Philly Residents Fight Planned Irradiator

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>]

Index:



Philly Residents Fight Planned Irradiator

Subsidy needed to build new US nuclear plants-MIT

Radiation doses of Hiroshima survivors confirmed

No. of A-bomb patients in Nagasaki hospital at record high

==================================



Philly Residents Fight Planned Irradiator



PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Judy Szela said she found out about plans for a 

nuclear irradiator to be built in her sleepy suburban Bucks County 

community from an employee at the grocery store.



``I was upset because I didn't know anything about it, but as I 

started asking my neighbors, no one knew about it,'' she said. ``Then 

the more I started doing research, I was devastated. And afraid.''



Szela and her neighbors in Milford Township are waging a battle with 

local leaders and federal officials over a proposed irradiator that 

could be used to sterilize anything from meat to medical supplies. 

The neighbors fear terrorism, an accident or other risks to people 

and the environment.



A world away - near Brisbane, Australia - residents have been 

protesting a planned irradiator as well.



It is unclear whether either community will be able to halt the 

projects. Irradiators opened in Mulberry, Fla., in 1991, and in 

Schaumburg, Ill., amid opposition in 2001.



The Pennsylvania irradiator, if approved by the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission, would have an 18-foot-deep underground tank with a rack 

of the radioactive isotope cobalt 60 at the bottom. Items to be 

irradiated would be lowered into the roughly 6-foot-square tank for 

about 15 minutes.



Most of the 50 or so irradiators in the United States use cobalt 60.



Irradiators are used for such things as killing bacteria in meat and 

produce and sterilizing medical supplies and feminine products.



The government has long allowed irradiation of wheat and flour, to 

discourage pests, and of potatoes, to retard sprouting. Spices, pork, 

poultry and produce were approved for irradiation in 1985; beef was 

approved in 1997 and eggs in 2000.



Herbs, seasonings and spices accounted for 95 million of the 97 

million pounds of food irradiated annually in the United States, 

according to a January 2000 report by the General Accounting office, 

the most recent figures available.



The Food and Drug Administration in 1997 deemed irradiation a safe 

method of killing bacteria that can cause food poisoning. Three years 

later, irradiated ground beef was briefly offered in U.S. 

supermarkets but did not sell well. Now that the government has 

permitted irradiated beef to be sold in school lunches, however, that 

might mean more business for many irradiators.



The proposed 1,600-square-foot irradiator in Pennsylvania would be 

inside an existing 150,000-square-foot cold storage facility that is 

operated by CFC Logistics Inc., a subsidiary of the Clemens Family 

Corp., which also owns Hatfield Quality Meats.



CFC hopes to have the machine running by the fall, though the 

timetable is uncertain now that the citizens group has sued the 

township zoning board, claiming it granted variances to CFC in 2002 

for a cold storage facility - not an irradiator.



The consumer group Public Citizen, an opponent of irradiators, said 

that there have been dozens of accidents at irradiation facilities 

since they came into use in the 1960s. Among them, the group cites a 

1982 incident in Dover, N.J., in which workers poured 600 gallons of 

radioactive water down a drain that emptied into the public sewer 

system, and a 1988 leak in Decatur, Ga., that was contained but 

resulted in several exposed workers spreading radioactivity to their 

homes.



CFC and township officials say the equipment would pose no danger to 

the community.



``It's inherently safe,'' said CFC Logistics president Jim Wood. 

``The possibility of any accident or danger of any employees coming 

into contact with this material just isn't there.''



Residents disagree.



``Cobalt 60 is dangerous. It has to be replenished, it has to be 

transported, and our goal is to have it never come here,'' said 

Szela, a member of the citizens group who lives a few miles from the 

site. ``The weight of public outcry is very strong, and we are 

telling our elected officials that we don't want this.''



Public Citizen argues that irradiation could cause cancer, that the 

materials could be used to make a radioactive ``dirty bomb,'' and 

that concerns about food contamination should be addressed by making 

slaughterhouses more sanitary.



``Food irradiation is an unnecessary technology,'' said Monique 

Mikhail of Public Citizen. ``The question is why the residents of 

Milford Township should be forced to live with this threat in their 

back yards for something that's unnecessary?''



