Re: Feedback - Radioactive-waste bunkers `unsafe'

[BLHamrick@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 11/07/2002 11:09:12 AM Pacific Standard Time, lists@richardhess.com writes:



> I'll pick on just one. What is the level of radioactivity and the exposure levels (immediate and long term) in the case of the San Diego dumps?


As another poster pointed out, the article refers to 2.5 chest x-rays.  This is the number Mr. Hirsch (the anti-nuclear activist quoted in the article) often uses to describe the NRC's License Termination Rule criteria of 25 millirem per year to the average member of the maximally exposed group, which WAS California's criteria before Mr. Hirsch sued the Department of Health, and the Department of Health didn't competently defend themselves.


So, Mr. Hirsch's basic premise is that once a land area was released for unrestricted use, then the soils, etc. could be removed to a landfill without regard to the residual radioactivity, which is true, because it's an UNRESTRICTED release, thus resulting in 2.5 "chest x-rays" to all the neighbors.  Of course that's ridiculous, and futhermore not significant, but Mr. Hirsch doesn't really like to bother with the science of it all.  Anyway, the modelling is generally so conservative, and the MARSSIM survey methods will generally result in a lower overall "actual" concentration than the DCGLs based on the target dose, that it's silly to imagine that anyone actually could receive 25 millirem in a year from these releases.  Not to mention those doses were probably modelled for someone living on the site, not a half-mile away.


I've written a response to Channel 10, but the grapevine has it that the reporter wasn't interested in any facts.  That's just a rumor, and I don't know if it's true, but I suppose the article speaks for itself in this regard.


Barbara