Re: Nuclear Waste Paradox

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Bjorn Cedervall wrote:
> 
> The main problem here - if we are dealing with radionuclides like Fe-55, 
> Fe-59, Co-60 etc (which I guess was the case?) is probably about risk 
> perception. For half lives less than say less than 50 years, consideration 
> of the slow transients of the deep sea (vertical mixing time constants in 
> the order of perhaps 1000 years or so) and consideration of the natural 
> background - I suppose that even conservative (quite pessimistic) scenarios 
> would not result in any doses that could compete with the natural background 
> (?). Or could living deep sea organisms make this overall picture invalid 
> (active vertical transportation)?

	--According to my calculations published in Nuclear Technology
47:163-172;1980, ocean dumping would eventually cause about 0.2
human deaths per GWe-year (based on linear-no threshold theory, and no
cure for cancer for the next 100,000 years or so) through
contamination of sea food.This is less than 1% of the deaths caused by
coal burning power plant wastes.
	 If all of the World's power were from nuclear
reactors, sea dumping of the high level waste would not increase the dose
to marine life by as much as 1% (0.1% for microbiota), except for sea
animals that pass within a few meters of the waste. Sub-seabed disposal,
which was studied by Sandia Laboratory, would cause very much less
radiation to marine life




Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept.
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245
Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu


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