Canadian Steam Generators: Radioactive Cargo is Mostly Plutonium

Media Release
November 15 2010 For Immediate Release

Steam Generators:Radioactive Cargo is Mostly Plutonium

Several prominent non-governmental organizations are accusing Bruce
Power (BP) of misleading the public, the media and decision-makers about
the kind of contamination inside the cargo of 16 radioactive steam generators
it plans to ship to Sweden, by neglecting to state that it is mainly plutonium.
BP has applied to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for a
licence to transport the radioactive cargo through the Great Lakes and St.
Lawrence Seaway en route to Sweden. CNSC staff has acknowledged that the
proposed shipment exceeds by at least 6 times the maximum amount of
radioactivity normally allowed on a single vessel.
BP has trivialized the danger of this proposed shipment by referring to the
cargo as “low level radioactivity.” But according to BP’s own figures, about
90 percent of the mass of radioactive material inside the steam generators is
plutonium -- a highly toxic, long-lived radioactive poison. On its web site,
Studsvik – the Swedish company that plans to melt down most of the
radioactive metal and sell it as scrap for use in any number of commercial
products – calls the innards of the steam generators “highy radioactive”
“Each steam generator contains five plutonium isotopes with an admixture of
at least eighteen other man-made radioactive materials. To imply that this
radiotoxic cocktail poses only a low-level of risk is misleading” said Dr.
Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. “It is
extraordinarily dangerous stuff, and will remain toxic for thousands of years.”
The plutonium inside the steam generators gives off very little highly
penetrating radiation, and therefore cannot be detected from the outside. But
it gives off alpha radiation, which is 20 times more biologically damaging than
beta or gamma radiation per unit of energy when deposited in living tissue.
Any accidental spill will pose a serious long-lived contamination problem.
“Simple arithmetic shows that the amount of plutonium-239 inside the 16 steam
generators is enough, in principle, to give more than 52 million atomic workers
their maximum permissible ‘body burden’ of 0.7 micrograms,” said Dr. Marvin
Resnikoff of Radioactive Waste Management Associates in Vermont.

“And if the other plutonium isotopes inside the steam generator (plutonium-
238, plutonium-240, plutonium-241 and plutonium-242) are factored in, the
number of workers that could be overdosed is doubled,” added Dr. Edwards.
BP’s planned shipment of 1600 tonnes of radioactive waste through the Great
Lakes and St. Lawrence has been met with concerted opposition from over
100 municipalities and aboriginal communities along the route, as well as from
more than 70 NGOs. In response to this public outcry, CNSC held a public
hearing in September with 79 intervenors. The outpouring of concern at that
hearing led CNSC to extend the comment period for intervenors to give added
input until November 22 -- an unexpected and unprecedented development.
Most of the intervenors want Bruce Power to cancel the shipment and return
to the original plan as laid down in a 2006 Environmental Assessment : to
store the steam generators on site indefinitely as radioactive waste along with
all the other radioactive waste materials produced by the Bruce reactors.
“Radioactive waste should be isolated from the human environment, not
transported halfway around the world, and certainly not dispersed into
consumer products,” said Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear.
But if BP insists on pushing forward with its proposal, intervenors feel
strongly that there must be an environmental assessment of the entire project,
including not only the initial transport to Sweden but the recycling of the
radioactive metal and the return back to Canada of up to 30 percent of the
original waste.
“The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River constitute a priceless natural
resource, providing drinking water for 40 million people, and supporting a
multibillion dollar fishery. If that does not trigger an environ-mental
assessment, then something is wrong with the system,” said Kay Cumbow of
Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination in Michigan.

Contacts:
Dr. Gordon Edwards, (514) 489 **** (514) 839 7214 ---President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Montreal.

Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, (802) 732 **** ---@rwma.com
Radioactive Waste Management Associates (Bellows Falls, Vermont),

Kevin Kamps, (240) 462-**** ---@beyondnuclear.org
Beyond Nuclear (Takoma Park, Maryland)

Kay Cumbow, (810) 346 **** k---w@greatlakes.net
Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination (Michigan),

Love Day on the Democratic Underground

Maybe you could dissolve it in acid and put it in their Kool Aide. Here, drink this everybody...

It would be so much easier to expose them to the exhaust of a coal power plant. In fact, that's what we do every day.

Here, breathe this...

wikipedia

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

the course of human civilization does not depend on the disposition of scrap metal

And about 3 times that amount of Thorium.

Take a deep breath, brainiacs. For every nuclear power plant a so-called environmentalist has halted or caused to be cancelled hundreds of tons of Uranium has been released into the environment because the utilities had to provide power to equal the energy demand and so had to go with coal plants. Idiots. "Oh, I'm saving the world from scary radiation... wait... I just CAUSED far more radioactive emissions... Damn, I'm an IDIOT!"

Do you love or do you hate the radioactive steel?

Dr. Hansen took a lot of heat (so-to-speak) for outing the global climate crisis as I recall.

And presumably this 100 g is firmly impregnated in the generator; if it were easy to "rinse out" of this scrap metal this whole issue of shipping "hot" generators wouldn't even arise, since Bruce could just clean them first and ship them without this hubbub.

Seems that if the worst were to happen and a ship carrying this cargo sinks, the least likely outcome is for this plutonium to immediately diffuse into the water and spread all over creation.

The information in this press release makes the potential danger look completely negligible. The remarks about body burdens for radiation workers correspond to a mathematically conceivable but physically absurd scenario of the Pu magically distributing itself and permanently embedding in people.

As abrasive as the subject line may have been, txlibdem is right. Coal contains from 1-10 ppm uranium as well as other radioactive isotopes. Every ton of coal burned therefore contains 1-10 grams of uranium alone. While 1 g of Pu is certainly more hazardous than 1 g of U, even one modest coal plant burns a LOT of tons of coal. An exercise for the reader is to determine how much coal one would need to burn to introduce into the atmosphere enough radioactive material to pose a risk comparable to 100 g of Pu lodged in scrap metal at the bottom of a lake, and devote one's energies to spreading the word about health risks in proportion to the actual risk imposed rather than which segment of the electric power industry that generated the threat.