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Dr. Theodore Rockwell is a founding officer of the engineering firm MPR Associates, Inc., and a founding director of Radiation, Science, and Health, Inc., an international organization of independent radiation experts committed to bringing radiation policy into line with the best scientific theory and data. He is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society and recipient of the first ANS Lifetime Contribution Award, now known as the Rockwell Award, and was awarded Distinguished Service Medals from both the Navy and the Atomic Energy Commission. He is author of several books, technical papers, and articles on radiation and nuclear power. He was Technical Director of Admiral Hyman Rickover’s program to build the nuclear Navy and the world’s first commercial atomic power station at Shippingport, PA. He has several patents, including one listed in “a selection of [27] landmark US atomic energy patents from all the patents issued to date.” His works have been published in German, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
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When specialized knowledge of professional people is
incomprehensible to the average man,
Who Will
Speak for Truth? When I worked for Admiral Rickover during the Cold War years, we had one thing going for us that is hard to find today. Although many people opposed us, including some in high places, still there were a few serious and important people to whom we could go for guidance, insight and help, confident that their personal and institutional loyalties and biases would not prevent them from speaking openly and honestly about problems we both wanted resolved. Today, in the area I will discuss this evening, most people whose apparent objectives are the same as mine, often work to ignore or obscure or distort scientific facts that seem to endanger their more pressing goals. So, statements that seem to me simple truths, or facts of nature, cannot be acknowledged as such by those whose reputations and incomes are dependent on fear and mystery being associated with those facts. Truth is not Enough Truth is an elusive goal, so let’s get specific. First: truth, while necessary, may not always be sufficient. That’s why witnesses must swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” It might be misleading to report, “The captain was sober today.” A simple example is shown on the Dihydrogen Monoxide website, www.DHMO.org/truth . Although this site makes some highly alarming statements, it states nothing but scientific truth. It notes:
On the basis of these and other disturbing facts, all scientifically verifiable, the site urges citizens to write their representatives to ban this prevalent hazard. Those of you who know this substance by its more common name may feel that additional facts must be considered. Ralph Nader, who crusades as a truth-seeker, once debated Ralph Lapp, the radiation pioneer. Nader said, “One pound of plutonium is enough to kill every man, woman and child on earth.” Now, he was wrong by three orders of magnitude: one pound could kill only five million at most, not five billion, people. But suppose he had said it correctly—he would have spoken a truth. And with hundreds of thousands of pounds of plutonium in the world, his statement sounds devastating. How can one respond to such an astonishing charge? Lapp responded simply, “So is a pound of air, Ralph.” Another truth. But how can that be? Plutonium, we are told, is “the most lethal substance known.” (An untruth. There are many substances more toxic, spoonful for spoonful, than plutonium. We spread pesticides as toxic as plutonium in tonnage lots around our food crops.) Fresh air is the very breath of life. How could it harm us? Lapp explained. “The only way plutonium could kill so many people is if a trained medical technician were to line up five million people and inject just a lethal amount—no more, no less—into exactly the right place in the body, in the only form in which is it harmful. Then we would have to protect all those people for several decades, against the other hazards that would normally kill them, until the plutonium-caused cancer caught up with them—which it might or might not. The same technician could inject a small bubble of air in just the right place in the bloodstream, and the resultant death would occur quite quickly.” Both Ralphs had spoken “truth,” but for the same reason that we don’t fear death from fresh air, no single individual has ever been found to have died from plutonium poisoning, though it’s been handled in tonnage lots for half a century. Both statements were true, but only in a trivial way. In the practical, rough-and-tumble world we all live