Re: radiation leaks...

[Steven Dapra <sjd@swcp.com>]

According to the St. Petersburg Times article:

<<<<<
Dangerous levels of radioactivity - exceeding the amount produced by 10,000
nuclear reactors - have been detected in two rivers near a western Siberian
nuclear complex, a U.S.-based nuclear watchdog said in a report issued
Thursday.

The Government Accountability Project said that more than enough
radioactivity to meet the world's electrical power demand had been found in
the Tom and Romashka rivers flowing from the Siberian Chemical Complex,
Russia's largest nuclear site.

"This pollution is probably the largest ongoing discharge of radioactivity
in the world," Norm Buske, the head author of the report, said Thursday by
telephone from Washington.

[edit]

Buske, a physicist and oceanographer with the Government Accountability
Project, traveled to the Tomsk region some 3,000 kilometers east of Moscow
in August and conducted tests in the Tom and Romashka rivers.
>>>>>

These tests were conducted in August.  It seems to me that if these rivers
are as radiologically hot as Buske claims they are, he should at least be
suffering from radiation sickness.  I'm no HP, but shouldn't radioactivity
in excess of the amount produced by 10,000 reactors be enough to cause some
type of prompt health effects?

Can someone set me straight on this if need be, or offer some helpful
comments on possible health effects to anyone who took water samples from
these contaminated rivers?

Steven Dapra
sjd@swcp.com



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