Nuclear is Our Future

Nuclear is Our Future Monthly Newsletter

March 2006 Issue

Go Nuclear Top 10 Jr. Raglan

In This Issue:

1. Introduction
2. March 2006 Archive

1. Introduction

Welcome to our newsletter! Contained here is the March 2006 Nuclear is Our Future weblog archive. Given that it is in plain text format, the HTML has been removed and thus many posts do not look the same as when they were posted. If you want more information, please check the March 2006 online archive at blog.niof.org/2006_03_01_archive.html.

Link: http://blog.niof.org/2006_01_01_archive.html

2. March 2006 Archive

Friday, March 31, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #54


"Farmers are told to separate cream and use fatless milk, but are not told how or where to dispose of the remaining liquid."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Not sure how removing cream is going to remove individual atoms of metal, but fat-free milk is a good idea in general, and "disposing of the remaining liquid" is not unprecedented.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 5:58 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"How can NRC approve a license extension for Palisades when Consumers Energy and Nuclear Management Company nearly dropped a 107 ton nuclear waste container into the storage pool in October 2005? Such a drop could have punched a hole in the pool floor, draining away the cooling water, leading to a waste fire and radioactive inferno."


-Nuclear Information and Resource Service

These guys must be in line for a Nobel prize. They figured out not only how to make water drain up but how to set ceramic on fire.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 3:00 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Thursday, March 30, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #53


"People are told to wash food at least five times in “clean water” but nobody is told where this clean water is to be found."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

I thought they said that the food itself was contaminated.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 11:58 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Climate change is undoubtedly a very serious problem, but nuclear power can only ever make a small contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. It supplies only 8% of total energy in the UK."


-Nuclear-Free Local Authorities Web Service

That's what nuclear power plants do--supply electricity. Do you see them criticizing windmills for not producing transport fuels?

What's their solution? Burn more gas!

posted by Stewart Peterson at 2:54 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #52


""


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Uh, OK, I guess. It decays, so you would think it would go down. And their threshold for contamination is radioactivity equivalent to that from 1 gram of radium per square kilometer, or distributing a single ounce of material over 11 square miles. Nice for a science experiment on the sensitivity limits of mass spectrometry, but inconsequential for public health.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 10:58 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"All over the world, criticality events are gathering at the bottom of sealed cans, drums, tanks and bottles."


-Nuclear-Free Future Awards

Criticality. Events. Occur. Only. In. Fissile. Material.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 2:42 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Three Mile Island 27 Years On

The NRC's fact sheet is pretty good. I'm working on a real article.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 4:00 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Daily Chernobyl #51


"The Director of the Malinovka Centre has found that 95% of the 5,000 evacuee children living there are ill."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

That's terrible, but every case of the flu in Ukraine is not Chernobyl's fault.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:57 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Critical Mass
The minimum mass of a fissionable material that will just maintain a fission chain reaction under precisely specified conditions, such as the nature of the material and its purity, the nature and thickness of the tamper (or neutron reflector), the density, and the physical shape. For an explosion to occur, the system must be supercritical (i.e., the mass of the material must exceed the critical mass under the existing conditions)."


-NuclearFiles.org

And even if it is supercritical, the geometry and timing must be correct. In a nuclear power plant, they aren't.
A nuclear explosion at a nuclear power plant is 110% physically impossible. It will not happen because it cannot happen.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:18 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Monday, March 27, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #50


"Evacuees are stigmatised by the local population and referred to as “Chernobyls”. Nobody wants to marry them, employ them or be friends with them, for fear of contamination and because of ignorance. This stigmatism is similar to that experienced by the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who became known as Hibashuka [sic]."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

BTW, it's hibakusha.
So nukophobia now is the fault of the misunderstood event?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:57 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"According to the 9/11 commission final report, al Qaeda strongly considered targeting nuclear plants."


-Nuclear Energy Information Service

If nuclear power plants are so vulnerable, why didn't they go ahead and attack them?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:06 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Sunday, March 26, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #49


"The evacuees are, for the most part rural people who have been used to a traditional self-sufficient way of life, producing their own food, and living in villages where their families have lived for several generations."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Subsistence farming is a good thing? No, they should not have been displaced; that's not what I'm saying. It's the pastoralist ideals evident on the part of the anti-nuclear writers.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:57 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Plutonium is a manmade element created in nuclear reactors. If separated from the spent fuel of nuclear power plants by means of reprocessing, plutonium can be made into atomic bombs."