Township supervisor Charles Strunk suggested the fears stemmed from 

``a very rude and obnoxious group of outside agitators.''



``I can tell you that I wouldn't mind one bit living next door to 

it,'' he said. ``As far as terrorists go, anyone looking to steal 

radioactive materials would have better luck getting it from a 

hospital than from the bottom of a tank.''



On the Net:



CFC Logistics: http://www.cfclogistics.com/irradiation/default.htm



Public Citizen: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/foodsafety/



Milford Township: http://www.milfordtownship.org

-----------------



Subsidy needed to build new US nuclear plants-MIT



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal subsidy is needed to encourage 

private investors to build the first U.S. nuclear power plants since 

the 1979 Three Mile Island accident halted the industry in its 

tracks, experts with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said 

Tuesday.



Nuclear power is an important option to help meet growing U.S. demand 

for electricity over the next 50 years, especially because it does 

not pollute the air like coal- and petroleum-fired plants, the MIT 

report said.



The report was prepared by several MIT professors, including two 

former Clinton administration officials -- John Deutch, who once 

headed the Central Intelligence Agency, and Ernest Moniz, a former 

undersecretary of the Energy Department.



"We propose a production tax credit of up to $200 per kilowatt hour 

(kWh) of the construction cost" for up to 10 new nuclear plants, the 

report said. "This benefit might be paid out at about 1.7 cents per 

kWh over a year and a half of full-power plant operation."



The same kind of tax credit, which the researchers described as 

"modest," could also be offered to wind power and other clean 

electricity technologies.



A credit of 1.7 cents per kWh is the equivalent to a credit of $70 

per avoided metric ton of carbon if the electricity came from a coal-

fired plant, they said.



However, a subsidy for new nuclear power plants would work only if 

the industry can find other ways to cut capital costs. Nuclear power 

now costs about 6.7 cents per kWh to produce, compared to a range of 

3.8 cents to 5.6 cents for plants fueled by coal or natural gas, the 

MIT report said.



Nuclear power could become more competitive with coal and natural gas 

plants if the United States eventually imposes a carbon tax or 

emissions trading system on the latter two fuels to curb air 

pollution, they said.



The report was released as the U.S. Senate debated a broad energy 

bill to encourage more domestic production and conservation. It 

includes $10.5 billion in loan guarantees to cover up to half of the 

cost of constructing seven nuclear power plants with a capacity of 

1,100 megawatts each.



No new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States 

since the partial meltdown of the reactor core of the Three Mile 

Island plant in Pennsylvania  in 1979.



The MIT report, which also analyzed nuclear waste disposal and safety 

issues, was posted on the Web at http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/ .

---------------------



NRC approves restart of South Texas nuke



NEW YORK, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on 

Friday approved restart of the 1,250 megawatt South Texas 1 nuclear 

unit, paving the way for the plant's much anticipated return to the 

power grid.



In a statement posted to the agency's Web site, the NRC said it 

"concluded the plant's operator had taken all the necessary actions 

with respect to the bottom-mounted instrumentation penetration 

leakage issue to support the safe restart" of the plant.



The unit, near Bay City, Texas has been shut since late March, when 

routine refueling turned up tiny boric acid deposits on the bottom of 

the reactor vessel.



A spokesman for the plant's operator, STP Nuclear Operating Co., told 

Reuters they were implementing a restart schedule, but would not 

comment on the plant's expected restart date due to competitive 

reasons.



Nuclear plants restarting from long-term outages typically take at 

least several days to heat up and return to the grid and could take 

several more days to return to full power.



The plant, which includes a twin 1,250 MW unit, provides enough power 

for more than a million homes.



At a public meeting near the plant on Monday, the NRC indicated they 

were satisfied with repairs done to the plant and would give the go-

ahead by Friday to restart operations.



The NRC said small cracks found in instrumentation tubes beneath the 

reactor had been properly repaired and posed no threat to safety.



Owners of the plant include CenterPoint Energy Inc.'s <CNP.N> Texas 

Genco Holdings Inc. <TGN.N> (30.8 percent), the city of Austin's 

Austin Energy (16 percent), American Electric Power Co.'s <AEP.N> AEP 

Texas Central Co. (25.2 percent) and City Public Service of San 

Antonio (28 percent).



