PLUTONIUM SUPERLATIVES MADNESS

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

Dear Radsafers,

Here is another unfortunate example of journalistic incompetence in nuclear
issues, published on the front page of the local newspaper. 
I guess it also highlights just how much we should value those rare cases
when a journalist takes the initiative to consult this listserv and all the
experts who contribute to answering questions from these people.
The reply (intended for an op-ed article) I sent to the paper is attached
below.

Thanks

Jaro

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/000619/4303556.html
Monday 19 June 2000
Making waves
Ship carrying plutonium from Russia will sail into controversy over safety
MICHAEL MAINVILLE
The Gazette	
Sometime this summer, a ship from St. Petersburg will pass through the St.
Lawrence Seaway near Montreal, its hold containing one of the most dangerous
man-made substances in the world: 132 grams of plutonium removed from
decommissioned Russian nuclear warheads. 
For security reasons, the federal government won't say exactly where or when
the ship will travel. 
But its final destination is the Chalk River nuclear-power facility in
Ontario, about 200 kilometres northwest of Ottawa. 
Once there, the plutonium will be tested to see whether it can be converted
for use in CANDU nuclear reactors to produce electricity. 
If the test is successful, Canada could soon take on the responsibility of
eliminating some of the more than 100 tonnes of plutonium that is expected
to be left over as Russia and the United States dismantle 40,000 nuclear
warheads in their current round of nuclear disarmament. 
This leftover plutonium could be buried along with other nuclear waste, but
that would leave it vulnerable to being used again for military purposes.
Which is why the federal government says finding ways to convert it for
commercial use is such a noble task: it's essential to forever eliminating
the threat of nuclear war. 
But the plan has a growing number of opponents, who are afraid Canada will
become a dumping ground for unwanted plutonium, a highly radioactive and
toxic substance. 
They also worry about the dangers of transporting even small amounts of
plutonium near populated areas and believe the federal government has not
done enough to inform or consult with Canadians about the plan. 
The opposition campaign started with the usual suspects: a handful of
anti-nuclear activists and the organizations that support them. But over the
past year, word has spread and the battle has moved into the mainstream. 
The Bloc Quebecois and the New Democratic Party have repeatedly questioned
the plan's merits in the House of Commons and more than 150 municipalities
along the St. Lawrence Seaway have adopted resolutions demanding that Ottawa
not import plutonium. 
Mohawk leaders from the Kahnawake and Akwesasne reserves have promised "to
use every means necessary" to prevent the shipment from passing through
their territory. 
And this Wednesday, the Montreal Urban Community council will be deciding
whether to join the fight. It would be by far the most influential municipal
body to take a stand against the shipment. 
The council will vote on a resolution that calls on Ottawa to "put an end to
the project of eliminating military plutonium" because of the "death rate
and substantial increase in cancer rates should an accident occur" and
because the government has refused to hold public consultations on the
project. 
The resolution, put forward by Montreal opposition councillors Marvin
Rotrand and Richard Theoret, is very likely to be adopted - it is supported
by the seven members of the MUC's environment committee and by MUC council
chairman Vera Danyluk. 
But despite the growing public outcry, the federal agency responsible for
nuclear power and research says Ottawa will not back down. 
"We will not let ignorance stop this," said Larry Shewchuck, a spokesman for
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. "This is research and development into the
destruction of nuclear weapons, and we firmly believe the vast majority of
Canadians believe that is a very good thing." 
Shewchuck has been working on the plutonium recycling plan for more than
three years and has spent much of that time preaching AECL's gospel - that
the plan is safe and will have great benefit for Canada and the world. 
"There is no danger" has become a mantra of sorts for Shewchuck, who said he
has been amazed by a lack of intelligence in this debate. 
"There's been a lot of misinformation for political purposes, to the point
of causing real public concern, which I think is irresponsible," Shewchuck
said. 
The origins of the debate date back to 1996, at the Moscow summit on nuclear
disarmament, where Prime Minister Jean Chretien first offered to burn
military plutonium from Russian and U.S. warheads in Canadian nuclear
reactors. 