-Nuclear Control Institute

Five plutonium isotopes are produced in nuclear reactors: weights 238, 239, 240, 241, and 242. Only 239 works in bombs, and reprocessing can only chemically separate plutonium (all isotopes) from the rest of the spent fuel. Reactors that produce only plutonium-239 have obvious distinguishing characteristics that are not present in and are incompatible with a civilian power program. Chernobyl was an attempt at integrating the two.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 12:44 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Saturday, March 25, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #48


"The shelter is designed to keep water out and dust in for approx 100years, or for as long as it takes the Ukrainian Government to designate a permanent storage facility and dispose of all the radioactive material."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Why not Chernobyl? Of course it would be stored in a much more organized way, but there's not much a well-engineered and contained facility could do that a harebrained stunt performed incorrectly on the worst reactor in the world couldn't do.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:57 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"The industry has a ... dirty little secret about how little high-grade uranium ore is left to fuel reactors."


-Nuclear.com

Why high-grade ore? Fuel costs are a small part of the cost of nuclear-generated electricity, and the actual uranium is a small part of that. Mining, milling, enrichment, fabrication, and transportation all cost more than the actual fuel itself, so a large increase in uranium prices per se does not have a proportional effect on electricity costs.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 8:43 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Friday, March 24, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #47


"The result of the water and dust mixing is a dangerous radioactive ‘soup’. When the building became highly radioactive the engineers were unable to physically screw down the nuts and bolts or apply any direct welding of the Sarcophagus, this work was done by robotics, unfortunately the result is that the seams of the building are not sealed thus allowing water to enter and radiation to escape on a daily basis."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Mixing fission products with concrete dust and water doesn't make it any more dangerous per se. The building "became" highly radioactive after the steam explosion.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:56 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"In 1967, 700 kilometers off the Spanish Coast a dump site was designated and 8 countries carried out a total of 26 dumping operations at this site between 1967 and 1981..... representing 85,000 tonnes of radwaste containing 900,000 curies of radioactivity."


-The Nuclear Atlas

900,000 curies is equivalent to 900 kilograms of radium. 85,000 metric tons is 85,000,000 kilograms, meaning that this is over 94,000 times less radioactive than radium (low-level waste--used protective clothing, coffee cups, etc.).
Bad? Undoubtedly.
A really stupid idea that never should have been implemented? Certainly.
An environmental disaster? Not really.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 8:25 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Thursday, March 23, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #46


"...intense heat inside the reactor, which is still over 200 degrees Celsius.
...
Locked inside lies 30 tons of highly contaminated dust, 16 tons of uranium and plutonium and 200 tons of radioactive lava."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Lava at 390 degrees Fahrenheit? I wonder what kind of rock that is.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:56 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"A U.S. Navy P-5M aircraft ditched in Puget Sound off Whidbey Island, Washington. It was carrying an unarmed nuclear anti-submarine weapon containing no nuclear material."


-Nuclear Accidents List

This is a nuclear accident?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 8:11 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #45


"There are 740,000 cubic metres of lethally contaminated debris inside the sarcophagus, which is ten times more than was previously thought."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

But is the debris itself "lethal?"

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:56 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"The presence of radioactivity in the area may never have come to light had it not been for an alert official in the office of the Radiation Health Inspectorate at the complex, who got wind of the incident and sent for a water sample from the puddle in the excavated pit. The activity recorded in the water sample was 40 becquerel/ml.

The contract labourers who had worked for almost eight hours inside the pit on December 13 and 14, 1991, were thereafter hastily pulled out, given a bath, new sets of clothing and packed off home. There is no evidence of the labourers having been subject to radiation monitoring tests.

However, the authorities sought to deduce the dosage the labourers had received. On December 19, department personnel dug a small portion from the bottom of the excavated pit. During a 12-minute period, the whole body dose recorded by the DRD (a radiation monitoring badge) ranged from 10 to 30 millirems (mR). Extrapolating on this observation, the radiation exposure of the contract labourers is held to be in the range of 300 to 1,000 mR."


