GAO: NRC Misjudged Ohio Nuke Plant Risk

GAO: NRC Misjudged Ohio Nuke Plant Risk

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-cong/2004/may/18/051801223.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission miscalculated the risk to the public of letting an Ohio nuclear power plant continue to run in 2001 with suspected reactor leaks, congressional auditors said Tuesday.

The General Accounting Office said in a report that government inspectors should have recognized warning signs years earlier that an unsafe amount of corrosive boric acid was accumulating on the reactor head at the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo.

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Had the commission shut down the plant sooner, officials would have found a corroded hole that nearly penetrated the reactor, the GAO said. The auditors said that three years later, they still aren't convinced that the NRC has addressed the problem adequately.

"We do not yet have adequate assurances from NRC that many of the factors that contributed to the incident at Davis-Besse will be fully addressed," said the GAO report.

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note: check out the Dennis Kucinich comments...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/search.html

Looking back from the vantage point of a post-Three Mile Island, post-Chemobyl world, people sometimes wonder why we ever went ahead with nuclear power. Didn't anyone realize how dangerous it was? Didn't anybody think about the risks to people living close to nuclear plants? Didn't anyone consider the implications of generating so much nuclear waste? These things seem so obvious today.

But it was a different world in the years after World War II. For starters, the environmental consciousness so prevalent now did not exist, nor was there nearly as much concern about small risks to the public health. Indeed, people were cavalier about radioactivity to an extent that seems shocking today. As late as 1958, for example, the Atomic Energy Commission was exploding bombs above ground at its Nevada test site, and many tests in the 1950s created measurable amounts of radioactive fallout that landed outside the test area. After one test, people were warned to stay inside because the wind had shifted and carried a cloud of radioactive dust over a populated area. The exposures were probably too small to be dangerous, but it's impossible to imagine such tests being carried out in the 1990s.

The people in charge of the country's nuclear programs were not unconcerned with risk, however, they simply looked at it from a different perspective than most do today. No one worried much, for instance, about very small doses of radiation. They knew that humans are exposed to low levels of radiation from a number of natural sources, such as cosmic rays, and figured that a little extra didn't matter much. More importantly, forty and fifty years ago people had a tremendous faith in technology and in their ability to handle technology. They recognized that nuclear reactors were potentially dangerous and generated vast amounts of radioactive waste, but they assumed that nuclear scientists and engineers would find solutions. It wasn't even something they thought to debate-Can we make reactors safe? or, Can we figure out a way to dispose of nuclear wastes?-but instead was a silent premise that underlay all thinking about risk. Disputes concerning risk were always about "how," never about "can."

Only a person who is preternaturally unacquainted with risk analysis could write something like this.

Until you have a way to undo the millions of deaths (Expected to reach 8 million per year by 2010) that occur each year from air pollution, you will not have demonstrated even a primitive understanding of risk analysis. I have been explaining risk to you for years and still you have not understood it at a third graders level, which is a simple matter of using the "greater than" (>) and "less than" (<) symbol. I have never met anyone as unconcerned with risk as you are, coal boy. Indeed, you are willing to risk the putative complete collapse of the earth's atmosphere to avoid the risk that one person somewhere some day might actually have a case of cancer if so called "nuclear waste" leaks out in the one thousand years before nuclear power succeeds at reducing the radioactivity of the earth as a whole.

In fact, you cannot demonstrate that anyone in this country has died from the storage of so called "nuclear waste," simply because no one has died from it. The only deaths from nuclear power in its entire history, with a great many hundreds of exajoules generated world wide, are from Chernobyl (<1000) and a criticality accident in Japan (<5). I know of course you are disappointed that neither of these events lead to the end of life on earth, but that's just how things worked out.

I know of course from experience what your response will be. You will wiggle, hem and haw, and maybe start attacking me personally, which of course I don't mind,. (I will go again on record, for the benefit of the moderator's consideration, lest you try to claim otherwise, I want to be on record as opposing the deletion of a single post by you or anyone else that attempts to divert the issue by making a personal attack on me. I love this particular turn, since it is illustrative of intellectual paucity of my detractors.) There is a frightening, even if tiny, probability that the greenhouse effect or related atmospheric effects will kill most, if not all, of the people on the planet, as well as destroying most, if not all of its ecosystems. Simply measured on the basis of an expectation value (probability multiplied by the number of persons killed) opposition to the rapid expansion of nuclear power is so obtuse and morally indefensible.

The future belongs to those who embrace reality, and not those who seek to obscure it because of religious convictions and/or the repeated application of ancient unreflective dogma. Through most of human history, we have had the luxury of being able to afford the consequences of such thinking, since we could rely on a future generation where truth would prevail. However, today the matter of the existence of the future itself is in some question, owing to the irreversibility of imaginable, if not probable, outcomes. Thus I have made it an ethical point to confront specious (and frankly puerile) lying however persistent its practitioners are.