in, these “true statements” are wholly misleading. The Truth about Radiation So, context is important in making truth “real.” A truth that sounds scary by itself may look very different in context. Radiation is often portrayed as the frightening by-product of mankind’s technological tinkering with secrets of nature that perhaps should never have been explored. It seems to have taken on a uniquely menacing character in the public mind, inciting primal fear. It is not just first among the various public hazards. It is deemed to be in a class by itself. Alien, unnatural. No defense against it is considered too much; nothing seems fully adequate. How did all this come about? Where does radiation come from? How dangerous is it? Ionizing radiation arising from atomic processes is not new. God’s good green earth was created from a nuclear fireball and is, in fact, the radioactive waste dump of that process. Heat from the earth’s natural radioactive decay keeps the iron core molten and the biosphere livably warm. Without radioactivity, Earth would be as cold and lifeless as the moon. Life evolved when the world was ten times more radioactive than today, and still derives its energy from the thermonuclear reactor we call the sun. Even uranium-fueled nuclear reactors are not new. 1.7 billion years ago, in what is now the West African Republic of Gabon, rich deposits of uranium ore, when soaked with rain water, started up a natural chain reaction, generating more than 130 billion kilowatt-hours of energy over several hundred thousand years. (Such a natural reaction is no longer possible, since the fissionable part of uranium has a half-life of 0.7 billion years, meaning that over three-quarters of it has decayed to a non-fissionable form since that time. For this reason, natural uranium will no longer support a chain reaction under these conditions.) It is interesting that, without any containment structure whatsoever, the plutonium and radioactive fission products created by this natural reactor have stayed immobilized in the soil around the reaction, and have not created any problems for the plants and animals in the area. Concern has been expressed that radioactivity leaking from the sunken Russian submarine could endanger plant and animal life and pose a hazard to humanity. It cannot. We could dump all our radioactive waste into the oceans, even without containers, and that radioactivity would not add measurably to the seas’ overwhelming natural radioactivity. Millions of times more radioactivity is being continuously fed into the oceans, discharged from deep-sea vents and volcanoes, and from cold seeps, and from aquifers discharging to rivers and through the continental shelf. All over the planet, life continues to thrive in this radioactive sitzbath, bombarded by cosmic rays from outer space (which also create new radioactivity in the atmosphere); and from some 60 different radioactive isotopes in the soil, air and water; and from radioactive materials within the body itself. There is substantial evidence that life may, in fact, depend on ionizing radiation for its very existence and well-being. X-rays and Radium Humanity’s state of happy unawareness of ionizing radiation continued until 1895, when a series of events, occurring in rapid succession, ushered in a new age of artificial and controlled radiation. On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen discovered x-rays. Three months later, Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity. And in 1898, the word “radioactivity” was coined by Pierre and Marie Curie as they discovered and isolated polonium and radium, and Paul Villard discovered gamma rays. These events not only startled the scientific world, they fascinated and delighted the public at large. It was remarkably easy to build a crude x-ray generator, and within days after Roentgen’s initial announcement, scientists and lay-persons alike were experimenting with this new phenomenon. The public reaction was one of optimistic excitement. Various “cures” using radioactivity were advertised: girdles, contraceptive jelly, hair tonics, chocolate bars, tooth paste and hearing aids, all loaded with radioactivity, were said to be boons to health. The first warnings about x-rays were concerned with morality rather than health hazards, focusing on the possibility that mischievous people would carry on improper anatomical inspections. Photography magazine wrote:
A British newspaper advertised x-ray spectacles “that give you the amazing illusion to see right through everything you look at…the most amazing things when looking at girls and friends!” As an antidote, papers advertised x-ray proof underwear. The New Jersey legislature considered a bill to prohibit the use of x-rays in opera glasses.
