Chipping in with my selective .02$ worth, mostly from a medical perspective (since my environmental engineering days were limited to a summer-and-a-semester of graduate school -- before I thought I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up ;D ). Articles about Chernobyl, the problems of uranium mining, and radioactive waste storage are cited. As I was living in Louisiana at the time when a salt dome "stable for thousands of years" collapsed, the problem of safely containing waste was particularly illuminated. - Of course, it was humans drilling and mining that caused the collapse: (true story, told humorously)http://members.tripod.com/~earthdude1/texaco/texaco.html
--- Dan Minette wrote: <snippage> > > >We do have a very environmentally friendly > alternative, but it is not PC, > > >so it is being phased out, alas. No global > warming, a strong safety record in the West. > > > > True. The *potential* disaster is why most people > fear it. > > But, they use different criterion for evaluating the > potential disaster for > nuclear power than anything else. With Chernobyl, > they did almost > everything about as badly as possible, and still > killed only 200... I realize that this plant was poorly designed and operated, but since it was mentioned, I picked out several points. Late sequelae will not be tabulated for years (particularly with regard to solid-tumor cancers). One of the things I found unsettling about this incident is the number of discrepancies I found in reading; one following article is based on an official Registry, listing 170 cases of thyroid cancer in Bryansk, yet failing to mention the total of 1800 (see next article). The possible suppression of the full extent of medical consequences, in the case of Dr. Yury Bandazhevsky, prompted a letter from the AAAS (excerpt below). In another paper, the conclusion is that there is no definite relation of radiation exposure to adverse pregnancy outcomes, yet it earlier notes increased defects in medically aborted fetuses (there was a definite increase in abortions post-exposure) in the highly-contaminated area, increased spontaneous abortions in 2 of the 3 most-contaminated regions, and decreased birth rates in the same areas (but does not specify if the increased abortions equals the decrease in birthrate) [pg 512; this is a pdf file and I was unable to copy the paragraphs I wanted - I'm sure I will be quite chagrined when someone points out to me the simple way of doing this <sigh> (instead of highlighting the text I wanted, mouseclicking made the hand symbol move the 'page,' and I couldn't disable the 'hand' at the toolbar) :P ]: http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Focus/Chernobyl-15/unscear_report.pdf There were several poorly defined reports of increased stillbirths in Poland, Finland and parts of the former USSR; others stated that there was no significant difference. A German study did find a significant difference between Eastern European rates and Western European rates, but they requested further study as 'other reports did not show such an effect:' European stillbirth proportions before and after the Chernobyl accident. Scherb H, Weigelt E, Bruske-Hohlfeld I. BACKGROUND: Numerous investigations have been carried out concerning the possible impact of the Chernobyl accident, in April 1986, on the prevalence of anomalies at birth and on perinatal mortality. The accident has contaminated Eastern Europe more heavily than Western Europe. If there was an effect of the radioactive contamination on perinatal mortality or stillbirth proportions one would expect to find it more pronounced in Eastern Europe as compared to Western Europe. We therefore studied long-term time trends in European stillbirth proportions...RESULTS: There is a marked differential effect in the long-term stillbirth time trends between Western Europe (Belgium, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain), Central Europe (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland), and Eastern Europe represented by four countries (Greece, Hungary, Poland, Sweden). In contrast to the western and central European trends, the eastern European trend exhibits an absolute increase of the stillbirth proportion in 1986 as compared with 1985 and an apparent upward shift of the whole trend line from 1986 on. CONCLUSION: Our results are in contrast to those of many analyses of the health consequences of the Chernobyl accident and contradict the present radiobiological knowledge. As we are dealing with highly aggregated data, other causes or artefacts may explain the observed effects. Hence, the findings should be interpreted with caution and further independent evidence should be sought. Int J Epidemiol 1999 Oct;28(5):932-40 (full pdf article at:) http://ije.oupjournals.org/cgi/reprint/28/5/932.pdf From: Medical Consequences of the Accident at the Chernobyl NPP: Forecast and Comparison With Actual Data in the National Registry http://phys4.harvard.edu/~wilson/radiation/Si2002/Chapter_1.html "Unfortunately, the prognostic estimates have been fully corroborated by the actual data from the Registry. As of the time of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, among the children in the Bryansk oblast, about 30% of detected thyroid cancer cases were induced by the radiation impact from incorporated 131I. "Among the children (at the time of the Chernobyl accident) of the Bryansk oblast, 170 thyroid cancer cases have been detected, out of which 55 cases are related to radiation (Ivanov et al., 2001)." Overall there were 1800 thyroid cancers confirmed (I found this number in other sources as well): http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Focus/Chernobyl-15/chernobyl_15.shtml "The Agency is also providing assistance in treating thyroid cancer in Ukraine by supplying the radioactive iodine used to treat patients. According to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) in its 2000 Report to the UN General Assembly (3.2 MB pdf file), the number of thyroid cases among people who were children in 1986 has risen to about 1800 and further cases can be expected in the future. Significantly, UNSCEAR has, however, found no scientific evidence of increases to date in the incidence of any other health effects that could be related to radiation exposure." http://shr.aaas.org/aaashran/csfrlets.php?cl_id=2 "On behalf of the Committee, I am writing to express my concern about the recent conviction of Dr. Yury Bandazhevsky. I am extremely concerned about reports that Vladimir Ravkov, the colleague of Dr. Bandazhevsky who initially made the allegations of bribery, subsequently withdrew the