-No Nukes South Asia

40 becquerels/milliliter means 40 individual atoms decaying per second. This is not very much, considering that a million atoms would fit in the period at the end of this sentence. 10-30 millirem isn't very much, either--natural background can be anywhere from 90 to 180. I don't know what they "extrapolated" from--it can't be exposure time, since they were exposed to natural background radiation for the same amount of time, or full-body exposure vs. partial exposure, because this number was full exposure. Maybe they added up everybody's dose. I don't know.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 7:41 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #44


"The pillars supporting the building which contains the damaged reactor are in serious danger of bursting. If this is allowed to happen, the consequences could include the crashing of debris right through the concrete sarcophagus; or rubble could lunge into Reactor 3 which is right next door. This could trigger a core meltdown which would send another radioactive plume into the atmosphere, this plume would blow all over Europe and beyond."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Reactor 3 is no longer operating. It could not melt down; there's nothing to melt and no heat source to do it. Even if it was, destroying the reactor building, breaking some pressure tubes, and disabling the controls wouldn't cause a meltdown. Somewhere there needs to be human error. Even at that, a meltdown does not mean an explosion. A meltdown is a situation in which the temperature in the reactor exceeds the melting point of the fuel. The fuel then melts, but the design of the reactor determines what happens next. Chernobyl's was unique in allowing the power to spike if the reactor was shut down too quickly; this power spike raised the temperature enough to both melt the fuel and exploit weaknesses in the design that allowed the explosion to happen and then reach the outside. The fuel melt was incidental to the actual accident.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 6:55 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"But nuclear power is a product that creates permanent pollution."


-No Nukes Asia Forum

Radioactive materials lose some of their mass as radiation. Eventually, they lose enough mass to become stable.
"Eventually" means about 300 years for nuclear waste and longer for fuel. However, the longer a substance is radioactive, the less radioactive it is because it takes longer to lose enough mass to become stable.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 6:12 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Monday, March 20, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #43


"The concrete tomb was meant to last forever, but it began to deteriorate in the first five years."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

It was meant to isolate the reactor until they could figure out something else to do. The Soviet military was in charge of this and was not exactly thinking of the future.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 7:55 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"So then we’d all have the same things to look forward to, no matter where we live: More high-level nuclear garbage, more reactors creating more garbage everyday, and high-level nuclear garbage on the roadways next to us 24 hours a day for at least the next 30 years."


-Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force

"Garbage?" 97% of it hasn't even been used yet. Why not recycle it into new rods?

The 3% isn't useless, either. It gives off heat, which can be converted into electricity. As long as it's radioactive, it gives off heat; as long as it gives off heat, it's useful.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 5:59 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Sunday, March 19, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #42


"Twenty thousand tons of concrete floor is about to collapse into what has been described as a mix of radioactive lava and dust, which resulted from the dropping of tons of sand in the early attempts to put out the fire, formed by the fusion of molten fuel, concrete and dust."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

1. This is not a necessary consequence even of operating this terribly-designed reactor. The Soviet military was not sustainability-oriented, to say the least, and didn't even put the fire out correctly.
2. The internal temperatures are still quite high but not high enough to melt rock.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:55 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"The Department of Energy has admitted the legacy of nuclear testing has left four tons of plutonium (the single most carcinogenic substance known to humans) in the desert soil."


-Nevada Desert Experience

The anti-nuclear argument goes that plutonium is radioactive, that radiation causes cancer, and it gets proportionally worse the higher the dose. Substances that are more radioactive would then be more carcinogenic.
Plutonium is nowhere near the most radioactive material known; thus, this argument is internally inconsistent.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 9:44 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Saturday, March 18, 2006
Sorry for the Hiatus

I've had some computer problems, but I'm trying to catch up. Stay tuned.

Edit 3/18: It turns out that my graphics card was toast. It's sort of hard to post when you can't see anything on the screen. :-)

posted by Stewart Peterson at 8:44 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Daily Chernobyl #41


"The fact that only 3% of the original nuclear material was expelled in 1986, leaving behind 216 tons of uranium and plutonium still buried inside the exploded reactor, is a chilling reminder that the explosion was not the end, but rather the beginning."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

It's also a reminder of the fallaciousness of the worst-case scenario of 100% of the material being released.
The problem, however, is the fission products--the atoms that have already been split, not the uranium (which has been in nature for billions of years), or plutonium-239, which is only moderately radioactive (Chernobyl was a weapons-production reactor, producing mainly plutonium-239).

posted by Stewart Peterson at 4:55 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"A political battle of huge significance underlies this question: will the Government take determined action to put in place step changes in energy efficiency, or capitulate to the vested interests that want Government support for new investment in large capital-intensive plant?"


