people.

So, the biological effects found by Lai and Leszczynski must be 
explained by something else. The problem, in addition to the 
conflicting lab results: lack of an accepted scientific theory.

"Nobody has identified a route that would allow [magnetic fields] to 
interact with a biological system except through the heating effect," 
said Ben Greenebaum, an emeritus physics professor at the University 
of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha.

"That doesn't means it doesn't exist," said Greenebaum, who's also 
president of the Bioelectromagnetics Society, a group for those who 
study radiation and biology. "It means no one has come up with it."

Greenebaum is in the camp that thinks that while research hasn't 
shown phone radiation is a health hazard, he won't discount the 
possibility. "I never say never."

But there are skeptics who will say "never"--such a discovery would 
be too contrary to the principles of physics.

"I think it's impossible," said Robert Adair, an emeritus physics 
professor at Yale University and a member of the National Academy of 
Sciences. The whole notion isn't even "recognized by good 
biologists."

Many studies on the biological effects of weak radiation are "subject 
to errors that follow from faulty processes," Adair wrote in a Web 
piece last fall for the American Council on Science and Health.

The notion that cell phone radiation could have a biological effect 
is tantamount to a scientific hypothesis like cold fusion, he wrote.

Cold fusion caused a stir years ago with the prospect of limitless 
energy, but it turned out to be an illusion, the result of poorly 
controlled experiments.

Adair's bluntness and reactions to it are emblematic of the 
contentiousness the radiation issue has created among some of those 
who study it.

"[Adair] has dug himself a hole and keeps digging," said Martin 
Blank, a physiology professor at Columbia University.

Adair has staked out a position, even though evidence of biological 
effects is mounting, said Blank, whose own work concluded that cell 
phone radiation caused cellular changes in fruit-fly larvae.

The contentiousness isn't limited to the radiation issue itself: 
Industry influence on radiation-related publications has also been a 
hot potato.

For instance, Blank wrote a missive in 2004 to the newsletter of the 
Bioelectromagnetics Society, castigating its editor for bias.

The editor, a Motorola scientist, had been quoted in a British 
science magazine saying that further phone radiation research was a 
waste of money--there simply were no health effects.

The society formed a committee to look into Blank's complaint. It 
found that while "some single reports" caused "strong concern" there 
was no "systematic bias" in the newsletter.

The bias issue surfaced again last year, including in a study led by 
researchers at two Swiss universities.

They reviewed 59 laboratory studies involving mobile-phone radiation, 
68 percent of which reported some sort of biological effect.

Their conclusion, published in the journal Environmental Health 
Perspectives: Compared with studies done by public agencies or 
charities, research exclusively funded by industry was less likely to 
report that radiation caused a statistically significant biological 
effect.

The Swiss academic study came out a couple of months after a report 
on possible funding bias on the Web site Microwave News, which has 
tracked radiation issues for many years.

The site's publisher, Louis Slesin, is a pot-stirring independent 
voice, or an advocate of the view that radiation risks are being soft-
peddled--depending on who's describing him.

With Lai's help, Slesin analyzed 85 lab studies that examined whether 
radiation had caused harmful changes to DNA in animals or cell 
cultures. Forty-three of them found a biological effect; 42 didn't.

But studies funded by industry or the Air Force were considerably 
more likely to find no effects than studies without such funding, 
Slesin concluded. (The Air Force is also a beneficiary of weak 
radiation, Slesin argues.)

Slesin singled out the scientific journal, Radiation Research, saying 
it published primarily cell phone-related research, much of it funded 
by Motorola, that showed no biological effects.

"It almost appears that Radiation Research is a house organ of the 
Motorola Corporation," Slesin wrote.

Radiation Research's editor, Sara Rockwell, in an interview with the 
Tribune, said: "I'm trying to think of a response that's printable. 
It's totally untrue, of course."

Rockwell, a Yale University radiology and pharmacology professor, 
criticized Slesin's methodology, contending that some studies he 
counted as industry funded also got money from non-industry sources 
such as public agencies.

Many of the Motorola-funded studies cited by Slesin were done by 
Joseph Roti Roti's lab at Washington University School of Medicine in 
St. Louis.

A radiation oncologist, Roti Roti has been investigating weak 
radiation issues since 1994. He's published at least 25 papers, 
primarily finding no biological effects. Any effects he found, he 
couldn't replicate.

Roti Roti said Motorola was one of the few places he could get 
funding for his work; the federal government has put relatively 
little money into his field.

Motorola had little say over his research, he said. "They never said 
how we should do the experiment or what we should write. Otherwise, I 
wouldn't take the money."

Roti Roti said he started with a "huge team" of scientists when he 
began looking at phone radiation. "They gradually lost interest 
because they were finding no effects," he said.

"I've wasted--I've invested more than 10 years of my career doing 
this. Believe me, I've tried to find [effects]."

To Roti Roti, the issue is all but settled, but that doesn't mean it 
will go away. "I think it will go on forever."

Indeed, some cancers can lay hidden for 20 years before blooming. But 
cell phones--as a mass-market device--haven't even been around that 
long, making any 20-year latency a tough issue to research.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle 
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations 
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc. 
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714 Extension 2306 
Fax:(949) 296-1144

Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/ 
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/