Texas Genco put their cost of repairs at $4 million. It was not known 

what the cost of replacement power during the outage was or what 

repair costs were for the other utilities.



The cause of the cracks has not been identified, but STP believes 

they were the result of stresses on the instrumentation tubes when 

the reactor core was constructed.



The South Texas plant contains two of the 69 pressurized water 

reactors active in the United States. There are a total of 104 

nuclear units licensed to operate in the U.S., providing about 20 

percent of the nation's power supply.

--------------------



Radiation doses of Hiroshima survivors confirmed



LONDON, July 30 (Reuters) - New research into the level of radiation 

that Hiroshima survivors were exposed to has confirmed that the 

figures used to calculate cancer risks from radiation are correct, 

scientists said on Wednesday.



A week before the 58th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb 

on Hiroshima, the publication of the research should ease fears about 

whether the survivors' radiation doses may have been underestimated.



Most estimates of cancer risk and safe levels of exposure to 

radiation sources ranging from nuclear plants to X-rays are based on 

data from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki so it is vital that the 

doses of exposure are correct.



"These findings provide, for the first time, clear measurement 

validation of the neutron doses to survivors in Hiroshima," Tore 

Trasume, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City who headed the 

research team, said in a report in the science journal Nature.



Survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 were exposed 

to two types of radiation -- gamma rays and neutrons.



"The risks are pretty much what we thought they were," Mark Little, 

of Imperial College London who commentated on the research, said in 

an interview.



Scientists extrapolate from the data to determine how safe radiation 

is at low doses. Cancer risk is estimated by correlating the 

incidence of cancer in groups of survivors with the dose they 

received.



"So if you don't know the dose, or if it is uncertain, that feeds 

into uncertainties on the risk estimates," Little said.



"It as safe as we thought it was," he added.

--------------------



No. of A-bomb patients in Nagasaki hospital at record high



NAGASAKI, Aug. 1 (Kyodo) - A Nagasaki hospital specializing in the 

treatment of survivors of the August 1945 U.S. atomic bombings said 

Friday the number of inpatients there posted a record-high in fiscal 

2002, with more patients now coming over from South Korea.



The Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital said the number 

of inpatients still suffering from the effects of the atomic bombings 

in Nagasaki and Hiroshima rose in fiscal 2002 by 99 from the previous 

year to 1,363.



Of this number, cancer inpatients numbered 488, or 35.8% of the 

total, an increase of 58 people from fiscal 2001.



Also Friday, the Nagasaki prefectural government said it has agreed 

to have the South Korean National Red Cross act as the contact in 

South Korea to facilitate applications by A-bomb victims there for 

treatment in Japan.



The hospital said the number of patients from South Korea had 

increased following a Japanese government aid program begun last year 

in which the state will shoulder their travel costs. It added 10 

people were inpatients, and nine others came for hospital visits.



Previously, A-bomb victims from South Korea had traveled to Japan at 

their own expense.



On the possibility of more people from South Korea seeking treatment, 

Hideki Mori, assistant director at the hospital, said the hospital 

will deal with all applicants, in cooperation with medical facilities 

in Hiroshima.



The hospital also said 56 people in Japan has filed applications to 

be recognized as victims who had been exposed to bomb-induced 

radiation, which would entitle them to special medical benefits. Of 

these, 16 has been approved, 17 rejected, and 23 cases are still 

pending.



The Nagasaki prefectural government said it will formally sign an 

agreement on Monday in Seoul to entrust to the South Korean National 

Red Cross the task of processing applications by A-bomb victims in 

South Korea.



Acting on the request of the central government, the prefecture said 

it started negotiating with the South Korean Red Cross in December.



With the agreement, victims from South Korea who have so far directly 

dealt with the prefecture can now apply in South Korea.



However, in the issuing of certificates recognizing them as A-bomb 

survivors or as receiving treatment, they will still be required to 

come to Japan, a policy that has prompted calls to enable both 

processing and treatment to take place in South Korea.



-------------------------------------------------

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: sandyfl@earthlink.net

E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com



Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/



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