West Texas site seeks to bury depleted uranium, triple capacity of burial site
Source: AP
LUBBOCK (AP) — The company operating Texas’ only radioactive waste dump site is asking state regulators to allow disposal of depleted uranium and triple the capacity of a burial site that accepts waste from dozens of states.
Although Waste Control Specialists says the uranium stored at its West Texas site would have only low-level radioactivity, opponents say the proposal would get the company another step closer to handling more dangerous material that wasn’t part of the original license. The company has already been in talks with county officials about high-level waste disposal.
Meanwhile, the Dallas-based business has also asked the state to reduce the money it’s required to have available to fund potential liability at the site — to about $86 million from $136 million.
“The public should be paying attention, but they’re not,” said state Rep. Lon Burnam, a Fort Worth Democrat who has taken an active role in monitoring how the state handles radioactive waste. “We have less and less financial assurances and greater threat for more harm.”
Read more: http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2014-06-14/west-texas-site-seeks-bury-depleted-uranium-triple-capacity-burial-site#comment-337082
Pandora's box--once it is opened there is no way to put what escapes back into it. Posted in LBN as a warning to other areas of the country that may consider granting permits for the disposal of radioactive waste.
= new reply since forum marked as read
- There's already a lot of waste there....
K&R
WASHINGTON POST
By Stephanie McCrummen
October 1, 2011
Paint Creek, Tex. — In the early years of his political career, Rick Perry began hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family’s secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance.
“Ni**erhead,” it read.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rick-perry-familys-hunting-camp-still-known-to-manyby-old-racially-charged-name/2011/10/01/gIQAOhY5DL_story.html
We knew that any of them being built was going to allow them to pollute the whole state with this stuff - legally - it just goes with the territory.
It just keeps on getting worse while good ol' Governor Goodhair is busy promoting his own religious beliefs out of state on the public dime.
He no doubt sees all forms of ecological destruction (hurricanes, drought, fracking, water and air pollution) as anything more than just Gawd's Will©.
Just pray the Rad away!
BTW, one of our prolific posters on ecological issues has (just kidding) his own Wikipedia page:
Banana equivalent dose
A banana contains naturally occurring radioactive potassium.
Banana equivalent dose (abbreviated BED) is an informal expression of ionising radiation exposure, intended as a general educational example to indicate the potential dose due to naturally occurring radioactive isotopes by eating one average sized banana. However, in practice this dose is not cumulative as the principal radioactive component is excreted to maintain metabolic equilibrium. The BED is only an indicative concept meant to show the existence of very low levels of natural radioactivity within a natural food, and is not a formally adopted dose quantity.
The major natural source of radioactivity in plant tissue is potassium, which in nature contains 0.0117% of the unstable isotope potassium-40 (40K). This isotope decays with a half-life of about 1.25 billion years (4×1016 seconds), and therefore the activity of natural potassium is about 31 Bq/g – meaning that, in one gram of the element, about 31 atoms will decay per second.[2][3] Plants naturally contain other radioactive isotopes, such as carbon-14 (14C), but their contribution to the total activity is much smaller.[citation needed] Since a typical banana contains about half a gram of potassium,[4] it will have an activity of roughly 15 Bq.[5]
Although the amount in a single banana is small in environmental and medical terms, the radioactivity from a truckload of bananas is capable of causing a false alarm when passed through a Radiation Portal Monitor used to detect possible smuggling of nuclear material at U.S. ports.[6]
The dose uptake from ingested material is defined as committed dose, and in the case of the overall effect on the human body of the radioactive content of a banana, it will be the "committed effective dose". This is typically given as the net dose over a period of 50 years resulting from the intake of radioactive material.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), isotopically pure potassium-40 will give a committed dose equivalent of 5.02 nanosieverts over 50 years per Becquerel ingested by an average adult.[7] Using this factor, one banana equivalent dose comes out as about 5.02 nSv/Bq × 31 Bq/g × 0.5 g ? 78 nanosieverts = 0.078 ?Sv. In informal publications one often sees this estimate rounded up to 0.1 ?Sv.[8]
However, the committed dose in the human body due to bananas is not cumulative because the amount of potassium (and therefore of 40K) in the human body is fairly constant because of homeostasis,[9][10] so that any excess absorbed from food is quickly compensated by the elimination of an equal amount.[1][11]
It follows that the additional radiation exposure due to eating a banana lasts only for a few hours after ingestion, namely the time it takes for the normal potassium contents of the body to be restored by the kidneys. The EPA conversion factor, on the other hand, is based on the mean time needed for the isotopic mix of potassium isotopes in the body to return to the natural ratio after being disturbed by the ingestion of pure 40K; which was assumed by EPA to be 30 days.[9] If the assumed time of residence in the body is reduced by a factor of ten, for example, the estimated equivalent absorbed dose due to the banana will be reduced in the same proportion.
The human body contains about 2.5 grams of potassium per kilogram of body mass,[12] or 175 grams in a 70 kg adult. (Not all of this potassium is 40K, though.) The amount of naturally-occurring potassium decay in humans is therefore less than 175 g × 31 Bq/g ? 5400 Bq of radioactive decays, constantly through the person's adult lifetime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
I feel much better now or at least I think I do. An example of what didn't go the way I thought it would in final results:
Radioactive Wolves Of Chernobyl - Full Documentary
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017196879
It's a long video, but it is very beautiful and I was impressed by the human commitment to protect the environment and the close study of what happens when Nature is allowed to do her work.
Science tells us much, but Nature has her ways. Yet I'm still against nukes. It was always about the half-lifes to me.
What could possibly go wrong there?
The week-to-week stories were pretty good, as was the acting and actors. The ships were great (I always loved the design.) But yeah, the premise that nuclear waste could spontaneously combust and send the Moon not only out of orbit, but across interstellar distances was bad writing.