No amount of selective religious prattling and selective religious fear mongering will undo the basic fact of the matter. On a risk weighted basis by any equation (assuming of course you can count past 100 and that you can compare two integers) nuclear power saves lives. Quantitative analysis after analysis after analysis demonstrates this (see my favorite thread, "What you pay with your flesh: The external cost of energy") but unfortunately thinking and measurement still have a long way to go before triumphing over ignorance and distortion. In this regard, I'm certainly happy with the side I'm on.

(Unrelated point: Today, for the first time, I saw the Michael Moore film "Bowling for Columbine" which had nothing to do with energy, but did make some interesting cultural points about the ethics and results of fear mongering in the United States. The topic of Mr. Moore's film was of course guns and their use, but the point about Americans and their particular propensity for elevating fear over reason certainly should - but probably won't - be applied to understanding the issue of energy in this country. Damn if I could understand the power of the irrational media driven lie - of which this anti-nuke crapola is just one example - but the film, for all its weaknesses, advanced my understanding of the etiology this particular mass psychopathology.)

as a result of exposure to radiation and hazardous chemicals in the uranium industry.

Uranium mining and milling:

http://www.house.gov/judiciary/6158.htm

Lung Cancer in Radon-Exposed Estimation of Risk From Indoor Miners ...

http://tis.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/achre/chap12_2.html

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By 1990, 410 lung cancer deaths had occurred among the 4,100 miners in the Colorado Plateau study group; about 75 lung cancer deaths would normally have been expected in a group of miners such as this.

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Uranium conversion plants:

http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/faq/health/faq30.cfm

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Another UF6 accident involving a cylinder rupture occurred at a commercial uranium conversion facility (Sequoyah Fuels Corp., Gore OK) in 1986. The accident occurred when an over-loaded shipping cylinder was reheated to remove an excess of UF6. The cylinder ruptured, releasing a dense cloud of UF6 and its reaction products. This accident resulted in the death of one individual from HF inhalation. An additional 31 workers were exposed to the released cloud. Although some of the more highly exposed workers showed evidence of short-term kidney damage (e.g., protein in the urine), none of these workers had lasting kidney toxicity from the uranium exposure.

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Uranium enrichment plants:

http://www.house.gov/judiciary/ray0921.htm

http://www.earthisland.org/yggdrasil/uep_11_04.html

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2001/01/11/ky_uran.html

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0012/15/001215uranium.html

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0003/23/000323uran.html

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WASHINGTON -- Several cases of cancer and widespread lung diseases that probably are job-related have been detected among about 1,000 former uranium workers at Paducah and two other plants, a doctor told Congress yesterday.

The cancers involve workers' lungs and bladders, said Dr. Steven Markowitz, who heads a government medical-screening program for former workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and its sister plants in -Piketon, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tenn. He did not give the exact number of cancer cases he has found.

In the most detailed discussion of his findings so far, Markowitz, director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College in New York, told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that about 10 percent of former uranium plant workers showed non-malignant scarring that indicated exposure to asbestos. Tests also have found that 20 percent to 25 percent of workers had chronic bronchitis and/or emphysema, in which exposure to strong lung irritants, including hydrofluoric acid, contributed. And nearly all the workers had moderate or severe hearing loss from the noise in the plants, he said.

About 3 percent of former workers from Oak Ridge exhibited "beryllium sensitivity," Markowitz said. The DOE recently acknowledged the presence of that cancer-causing chemical at Paducah.

<snip>

Lethal hazards associated with the nuclear fuel cycle are well documented and cannot be ignored.

are greatly comforted by the knowledge that their deaths were completely non-radiation-related:

The total number of coal mine-related deaths in 2001 in China dropped by 403, but still remained tragically high: 5,395.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/j/m/jmr250/anything_into_oil.htm

In the early 1900s, thousands of American mine workers lost their lives each year to supply the country with coal and minerals. These deaths were caused by mining accidents, black lung, and other industry related diseases.

http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php?id=18&print=1

As of December 31, preliminary figures indicated an all-time low of 30 coal miners died in workplace accidents in 1997, a decrease from the 39 coal miners killed during 1996, a record low at the time.

http://www.msha.gov/MEDIA/PRESS/1997/NR971231.HTM

(btw, suppose it's a bit ironic, but subsequent burning of the coal provided by these dead people goes on to release much more radiation into the enviroment than released by commercial power generation, which of course is a good thing due the protective effects of radiation hormesis).

He died of black lung before I was born.

I know all about it.

The conclusion that coal-fired power plants release more radiation into the environment than nuclear power plants was based on an Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) report published several decades ago.

