Nuclear Power In The Media

[DUFFYP@detroitedison.com]

I have received a copy of an article from the August 12 edition of "The 
Press", a local newspaper in Fremont, Ohio.  It contains observations on the 
nuclear industry from an "electrician" employed to change light bulbs on the 
cooling tower at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant.   
 
While I am not going to reproduce the article in it's entirety, it mentions 
his job experience as an electrician employed "washing down the interiors of 
at least eight reactors" since "The interior of the reactor, when the fuel 
rods are functioning must be as free as possible of radioactivity".  He 
discusses ALARA by describing lead shields suspended from chain falls being 
moved about "increasing the level of radioactivity in the working area".  He 
also observes that the spent fuel rods have a half life of 100,000 years.  
 
After working in the interior of the reactor, he describes how he (and 
presumably the other "sixty to 80 people" working with him, are submerged in 
an ice bath while a detection unit slowly scans their bodies.  "Radioactivity 
airborne into your lungs cannot be removed" "should that happen, an alarm 
sounds.  The victim is plucked out of the reactor with a helicopter and is 
immediately flown to a compound in Arizona.  The immediate family is then 
moved to the complex with the contaminated worker.  That happened to one of my 
friends." 
 
While this may be initially entertaining to those of us in health physics and 
nuclear power, it underscores a failure in the radiation worker training 
process - particularly if this individual has worked at several sites as he 
described.  And as this article demonstrates, one misinformed individual with 
the credibility of a "radiation worker" can influence the opinions of numerous 
members of the general public.  The area of Fremont, Ohio now may have 
hundreds or thousands of people who think radiation workers with uptakes are 
airlifted to a compound in Arizona, where they and their families are 
presumably interred for life, since that radioactivity in their lungs "cannot 
be removed".