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Re: Ward Valley "fill-the-blanks"



David Scherer (scherer@mirlink.wustl.edu) writes:
 
> >Jim Muckerheide asks:
> 
> >Anybody want to do the "fill-the-blanks" that we did in the late '70s that
> >shows that opening and handling waste from Hanford tanks and digging a hole to
> >bury it will release more radioactivity to the environment than leaving it all
> >where it is forever, with minimal short-term management? (which can be debated
> >as to whether that's <100 or ~300 years.) 
> 
> This assumes that active maintenance will be effective, which assumes that the
> social/political climate is stable over this timeframe.  And it seems to me
> that the active maintenance period could be an order of magnitude longer.

No, it didn't.  This assumed a short-term aggressive "stabilization" 
campaign, then leaving it virtually untouched except to assume minimal
monitoring and potential intervention over a hundred years, and walking away
from it (with a minimal "closure" stage and records, signage, etc).  But you
have to put the quantifiable issues of what are the real radionuclides, and
what are the real human and environmental exposure risks (other than absolute
control to absolute zero that we have been getting trapped in the last few
years). 

And it does address rational, quantified, technical, risk assessment, not
political correctness or realities. 

> Jim also asks:

> >Can somebody "fill-the-blanks" for poor Gov. Hunt? Does anybody think the
> >releases will be greater than drilling a water well? (How 'bout a municipal
> >well?) 
> 
> Without knowing anything about the geology and land use practices near the NC
> LLW site, I for one am not sure that the releases from Class C ion exchange
> resins would only double the dose received from the present groundwater. 
> Experience at Sheffield, West Valley, and Maxey Flats sugest that releases are
> possible.  Those releases were at low levels, but concentrations in the primary
> waste streams have increased, and who knows what the future will bring?

Everybody. Old sites had free liquids, not HICs; not engineered facilities
that assure no groundwater contamination at all! (And I include current
"shallow land burial" standards as "engineered", not just vaults. 

And what long-lived component do you expect in the resins (dried and in 300
year HICs and in such engineered facilities)?   that would conceivably DOUBLE
the dose from present groundwater??  (there is a substantial amount of
radioactivity in groundwater, that we usually ignore when assessing
contributions from man-made (bad) radionuclides.  :-) 

> >All kidding aside, the need to do some real work to prepare a base of
> >objective data and take that to the administration, the Congress, and the
> >courts (instead of paying millions for PR about how we can spend billions to
> >protect the public from this most heinous risk!) 
> 
> Of course we must provide complete and objective information to the decision
> makers.  But this "fill-in-the-blank" approach is not the way.  In Illinois a
> former HPS president prepared such an analysis for the LLW Siting Commission. 
> (In his defense, Terry Lash insisited on this simplistic approach.)  His
> conclusion was that the leach rates from the solidified waste forms are so low
> that that the public and environment are protected.  In cross examination, the
> opponents' counsel got him to say that the outfield of Wrigley Field would be
> an acceptable LLW site.  When his "expert testimony" was challanged, the
> Commission chairman (a retired Supreme Court Justice) allowed it "for whatever
> it's worth."  Another commission member (who voted the site down) was a former
> Civil Engineering Dept. Head at UIUC.  So much for convincing decision makers
> by simple back of the envelope calculations.

I'm not sure I understand your argument: whether the "former HPS president"
was wrong and unjustified, or whether "decision-makers" can be stupid (or have 
ulterior motives)?  or be unduly pressured by the political process to make
erroneous decisions? 

But my point is that  __the HPS president was right__  (which I presume you
would believe also, and what are those numbers?),  but, as I said, we have NOT 
done the work necessary to really quantify it, and to really explain it to
real people (and go to court when government fails to work properly by
arbitrary and capricious decisions, which works for NRDC); and that if the
public really knew that the "decision-makers" were expending $100s millions of 
their $$$$ for _NO_  public health benefit, they would do to the
"decision-makers" what rightfully should be done (and hopefully the new public 
outrage at government  __will__  do to them). 

Or do we just not tell the truth because it is not "politically correct"?  or
because there is big $$ to be made by getting the public to cough up $$ in
fear of their lives (like a mugging with a plastic gun)?  :-)   

> We use geological isolation for a reason.  It provides protection from the
> direct exposure and atmospheric dispersal.  

Originally geologic isolation was for the "reason" that it provided protection 
and was cheap. But that's when we intended to let the geology/hydrology be the 
barrier.  Now that we have gold plated the packaging, and the engineering of
the deep geology, monitoring, etc, we have massive expense for no incremental
benefit (ie, with that kind of packaging and engineering cost we can be just
as secure with the waste on the surface). 

>The principal risk remaining is
> from groundwater transport, and this is difficult to analyze.  

It's not difficult to prove safety, its only difficult to "prove" exact
numbers (when exact numbers are not needed). Clearly the American Physical
Society had it right in 1977/78? when they said essentially that there is
metaphysical certitude (loose paraphrase :-) that there is no way for
radioactive materials to be released from the site at concentrations
sufficient to cause concern for human or environmental health.  (This was when 
EPA could only get one consultant to find a health effect from groundwater
releases (Arthur D. Little) which identified a handful of (a few dozen?)
deaths over 10,000 years (mostly from Tc-99m ?!?!?) 

