Re: re a real solution

["dkosloff1" <dkosloff1@email.msn.com>]

I believe the article is "The Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Fission
Reactors" by Bernard L. Cohen, "Scientific American", June 1977.  It was
printed again in a book called "Energy and Environment" in 1980 by W. H.
Freeman and Company.  ISBN 0-7167-1052-8 and ISBN 0-7167-1053-6 pbk.

Part of one of the charts from Dr. Cohen's article is on the cover of the
paperback.  The chart is "Deaths per year in U.S. if all wastes were to be
dumped randomly in rivers" and "Total fatal cancer doses in ingested
wastes"(i.e. somehow all the waste gets eaten by humans) plotted against
"Years after reprocessing".  It includes curves for eleven isotopes and the
combination of all isotopes.

I believe the statement about 300 years may have come from the book "Energy
from Heaven and Earth" by Dr. Edward Teller, published in 1979, based on
lectures given in 1975.  The following paragraph appears on page 181:
"After approximately three hundred years in this deep burial place the
radioactivity would have become less than that of the original uranium ore
from which it was derived.  It would continue to decay through passing time.
The crust of the earth would actually be depleted of radioactivity.  Thus we
would have permanently freed the biosphere, the region of the living, from
the radioactive products."  A review of the preceeding pages indicates that
this conclusion is based, in part, on reprocessing.

Dr. Cohen also assumed reprocessing in his article but he did not mention
300 years.  He does include the following statement:  "In fact, one can
calculate that after 600 years a person would have to ingest approximately
half a pound of the buried waste to incur a 50 percent chance of suffering a
lethal cancer."  So this would probably cut down on people selling spent
fuel pudding.  Dr. Cohen's article also has several nice graphs.

I have both books if additional details or questions arise.

Don Kosloff dkosloff1@email.msn.com
2910 Main St. Perry OH 44081.

---- Original Message -----
From: "Sherman, Conrad" <ShermaC@ttemi.com>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2000 5:25 PM
Subject: re a real solution


> Mike:
>
> Bernard Cohen (I think) wrote an article for Scientific American.  As I
> recall, in this seminal article, he showed toxicity curves for uranium
> bearing ore vs. fission products, proving that nuclear power plants were a
> valid method for reducing the health threat from in situ naturaly occuring
> radioactive material, in only about 300 years. This is something some
> regulatory authorities are still trying to do, to this day, without much
> success. He used contemporary dosimetry for the day, which was, rather
> primitive.  I thing this article is very old, you may have to go back more
> than 20 years, but it is worth finding.
>
> PS.  If you find it online, could you shoot me a copy.
>
> Conrad Sherman
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