(I used to have a copy of this, but it disappeared long ago)

The study did not measure actual releases from operating power plants.

It estimated radionuclide releases from a hypothetical pressurized water reactor design, a boiling water reactor design and hypothetical coal-fired power plant of equal generating capacities.

Releases of radioactive material from the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle were not considered.

Releases from coal-fired power plants that generated the electricity used to operate uranium enrichment plants were also not considered.

It also made assumptions regarding the radioisotope content of the coal used - which varies greatly from source to source.

The study concluded that the coal-fired plant design released more radioisotopes per year than the pressurized water reactor.

BUT the boiling water reactor design released more radioisotopes than the coal-fired plant.

The latter conclusion has been ignored by nuclear power advocates (and/or apologists).

In the real world, nuclear power plants often release much more radioactive material into the environment than stated in their design specifications or operating licenses.

Radioisotope releases from coal-fired power plants also vary greatly based on their design, age, type of pollution abatement equipment installed and source of coal.

So do nuclear power plants release more radiation than coal-fired power plants - it depends on how you calculate (or fudge) the numbers.

radiation hormesis - ugh...

my oh my, what is to be done when science conflicts with one's prejudices and preconceived notions?

from Science, Vol 302, Issue 5644, 378 , 17 October 2003
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/302/5644/378

HORMESIS: A Healthful Dab of Radiation?

Jocelyn Kaiser
The notion that certain toxic chemicals can be healthful in small doses is stirring new controversy (see main text), but a similar debate about low-dose ionizing radiation has been raging for decades. Now, research that could shed light on possible "radiation hormesis," much of it funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is well under way. Although these studies may not soon alter regulators' assumption that any dose of radiation is harmful, the findings about low-dose effects may be provocative.

Radiation risks are now calculated based mainly on cancers among 86,600 survivors of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. These human data "are the gold standard," notes carcinogenesis expert Julian Preston of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The incidence of solid cancers in the survivors rises in a straight line with dose. This suggests that any increase in dose delivers an increase in risk, with no safe level of radiation. But at the lowest doses, there are too few cancers to calculate the actual risks. "The numbers are just not there," says radiobiologist Eric Hall of Columbia University in New York City. To be cautious, public health agencies extrapolate risk in a straight line from higher to lower doses. That leaves open the possibility that something unexpected is going on below the threshold of measured effects.

In this zone, there are hints that a little radiation could even be beneficial. The Japanese bomb survivors who received the lowest doses are living longer than controls, for example. Some studies have found a slightly lower incidence of cancer in people living in places such as western China and Colorado, where natural background radiation levels are three to four times higher than the global average of 2.4 millisieverts per year. And studies dating back to the 1950s report that rodents live about 10% to 20% longer if exposed to small amounts of radiation, notes cancer researcher Arthur Upton of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.




from Crit Rev Toxicol. 2003;33(3-4):443-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12809433

Metabolic efficiency in response to environmental agents predicts hormesis and invalidates the linear no-threshold premise: ionizing radiation as a case study.

Parsons PA.

La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia. pparsons@senet.com.au

Hormesis derives from high metabolic efficiency and hence high fitness that evolve in response to single and multiple environmental agents in low to moderate stress habitats. Consequently, nonlinear fitness continua are an evolutionary expectation for all environmental agents, which invalidates the LNT premise. For ionizing radiation, hormesis is interpreted to be adaptation to background radiation exposures, combined with adaptation to higher radiation exposures dependent on metabolic protection from the array of other abiotic stresses in the environment. This model of radiation hormesis renders suggestions of therapeutic radiation supplementation redundant because of similar health effects from other environmental agents. Furthermore, the model is compatible with a return of exposure levels for radiation protection to higher doses than are presently permissible, a deduction with substantial economic benefits.




but how could radiation be beneficial . . . ?
. . . perhaps by stimulating the immune system . . .



from Crit Rev Toxicol. 2003;33(3-4):431-41.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12809432

On radiation hormesis expressed in the immune system.

Liu SZ.

Radiation hormesis is reviewed with emphasis on its expression in the immune system. The shape of the dose-response relationship of the immune functions depends on a number of factors, chiefly the target cell under study, experimental design with emphasis on the dose range, dose spacing, dose rate and temporal changes, as well as the animal strain. For mouse and human T lymphocyte functions in the dose range of 0.01 to 10 Gy a J or inverted J-shaped curve is usually observed. For the more radioresistant macrophages, stimulation of many of their functions is often observed in the dose range up to a few grays. The cellular and molecular mechanisms of the enhancement of immunity induced by low-dose radiation were analyzed on the basis of literature published in the last decade of the past century. Intercellular reactions among the APCs and lymphocytes via distinct changes in expression of relevant surface molecules and secretion of regulatory cytokines in response to different doses of radiation were described. The major signal transduction pathways activated in response to these intercellular reactions were illustrated. The suppressive effect of low-dose radiation on cancer induction, growth, and metastasis and its immunologic mechanisms were analyzed. The present status of research in this field gives strong support to radiation hormesis in immunity with low-dose radiation as one of the mechanisms of cancer surveillance. Further research with new techniques using microarray with biochips to fully elucidate the molecular mechanisms is suggested.

