Time to rerun and old letter: U.N. Faces Tough Sell onChornobyl Research

[Muckerheide <muckerheide@attbi.com>]

Friends,



Another contribution on the Chernobyl/UNSCEAR tragedy:

 

on 10/26/02 8:50 AM, Jerry Cuttler at jerrycuttler@rogers.com wrote:



> We already know many facts of Chernobyl, but they are rarely publicized in the

> media.  The UN can't seem to come up with very modest funding (~$100,000/y) to

> continue the excellent work of UNSCEAR.  It seems they prefer the Chernobyl

> myths to the facts.

> 

> It's time to rerun an old letter:

> 

> 1781 Medallion Court

> Mississauga, Ontario

> L5J 2L6

> 

> 2000 November 3

>  

> The Editor

> CNS Bulletin

> 9 Sandwell Crescent

> Kanata, Ontario

> K2K 1V2

> 

> Dear Editor,

> 

> Evolving Safety Analysis Technology

> 

> I enjoyed very much the excellent paper by John Luxat in the August

> Bulletin.[1]  As he pointed out, recent changes in the electricity market are

> pushing the nuclear option to be more competitive, and this is driving an

> evolution/revolution in safety analysis.  Among the areas being examined are

> the specific assumptions and their conservatisms to accommodate uncertainties

> in supporting knowledge.  To help me understand these, I looked for an

> explanation of requirements established more than two decades ago, and found

> the 1981 paper by Domaratzki et al[2] very useful.

> 

> In addition to cost reduction, the new market requires a reduction of fear and

> misunderstanding.  One cause is terminology.  Even when there are no

> consequences to people, we call failures in reactor systems accidents.  This

> invites a comparison with airplane accidents.

> 

> A particularly challenging area of analysis is a potential large-break LOCA

> event.  Because there were no LOCAs in CANDUs by 1981, the frequency of

> large-pipe failures was taken to be less than one in a 1000 reactor-years,

> based on a 1964 survey of high pressure piping systems in non-nuclear plants.

> "With 25 operating CANDU reactors, the average interval (between large LOCAs)

> would be at least 40 years." [2]  It would be appropriate to reassess this

> frequency, based on: our use of ASME-code material; our practice of

> high-quality design, construction and operation; and the excellent operating

> experience of ~450 nuclear plants during four decades.

> 

> The defined consequences of LOCA accidents are the radiation doses which would

> be received by individuals at the plant boundary and those living in the

> vicinity.  We assume no protective action is taken (evacuation, use of iodine

> tablets) resulting in an average thyroid dose and whole-body dose for these

> two groups of people.  And we use the LNT model to calculate the number of

> fatal thyroid cancers and the number of fatal cancers (due to the whole-body

> dose).

> 

> At some point, we might consider revising our assumptions to fit more

> realistic consequences of a nuclear accident.  The actual consequences of the

> Chernobyl disaster,[3, 4] where the intensity of the damage and lack of

> containment allowed a much larger release than postulated for any western

> reactor accident, are as follows:

> 

> · ~40% of reactor core and most of its radioactivity released to the

> surroundings

> 

> · population evacuated soon after the event

> 

> · average whole-body dose 1.5 cGy (rad)

> 

> · ~1800 cases of operable thyroid cancer, in children, with 3 fatalities

> 

> · no excess leukemia or other cancers observed during the following 14 years

> 

> · severe psychological stress due to fear and relocation

> 

> · severe world reaction based on fear of contamination - social, political

> 

> · severe economic stress to the nation

> 

>

> Evidence has been accumulating for a century, and has been presented to us

> repeatedly by medical doctors, especially in recent years, that the net health

> effect of low doses of radiation seems to be beneficial,[5] recognizing that

> children are more sensitive to significant doses.[6]  We seem to be ignoring

> this information.  In a rational world, we would be addressing only risks that

> involve the reasonable likelihood of acute exposures greater than 10 cGy (10

> rad) or continuous exposure rates greater than the range of natural background

> radiation levels.  So the real consequences of a severe accident are

> fatalities of mostly plant workers and a very strong reaction from the public

> and the media due to the fear of cancer (and genetic effects) leading to

> severe economic consequences.

> 

> This raises the question of how many more decades we will continue to use LNT

> ideology, and help perpetuate the fear that has been exploited for more than a

> century[7]  to keep nuclear technology under a cloud of cancer.  Use of a

> scientific model for the health effects would give nuclear energy a more

> positive image.

> 

> Sincerely,

> 

> Jerry Cuttler

> 

> References:

> 

> 1. Luxat JC. "Safety analysis technology: evolution, revolution and the drive

> to re-establish margins."  CNS Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 32-39, Aug 2000

> 

> 2. Domaratzki Z, Campbell FR and Atchison RJ.  "The nature of reactor

> accidents."  AECB paper INFO-0053, Jan 1981

> 

> 3. "Chernobyl - ten years on: radiological and health impact, an

> appraisal by the NEA Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health."

