Re: OMRI Daily Digest I, No. 171, 1 Sep

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Rod,

You have a point, but:  1. I've seen some data (though not specifically about
the Kola Gulf, but we have data from Mayak); and 2. the need for resources
includes investigating, not just to fix. 

Granted, if the data then did not justify cleanup but just a bureaucratic
effort to justify funding with no public health or environmental benefit (like 
"some" we know, as Dr. Goldman said: to spend a $-trillion for negligible
public health benefit) then it should not be done. 

Regards, Jim
---------------------------------------
> From Rod Adams,
>
> Jim, I think you are falling into the trap of accepting news reports on face
> value here.  Notice that neither of the stories provides any details about
> potential doses to people or about any actual harm.
> 
> They simply state that there is radioactive material and therefore there must
> be a hazard to marine life and people.
> 
> You and I both know that the material cannot hurt anyone who does not ingest
> it and even if they do ingest it they must eat enough to cause a relatively
> high dose before it will cause them measurable harm.
> 
> I grant you that the Russians were more casual about where they dumped stuff
> than we were, but when it comes to this material, I need to see some numbers
> before I am convinced that their is a hazard to people or animals to worry
> about.
> 
> Rod Adams
> ********************************************
> Jim Muckerheide posted the following:
> 
> 2 items of interest:
> 
> Consider what we're spending on non-existent risks and zero public health and
> environmental benefits, then look at what needs action for which there are no
> resources ! 
> 
> Regards, Jim
> ---------------------------
> HIGH LEVEL OF RADIATION IN KOLA GULF . . . The level of radioactive
> contamination in the Kola Gulf is higher than in the area of the
> Norwegian Sea where a Russian nuclear submarine sank, according to the
> director of the Kola Research Institute of Marine Life, Professor
> Gennadii Matishev. ITAR-TASS on 31 August summarized an interview with
> Matishev appearing in Murmanskii vestnik. The Kola Gulf is the narrow
> fjord off the Barents Sea on which Murmansk and the Russian naval base
> of Severomorsk are located. The report said that nuclear waste once
> dumped into the sea had accumulated in hollows on the bottom of the gulf
> and posed a serious threat both to marine life and to the local
> population. -- Doug Clarke
> 
> . . . AND THE URALS NUCLEAR LEGACY. Nuclear waste at the Mayak Chemical
> Complex in the Urals is "an ecological bomb for Russia," Izvestiya
> warned on 30 August. It said that the water level is rising in one of
> three reservoirs built to hold radioactive water and that contaminated
> ground water is spreading under the Karachai Lake, into which all
> nuclear wastes had been drained and which is now being filled in. A plan
> to build a nuclear power station that would use plutonium accumulated at
> the Mayak Chemical Complex is on hold owing to lack of funding, the
> paper said. -- Penny Morvant