AECL quickly conducted a study of the idea and came up with a plan to ship
small amounts of plutonium into Chalk River for testing. The study proposed
two small shipments, one from Russia and one from the United States, each
containing just enough plutonium to conduct feasibility tests. 
Transporting plutonium, even in small amounts, is not a simple task,
however. It is considered extremely hazardous to handle because of its
intense radiation levels and high toxicity. Direct exposure can be fatal,
and absorbing even tiny amounts in the body can cause a variety of cancers. 
So instead of shipping pure plutonium into Canada, the plan calls for it to
be converted at the source into mixed-oxide fuel - or MOX - pellets. MOX is
3-per-cent plutonium and 97-per-cent uranium, baked into ceramic form. 
In January, the first shipment of MOX arrived from the U. S. About 120 grams
of plutonium was trucked to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., then flown by helicopter
to Chalk River. The MOX pellets were stacked inside nine zirconium-alloy
tubes, then packed into a reinforced 45-gallon drum, secured in place with a
screw-cap and surrounded by an impact-resistant heavy steel liner. 
According to Shewchuck, there never was any danger from the shipment. 
The container, he said, is standard issue for transporting plutonium and has
undergone a barrage of tests to ensure it can't be broken. It's been
exposed, for example, to temperatures of more than 1,200 degrees Celsius,
submerged for extended periods and dropped 200 metres from a helicopter onto
an airport runway. 
"We are confident this shipment could survive even the most serious
accident," Shewchuck said. 
And even if someone is exposed to the MOX, Shewchuck said, the substance
itself is not likely to cause any harm because its radiation level is so
weak it can't even penetrate skin. 
"Let's say someone does manage to stop the truck, somehow get inside and,
impossibly, break open the container and throw these pellets around. What
would happen? Nothing. We would come and clean it up and that would be it,"
Shewchuck said. 
The chair of McGill University's physics department agrees with AECL's
assessment of the dangers. 
"People hear the word plutonium and they think there's going to be a
catastrophe. But there is a lot of ignorance on this issue, a lot of
irrational fears," said Jean Barrette, who has no affiliation with AECL or
other groups involved in the debate, but has conducted wide research into
nuclear reactions. 
"The transportation of MOX is very safe. It's practically impossible to
imagine an accident where MOX would cause a problem." 
The plan's opponents, of course, dispute these contentions. 
Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear
Responsibility, said AECL has tried to divert attacks on MOX by pointing to
its low radiation levels, but hasn't properly addressed the issue of
toxicity. 
"The real danger from plutonium is if it gets into the body, because this is
probably the most toxic man-made material on Earth," said Edwards, who has a
degree in physics and graduated from Queen's University with a PhD in
mathematics in 1972. 
Studies have shown that even minute amounts of plutonium entering the body
can be fatal, he said, adding that as little as 30 micrograms is enough to
cause fatal lung cancer. 
"Is AECL going to tell us that E. coli is harmless as long as it's in a
container?" 
And while he agrees the chance of an accident is highly unlikely, Edwards
said it's not impossible. "Accidents have happened before, despite all the
assurances from the nuclear industry that practices are perfectly safe." 
Two things would have to take place for a MOX accident to occur, Edwards
said. First, "a crushing force" would have to tear open the drum container.
A high-speed collision might be enough to do this, he said. 
Second, either a very hot fire (about 1,200 degrees Celsius) would have to
come into contact with the MOX for a short period of time, or a lesser fire
(about 400 degrees Celsius) would have to be in contact with the MOX for a
longer period, about 10 or 15 minutes. 
Under these circumstances, Edwards said, the burning MOX would release
"toxic vapours that could spread over a very wide area." 
Still, for Edwards the issue of whether the transportation of MOX is safe
has dominated too much of the debate. As far as he's concerned, not enough
people are asking if the government should even be considering plutonium
recycling in the first place. 
"The big picture is the most important thing, but for some reason it gets
the least discussion," Edwards said. 
He said Ottawa and AECL aren't being completely honest with Canadians when
they say the only goal in importing MOX is to aid in nuclear disarmament.