>The hole
> drilling at Yucca Mountain is not an employment program for geologists, but a
> reflection of the difficulty hydrologists face.  

Actually it is. DOE was intentionally "spreading the wealth" pretty wide for
little purpose when I was watching closely, and again when I was watching less 
closely in the late 80s. In an engineering sense, none of the data is needed
to prove safety. It is a scientific expedition of great interest to a few
(many of whom can be the "adversaries" when it comes to making a political
decision). 

>We don't even have a very good handle on the source term.  

?? We don't know what's down there?  No, I suppose you mean we don't know how
fast it will corrode (if it does).  But what are the results/consequences if I 
tell you to assume it all goes to hell (ie, corrodes) in 50 years with a river 
running through it?  This was done, and there was no reasonably conceivable
way to bring rad materials to the suface in concentrations to be a problem!! 
That's how APS made its conclusion !!  But we don't use that data and
understanding in protecting the public wealth from this government grab for
bureaucratic power and authority and funding! 

>The estimates on waste leach rates is an
> order-of-magnitude guestimate at best.  So the transport has to provide an
> ample margin of safety.

Right. It does. For what ever bounding "source term/leach rate" you want to
"guestimate". That's what APS did, and what ADL (and many others did for EPA), 
and (I forget who but I'll look it up if you want) did for NRC, and (somebody
else) did for ERDA/DOE !! 

You see, you're right about all of this, but we don't have the numbers from
these analyses right out front so that you could put them in real perspective
that would easily enable you to have a more quantified reference to the
consequences right before you (in an HPS publication or fact sheet or... ??  ) 

A real respository analysis shows a parallel to Marvin Goldman's wonderful
point in the Feb 95 HPS Newsletter about the linear model causing 1500 cancers 
in 50 years if everyone wore 1" lifts in their shoes for a year, in that it
would be more justified and cost-effective to ban women's high heeled shoes
than to bury high level waste in deep geological repositories in terms of the
estimates of worst-case doses to future populations! 

> >And this doesn't even count the issue of the fallacy of the linear
> >dose-response model!!? 
> 
> Is there a concensus that it is a fallacy?  Recent threads on this list suggest
> not.  

Well, the "consensus" is in progress. See (look for), eg. the 22 "articles"
coming in the June HPS Newsletter in response to Gen Roesller's invitation to
discuss the "dose models"! NONE support the linear model!)  Ans you will
recognize a lot of the names as preeminent scientists and intimately
knowledgeable sources of the real data. 

I hope also that the current HPS reassessment of the scientific validity of
the linear model is formalized and out by the July annual meeting! 

>Again, a margin of safety is in order.  

Right, but eg, the far _lowest_ dose to a US radium worker case in the CHR
data that developed an osteosarcoma is equated to an ingestion of about
500,000 nCi (in 1918, with cancer diagnosed in 1981, she died in 1983) and
radium drinking water standards are ~2 nCi/yr (5 pCi/l x 1.1 l/d x 365 d/y). 
That's a 250,000 safety factor!  I think that's extreme, especially if the
public is paying big $$ to protect itself! (from eg 20 pCi/l = 8 nCi/yr?) 

>I, for one, do not think that the
> efforts of HPs are only placating needless fears.

And you're absolutely right!  Most dose protection HPs do is to protect
workers and patients and the public from potentially HIGH doses.  There is
very little work by HPs worrying about reductions at the few mr/yr range
(measurements at the few mr range are generally to quantify background data
and/or confirmatory that areas or materials are not contaminated at the risk
of potentially HIGH doses (though some waste management practices and proposed 
D&D may make this less true in the future).  

And HPs are taking a pro-active role in trying to keep the system honest:
witness Dr. Goldman's question in the same Feb HPS Newsletter article about
the nation spending a $Trillion to clean up our nuclear backyard for
negligible benefit!  This is all part of that message! 

> David Scherer
> scherer@mirlink.wustl.edu

Thanks David.  Please encourage more development of accessible radiological
data to provide verification and validation of my points about the quantified
results. 

I have been unable to get support to do that, and I will support anyone who
can and wants to do that -- and I don't want you to believe me outright, I
want you and all, including Shelly (had to do it :-), to help get quantified
data together, and to format it to be accessible and understandable to the
public, so that better perspectives on the data and risks are at hand for all
of us. We should not work on perceptions and beliefs any more than the public
should be forced to deal only with generalities and hand-waving arguments in
its rightful role in making the ultimate decisions on public health and safety 
protection, as Shelly so rightfully and repeatedly argues. 

(Has anyone seen or used "Fishbowl Planning" as a model to get and support
constructive public involvement? I argued for that for a long time, but as its 
developer Col. Sargent found, the problem is in the bureacracies that find
that giving the public a real role reduces their role as arbitrary
decision-makers and makes them "facilitators" and "servants of the public" in
getting to workable solutions -- that then do not always optimize the role of
the bureaucracy.) 

Regards, Jim