Bombs, Deterrence and Fallout Much is made of the fact that humans have no senses for detecting nuclear radiation. But this should not surprise us; radiation is not a threat to our well-being at the levels we encounter it in the natural world. But two new developments suddenly changed that situation. We now have instruments that can detect very tiny amounts of radiation, and we can now produce very large sources of radiation. This was demonstrated in the awesome explosions that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fear was a natural reaction to such cataclysmic events, and we amplified that fear to convince the Japanese that they were faced with destruction beyond imagination if they continued the war. Afterwards, those of us who had worked for the Manhattan Project exploited fear of the atom’s unexplored powers to convince policy-makers to convert the program from a routine classified army ordnance project to a civilian-run, internationally-monitored “Atoms for Peace” program. Then, as the arms race began, fear was again called upon to become the foundation of MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction, which doesn’t work unless both sides are sufficiently fearful. And when concern arose over possible health effects of exploding over 500 nuclear test devices in the open air, fear was again called upon to force a halt. The public was not afraid of radiation until these successive fear-mongering campaigns. We have now convinced the world that nuclear radiation poses an unprecedented threat to humanity and to the planet, control of which is claimed to be beyond human capability. “A Faustian bargain,” in the haunting phrase of Oak Ridge scientist Alvin Weinberg. A nuclear holocaust would wipe out all life on earth, we’re told. A Scientific Look Do we have any truths—any scientific facts—by which to measure this fearsome picture? Yes, there are several facts that give us some perspective. First, as pointed out by Zbigniew Jaworowski, Member and former Chairman of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, all the nuclear weapons in the world, at the cold war peak of 13,000 megatons of TNT equivalent, equaled only 30 times the megatonnage already released by previous atmospheric testing. Based on the measured radiation levels caused by those tests, we know that the average radiation dose that would result to people and other life-forms all over the world, from the fallout from all these nuclear weapons, would be well below 10 rem or 0.1 Sievert, where no deleterious effects of radiation can be seen. Clearly, the damage from blast and fire from such a mass release of weaponry would be devastating. The physical damage to civilization would be unprecedented and difficult to recover from. But the effects of radiation would be limited to those few persons at the edges of the bomb’s lethal blast. I was at Hiroshima earlier this year, and I can assure you that the vegetation there is lush and beautiful, right up to, and including, ground zero. Cancers attributable to the bomb added only about 2% to the cancers from other causes. In addition, the scare of “nuclear winter” has also been discredited. Note also, that most of the fuss about radioactivity that you read about, concerns waste produced in the weapons program, not nuclear power. Leaking tanks, and most of the contaminated sites, have nothing to do with civilian programs. The chemistry is different, the people and organizations are different, and the regulatory control is different. If no nuclear power industry had ever been developed, all these weapons problems would remain the same. So they don’t concern us here. But I will note in passing, that even these weapons programs have not posed, and do not pose, any significant public hazard. They have only been made to seem so by the fact that we can detect incredibly tiny amounts of radioactivity. Most of the “contamination scandals” that have led to Congressional investigations and shutdowns of facilities have involved harmless levels of radioactivity, comparable to the natural radioactivity of salad oil. What then are the Dangers? Radiation that greatly exceeds the natural background level can damage or kill an unprotected organism. This has happened several times in the past fifty years, but not with radiation from a nuclear facility. In each case, the radiation source was a piece of material made radioactive and used for “x-raying” huge steel castings. The problem arose when the source was stolen or thrown into trash, and then used unknowingly as a harmless toy. This situation is hard to control, since such sources are used in a wide variety of non-nuclear heavy industries all over the world. Before such sources were available, industrial x-ray machines fulfilled this function. Misuse of the x-ray machines caused similar casualties. Such accidents seldom occur in nuclear facilities, where workers are used to working with radiation. The other type of radiation hazard results from inhaling or eating radioactive particles. Nuclear power plants do not emit harmful quantities of radioactivity during normal operation, so this would result only from a major reactor casualty. The Chernobyl reactor in Ukrania that burned out of control in 1986 killed 30 workers and firemen and apparently led to about 1800 cases of thyroid cancer in children. This type of cancer is easily treated, and it is believed that only 3 to 6 deaths resulted. The UN investigation concluded there was no other