If Vermont Yankee had an Accident Like Fukushima

Confused said:

No its the responsibility of the Fear Mongering Media to not scare the public.  With Fukishima it was a constant barage of non-experts giving their "expert" opinion. 

Muir Woods said:

Then there's the DERU, the Denver Equivalent Radiation Unit.  I understand radiation levels in Tokyo have gone up so much they are getting dosed at the rate all of us do who live in Denver, Colorado.  We're a bit closer to that big reactor in the sky and surrounded by igneous rocks that leak radon all day.

But none of that matters as much as the economic value of the several hundred square miles of highly developed and densely populated land around Fukushima that has to be abandoned for a generation or more.  When you prorate that against every kilowatt hour ever produced by the plant, you get a significant premium on the cost of the electricity.  Whether or not those losses were borne by a private insurance company, the government, or those unlucky enough to own that property, Japan is experiencing the cost.

Here's what you can't explain away, and it's not the job of the scientific community to make us feel better about it.  Nobody is their right mind is going to finance, build or operate a new nuclear powerplant until our energy crisis is so severe that there is simply no alternative.  If that dark day never comes, we may never build another one.

Sure, people will dream, and even pretend to plan.  They will trot out experts to explain to us why they're not so dangerous (true), not as radioactive as coal (true), and not so expensive (?).  But when it comes time for a utility, a bank, or a government to sign on the dotted line, what people are going to remember is they are risky.  And risky in ways that defy quantification.  After 30 go-go years, when "risk didn't matter", we rediscovered it and that trauma will take a generation to fade.

Next week:  A leading psychologist explains why risk-aversion is actually harmful to human health.

Russ Neal said:

Radiation is not nothing.  The effects on humans and the environment from using nuclear energy must be acknowledged and rationally considered.  But the anti-nukes seem to have a monomania about this.  The downside of nuclear must be obsessed over while the downside of alternatives must be glossed over.  In the case of Fukushima, the 20,000 plus killed by the tsunami are nothing and the possible effects of radiation which hasn't killed anyone yet justifies doubling or tripling the cost of electric power in Japan regardless of how many doie early from the resulting poverty.  This kind of thinking is hard to understand.

Meat? said:

Charred Grilled Meat? When someone burns meat it doesn't end up on the world's table. You have a choice to eat it or not. We don't have a choice when it comes from nuclear accidents and daily emissions from these lovely plants.

Anonymous said:

Cancer expectancy rates in most of Europe went from 25% in the 60s, 70s, and 80s  up to 33% in 2000 and now up to 42% in 2011. Draw a graph and you see that after holdingsteady for decades they start going up after Chernobyl, and are now hitting peaks just when you'd expect them to. Nuclear accidents don't affect civilians? People smoke less, eat better, more health conscious than before Cherobyl, you'd expect it to go down , not up. People do not live much longer today than in 2000, so you can't explain away that 9% increase in the last decade alone way with that argument either. Chernobyl is the only obvious answer.

Miki Saito said:

This lecture was inaccurate.

-- Eating Bananas with Potassium-40 is NOT the same as eating, for example, fish laced with Strontium-90. Sitting in the sun, or flying on a plane, is NOT that same as eating, drinking or inhaling radioactive isotopes from Power plants . . . 

When anyone eats a banana, the body's level of Potassium-40 does not increase. The body readily rids itself of the excess Potassium-40 shortly after consuming it...Potassium-40 has an effect on the blood for several hours with an actual net dose of a single banana being 0.

Man-made (Nuclear created isotopes) are foreign destroyers of healthy human cells. They never existed in nature, but the body attemps to use them like their naturally occuring relatives. Using the periodic table to make sense of this dangerous radiological mimicry can shed some light. Lets take for example, Strontium-90 (Sr-90) vs Strontium (Sr). Natural Strontium (Sr) is nonradioactive and nontoxic. It sits in the Periodic Table column (vertical) with Calcium. Therefore the body will use it in bones, teeth, etc . . When the destructive radioactive Strontium-90 (Sr-90) enters the body, the body sees it as natural strontium and sends to calcium dependent tissue. This is why Stronium-90 typically causes cancer of the bone and marrow and is known as the "bone seeker" isotope. The same is true for Natural Iodine. It is needed by the Thyroid and easily absorbed. So when radioactive Iodine-131 is ingested, it causes Thyroid cancer because the body sees it as natural Iodine and absorbs it ust like natural iodine. The same is true for all isotopes.