> Nuclear Energy Agency, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,

> pp. 47, Nov. 1995

> 

> 4. "The radiological consequences of the Chernobyl accident."  UNSCEAR

> 2000 report to the General Assembly, Section 1.C.18, June 6, 2000

> 

> 5. Pollycove M and Feinendegen LE.  "Epidemiology, molecular cellular

> biology and occupational radiation exposure limits."  Proceedings of World

> Council of Nuclear Workers (WONUC) Symposium on the Effects of Low and Very

> Low Doses of Ionizing Radiation on Human Health, Versailles, France, 1999 June

> 17-18. 2000, Elsevier Science, ISBN: 0-444-50513-x, pp. 305-316

> 

> 6. Tubiana M.  "Contribution of human data to the analysis of human

> carcinogenesis."  C.R. Acad Sci, Paris, Life Sciences 1999, 322, pp. 215-224

> 

> 7. Weart SR. "Nuclear fear: a history of images."  Harvard University

> Press, Cambridge, MA,1988; ISBN: 0-674-62835-7

> 

> 

> 

> ----- Original Message -----

> From: Adam McLean

> To: Canadian Nuclear Discussion List

> Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 12:18 AM

> Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] U.N. Faces Tough Sell on Chornobyl Research

> 

> 

> Posted in Science Magazine, Volume 298, Number 5594, Issue of 25 Oct

> 2002, p. 725 and at:

> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5594/725a

>

> Too bad this is what happens when UNSCEAR concludes "there is no

> evidence of a major public health impact."

> 

> Adam

> 

> -------------------

> 

> U.N. Faces Tough Sell on Chornobyl Research

> Paul Webster*

> 

> MOSCOW--The United Nations is mounting a last-ditch effort to

> reinvigorate flagging interest in the long-term health consequences of

> the Chornobyl disaster. At a meeting of U.N. agencies in New York City

> earlier this week, the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of

> Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) established a new organization, the

> International Chernobyl Research Network, to mount a coordinated

> research program on the lingering impacts of the world's most serious

> nuclear reactor accident. A concerted scientific effort is necessary, it

> argues, "if the evidence is not to be lost forever." Prospects for the

> new initiative are unclear, however. OCHA itself has no money to launch

> new research projects, and expert opinion is split on the network's

> scientific potential.

> 

> The Chornobyl network is the brainchild of Keith Baverstock, the

> European radiation health adviser to the World Health Organization

> (WHO). A lack of coordination among international agencies, he says, has

> hampered research on the health impacts of the April 1986 explosion at

> the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which spewed roughly 200 Hiroshima

> bombs' worth of radiation across a region of Eastern Europe inhabited by

> 2 million people. As a result, he contends, much Chornobyl research has

> been unsound.

> 

> Baverstock is hoping that governments and international organizations

> will commit new funds for the initiative. The network could be modeled

> after WHO's effort to coordinate research on the health effects of

> electromagnetic fields, a program supported by $150 million in research

> commitments from governmental and nongovernmental research programs

> worldwide, says Mike Repacholi, coordinator of WHO's Radiation and

> Environmental Health Unit.

> 

> Partly to help guide the new network, WHO plans a systematic review of

> the literature on low-level radiation. WHO has a head start on this

> assessment thanks to the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of

> Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), which 2 years ago issued a comprehensive

> survey of Chornobyl health research. UNSCEAR charged that many studies

> suffer from "methodological weaknesses," including spotty diagnoses and

> disease classification, poor selection of control groups, and inadequate

> radiation-dose estimates. Apart from an increase in mostly treatable

> thyroid cancer in children, UNSCEAR concluded, "there is no evidence of

> a major public health impact."

> 

> The biggest challenge, UNSCEAR warned, is to estimate radiation doses

> reliably. Recent studies suggest that doses might have been lower than

> originally thought. "A lot of people thought the Soviets were

> underestimating the dose," says UNSCEAR scientific secretary Norman

> Gentner. "It's turning out the opposite was the case."

> 

> The lowered dose estimates suggest that any lingering health effects

> apart from thyroid cancer, if they exist, will be hard to detect. But

> that doesn't mean researchers shouldn't try, says Dillwyn Williams, a

> thyroid cancer expert at the University of Cambridge, U.K. "I do believe

> that there are large uncovered areas of research," he says. Priority

> areas, he adds, should be new case-control studies on breast and lung

> cancer and genetic effects, under the umbrella of a comprehensive

> long-term population study.

> 

> Few Chornobyl researchers anticipate undiscovered health effects. "It

> appears unlikely that excess for solid cancers can be seen and can be

> related to radiation exposure," says Albrecht Kellerer, director of the

> University of Munich's Radiobiology Institute, who has been involved in

> a decade-long German-French project on Chornobyl. But he's keeping an

> open mind on blood cancers. "Even if there is little expectation to find

> a radiation effect," Kellerer says, it would be worthwhile to monitor

> childhood leukemia--and to continue surveillance on thyroid

> cancer--among the roughly 200,000 people living in

> Chornobyl-contaminated areas.

> 

> Kellerer believes, however, that the hunt for knowledge about the health

> risks from long-term exposure to low-dose radiation could be pursued

> more fruitfully elsewhere. His group has won support from the European

> Commission to move its focus from Chornobyl to the region around the

> Mayak nuclear facility in the southern Urals of Russia, where extensive

> radioactive contamination in the surrounding watershed came to light

> after the Cold War. Mayak, he says, has opened "a vast new chapter of

> radiation epidemiology."

> 

> Such views don't augur well for the U.N.'s fundraising effort, which

> began this week with discussions aimed at generating research

> commitments within U.N. agencies and will continue at a follow-up

> meeting next month. As well as generating funding commitments from

> outside the U.N., the aim of the entire effort is to arrive at a

> consensus on "what research exists and what's needed," says David

> Chikvaidze, Chornobyl coordinator for OCHA in New York City. Judging by

> researchers' increasing ambivalence about their chances to make

> breakthroughs with Chornobyl data, the U.N. might need to set modest

> expectations.

> 

> Volume 298, Number 5594, Issue of 25 Oct 2002, p. 725.

> Copyright C 2002 by The American Association for the Advancement of

> Science. All rights reserved.

> 

> _______________________________________________

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> cdn-nucl-l@mailman.McMaster.CA

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> 



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