"The last thing the federal government or AECL want to do is rid the world
of plutonium," Edwards said. "What they really want to do is prove that they
can use plutonium in CANDU reactors, which makes them more attractive to
potential buyers." 
(AECL has already sold or approved sales of CANDU nuclear reactors to China,
South Korea, Romania, Argentina and Turkey.) 
Edwards sees the importation of MOX as a veiled attempt to make AECL's
operations more profitable and says the government is hiding behind the
cloak of nuclear disarmament. 
If the international community really wants to rid the world of plutonium,
he said, it should store the material under international guard and focus on
finding ways to destroy it safely. 
"Canadians have been told this must be done to help rid the world of nuclear
weapons, but they aren't being given all the facts." 
That's why, he says, the government should put off importing any more MOX
until it can accurately gauge how Canadians feel about the issue. 
The Bloc Quebecois has been demanding public consultations on the project
for months, saying the government has no mandate to adopt the policy of
importing plutonium. 
In fact, when the plan was presented to the Commons standing committee on
foreign affairs in 1998, the committee tabled a unanimous report
recommending the government reject the idea. Liberal MPs make up a majority
of the committee. Nevertheless, Chretien's government rejected its
recommendation. Transport Canada subsequently set a 28-day public-input
period in which Canadians were asked to comment on possible routes for the
shipment but not on the basic principle of importing plutonium. 
Bloc environment critic Jocelyne Girard-Bujold, the MP for Jonquiere, has
repeatedly pressed the government to hold consultations, but has been
rebuffed each time. 
Girard-Bujold said the Bloc even convinced the Quebec government to offer
the use of its environmental consulting body - the Bureau des Audiences
Publiques sur l'Environnement - but Ottawa refused. 
"I don't understand why the government isn't willing to hold a public
consultation on the importation of this very dangerous substance," she said.

In response to these criticisms, Natural Resources Minister Ralph Goodale
has repeatedly said this shipment is for testing purposes only. 
"We are not committed to anything beyond the testing. The testing is covered
under existing regulatory authority. If there is ever to be any further
commercial activity, it would be subject to a full environmental health and
safety review," Goodale said during question period in the House of Commons
last October. 
With that in mind, AECL's Shewchuck said he can't understand why anyone
would want to hold public consultations now. 
"Given the small amount of material concerned, why would we invest
taxpayers' money to conduct a lengthy and expensive public consultation
until we decide we want to go ahead with the plan? That doesn't make very
much sense to me." 
But that's not good enough for Danyluk, who said the MUC might be more
receptive to the plan if it had been briefed and consulted on it. 
Here is a glossary of terms 
- Plutonium: A radioactive chemical element that is recovered from
irradiated nuclear waste (spent fuel). The waste is dissolved in nitric acid
to separate the pure plutonium. It is estimated that about 300,000 kilograms
of plutonium are produced every year in nuclear power plants. 
First discovered at the University of California at Berkeley in 1940,
plutonium does not occur in nature except in minute quantities. The metal is
silvery in appearance, but tarnishes to a yellow colour when exposed to
oxygen. It is also a natural heat source, and large enough pieces are
capable of boiling water. 
The main use for plutonium has been as the primary explosive ingredient in
nuclear weapons. In its pure form, the element emits intense radioactive
particles and is highly toxic. 
- Uranium: Constitutes about two parts per million of the Earth's crust
throughout the world, but particularly in Canada, the United States and
Russia. 
Uranium is a malleable white metal that tarnishes with exposure to air and
can burst into flames when finely divided. The world's first uranium mine
was at Port Radium, N.W.T. and Canada remains the world's largest producer
and exporter. 
The element is the main source of fuel for nuclear reactors. It is also
radioactive. Long-term and/or unprotected exposure can lead to various forms
of cancer. 
- MOX: Short for mixed-oxide fuel, MOX is a mixture of about 3-per-cent
plutonium and 97-per-cent uranium, which can be used in nuclear reactors for
the production of electricity. It is routinely used for power generation in
a number of European countries. In solid form it is only very weakly
radioactive. 
