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3 Mile Island Plaintiffs End Legal Action
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3 Mile Island Plaintiffs End Legal Action
China launches new commercial reactor in Zhejiang
X-rays considered for carcinogen list
================================
3 Mile Island Plaintiffs End Legal Action
HARRISBURG, Pa. Dec 31 (AP) - Attorneys for 1,990 plaintiffs who claimed their
health was damaged by the 1979 reactor meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear
plant say their legal action is over.
Earlier this month, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hear an appeal of
a lower-court decision granting summary dismissal of the claims against former TMI
owner General Public Utilities Corp. and related defendants.
``There's nothing more that can be done to proceed with them, essentially,'' said
attorney Lee C. Swartz. ``We doubt the U.S. Supreme Court would agree to hear the
case.''
No other major litigation remains from the 1979 accident at TMI, the nation's worst
commercial nuclear accident.
The plaintiffs said their health was harmed by radiation that escaped from the
damaged TMI-2 plant for several days before the reactor was brought under control.
An estimated 100,000 people fled the region during the crisis.
GPU and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials have maintained not enough
radiation was released to cause adverse health effects, but some doctors as well as
anti-nuclear activists argued that was unclear.
``It just seemed to me there was scant, if not zero, evidence of a true corollary
between the radiation and the illnesses,'' former GPU president and chief operating
officer Herman M. Dieckamp said Thursday. ``So it was probably the right thing for
them to do.''
In 1990, a Columbia University study concluded the reported exposure levels were
too low to have caused increased lung cancer and leukemia cases near the plant,
which is on the Susquehanna River, about 10 miles south of Harrisburg.
But a later study by Dr. Stephen Wing and others at the University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill School of Public Health used the same data and concluded ``downwind''
areas during the accident had increased cancer rates. Wing conceded his study did
not prove more potent radiation releases, but said there was little else that would
explain the higher cancer rates.
A spokesman for a watchdog group that monitors Three Mile Island vowed Thursday
the group ``will continue to pursue and track radiogenic cancers.
``While this is a setback, I believe we'll endure and prevail, probably when I'm a very
old man,'' TMI Alert spokesman Eric Epstein.
Two of the plaintiffs were Terry L. Koller and his wife, Joanne, who was pregnant
when the TMI radiation plume drifted across the Susquehanna River. Their daughter,
Abigayle, was born with deformed feet Aug. 12, 1979, and they filed suit in 1986.
Koller said he and his wife have known the case was ``dead in the water.'' Their
daughter, who underwent two operations as a child, played basketball in high school
and college and now does mission work.
``We have moved on with our life,'' he said. ``She has moved on with hers. We're not
thinking about the past. The Lord gave her abilities in other ways.''
On the Net:
Three Mile Island Alert: http://www.tmia.com
Pennsylvania Department of Health: http://www.health.state.pa.us
---------------
China launches new commercial reactor in Zhejiang
BEIJING, Dec. 31 (Kyodo) - China on Tuesday started up the operation of a newly
Canadian-built nuclear power reactor in Zhejiang Province in eastern China, the
state-run Xinhua news agency said.
The 700,000-kilowatt heavy-water reactor, the first such type of reactor to be used
commercially in China for power generation, is located in the Taishan No. 3 nuclear
power plant in Haiyan County.
The reactor was built by a Canadian firm under a nuclear cooperation agreement
between China and Canada. Construction work began in 1998. Hitachi Ltd. and
Itochu Corp. of Japan were also involved in the project.
Xinhua said the commercial launch of the reactor was nearly one and a half months
ahead of schedule.
China is building a second heavy-water reactor at the Taishan nuclear plant. It is
scheduled to start operation in August 2003.
-----------------
X-rays considered for carcinogen list
Dec 31 (USA Today) - The federal government has begun evaluating whether
medical X-rays should be declared a carcinogen, a move experts say could reduce
unnecessary exposures to radiation and force doctors to pay closer attention to the
risks.
The evaluation, which will be conducted over the next year, was prompted by a
request from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The listing is
being considered for the National Toxicology Program's 11th Report on Carcinogens
due in 2004.
The cancer risks of radiation exposure are well documented in studies of atomic
bomb survivors, but risks from medical sources are controversial and often
downplayed by physicians.
''There is a lot of data showing that radiation is a carcinogen at very high levels,''
says G. Donald Frey of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. ''What is
scientifically unsettled is whether it causes cancer at low levels. We don't really
absolutely know.''
According to the National Cancer Institute, major organizations ''agree there probably
is no low-dose radiation 'threshold' for inducing cancer, i.e., no amount of radiation
should be considered absolutely safe.''
Christopher Portier, director of the NIEHS, says the agency is concerned that use of
Computed Tomography (CT) scans, fluoroscopy, mammography in younger women
and medical X-rays are exposing the public to increasingly higher levels of radiation.
Fred Mettler, a spokesman for the American College of Radiology and professor of
radiology at the University of New Mexico, says radiologists are supposed to
''optimize'' radiation doses by exposing patients only to enough radiation to get a
clear image. The risk of exposure is balanced against the medical benefit.
The NCI says the use of CT in adults and children has increased seven-fold in the
past 10 years. Of particular concern is exposure to unnecessarily high levels of
radiation in children.
A CT scan is equal to 100 chest X-rays. For every 1 million children scanned with
CT, an estimated 1,500 will develop cancer two decades later. Up to 3 million
children receive CT scans each year. Children are typically given adult doses during
CT scans.
In October, the NCI issued an alert to radiologists asking them to reduce CT doses
to children.
***************************************************************
Sandy Perle
Director, Technical
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service
ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Tel: (714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100 Extension 2306
Fax: (714) 668-3149
E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/
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