Re: Comments on the West Wing episode

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 4/4/02 10:54:22 PM Mountain Standard Time, tedrock@CPCUG.ORG writes:



> so as to disperse sufficient quantities of
>
> fission products in respirable or ingestible form, over sufficient distance
>
> to create a significant health problem for a significant number of people.
>
> (I discount rampant panic, because that would be preventable if we tell
>
> people the truth about the situation.)


The Yucca Mountain EIS analyzes what we called the "maximum reasonably foreseeable accident"  -- an accident that has a conditional probablity (conditional on there being an accident at all) of 1E-7 or greater.  The details are in a document called the Transportation Health and Safety Calculation Package which is available on request from DOE/RW at the address cited on the website www.ymp.gov.  To obtain the document you have to provide your home address and it hgas to be in the U. S.  The general discussion is in Chapter 6 and Appendix J of the EIS, available on the Web.  Table 6-14 presents the results.


The analysis, which, like any prospective analysis, includes a number of  conservative estimates, does project a total dose (including inhalation, inhalation from resuspension, and ingestion of plants that have taken up deposited material) that is of the order of 1000 person-rems, if the accident were in a densely populated area.  For LNT-believers, this would translate to  0.55 latent cancer fatalities in that population.  I myself prefer just to look at collective dose, and say that it is significant.


The model is based on actual physical tests, except for the projection of release from the fuel rods themselves, which are PWR SNF and are assumed to be pressurized.  No physical tests of fuel rods have been documented.  the release model is discussed in detail both in the Calculation Package I cited and in NUREG/CR-6672.  Indeed, as has often been stated, the body of the cask is at worst slightly flattenend, and leaks occur around the seals.


I hope, Sandy, that this discussion backs up my statement that I neither said nor implied that "there could never be" such an accident.  I have given a definition of "foreseeability" or "credibility" -- conditional probability of 1E-7 -- and the judgment of the accuracy of that definition is entirely up to the reader.


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com