major public health impact from this accident, and no other increase in cancer incidence or birth defects. This obsolete design was used only in the Soviet Union. The worst accident in a modern reactor was the meltdown in 1979 of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania. Several detailed, independent public health surveys concluded that the public and the environment, and even the plant workers, received no significant radiation dose and no detrimental health effects. This is the real-world example of the consequences of a major reactor accident. Radiation Protection Policy and Practices Our radiation policy affronts both science and common sense, for at least two major reasons. First, because, as just described, Nature itself provides a large and highly variable radiation background, from the ground beneath our feet and from the sky beyond our galaxy; from our food, water, air, and the very cells of our bodies. In fact, nature’s own radioactivity in many healthful mountain streams would violate EPA’s regulations and would require “remediation treatment.” Some places in Brazil, India, Iran, England and Finland, have much more natural radiation, yet people have lived healthily there for generations. In this situation, trying to measure, account for, and reduce a tiny additional amount of man-made radiation that is far below and immersed in this variable natural background radiation is a fool’s game. The EPA says that 4 millirem per year is the upper limit for radioactivity in water, and they would apply this equally to locations where the natural background is less than 100 millirem per year and to others where it is more than 800. This is like saying that only 4 gallons of water is enough to drown you, so whether you’re swimming in an 800-gallon pool, or in a 100-gallon pool, if I add 4 gallons, you must empty out that 4 gallons to be safe. (“The four gallons you added may well be the very water that could drown you,” critics insist. True, but silly.) Hormesis: Life Strikes Back The second fact that invalidates the notion that tiny amounts of radiation are hazardous is this: the response of living organisms to any assault, whether by radiation or by chemicals, bacteria, heat, or other imposed stressors, is to increase the effectiveness of the body’s innate defense systems. Vaccination against disease works that way. So does exercise. So do the deadly poisons in your vitamin pills. Selenium, chromium, manganese, boron—all these are extremely toxic at higher doses, yet are beneficial, even essential, at tolerable doses. We should expect radiation to act the same way, and it does. This fact was brought home at a meeting of toxicologists some years ago. They were discussing thresholds for the heavy metals, which are very poisonous. They wanted to provide plenty of safety margin, so the presumed minimum toxicity levels kept drifting downward. Then one of the scientists said with a grin, “You realize we are now talking about some toxicity levels that are actually below the Recommended Daily Allowance for those minerals set by nutritionists.” This was quickly agreed to be too low, but the problem got even muddier when it was recognized that nutritionists were urging that some of these RDAs were themselves too low. “We’re calling toxic what nutritionists are calling deficient,” the toxicologists realized. That is why biologists talk about “the nutrient/toxic continuum,” in line with the advice of Paracelsus in 1540: “Nothing is poison, but the dose makes it so.” Biologists say that it is meaningless to say that a substance is a food, a poison or a medicine. The same is true of radiation. But when radiation protection regulations were being set up, there was concern that some deleterious effects, particularly cancer and genetic effects, might not show up until years after the radiation exposure. So it was assumed, for administrative simplicity, that any damage would be directly proportional to the radiation dose—linear, is the scientific term. And it was assumed there would be no amount of radiation small enough to be safe. No threshold, is how the scientists described it. This view of the body’s response to radiation is called the Linear No-Threshold premise, or LNT for short. Its advocates defend it in the following words (in report number NCRP-121, page 45):
Even more outrageous is the notion that we can add up harmless doses of radiation to large numbers of people (e.g. downwind of the Chernobyl accident) and “predict” tens of thousands of deaths, even if no individual is injured! On this basis, the Department of Energy announced that it would kill 23 people from the harmless amounts of radiation emanating from heavily shielded casks of radioactive waste being trucked across the country. Later, Energy Secretary Richardson announced gratuitously that 250 to 700 contractor workers in his installations would get radiation-induced cancer from their routine work, without violating any procedures, and 60% of these cancers would be fatal. There is no scientific basis for such nonsensical statements. (I recognize that hazardous chemicals, such as beryllium and fluorine, are present in some of these facilities, and these may present some health hazard. It is also possible that managements at these facilities may not have responded appropriately to worker complaints. I am taking no position on those questions. But Richardson and his people have referred specifically and separately to “radiation-induced cancers,” and