It has been proven that there is a linear, no-threshold dose-response relationship between exposure to ionizing radiation and the development of cancer in humans. . . . .this means that the sum of several very small exposures to radiation has the same effect as one large exposure, since the effects of radiation are cumulative.

--- External radiation (sunshine, xrays, laying near people, etc) is NOT the same as Internal radiation (eating, drinking or breathing in radiation). Ingesting (internal) radioactive isotopes is much more serious. The more you expose yourself to low dose radiation, the higher probability you have for getting cancer.

Neil craig said:

Nice one John. I don't personally think there is any validity to th LNT theory (here for available links against it, there being zero for it http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2010/03/low-level-radiation-evidence-that-it-is.html ) but then haven't seen convincing evidence against meat either.

Certainly a comparison of the dubious but tiny alleged danger of being in Fukushima with the dubious but tiny danger of eating meat would put things in perspective.We can also compare the radiation exposure around Fukushima with that of Yellowstone national park - if you spend significant time looking for Yogi you are exposed to more radiation.

Meredith Angwin said:

John. You are right. Also, I don't like charred meat. I'm a chemist, and to me, the "char"  on meat looks like the "tar" in the bottom of a beaker of heated organic chemicals! A metric for  charred-meat, CGMU, could be the equivalent of Banana Equivalent Dose.  

Dr. Swartz was wrong about several nuclear engineering issues.  He said there was "uncontrolled fission" at Fukushima, but there wasn't.  There was fuel melting but not criticality, as I understand it. He also made some incorrect statements about control rods. I liked his information about safety and dose, but he was not knowledgable about power plant operations.

gregor mallow said:

When radiation enters your town your life will change in a bad way. Long and the short of it. If the problem is that people worry wrongly about radiation exposure then why even tell them they are being exposed? Because the radiation that has entered their living space will change their lives in a bad way. People should leave a high radiation area immediately. If they stay they should worry about it until they leave. This article informs the public in a somewhat irresponsible way.

JohnEnglert said:

Thanks for the post Meredith.  Ignoring the blast and thermal effects, a significant difference between the radiation from a nuclear detonation and a nuclear power accident is the prompt gamma and neutron radiation that comes out as the weapon is detonating.  I recall hearing a few years back about efforts to do radiation dose triage on survivors as they are coming out of the blast zone.  I addition to the bio-markers, some folks have even suggested installing some sort of dosimetry in smart phones; perhaps measuring the activation products in the phones.  

I would like to suggest a new cancer risk equivalent unit: The Charred Grilled Meat Unit (CGMU), which would be the risk of regularly eating meat that is well done.  I just thought of it so I'm not sure what a given additional radiation dose (assuming the LNT) would equal in CGMUs.  The DOE estimated that if someone had remained at home in the contamination area near the Fukushima nuclear power plants for a whole year, that their total dose would be 20 mSv.  It would be interesting to relate the risk of that additional dose to say eating one additional serving of charred meat each week.  If the dose was stated in CGMUs, people would either 1) be less afraid of radiation or 2) eat less meat.  Either way the results could be positive.  

I am curious how someone who specializes in post-radiological disaster dose management would have insight into the availability of weapon's usable material or a fully assembled nuclear weapon.  

Anonymous said:

So friday you were disscussing how safe it all is and last month it was so reliable and getting shut down today for mechanical faliure of a pump that was end of life but not replaced. whats next week mechanical failure is good because it keeps us on our toes?

re Vermont Yankee, Reliability and Connecticut: De-Mystified