-N-Base Nuclear Information Service

Wonderful idea! Let's eliminate demand for new technology!

posted by Stewart Peterson at 4:29 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Friday, March 17, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #40


"Following the explosion a massive concrete ‘sarcophagus’ was constructed around the damaged Number 4 Reactor. This sarcophagus encases the damaged nuclear reactor and was designed to halt the release of further radiation into the atmosphere."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

No, it was designed to prevent the release of radioactive material.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:55 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Move decisively away from reliance upon nuclear deterrence and nuclear energy, take lead on material control protocols."


-Nautilus Institute (p.13)

So we shouldn't consume plutonium in reactors? They want it to be available for bombs?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 2:21 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Thursday, March 16, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #39


"However, whether for financial, political or other reasons, the majority of a further 3,678 towns and villages in contaminated zones will not be evacuated."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

How about because they aren't hot spots?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:54 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Moreover, the critical mass of the UREX-plus mixed product is intermediate between weapon-grade plutonium and highly-enriched uranium, and therefore can be used in nuclear weapons."


-Natural Resources Defense Council

Except it's not weapons-grade, so it doesn't work. The critical mass could be much higher or much lower. It doesn't matter.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 4:02 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #38


"A total of some 800 primitive nuclear waste disposal sites containing contaminated debris from Chernobyl are scattered within and outside the exclusion zone. According to the NEA 1995 Report "these wastes are partly conserved in containers and partly buried in trenches or stored in the open air". There is a very real risk that waste from these sites could contaminate the water table on which 40 million people in the Ukraine are reliant."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Nuclear waste is a general category of materials that are not used afterwards that have been involved in handling of radioactive materials. That's anything from spent fuel rods (with 97% of their original energy left) to coffee cups.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:54 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"FEDERAL DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA)"


-National Nuclear Workers for Justice

posted by Stewart Peterson at 3:26 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #37


"This situation will continue forever."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Radioactive materials decay at a constant rate, becoming less radioactive over time. They do not last forever.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 11:54 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Happy Pi Day

See date and time stamp.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:59 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"We have asked the Court to vindicate our legal right to participate in the decisions about how best to protect the environment from terrorist attack on the new nuclear waste facility"


-Mothers for Peace

What would happen if it were attacked? How would an attack cause a breach of the casks? Math please.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 12:20 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Monday, March 13, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #36


"It is the world’s most radioactive environment, where 2,000 towns and villages lie eerily silent and uninhabited."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Let's see what an actual visitor with an actual radiation meter said:


"It looks like an old Soviet border crossing, but it's the first checkpoint of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. We are still 30km from the nuclear reactor that blew apart during a routine safety test on April 25 1986 and scattered radiation equivalent to 270 Hiroshima bombs over much of the northern hemisphere.
Our radiation meter measures 1.0 millisievert, barely more than in Kiev airport."
...
"In the uninhabitable village of Illintsy, the radiation level is 2.0. Yet a few yards away it's 3.2. Wherever the explosion and the wind took the radioactive particles is now a hot spot."
...
"When the building blew, radiation levels were up to 20,000 millisieverts. The army conscripts were offered a year off their military service for every minute they spent in the danger zone. Now the monitor jumps to seven, eight, nine and then 10 millisieverts. We are only allowed two minutes.
It's roughly the same as an x-ray, we are told."


-John Vidal

Yet a commenter viciously attacked him (see link) because his radiation meter didn't snap to the official line of the anti-nuclear activists that this is a vast, contaminated, uninhabitable area.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:54 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day

"In June 2003, the NRC was presented with data obtained from the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) that indicate that in Grundy County, IL between 1995-99, the infant mortality rate has doubled, there has been a nearly 400% increase in pediatric cancer and a 38% increase in cancer among those aged 28-44 years old (while the same statistic for all of IL decreased by 8%). Moreover, other statistics show that the incidence of leukemia was 50% higher in men and 100% higher in women in Grundy County than it was in the rest of the State."


