RE: Rosalie Bertell

["Heinmiller, Bruce" <heinmillerb@aecl.ca>]

I had a look at the opinion piece attributed to Dr. Bertell from which the
1.3-billion-"victims" estimate was taken.  There are too many errors in that
opinion piece to comment on, so I'll just choose one of the substantial
ones.  Almost the entire "victim" tally is attributable, according to the
opinion piece, to atmospheric weapons testing (1.138 billion).  (In the
introduction, this gets categorized as part of "nuclear power".)  The
"victim" risk estimate given for all effects imagined is 51%/person-Sv, a
rather modest (for Dr. Bertell) discrepancy of a factor of seven (compared
to ICRP's 7.3%).  The larger problem lies in the misrepresentation of
UNSCEAR's dose estimates.  For atmospheric weapons testing, UNSCEAR gives 7
million person-Sv committed in total (not per year) from 1945 to 2200 A.D.
(or 30 million person-Sv committed to 10 000 years).  Using UNSCEAR's
estimate (which she claimed to have done) and using her fanciful risk
estimate, reduces the number of "victims" to date by a factor of more than
300.

For comparison, and also from UNSCEAR, natural background collective
effective dose for 50 years at the current rate is 650 million person-Sv
(approximately 100 times weapons-testing).  Medical collective effective
dose for 50 years at the current rate is 165 million person-Sv (consisting
of 90 million person-Sv diagnostic, and 75 million person-Sv therapy,
excluding the tissue being treated).  Nuclear power collective effective
dose (for the complete fuel cycle) for all years totaled and committed far
into the future is 1 million person-Sv (including Chernobyl), and at the
current rate for 50 years is 2 million person-Sv.  The actual effective dose
delivered or committed by nuclear power for all years combined up to 1989 is
given by UNSCEAR as 0.01 million person-Sv.

Thus, natural background is number one, medical is second, weapons testing
is a very distant third, and nuclear power is a very very distant fourth, in
terms of collective effective dose delivered to the general population.

Bruce Heinmiller CHP
heinmillerb@aecl.ca

> ----------
> From: 	Theodore S Bohn/BST/CC01/INEEL/US[SMTP:BST@inel.gov]
> Reply To: 	radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
> Sent: 	Tuesday, July 18, 2000 1:54 PM
> To: 	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: 	RE: Rosalie Bertell
> 
> 
> Rosalie's estimation of 1.3 billion is obviously too low!!  One hundred
> per
> cent of the inhabitants of the earth have been viciously pierced by cosmic
> rays,  we all eat radioactively contaminated food to some extent and we're
> all going to die directly or indirectly from the effects radiation
> according to her BROAD criteria.  So what is her earth shaking solution??
> By the way, I wonder if she sports a sun tan?
> 
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