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Re[2]: Health effects near nuclear power plants
Norm,
Your right, and thanks for the clarification. I realized I had put
Cs-137 instead of Sr-90 right after I sent my message. I had Cs-137
on my mind from something else I was working with (sounds like a
good song title, 'Cesium on my mind'???...sorry, sometimes I can't
stop myself).
But it's also true that you can substitute pretty much any
radionuclide that shows up in the environment and that can be
traced to both long-lived fallout and power plant operations. Even
isotopes that can be concentrated in an environmental medium (like
iodine in milk) are not going to be 'invisible' at the source (if
the NPP truly is the source).
Maybe another thing to look at is the absolute scale of the
environmental effects. In the environmental monitoring program I
worked with a long time ago, it was very easy to measure fallout
from (1) an atmospheric weapon test in China, which was detectable
for about a year and increased some measurements to maybe ten times
their normal value at the peak, and (2) Chernobyl, which had the
same effect for a shorter period of time (more like a month).
While I think we would all agree that these are not events we want
to see occurring, their health significance in the U.S. was nil.
(Other environmental types have similar stories, I'm sure). Given
this, imagine how large a 'blip' in the normal NPP environmental
program data would occur for a release that actually has
dose/health significance.
Vincent King
vincent.king@doegjpo.com
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Health effects near nuclear power plants
Author: Norman & Karen Cohen <norco@bellatlantic.net> at Internet
Date: 4/26/00 7:10 PM
Hi Vincent,
It was Sr-90, not Ce-137. But that probably doesn't affect the rest of your
arguments.
Sr90 is emitted by nuke plants and the emissions show up on yearly reports
issued by
each nuke plant and available at the NRC. I have the whole pile of them for
salem 1
and 2.
The questions are - does a relatively small amouint of sr-90 as reported by the
NRC
able to produce the effects shown in the Tooth Fairy studies, and is all of the
sr-90 emissions being caught or reported?
Norm
Vincent King wrote:
> Radsafers:
>
> With all due respect to Norm (whose questions I appreciate, by the
> way, even if I disagree with his conclusions), the posting below is
> exactly right. It is absurdly easy to show that nuclear power
> plants cannot cause the claimed health effects.
>
> If there is enough Cs-137 to show up in baby teeth, or enough
> radiation dose to the surrounding population to affect infant
> mortality, there is CERTAINLY would be enough radiation or released
> radionuclides that it would be easily distinguishable from
> background. You can't get the effects that are claimed to occur at
> a distance without (1) direct radiation, which shows up easily on,
> say, a TLD, or (2) released radionuclides, which are equally easy
> to detect in air or water samples. There is no mystical suspension
> of the laws of meteorology or physics that allows measurable
> effects offsite without seeing the harmful agent somewhere on the
> way.
>
> Even if you choose to ignore the results of the comprehensive
> environmental monitoring all NPPs are required to perform (which
> are quite sensitive, as everyone who conducts them knows), or the
> results of effluent monitoring (which are the locations where any
> released radionuclides are most concentrated), why don't the
> critics ever produce monitoring results of their own to prove their
> point? There is absolutely no restriction on someone conducting
> their own environmental sampling program, rather than relying on
> the supposed effect somewhere 'out there', to prove their
> contention. But I think we all know why that doesn't occur.
>
> (And sorry, I don't buy the Cs-137 in baby teeth 'proof' until you
> tell me how you adjust for the residual Cs-137 from atmospheric
> testing, demonstrate a statistically valid increase associated with
> a particular site, and give a plausible reason why the Cs-137
> doesn't show up at the effluent release point.)
>
> Vincent King
> vincent.king@doegjpo.com
>
> ______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
> Subject: Health effects near nuclear power plants
> Author: Holloway3@aol.com at Internet
> Date: 4/25/00 6:38 PM
>
> The fatal weakness of the various claims of health effects near nuclear power
> plants is that the emissions from the plants are so low that they are
> insignificant compared to the radiation always present from natural sources.
> Even the residual fallout from weapons testing of the 1950s and early 1960s
> is more abundant in than emissions from reactors. The claim of health
> effects from nuclear power plants just won't hold up under scrutiny as most
> of the readers of this list know. Making comparisons with natural background
> radiation is something that should be done more often to combat the poorly
> informed activists.
>
> To counter the flaws in their logic, the activists often claim that
> "artificial" radiation is somehow different and more harmful than natural
> radiation. They don't elaborate much on this theory, though. I think we
> should counter this claim by making the truthful statement that fission
> products are "natural" and "organic" because they were ultimately derived
> from uranium that once was dug up from the earth. Once Christie Brinkley
> learns that uranium is really a natural element, I am sure she will accept it
> as being from the earth and therefore good.
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