RE: Amchitka

["Timothy Hart" <harttp@HOTMAIL.COM>]

Maury,



Your friend sounds to logical to be true!  If only we could sit down with an 

open minded public and say "yeah we learned a lot at Bikini and your right, 

we probably don't have anything to worry about because it was a mile deep a 

long time ago and turbulence will mix it so well we will never see anything 

no matter how hard we look so we are not going to go look."  Unfortunately 

we have to do the study to show that this is good reasoning because everyone 

knows "the evil government is trying to kill us with deadly radiation."  And 

when the tests are done,everyone knows we will lie about the results and 

that when some small activity is found to exist as a result of naturally 

occurring elements it will need to be cleaned up to standards not yet 

detectable because that activity is causing all cancer known to mankind.  

Yes, I do believe your friend is making great logical points but the rest of 

society won't buy into simplicity.  (Besides what else does the government 

have to spend its money on)



Sorry for the soapbox sermon.



Tim Hart





>From: maury <maury@webtexas.com>

>Reply-To: maury <maury@webtexas.com>

>To: Radiation Safety <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>

>Subject: Amchitka

>Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 01:56:26 -0500

>

>A friend posed these questions (shown below)  to me concerning possible

>radioactive contamination of seafood in the Amchitka region. Do any of

>you happen to know of already existing measures that would likely detect

>radioactivity contamination if it existed in that region? I would expect

>that time and dilution would remove the effects of any seepage from the

>underwater test crater.  (Which I'd think would negate DOE funding to do

>more studies.)

>

>I'd appreaciate any comments that you think might interest him.

>Thanks in advance,

>Maury    maury@webtexas.com

>

>======================

>"I live in Alaska, so this topic is in the news and I am interested.

>Plus, I love king crab and I have friends who actually catch them for a

>living in that area. The fishery [business] is difficult to say the

>least. OSHA doesn't really apply to them.

>

>"I wonder, though, how much of this is being "blown out" of proportion.

>I believe, tragically, some workers may have been exposed on the surface

>to excess radiation during the test and etc., but I don't know how much

>residual risk in the marine environment there could ever be. A good

>case-study exists in the south pacific. The Bikini Islands were a very

>famous site for testing also (on the surface...geologically). They have

>been studied quite a bit (since 1947). They didn't have much of a

>problem with anything in the marine environment. The solution to

>pollution is dilution. They still had some problems with the terrestrial

>receptors though, until cleanup was completed recently.

>

>"It is a tourist destination now. It is easy to tell when it is clean

>when radioactivity is the issue. It is a lot harder with chemicals to

>demonstrate things are cleaned up.

>

>"Since the Amchitka test was not on the surface, I don't see the big

>deal. The test was 1 mile deep. The ocean is relatively shallow there.

>Any hydrologic connection via groundwater would have to percolate

>through a lot of strata, and the rate and amount of slowly leaking

>potentially contaminated groundwater would dissipate quickly once it

>reached the seabed. Plus, the sea is awfully turbulent in that area all

>year and it would be unlikely that radionuclides would buildup in any

>single location.

>

>Just some thoughts.

>Anchorage, AK"

>

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