Thanks for reminding us of the Chapin et-al rejoinder in
Science.
Below is the text, copied from the pdf I got
from someone...
...SNP pool issue is addressed starting
in the second paragraph.
I recall too that Lyman likes to talk about the possibility of UO2 combustion (producing UO3 or U3O8 I guess).
One problem raised previously by someone else on this (or other) list is where would water from a damaged SNF pool run to -- the pool is an in-ground type, so no quick water disappearance is possible, unless the critics are assuming that it runs up-hill.....
Most of the SNF in these pools is old and cold, so there simply isn't the kind of high-energy dispersion mechanism available, as there was at Chernobyl. That's why the latter released a substantial part of its core inventory of radionuclides, including some long-lived ones : about 55% of I-131 (T½ = 8d); ~30% of Cs-137 (T½ = 30y); ~5% of Sr-90 (T½ = 28y) and 3.5% of Pu-238 & Pu-239 (T½ = 86y and 24.4 ky).
The inventory in an SNF pool would be much less to begin with (near zero in some cases), in the case of short-lived nuclides like I-131, Cs-134, Te-132 (T½ = 78h); Sr-89, Ba-140, Ce-141&144, etc.
These were the largest contributors, in terms of activity released -- the largest two by far being I-131 (~1760 PBq) & Te-132 (~1150 PBq) - except for the noble gas Xe-133 (6500 PBq; T½ = 5.3d) - and all three would be virtually absent from SNF in pools.
The von Hipple crowd is obviously joshing us.
Jaro
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Chapin, Douglas, et. al. Science 299(____):202-203; 10
January 2003.
(Rejoinder to letter from von Hippel, and
to letters from two other authors.)
Response
OUR POLICY FORUM PAPER
DOCUMENTS THAT engineering tests and analyses of radioactivity
from molten nuclear fuels, with failed containment, under realistic
worst-case assumptions, would produce few, if any, casualties.
<SNIP>
Spent fuel pool
radioactivity has lost the short-lived and most volatile products and has
insufficient energy to disperse in hazardous forms. Even hypothesized zirconium
fires would only burn cladding and structures, external to the fuel, adding
little to the radioactivity release.
In the worst case scenario, near-plant contamination would warrant evacuation, but not urgently; there would be time for evacuation without significant public health risk.
Radioactivity dispersed widely has lower concentrations, in low-hazard forms. Our Policy Forum documented [in notes (11-15)] that even ejecting Chernobyl radioactivity directly to the environment, burning for 10 days, without evacuation or interdicting contaminated food, caused few, if any, deaths or injuries among the public. (Most evacuated area dose rates remained below those of high natural
radiation areas.) The average effective dose (8.2 mSv in 5 million people) is small compared with doses from hundreds of millions of relevant medical exposures showing no adverse effects at much higher doses (2, 3).
Brenner and von Hipple correctly note increased thyroid cancer rates from the Chernobyl accident (about 2000 cases) but do not acknowledge that the references we cited document that these cases are readily treated, producing few if any (none con-firmed) fatalities, with expected normal health and life-span, with patients taking thyroid hormones. No other cancer increases have been identified.
Analyses that predict many deaths use invalid release quantities, materials characteristics, dispersion, dose estimates, and dose consequences. For example, the Department of Energy spent fuel cask missile damage study assumes no cleanup and exposes "victims" for 1 year. Even so, the highest dose is tolerable, and if the "victims" walked away, it would be negligible. Similarly, a Nuclear
Regulatory Commission report falsely "predicts" radiation deaths 500 miles from spent fuel fires (4).
Brenner concedes that the issues of nuclear terrorism relate to a very small individual lifetime risk, but he claims that multiplied by a very large number of people, it presents a significant public health
concern using linear no-threshold (LNT) assumptions. Lyman similarly "predicts" thousands of deaths. But there is no scien-tific basis for such predictions.
NCRP-121 states, "Few experimental studies, and essentially no human data, can be said to prove, or even provide direct support for the concept... It is conceptually possible, but with a vanishingly small probability, that any of these effects could result from the passage of a single charged particle...
It is a result of this type of reasoning that a linear non-threshold dose response relationship cannot be excluded." (5, p. 45).
NCRP-136, cited by Brenner, states, "It is important to note that the rates of cancer in most populations exposed to low-level radiation have not been found to be detectably increased, and that in most cases
the rates have appeared to be decreased." (6, p. 6)
The LNT fails at every level-molecular, cellular,
microorganism, ani-mal, and human. Organisms' responses produce beneficial,
nonlinear health effects (7).
Natural radiation varies from below 1 mSv/year to 10 mSv/year, with local areas exceeding 100 mSv/year. Inhabitants of high radiation areas show average or better health and cancer rates (8).
<SNIP>