RE: Info re: MapScience SNF Accident Consequence assessments

["Ted Rockwell" <tedrock@CPCUG.ORG>]

> I have been asked by a media outlet here in Georgia to comment upon the

MapScience (www.mapscience.org) "What if ... a nuclear waste accident



Jim:



Careful how you use the word "conservative."  Many people will interpret

that to mean that you expect the reality to be much worse than stated.  My

conclusion is that it would be virtually impossible to create a serious

public hazard (i.e. large number of injuries and deaths) by attacking a

spent fuel shipping cask.  I believe most people who understand the physical

and engineering of the matter agree on that point.



So people say, "well it won't hurt anyone, but the people will panic."  And

then they go about making elaborate preparations and announcements that are

enough to panic anyone.



I suggest that the way to avert panic (isn't that supposed to be the goal?)

is to tell people there is no reason to panic, and explain that there is no

feasible way to disperse the fission products so that large numbers of

people will inhale or ingest medically dangerous amounts (which is not the

same as "detectable amounts").



For support, I quote the following, that you may not have seen.  I will

paste it into the msg (about 900 words), since RadSafe doesn't accept

attachments.  The statement follows.  Its authorship is explained in the

brief note at the end.



Ted Rockwell

_______________________________



NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

AS TERRORIST TARGETS



If you watch TV’s “The West Wing” or “Crossfire,” or read Congressman Markey

’s recently stated concern about nuclear power plants as terrorist targets,

you would be justified in believing that spent nuclear fuel casks being

shipped to Nevada for storage are each a nuclear catastrophe just waiting to

be triggered.  These casks have been called “Mobile Chernobyls,” and we are

told they are capable of causing “tens of thousands of deaths.”  What are

the facts?



Since 9-11 the nuclear industry and its regulators have been re-evaluating

plant safety.  These studies are properly being kept secret.  But it is no

secret that basic engineering facts and laws of nature limit the damage that

can result.  Extensive analysis, backed by full-scale field tests, show that

there is virtually nothing one could do to these shipping casks that would

cause a significant public hazard.  Before shipment, the fuel elements have

been cooled for several years, so the decay heat and the short-lived

radioactivity have died down.  They cannot explode, and there is no liquid

radioactivity to leak out.  They are nearly indestructible, having been

tested against collisions, explosives, fire and water.  Only the latest

anti-tank artillery could breach them, and then, the result was to scatter a

few chunks of spent fuel onto the ground.  There seems to be no reason to

expect harmful effects of the radiation any significant distance from the

cask.



Similarly, we read that airplanes can fly through the reinforced,

steel-lined five-foot thick concrete walls surrounding a nuclear reactor,

and inevitably cause a meltdown resulting in “tens of thousands of deaths”

and “make a huge area of the U. S. uninhabitable for centuries,” to quote

some recent stories.  However,  there seems to be no credible way to achieve

that result.  No airplane, regardless of size, can fly through such a wall.

This has been calculated in detail and tested in 1988 by flying an unmanned

plane at 480mph into a test wall.  The plane, including its fuel tanks,

collapsed against the outside of the wall, penetrating less than an inch.

The engines are a better penetrator, but still dug in only two inches.

Analyses show that larger planes fully offset their greater impact with

greater energy absorption during collapse.  Higher speed increases the

impact, but not enough to matter.  And inside containment  are additional

walls of concrete and steel protecting the reactor.



Is it possible to cause a nuclear reactor to melt down?  Yes, it happened at

Three Mile Island (TMI) in 1979.  Reactors are much improved since then, and

the probability of such an accident is now much less.  But suppose it

happens, through terrorist action or other; what then?  Well, the TMI

meltdown caused no environmental degradation and no injury to any person.

Not even to the plant operators who stayed on duty.  It has been said that

this lack of public impact was due primarily to the containment structure.

But studies after the accident showed that nearly all of the harmful fission

products dissolved in the water and condensed out on the inside containment

surfaces.  Even if containment had been severely breached, little

radioactivity would have escaped.  Few, if any, persons would have been

harmed.



To test how far the 10-20 tons of molten reactor penetrated the five-inch

bottom of the reactor vessel on which it rested, samples were machined out

of the vessel and examined.  The molten mass did not even fully penetrate

the 3/16 inch cladding, confirming tests in Karlsruhe, Germany, and in

Idaho, that the “China Syndrome” is not a credible possibility.



The accident at Chernobyl in 1986 is simply not applicable to American

reactors.  The burning graphite dispersed most of the fission products

directly into the atmosphere.  Even in that situation, with no evacuation

for several days, the United Nations’ carefully documented investigation

UNSCEAR-2000 reported that there were 30 deaths to plant operators and

firefighters, but no deaths or increased cancer due to irradiation of the

public.  The 1800 reported cases of treatable childhood thyroid nodules do

not seem to correlate with radiation exposure and are still being studied.

The terrible and widespread consequences of that accident—increased suicide,

alcoholism, depression and unemployment, plus 100,000 unnecessary

abortions—were caused primarily by fear of radiation, and misplanning based

on that fear.  The evacuated lands are generally no more radioactive than

the natural background levels where many people have lived healthily for

generations



It’s not surprising that some people overstate the concern, for whatever

reason.   But it is surprising that nuclear advocates are reluctant to

challenge such claims.  They say they don’t want to be viewed as downplaying

dangers or being unwilling to do whatever safety requires.  They want to be

cautious.  But striving for maximum caution leads to the assertion that we

should act as if even the tiniest amount of radiation might be harmful,

despite the large body of good scientific evidence that it is not.  This

policy has scared people away from mammograms and other life-saving

treatments, and caused thousands of Americans to die each year from

pathogens that could have been killed by food irradiation.  It has piled

regulations on nuclear medicine facilities that caused many of them to shut

down.  And now, “permissible doses” have been pushed below those found in

natural radiation backgrounds.



Such cautiousness has drawbacks when applied to design and operation of

nuclear facilities  But it is particularly dangerous when applied to

terrorism.  To tell people that they and the earth are in mortal danger from

events that cannot cause significant public harm is to play into the hands

of terrorists by making a minor event a cause for life-endangering panic.

Now is the time to clear the air and speak a few simple scientific and

engineering truths.



This statement was prepared and endorsed by the following scientific

authorities on nuclear energy technology.  They have all held prominent

positions in government, academia or industry.  They are all members of the

National Academy of Engineering but this statement does not constitute an

official statement of the Academy.





Dr. Douglas M. Chapin	Mr. Milton Levinson	Mr. Alexander Squire

Dr. Karl P. Cohen	Dr. I. Harry Mandil	Dr. Chauncey Starr

Mr. Edwin E. Kintner	Dr. Zack T. Pate	Mr. Henry E. Stone

Dr. Leonard J. Koch	Dr. Theodore Rockwell	Prof. Neil E. Todreas

Dr. John W. Landis	Mr. John W. Simpson	Dr. Edwin L. Zebroski



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