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RE: Comments on the West Wing episode
Okay--I'll say it instead. I accepted one in a million as possible
after TMI. 1E-7? Unless you can show me where an equally reliable (i.e., based
on valid assumptions) model shows such a probability that has then actually
occurred, I'll say it's "impossible." I don't accept the "anything is possible"
crap that (speaking of Hollywood) TV/movie lawyers so often manage to extract
from their hapless witnesses. I do accept natural laws like physics and
recognize that we obviously don't understand most of them, but there are many of
them that we do understand sufficiently to apply in a reasonable
way.
Jack Earley
Radiological Engineer
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