-Mothers' Alert

Is Grundy County a representative sample of the entire state? Probably not. A real study would take an actual sample and not rely on the completely arbitrary and meaningless distinction of what a county is.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 12:09 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Sunday, March 12, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #35


"The 30 kilometre contaminated exclusion zone has been expanded to 70km. This ‘purple zone’ has been dubbed ‘Death Valley’ by the locals."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Which isn't actually part of the exclusion zone...

posted by Stewart Peterson at 3:53 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"The Draft EAW states that the proposed project is an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) that would "store up to 30 dry storage canisters in concrete vaults." This is not an accurate project description; it disregards the 35 additional storage modules that are listed in the Draft EAW as "planned" or "likely to happen" at the Monticello site. The proposed project must therefore be examined as an ISFSI that would store spent fuel in up to 65 dry storage canisters in concrete vaults."


-Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy

When they seek approval for the 35 additional casks, the environmental impact of those casks would be analyzed. As they are not attempting to do that, only the first 30 that they are seeking approval for would be studied.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 3:01 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Saturday, March 11, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #34


"Traces of plutonium have been found well beyond the original 30km exclusion zone around the plant."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Traces of plutonium are found in lots of places--it's weapons testing fallout.

Bad? Undoubtedly.
Should it have happened? Of course not.
The fault of nuclear power? Also no.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:53 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"As for Cheney's energy comments, they reeked of disingenuousness. He declared nuclear power "the cleanest method of power generation we know," because it produces no greenhouse gasses. But what about all that nuclear waste that remains deadly for tens of thousands of years?"


-Lovearth.net

There is only a small part of nuclear waste that remains significantly radioactive for tens of thousands of years, and that can be burned in certain types of reactors, along with the 97% of the original fuel that remains unburned. Why don't we do it? In the US, it's illegal not only to recycle the unused fuel but to build those reactors.
And what about that nuclear waste, to answer their core question? It is all contained--what could be cleaner than that?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 7:58 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Friday, March 10, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #33


"The radioactive element plutonium released by the Chernobyl explosion has a half-life of 24,400 years."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

The implication being that this means it is extraordinarily dangerous. Think about it: a radioactive material is radioactive because it loses some of its mass as radiation. Eventually, it will decay into a stable material and no longer be radioactive. But the more radioactive a material is, the quicker it gets to a stable state.
And plutonium is a general name for an atom with 94 protons. Plutonium-238 has a half-life of only 87 years, plutonium-239 has the 24,000-year half-life, plutonium-240's is 6,500 years, plutonium-241's is just 14, plutonium-242's is 373,000 years, and plutonium-244's is 80.8 million. Obviously, radiotoxicity (the danger contributed by the radiation, not the chemical properties, of the material) changes for each isotope.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:53 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"ICRP's scientific model, which is used as the basis of radiation protection almost everywhere,
-is based on studies which are completely silent on the health effects of internal contamination
-is an averaging model, which is inappropriate -- like saying that the energy you receive from warming yourself at an open fire could just as safely be absorbed by means of taking one of the burning coals and swallowing it."


-Low-Level Radiation Campaign

1. It's also silent on the psychological effects of pink baby diapers. So what? That's not what it's measuring. Low-level radiation is a small amount of radiation. Nothing else is included. For something to be low-level, it actually has to be low-level. Many anti-nuclear studies include everything but the direct effects of nuclear bomb detonations, then try to apply it to everything.
2. Another common inaccuracy: they don't know what an average is. Let's say you want to find the amount of tax paid by a "typical" family. You add up all of the families' taxes, and divide by the number of families (example: Family 1 pays $1,000, Family 2 pays $1,200, Family 3 pays $1,000, and Family 4 pays $2,000. 1,000+1,200+1,000+2,000=5,200; 5,200/4=1,300; average tax paid=$1,300). In their example, swallowing a burning piece of charcoal would result in a higher exposure to heat. This has nothing to do with an average.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:01 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Thursday, March 09, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #32


"99% of the land of Belarus has been contaminated to varying degrees above internationally accepted levels as a result of the Chernobyl explosion."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Internationally-accepted levels for what use?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 9:53 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"It's [the LANL low-level waste repository] Growing. And It's Ours Forever"


-Los Alamos Study Group

Radioactive materials decay. Eventually, this waste will be gone.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 2:05 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #31





-Chernobyl Children's Project

Where did they get the pre-1986 numbers? Relying on the Soviets for accurate data is usually not a good idea.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 6:34 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Americans need and deserve a smarter, cleaner energy policy that reduces our dependence on polluting energy sources, safeguards our natural resources, and significantly increases energy efficiency and renewable energy."