- Nuclear power: Fission reactions used to generate steam that flows through
turbogenerators to produce electricity. In the fission process, the nucleus
of a uranium atom is split to release heat, which produces the steam.
Similar techniques are used to produce nuclear chain reactions, which create
the powerful explosions of nuclear weapons. 
In Canada, only three provinces use nuclear-power generation: Ontario has 22
nuclear reactors while Quebec and New Brunswick each have one. 
Nuclear power plants discharge about 30 tonnes of highly radioactive spent
fuel per reactor per year. Effective methods of disposing of nuclear waste
have yet to be found, so currently it is sealed in containers and buried in
isolated areas. 
- On the World Wide Web: 
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd: www.aecl.ca 
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility: www.ccnr.org 
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission: www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca 
Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout: www.cnp.ca 
International Atomic Energy Agency: www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/ 
United States Department of Energy: www.doe-md.com 
Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom):
www.x-atom.ru/minatom/min_eng.html 


> ----------
> From: 	Franta, Jaroslav
> Sent: 	Monday, June 26, 2000 12:31 PM
> To: 	'Editor of The Gazette'
> Subject: 	PLUTONIUM SUPERLATIVES MADNESS
> 
> To the Editor,
> 
> In his June 19 Gazette front page feature on plutonium ("Making waves," p.
> A1 and "No danger," p. A2) Michael Mainville tells readers several times
> over - including in his "glossary of terms" - that the material is "highly
> radioactive," that it has "intense radiation levels" and is therefore
> "considered extremely hazardous." But he never once justifies the use of
> all these superlatives by comparing plutonium to other radioactive
> substances.
> 
> In the early part of the last century scientists measured the radioactive
> decay of various natural radioactive substances (since there was no way of
> creating artificial ones at that time). Ever since then we have been able
> to COMPARE the radioactivity of various substances by the number of
> nuclear disintegrations per second that occur within a sample ( OK, so
> this is old news - but evidently some journalists haven't gotten the
> message in the last 100 years...).
> 
> Even a tiny sample of material contains many billions of atoms, each with
> its nuclear core composed of protons and neutrons. This in spite of
> decrees by politicians and lawmakers in some parts of the country that
> their town or "zone" is "nuclear-free" (one could say that "they are full
> of it" - nuclear matter, that is...).
> 
> In the case of radioactive substances, the cores of their atoms undergo
> random nuclear disintegration ( or "transformation" or "transmutation")
> accompanied by the emission of an energetic particle such as an alpha,
> beta or gamma ray. The rate at which these nuclear disintegrations occur
> is characteristic of each particular radioactive substance. A "highly
> radioactive" substance has a rapid rate of disintegration, while a "mildly
> radioactive" substance has a slow rate.
> 
> We can compare the radioactivity on an equal-mass basis - how many nuclear
> disintegrations per second occur in one gram of any particular sample.
> 
> For example, each gram of the "highly radioactive" plutonium that Mr.
> Mainville writes about contains some 2,520,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms
> (that's two-and-a-half thousand-billion-billion), out of which 2.3 billion
> random atoms undergo a nuclear disintegration every second, each with the
> emission of an alpha particle. Or, in other words, every second, just
> under one trillionth of the atoms in the one-gram sample undergo a nuclear
> disintegration. To claim that this is an "intense" level of radioactivity
> is ridiculous without any sort of comparison to put things in perspective.
> 
> For instance, one of the first radioactive substances discovered - by the
> Curies in 1898 - was radium. Its a natural element occurring in very small
> concentrations all over the earth, including in vegetation and in our
> bodies. Each gram of radium has a radioactivity of 37 billion nuclear
> disintegrations per second - or about 16 times that of plutonium. By Mr.
> Mainville's standard, that would make radium "more-highly radioactive,"
> and by Gordon Edwards' standard, its radiotoxicity "more-most toxic" than
> plutonium.
> 
> The radioactive substance inside the smoke detectors in every house and
> apartment is americium-241. Its radioactivity per gram is 120 billion
> disintegrations per second, or 52 times that of plutonium. In Mr.
