Re: Nuclear Waste Paradox

["J. J. Rozental" <josrozen@netmedia.net.il>]

The  IAEA recently  published the following two tec-doc on sea dumping:

a) IAEA-TECDOC 1068 - Application of radiological exclusion and exemption
principles to sea disposal.
(The concept of the de minimis for radioactive substances under the London
Convention, 1972) - March 1999

b) IAEA-TECDOC 1105 - Inventory of radioactive waste disposals at sea,
August 1999.
This document presents a large annex  on inventory of radioactive waste
disposals  at sea by country.

I can provide the e-mail of the IAEA officer responsible for these TECDOC to
those interested in the subject. Probably he can send copy to those who
request them directly.

J. J. Rozental
josrozen@netmedia.net.il
Israel

>At 9:34 AM 12/1/99 -0600, you wrote:
>
>
>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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jjrozental

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