-League of Conservation Voters

Energy efficiency will lead to none of those things. It makes the energy crisis small enough for the status quo to solve.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 3:57 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #30


"Some forms of thyroid cancers are among the most aggressive cancers known."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

Does iodine-131 exposure cause those forms?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 2:52 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"It is however becoming increasingly obvious that while the benefits of nuclear technology in medicine, engineering and agriculture may outweigh the risks, this is not true in the case of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy creates a legacy of serious and long-lasting environmental and health problems, and enables proliferation of nuclear weapons."


-Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy

Environmental: zero-emission, all waste contained, less radiation than coal
Health: in the US, coal=30,000; nuclear=0
Proliferation: nuclear power plants burn fissile material that could otherwise be in a bomb
???

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:54 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Monday, March 06, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #29


"Thyroid cancer develops slowly over the years, often taking between 10-30 years after the exposure to become apparent."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

So why doesn't their data include the latency period?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:51 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Wind energy is...
unlimited. As long as the sun shines, let there be wind!
clean. The transition to wind power will improve air quality by reducing smog, haze, and ground-level ozone. Also, the atmosphere will be spared millions of tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that lead to severe global climate change. A wind energy purchase ensures that the energy in the electric grid is composed of a greater percentage of clean sustainable wind energy.
healthy. A wind turbine does not emit harmful particulates into the air we breathe. Wind power decreases our vulnerability to respiratory and pulmonary problems, heart and lung disease, and cancer.
save [sic]. Nuclear power yields extremely biohazardous byproducts. Should we bury this waste in a mountain on a fault line? Sink it to the bottom of an ocean trench? Send it to space? Mix it into commercial grade cement? These are just some of the unreal solutions to a very real problem: Radioactive waste cannot be disposed safely. Furthermore, this waste can be enriched to produce powerful weapons with relatively modest equipment.
economically competitive. A college wind purchase is a solid investment into an emerging, lucrative new industry - clean energy. It will allow for the development of better wind turbine technologies that decrease production costs.
local. Studies show that the construction and maintenance of wind energy generates more jobs and revenue for local communities than dirty energy.
domestic. It reduces our dependence on foreign oil and eases pressure to drill off coastal waters and pristine Arctic wilderness. Our insatiable thirst for oil and our hunger for other fossil fuels dictate much of our foreign and domestic policy. However, only the demand from consumers can be held accountable for influencing our leaders to make unwise decisions.
responsible. What better way can Lafayette demonstrate its environmental stewardship and its role as a responsible institution than to purchase wind energy? Wind energy will attract prospective students and faculty who value progressive leadership. Along the eastern seaboard, 47 colleges, 34 of which reside in Pennsylvania, have made wind energy purchases. If Lafayette wishes to compete at the appropriate caliber, it too must become a leader.
cool. More than fifty of the nation’s most elite and prestigious universities, like Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth and UPenn, are supporting socially responsible energy choices.
sustainable. For the above reasons and more, wind power is a necessary step to achieve a cleaner, healthier world for our children to inherit."