> Mainville's terms, that makes it "extra-highly radioactive" (the americium
> is actually produced inside nuclear reactors from plutonium, by neutron
> irradiation..).
> 
> Another radioactive substance that occurs naturally in the ground and in
> vegetation (particularly in tobacco plants and the cigarettes made from
> it) is polonium-210. Each gram has a radioactivity of 167,000 billion
> disintegrations per second, or 72,600 times that of plutonium. No doubt
> its "super-extra-highly radioactive." But while "Mohawk leaders from the
> Kahnawake and Akwesasne reserves have promised 'to use every means
> necessary' to prevent the [MOX] shipment from passing through their 
> territory" on the St.Lawrence Seaway, they have no qualms whatsoever about
> illegally importing cigarettes by the hundreds of tonnes. Thousands of
> smokers die each year from lung cancer caused by the chemical carcinogens
> in cigarette smoke (not by the radiation from the small amount of polonium
> also present).
> 
> As everyone knows, every home has a small amount of radon in it, which is
> a natural radioactive gas that seeps in from the ground below and from the
> minerals in building materials. Its radioactivity is 5,727,000 billion
> disintegrations per second for each gram. That's two-and-a-half million
> times that of plutonium, or "super-duper-extra-highly-radioactive"
> according to the Mainville terminology.
> 
> Incidentally, all the natural radioactive substances normally present in
> our bodies undergo about 20,000 disintegrations per second, and this goes
> on continuously for our entire lives. This is much less than pure
> plutonium, but is also an average figure that varies a great deal,
> depending on one's location (local geology) and on one's diet. To this
> internal radiation "self-exposure" must be added radiation exposure from
> external sources such as cosmic rays (particularly at high altitude
> locations like Denver, Colorado, and on airline flights). We have lived
> with natural radiation for many thousands of generations. And back when
> the earth was young, our microscopic ancestors adapted to background
> radiation levels seven times higher than today's. Occasionally,
> concentrations of uranium ore formed in a way that allowed natural nuclear
> reactors to operate, without any safety devices or containment, for
> hundreds of thousands of years. We have found the remains of a few of
> those (the "nuclear waste"), no longer radioactive, 26 years ago in an
> African uranium mining site called Oklo (again, this is old news, which
> can be found on several Internet web sites and old issues of peer-reviewed
> science journals).
> 
> Then of course there are the medical radioisotopes frequently used for
> diagnostics or cancer treatment ("brachytherapy"). This includes things
> like iodine-131, phosphorus-32, paladium-103 and technetium-99m. The first
> three examples have radioactivity comparable to that of domestic radon
> (about a million times higher than plutonium), while the last - which is
> by far the most commonly used, and the main commercial business of AECL -
> has a whopping 130 billion-billion disintegrations per second per gram, or
> 57 billion times higher than "highly radioactive" plutonium. I guess that
> makes it "humugously-super-duper-extra-highly-radioactive" in Mainville
> terminology. Yet its USED IN THOUSANDS OF MEDICAL DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURES
> around the world EVERY DAY, with no harm to the patient, to the hospital
> personnel, or to the employees of the radiopharmaceutical company that
> refines the raw product (MDS Nordion of Kanata, Ont.), the transportation
> company personnel or public along the shipping route, nor indeed the AECL
> folks in Chalk River who produce the stuff in the NRU reactor and the "hot
> cell" processing facilities. The very tiny quantities of technetium or
> other radiopharmaceuticals used in each patient's diagnostic or treatment
> procedure typically end up being flushed down the toilet with the
> patient's urine, following which they decay into stable, non-radioactive
> substances within a few days or months (or in the case of solid
> brachytherapy "seeds," they remain embedded in the organ, such as the
> prostate gland).
> 
> All this to illustrate the point that substances which decay away quickly
> are more radioactive (they exhibit a furious rate of nuclear
> disintegrations), than those that decay away slowly - with only a small
> number of desintegrations per second per gram. In other words, the degree
> of radioactivity per gram of a substance is inversely proportional to its
> half-life. That's why non-radioactive substances can be said to have an
> infinite half-life.
