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RE: Feedback - Radioactive-waste bunkers `unsafe'
As another problem, the public, and legislators, do not understand (1) this
is an ESTIMATE of the risk, (2) of 1000 people quoted, 250 will get cancer
anyway, and (3) that all of these numbers are presented as an exact value
rather than a bounded value based on the ESTIMATIONS.
Of course, it the public understood numbers and risk, no one would play the
lottery.
-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
3050 Traymore Lane
Bowie, MD 20715-2024
E-mail: jenday1@email.msn.com (H)
-----Original Message-----
From: BLHamrick@AOL.COM [mailto:BLHamrick@AOL.COM]
Sent: Friday, November 08, 2002 8:52 AM
To: lists@richardhess.com; joseroze@netvision.net.il;
radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Subject: Re: Feedback - Radioactive-waste bunkers `unsafe'
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
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