-Lafayette Environmental Awareness and Protection

1. Have you ever seen a sunny day where there isn't any wind? Have you ever used electricity when the sun isn't shining? Have these people ever actually measured the actual output of an actual windmill? It's generally between 20%-30% of capacity and completely unpredictable.
2. Clean, meaning it kills birds with blunt force trauma instead of chemicals. If the center of the windmill is turning at a particular speed, the tip of the blade obviously moves much faster than the center. This creates an optical illusion for birds, who are not only unable to see the end of the blade but believe that it is going much slower than it actually is. They fly into it, and are chopped to bits. Windmills sure improve air quality by getting rid of all those nasty, dirty, polluting birds of prey. It will not, however, significantly reduce power plant pollution, since a wind turbine is so unreliable (from a supply standpoint, not a mechanical standpoint) that a conventional power plant needs to be kept ready in case any given wind gust disappears.
3. It doesn't pollute--but it doesn't prevent pollution, either.
4. FYI, a 'biohazard' is not something that is hazardous to life, but something that is living or contaminated with living organisms that are hazardous, e.g., a used syringe. Nuclear waste is a problem because it is illegal to use more than 3% of a fuel rod at a time. Plans have been proposed to use more than 99% of it (guess who opposes them). This 99% includes practically all of the long-lived waste; this would reduce storage time from 10,000 to 300 years. Why should it even be buried at all? It's dangerous because it gives off radiation, which is readily converted to electricity using proven technology. Spent fuel is waste only because it's illegal to use it, not because of any technical considerations. (Interestingly, "mixing it into commercial grade cement" is what they do with uranium- and thorium-laced coal ash, which is nuclear waste as well. How much uranium and thorium? 4.5 parts per million, which doesn't sound like much, but it is 22 times the energy content of the rest of the coal.)
5. Spent fuel can't be "enriched"--enrichment increases the amount of uranium-235 in a given amount of uranium from 0.71% to 3%-4%. The reactor then uses the U-235, leaving little to none left to extract. There is plutonium-239, another fissile isotope, in spent fuel--but isotopes 240, 241, and 242 are also present, which not only do not work in bombs, but actively prevent bombs from working. Researchers worldwide have tried for 50 years with much more than modest equipment to separate 239 from the rest and failed. Specially-designed reactors can produce nearly pure plutonium-239, but these have obvious major technical differences and are operated only by militaries, with the exception of Chernobyl (the "major technical differences" are one of the causes of the Chernobyl accident).
6. If you want to invest in an industry, buy stock, not their products.
7. Wind can't really be compared to baseload (constant bulk) electricity sources--you still need the conventional power plant.
8. More jobs and tax revenue means it costs more. You can't have it both ways.
9. Electricity-generating windmills will do nothing for dependence on foreign oil. Neither do nuclear power plants, or any other source of electricity, because we use oil to generate only 3% of US electricity.
10. Demand from consumers is either "more electricity" or "less electricity." When less electricity is needed, utilities shut down or lower power output from plants in descending order of operating cost. In most places, they can't say "I want wind."
11. Any electricity source with that number of externalities is not "responsible." Notice how they never back up their argument--they follow their thesis with three unrelated sentences. For example:
Carpal tunnel syndrome is a debilitating disease of the wrist. Diseases are terrible. Likewise, walnuts cause 537 choking deaths of babies every year. Please help our Crusade for the Carpal Cure so that no other families must go through this suffering.
12. Like, wow, man, like, wind is like, so totally awesome, dude.
13. "Sustainability," like "peace," is one of those words that can mean anything and everything depending on who uses it. It can mean anywhere from "it lasts a long time" to "it prevents us from using enough energy to do anything." Certainly, wind will always be available as it is today--but it is not now and barring a collapse of civilization never will be the kind of electricity source that we need.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 8:14 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Sunday, March 05, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #28


"Iodine 131 in the mother’s body crosses the placental barrier and penetrates the foetus where it predominantly accumulates in the thyroid, to develop into a potential killer over the next few years."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

However, it accumulates in the mother's thyroid, too.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:50 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"The same person believes that public management of dangerous waste is better than private storage. The proposed repository will be built, managed and operated by a private company; tenders have been called for (The Advertiser, August 2000). As with the existing stores, government will oversee and regulate the repository."


-Jim Green Nuclear & Environmental Research

It will be managed by a private company, yet the government will oversee it? Who directs and administers it? Where's the supervisor? Does someone else run it?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 8:10 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Saturday, March 04, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #27


"In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, had the authorities supplied the population with preventive potassium iodine, it would have prevented their thyroid from the uptake of ionising radiation."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

That would be radioactive materials (iodine-131 specifically), not radiation. 'Uptake' of light?

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:50 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Jersey Shore Nuclear Watch wants New Jersey residents to know about the dangers posed by the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant in Lacey Township. It is the oldest nuclear facility in the States and is located less than 400-feet from Route 9, a busy highway, making it an attractive target for terrorists."