> 
> Natural uranium and potassium-40 (present abundantly in bananas and Brasil
> nuts) come close to being non-radioactive, with their half-lives of 4.5
> and 1.3 billion years, respectively. Plutonium, with its 24,000-year
> half-life is somewhere in-between, thus making it mildly radioactive, in
> spite of the claims and glossary definitions of Messrs. Mainville and
> Edwards (by contrast, technetium-99m has a half-life of just 6 hours).
> 
> Scientists, health physicists, radiooncologists and others familiar with
> radiation are well aware of these facts, while the general public - thanks
> largely to the media - are NOT. That's why at our annual "Hands-on
> Radiation Workshop" for visiting teachers at Chalk River Nuclear
> Laboratories we usually have a sample of plutonium metal on hand to debunk
> the nonsense typically perpetuated by the media. The plutonium is an
> instrument calibration source which the visitors can test using a
> hand-held alpha-radiation counter. A dilute ( 3% ) form of plutonium
> oxide, which is NON-combustible, regardless of Gordon Edwards' claims, is
> to be included in the nine small tubes of MOX fuel pellets to be shipped
> from Russia. This is what our ignorant municipal politicians and antinuke
> activists are crowing about.
> 
> Its strongly reminiscent of the story of the high-school student who won
> his school's science fair a few years ago by getting folks to sign a
> petition calling for a worldwide ban on the terribly hazardous chemical
> dihydrogen oxide.  All he had to do was stand on the street corner, stop
> passers by, and show them a list of hazards. It went something like this:
> "This chemical almost always leads to death upon inhalation.  Uncontrolled
> releases completely destroy whole towns many times each year.  It is
> always found in cancer cells.  It causes severe burns in both its gaseous
> and solid states.  When existing as a solid or liquid, it is the direct
> cause of thousands of fatal accidents each year.  It is a known carrier of
> almost every serious disease known to man. Elimination of this substance
> would immediately eradicate AIDS."  There were many other "hazards" cited.
> This young man was able to convince two-thirds of respondents to sign a
> petition calling for a worldwide ban on water!
> 
> Finally, Mr. Mainville's list of web links was woefully inadequate, if the
> goal was to provide information on plutonium and on the MOX plutonium
> disposal program. I believe that Internet surfers will find the following
> more informative and to the point:
> 
> Dr. Jeremy Whitlock's "10 Reasons for MOX" and "Can the CANDU reactor be
> used to burn weapons-grade Plutonium (as MOX)?"
> http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~cz725/mox.htm
> http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~cz725/cnf.htm#j2
> 
> Transport Canada's web site on MOX shipment
> http://www.tc.gc.ca/TDGoods/info/mox_e.asp
> 
> Uranium Institute's fact sheet on plutonium & its transport
> http://www.uilondon.org/pdf/Pluto.pdf
> http://www.uilondon.org/pdf/co5po.pdf
> 
> Uranium Institute's information on MOX & its transport
> http://www.uilondon.org/factsheets/mox/index.htm
> http://www.uilondon.org/pdf/mox.pdf
> 
> Australian Uranium Information Centre Briefing Paper on plutonium
> http://www.uic.com.au/nip18.htm
> 
> Australian Uranium Information Centre Briefing Paper on MOX & transport
> http://www.uic.com.au/nip42.htm
> http://www.uic.com.au/nip23.htm
> 
> Radsafe listserve archives (search by keyword, such as "plutonium" of
> "MOX")
> http://romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu/SFgate/search.html
> 
> Canadian Nuclear Discussion List archives (search by keyword, such as
> "plutonium" of "MOX")
> http://mailman.mcmaster.ca/mailman/wilma/cdn-nucl-l
> 
> European commercial MOX web site
> http://www.moxfuel.com/
> 
<SNIP>

> Sincerely,
> 
> Jaro Franta, P.Eng.
> 
> Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this communication reflect only
> those of the author and do not represent those of his employer, AECL, or
> anyone else.
> 
<SNIP>
> e-mail: frantaj@aecl.ca
> 
> 
>     
> 
> 
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