that is what I’m addressing here.) The concept of cumulative radiation dose was based on the fear that radiation damage too small to affect the individual might still “contaminate the gene pool” in subsequent generations. This was based on Hermann Muller’s work on fruit flies. But studies of humans irradiated by atomic bombs, by medical procedures, and in jobs involving radiation, have all shown that this does not occur with humans. Careful, continuous studies by international teams of research physicians, show that children and grandchildren of A-bomb survivors show no trace of detrimental health effects from radiation; nor do radiation workers or medical patients that have received moderate to high radiation doses. Time for a Change It’s time for the civilian nuclear industry—indeed for all activities involving nuclear radiation—to step back and look afresh at the basis for their radiation protection standards and procedures. We should reject those requirements that are based solely on fear and refuted by scientific evidence. The radiation protection establishment’s most recent effort to obfuscate this issue by proposing a concept called “Below Regulatory Action.” The scheme, proposed by Roger Clarke, Chairman of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), would establish a threshold (but not, heaven forbid, called by that name), below which regulatory action would not be required. He would set this threshold so low that it would not eliminate most of the unwarranted radiation studies and extreme radiation protection practices, but neither would it repudiate the treasured LNT premise, on which so much income and reputation depends. He would have us say that radiation below the action level is still lethal, but we’ve decided not to worry about it any more. Understandably, this proposal has not been received with wholehearted acceptance. But remedying this situation turns out to be a difficult task. It seems that money we call wasted on needless studies and “decontamination” of harmless levels of radiation are in fact someone else’s income. A great deal of money is being made from the fear of radiation, and reputations are built on studying, remediating and regulating it. Physicist John Cameron quotes Tolstoy in this connection: I know that most men, even those who are clever and capable of understanding the most difficult scientific, mathematical or philosophical problems, can seldom discern even the most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed perhaps with much difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives. This is not the occasion to present the complete scientific case on the harmlessness of low-dose radiation, and the evidence that it can instead be beneficial. I will just note that there are thousands of studies, hundreds of which are reported in peer-reviewed scientific journals, supporting this conclusion. There is, in fact, an effective treatment for some cancers that involves irradiating the whole body with x-rays at an intensity high enough to stimulate the body’s immune system and other defenses, but not high enough to cause any detrimental effects. Japanese physicians are successfully treating patients this way, and it has been applied in America and elsewhere since the 1920s. But the attitude of radiation protectionists still inhibits widespread use of this life-saving technique. What Should We Do? The first step, you may be surprised to learn, is for organizations affected by the costs of radiation protection requirements to assign one or more of their own senior persons to review the scientific literature and reach their own conclusions as to the truth, magnitude and implications of what I have been saying. This is necessary because there is a continuing record of suppressing, distorting and misrepresenting the data on low-level radiation, so that many people who should be aware of this information, are not. In addition, there are many reports, widely touted as supporting the LNT, which have distorted their own data to appear supportive. These reports must also be reviewed by persons who have the capability and independence to assess their conclusions. Radiation, Science & Health, Inc. (RSH), an international non-profit organization of radiation and policy experts, has for several years been assembling and evaluating this information and making it available. Meanwhile, RSH is taking direct action. We have filed formal, documented comments with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), charging that its proposed rule on radioactivity in drinking water sources defies the scientific data, in order to use the LNT as its basis for defining regulations. This, we argue, is an arbitrary and capricious action that is not allowed under the Administrative Procedures Act, and an abandonment of its statutory obligation to use the “best peer-reviewed science.” EPA is under court order to issue this rule by November 21, 2000. If, as expected, it does not abandon the LNT in setting this rule, we are prepared to challenge it in court. In this effort, we are supported pro bono by one of the best law firms in this field. The law, in contrast to the other approaches we have pursued, offers the possibility of an objective assessment of the data, and an unambiguous and timely solution to this important problem. For example, the U.S. District Court of Appeals in D.C. recently vacated the EPA’s rule on chloroform in drinking water, noting that it was based on an LNT model, and that there was no actual evidence or theory that supported the contention the small amounts of chloroform were harmful. In another case, the U.S District Court in Greensboro, N.C. vacated EPA’s ruling that second-hand smoke was a carcinogen, since EPA (to quote the court record):