-Jersey Shore Nuclear Watch

Being a target isn't a bad thing. It means that it's valuable, or it wouldn't be targeted. If we shut down everything that could be targeted, we'd have nothing left to defend.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 8:01 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Friday, March 03, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #26


"Dr. Demidchik of the Thyroid Tumour Clinic in Minsk (capital of Belarus) has conducted the most comprehensive study of the incidence of thyroid cancer in Belarus. His findings are widely accepted and make for shocking reading:
-There has been a 2,400% increase in the rates of thyroid cancer in Belarus
-In the Gomel region of Belarus, the region closest to Chernobyl, there has been a 100-fold increase in thyroid cancer.
This increase is almost certainly due to the population’s exposure to Iodine 131. Thyroid cancer is normally an extremely rare disease. Before Chernobyl, Dr. Demidchik’s study shows that, on average, there was less than one case of thyroid cancer per year in Belarus."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

His projection is made even more interesting by the fact that there was no monitoring of thyroid tumors before the accident.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:48 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"The project was also presented to the media with the aim of raising issues such as the danger of radioactive waste, energy production and climate change on a national level, while promoting the environmentally friendly alternative of energy efficiency."


-International Energy Brigades

Somehow, I don't think they're talking about the radioactive waste produced by coal-fired power plants--more of it than at a nuclear plant of the same size. Maybe they're talking about maintaining the current broken system so that no substantive changes need to be made--the essence of conservation. Maybe they like the prospect of someone dying every 17 1/2 minutes from coal fumes.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 8:28 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Thursday, March 02, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #25


"The whole future of our nation is is jeopardy. The Chernobyl disaster was a like a nuclear attack on our republic in peacetime, and we are just beginning to see the consequences of the tragedy."


- Petr Kravchanka, as quoted by the Chernobyl Children's Project

Chernobyl was a steam explosion caused by a sudden power spike in the reactor.

A nuclear weapon would actually have released less radioactive material, but caused much more damage.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:48 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Around the world a growing number of scientific organizations and studies have linked Gulf War Syndrome and the high rate of assorted and mysterious sicknesses to radiation poisoning from weapons made with depleted uranium."


-International Action Center

Gulf War Syndrome is a collection of symptoms, not a specific disease, and probably has different causes in different people. It certainly isn't caused by radiation from depleted uranium, since it's one of the least radioactive known radioisotopes. Heavy metal poisoning, chemicals, and the inherent stress of the military are all possible candidates.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 8:02 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Daily Chernobyl #24


"Uranium. The heaviest naturally occurring element. This dark grey, radioactive, metallic element was discovered by the German chemist H.M. Klaproth in 1789. Uranium is both radiologically and chemically toxic and poses a health hazard as a heavy metal as well as a radioisotope. Uranium–235 is used as a source of nuclear energy by fission."


-Chernobyl Children's Project

It's one of the least radioactive known radioisotopes. It poses basically no radiological threat.
The radiological effects from Chernobyl came from the fission products--the atoms that have already been split.

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:47 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day


"Conventional physics addresses only to mass-energy categories. But Psychotronics is a new science which contains not only mass energy categories, but also consciousness (Ki) category. In Psychotronics, the energy conservation law of the conventional physics E=MC2 is extended into a triangular form.

Where M; mass, E; energy, C; light velocity, G; gravitational const., Q; shadow electric charge, Ki, consciousness. E=MC2 is nuclear energy and E=(C2G1/2) Q is Ki-energy. In 1986, the year of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Japan has 33 nuclear power stations and produced 245 billion KWh yearly; which means that about 10 Kg of mass was converted into energy according to E=MC2.

According to Ki-energy E=(C2/G1/2) Q, 2.6 CGS unit of shadow electric charge or Ki-quantity, if converted into energy, can supply the same amount of energy. The psychotronics theory stipulates that the vacuum is a balanced sea of both Yin and Yan Ki with infinite depth. And Ki can be tapped unlimitedly. And the ultimate energy device of non-fuel, non-pollution and non-waste could be realized."


-Institute for New Energy

posted by Stewart Peterson at 1:35 PM | 0 comments links to this post

Link: http://blog.niof.org/2006_01_01_archive.html