statement and claimed that the testimony he gave was the result of torture inflicted by Belarusian security forces. He stated that security forces interrogated him for 14-16 hours a day, denied him food and sleep, and threatened to harm his wife and daughter...It is also the Committee's understanding that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Advisory and Monitoring Group for Belarus issued a statement that no evidence had been provided to the court to substantiate Dr. Bandazhevsky's guilt. "If there is not substantial evidence to support the conviction of bribery, it appears that Dr. Bandazhevsky is being targeted because of his criticism of the government's health policies. In the last few years, Dr. Bandazhevsky has increasingly spoken up against government policies for dealing with the health risks caused by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. He has been critical of a policy that would remove restrictions on contaminated foods. His research has demonstrated a correlation between daily ingestion of food contaminated with Cesium 137 with a dramatic increase in morbidity and mortality among the exposed population, especially children. His fear was that a government policy to remove the restrictions on these foods would expose citizens to serious health risks." Uranium Mining - I have to disagree with "very environmentally friendly" wrt nuclear power; ditto for waste disposal. http://www.cwis.org/fwdp/Americas/four_dir.txt "The most common health risk associated with uranium mining is breathing radon-222 gas, which continues to seep from the crushed ore and mill tailings for hundreds of thousands of years. It is therefore essential to contain this material, and prevent it from either blowing away or spilling into water supplies. Responding to the widely publicized discovery that more than 600 homes in Grand Junction, Colorado, had been built on top of uranium mill tailings (House Report No. 95-649 [1978]), Congress targeted 22 abandoned uranium mines and mills for remedial action. Four are located on the Navajo Reservation (House Report No. 95-1480 [1978])..." http://www.engg.ksu.edu/HSRC/95Proceed/aragon.html "American Indian reservations around the U.S. have soil and water contamination resulting from a variety of activities which occur both on-reservation and off-reservation. The Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming has contaminated drinking water. The tribes on that reservation are working with the Department of Energy to clean up contamination from abandoned uranium sites. Elements from the abandoned mines have leaked into the underground water supply and are contaminating wells that supply water for the surrounding houses." http://www.fe.doe.gov/techline/tl_nosr2ute.html "Under the agreement, a portion of any royalties from future energy production on the lands would go into a fund to help cleanup and remove 10.5 million tons of radioactive mill tailings from the doorstep of two national treasures -- Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, near Moab, Utah. The site is the nation's fifth largest pile of uranium mill tailings, the radioactive contaminated waste products from nearly three decades of uranium mining operations." I include two sites about environmental contamination in the former USSR from a weapons production site; the morbidity and mortality in the Chelyabinsk region secondary to very significant amounts of radioactive material is fairly well documented (considering it was (continues to be?) covered up by the government). http://www.wedo.org/ehealth/forty.htm http://hjem.get2net.dk/muslumovo/tekst1.htm Waste Disposal The above Russian sites demonstrate what happens when there is extensive local environmental contamination; I think this is pertinent because of the extremely long time-frame needed to contain radioactive waste while it decays - how can one guarantee safe containment for so long, when we find houses built on wastage from a mere 50 years ago? Would putting it in a huge structure akin to a Great Pyramid ensure that no 'tomb thieves' a thousand years hence won't try to plunder it? (Although that would result in a true 'curse of the dead, wouldn't it? ;P ) Currently, nuclear/radioactive waste is stored temporarily, 'awaiting final disposal' according to the DOE; http://www.em.doe.gov/em30/waststor.html Transuranic (TRU) waste is contaminated with radioactive isotopes that have decay rates and concentrations exceeding specified levels. Because it will remain radioactive for thousands of years, TRU waste presents unique problems. DOE stores most TRU waste in a method that allows for easy retrieval. To protect the groundwater under storage areas, the waste is placed in containers and stacked on concrete pads. These containers are then enclosed in a protective vinyl cover and the area is backfilled with soil providing stable storage. The containers can be easily retrieved for future processing and disposal. If feasible, however, this 'Jijoan' solution at least sounds logical to me - subduction: http://www.etsu.edu/writing/3120f99/zctb3/nuclear2.htm#nw5 The Subductive Waste Disposal Method involves the formation of a radioactive waste repository in a subducting plate. As the plate is reabsorbed, the waste will be absorbed along with the plate where it will be dispersed through the mantle. Subducting plates are naturally structured for absorption in the Earth's mantle. And the plate is constantly renewed at its originating oceanic ridge. The plate moves slowly so that any fractures over a repository would be sealed at the contact point between the overriding plate and the subducting plate. Therefore, this method would obviously need to be implemented in a geographically active region. Plant Safety There is an extensive timeline of incidents involving transportation and storage of nuclear material, operation of commercial plants, worker deaths, some military incidents and missing material at this Physicians for Social Responsibility site. http://www.psratlanta.org/1980s.htm (just change the 8 to 7 or 9 for other decade timelines) While 'died of radiation poisoning' is more emotionally loaded than 'died in a gas explosion,' the real problem that I have with the nuclear bandwagon is the extensive length of time that waste/fuel/contaminated material remains hazardous. If one ought to consider beforehand what one is going to do with Iraq after offing Saddam, shouldn't one have a viable plan for what to do with deadly matter before mining/refining/concentrating it? Debbi __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? 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