We believe that similar charges can be proven with respect to EPA’s use of LNT as a basis for its rule on radioactivity in drinking water. This would of course destroy any rational basis for using LNT for other rules made in the name of radiation protection. We intend, at the same time, to press charges of scientific misconduct against those scientists who have inappropriately mishandled data and misinterpreted conclusions in their zeal to find detrimental health effects from low-dose irradiation. Similar misconduct has been successfully prosecuted in other scientific areas, where a principal investigator was found to have “deliberately reported selected data, omitted contradictory data, and falsified results,” and another was found to have committed “not honest error, not preliminary results that later proved overly optimistic, not even carelessness, but rather intentional and conscious fraud.” Adding Up the Benefits One might expect that organizations impacted by radiation protection rules would have long ago developed complete descriptions of how their operations would be improved by more reasonable requirements. This involves far more than the 103 American nuclear power plants. One out of every three hospital procedures involves radiation. The great majority of all medical research work involves radioisotopes made in a nuclear reactor or accelerator. Radiation and radioactivity figure in a wide variety of industrial processes: measurement and automation, quality control and testing, and process development. Many consumer items are made by processes involving radiation. These activities create 4½ million U.S. jobs and over $400 billion in sales. All these activities are constrained by radiation protection regulations. But more importantly, the benefits that the public gains from these applications, from health and medicine, to lower costs and higher quality and safety in goods and industry, are constrained. Some hospitals have closed their life-saving nuclear medicine facilities because they can no longer operate under burdensome and ever-mounting reams of regulations, lack of disposal options, security and accountability comparable to that for illicit drugs, and a continual barrage of government scare stories about trivial levels of radiation. Electric utilities have ten or more times as many employees as a corresponding gas-fired plant, and pay them premium salaries to work at nuclear facilities called “ultra-hazardous.” Potential food irradiators are threatened with boycotts and lawsuits (while thousands die of food poisoning). And so it goes. Yet, surprisingly, these organizations have become so convinced that current requirements cannot be changed in the foreseeable future, that they have given little consideration as to how the design and operation of their facilities could be improved under reasonable regulations that would still protect public and worker health and safety and environmental integrity, and would still be far ahead of other industry standards and practices. Innovative new designs and procedures must be drawn up, based not on “what will the regulators allow?” or “what will the public accept?” but on “what’s the best way to do this?” Until we have defined the plant we’d really like to build and operate, we should not try to second-guess others. There will be plenty of time for that later. Let’s step back far enough to get the whole picture in view. What keeps nuclear power from being accepted as the best energy source? “The waste problem,” we hear from all sides. “What waste problem?” should be our first response. We normally judge a hazard by the number of lives lost. Electricity kills about 1,000 people each year, from accidental electrocution. Yet we properly accept this risk (vowing to be respectfully careful) in exchange for the benefits. How many people are killed by nuclear waste? None. Ever. How many injured? None. Here one might interject: “I’ve read that some small number—one, or ten, perhaps—are killed by nuclear waste each year. What about that?” Such hypothetical death estimates are based on the LNT premise that trivial radiation exposures to large number of people can be added up to “predict” a certain number of deaths. Such calculations have no basis in reality, despite statements to the contrary by various persons who make a living from such fanciful scenario spinning. No individuals are harmed by nuclear waste, and it is only individuals who can be harmed—not populations. This is the type of artifice we must dump. The real-world situation is that the biggest advantage of nuclear power is that its waste problem is trivial. What other industrial or commercial operation can contain its own waste inside the fuel, and store all of it for 40 years on site, sealed in drums, in a space smaller than the employees’ parking lot? This “waste” is mostly in the form of sealed tubes containing ceramic pellets of “spent fuel,” plus demineralizer resins and some other significant sources that are stored in drums, and rags, tools and other materials “contaminated” with trivial quantities of radioactivity. Small amounts of liquids are solidified in concrete or glass. It is shielded so that persons nearby do not receive significant radiation. It cannot hurt you, unless you break into the drums and eat some of the waste. But, we hear, “nuclear waste is particularly hazardous. Nothing else is anywhere near comparable.” And if we ask why this is so, we’re told, “Because it lasts for thousands of years.” Again we have to ask the next question: “How does that compare with other wastes that we create in quantities millions of times greater?” And the answer is that other poisons—lead, mercury, selenium, cadmium, barium, chromium, etc.—never lose, or even diminish, their toxicity. The new thing about radioactive wastes is that they naturally decay to become less toxic. If we have learned to live with wastes whose toxicity never fades, how can we argue that radioactive waste is uniquely hazardous? (Even anti-nuclear activist Sheldon Novick of the Sierra Club wrote in his 1976 book "Electric Wars," page 180: "Once radioactive materials have decayed past the point at which their internal generation of heat is a dangerous self-contained means of dispersal--in a few decades, or well within a single human lifetime--it is difficult to see in what way they are any more or less hazardous than other poisons produced by industry.") The implications extend far beyond nuclear waste. Many other requirements placed on nuclear technologies are equally outlandish. After 40 years of safe operations, we should be ready to replace them with requirements more suitable to the demonstrated low level of risk. Let’s look first at the dreaded nuclear meltdown. Based on LNT and a endless list of incredible what ifs, calculations were made of thousands of deaths. On this basis, elaborate plans for evacuations were developed, to be followed by “an area the size of Pennsylvania made permanently uninhabitable.” But then, as more realistic figures and assumptions were put into the calculations, it became impossible to find conditions that could lead to more than a few score deaths. And these were still based on the false LNT assumptions. The meltdown at Three Mile Island, with no harm to workers, the public or the environment, demonstrated that even these latest calculations are unrealistically pessimistic. There is no longer any basis for planning evacuation. Even if the air were full of fission products for a few hours, it would not be prudent to order people to go mill around in it. Evacuation of homes, schools, hospitals and prisons is not risk-free. We know that even under the worst accident conditions, fission products cannot be released until most of the cooling water is gone. If the containment building were vented before that time, there would be no need to build the tremendously thick-walled containments that are so costly. All but a tiny fraction of one percent of the worst radionuclides are trapped in the water and metal surfaces in the containment, the need for extraordinary leak-tightness, building up instead of relieving pressures, is questionable. Even the ultimate accident at Chernobyl, which spewed nearly all its fission products into the air, produced fewer casualties than accidents actually experienced in coal-, oil-, and gas-fired power plants. And such an accident is literally impossible in the type of nuclear plants built outside the Former Soviet Union. Matters such as these, and many others, should be looked at anew, recognizing that radioactivity is just another hazard—less dangerous than many others we handle satisfactorily. Over-designing introduces its own hazards. For example, locking many of the plant compartments against hypothetical terrorists can interfere with routine corrective or emergency actions that normally ensure safe operations. Providing three diesel-generators to ensure that at least one comes on when emergency power is needed may require a complicated switching system that is less reliable than a single diesel. No ordinary plant would incorporate such extreme features, and it is questionable that piling redundant safety systems onto a plant actually achieves greater safety. These extreme requirements will not fall automatically when the LNT is struck down. But they are products of the same phobic fear that created the LNT. And they should all be re-evaluated from scratch, using the best engineering judgment and experience we have gained, not only from nuclear plants, but from other successful engineering projects as well. Using our Engineering Experience The nuclear engineer should peel off the encrustation of artificial requirements, to reveal that simple, natural, functional reality at the center. It may be painful, and we’ll get a lot of objections from others. But we’ll never discover how to do the job right, until we shed our unnatural nuclear phobia and all the harmful paraphernalia it has spawned. A natural, simple, reliable and tremendously valuable entity lies hidden within, waiting to be liberated to free humankind from many of its most serious problems. These include wars fought over oil supplies; West Virginia valleys filled with coal-mining wastes; gas pipeline explosions, coal mine disasters and oil-soaked beaches; thousands killed by food pathogens; and further thousands killed by air-borne pollution from fossil fuels. More cancer patients could be cured by radioimmunotherapy. And freer use of affordable, non-polluting energy and radiation technologies could bring us further benefits not yet even envisioned. 6000 words (excl bio note)
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