How many cigarettes should people be smoking to stop from getting lung cancer?

(as i suspect you already know)

that's because life evolved on earth when the planet was considerably more radioactive than it is today - hence cells are optimized to thrive in an environment with slightly higher levels of radiation than most people experience today.

by contrast, the primary components of cigarette smoke that cause lung cancer are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. thanks to your beloved coal and diesel energy sources, levels of these largely human-produced pollutants are already WAY higher than found during most stages of the evolution of life on this planet. consequently, "background" levels of cigarette smoke-type pollutants are already far higher than what could possibly be considered hormetic by any rational person and smoking a cigarette just compounds the risk factors already in play from breathing mr. bush's air.

so they won't get mercury poising?

or else you're continuing to be purposefully obtuse by suggesting that inappropriate comparisons be made. in this case, mercury hormesis would not necessarily protect against mercury poisoning - rather the idea is that it would do something like stimulate the immune system or up-regulate DNA repair enzymes that would in turn do something like decrease one's risk of getting cancer.

if you specifically want to know how much mercury intake is required for a hormetic effect, that information can be found in the following paper (sorry, i don't yet have access to the full text, so i can't give you numbers right now - but it's a fairly low amount, much lower than one would receive from a dental filling, for example):

Critical Reviews in Toxicology 2003;33(3-4):215-304.

Inorganics and hormesis.

Calabrese EJ, Baldwin LA.

Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Morrill Science Center, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.

The article is a comprehensive review of the occurrence of hormetic dose-response relationships induced by inorganic agents, including toxic agents, of significant environmental and public health interest (e.g., arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, selenium, and zinc). Hormetic responses occurred in a wide range of biological models (i.e., plants, invertebrate and vertebrate animals) for a large and diverse array of endpoints. Particular attention was given to providing an assessment of the quantitative features of the dose-response relationships and underlying mechanisms that could account for the biphasic nature of the hormetic response. These findings indicate that hormetic responses commonly occur in appropriately designed experiments and are highly generalizeable with respect to biological model responses. The hormetic dose response should be seen as a reliable feature of the dose response for inorganic agents and will have an important impact on the estimated effects of such agents on environmental and human receptors.

The ABCC data don't support it and that is the "gold standard".

There's little (if any) data that support hormesis effects for either ionizing or nonionizing radiation - the statitistical responses in the low-dose regions of these curves are just plain inconclusive.

http://www.gfstrahlenschutz.de/docs/hormeng2.pdf

That's just my preconceived prejudice.

i.e., a complete dis-regard for any pretense of rational risk analysis.

more specifically, the link you posted cites a few studies that posit deleterious effects of ionizing radiation to cells. these effects no doubt do occur but in no way invalidate the hormesis concept because of the greater number of positive effects that are simultaneously elicited in the cells.

perhaps consideration of non-ionizing radiation will help you understand this point, so let's consider sunlight. according to you, the earth would be better off without sunlight - indeed, one could write a completely scientifically valid paper, with thousands of references, citing the harmful effects of sunlight (i.e., uv radiation) on genes, cells, whole organisms, etc etc. however, life on earth clearly benefits from the existence of the sun and in fact almost completely depends on it - very little life would survive without it. in this case the positive benefits outweigh the risks.

in the case of radiation hormesis, a similar situation exists. people like you pull out risk x, y and z but neglect to mention benefits a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, and k. in sum, the benefits outweigh the risks and presenting only one side of the issue is a tad dishonest (but with the example set by the current occupants of the white house, i suppose it's understandable why one would do so . . .).

anyhow, i'd urge the interested reader to access all the reputable (i.e., peer-reviewed, not google-supplied)scientific information available on this topic at the PUBMED search engine (just type in "hormesis" or similar keyword):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=Pager&DB=pubmed

(and please note that hormesis is NOT the same thing as homeopathy)

Nonsense - don't put make believe words in my mouth to support your argument.

sorry

energy is unsafe when compared with its alternatives.

Let us assume (wildly and inaccurately) that one hundred thousand people have been killed by nuclear operations in the lifetime of nuclear power. How does this compare with the monthly deaths from air pollution?

You cite a claim by a person who "did not give the exact number of cancer cases he has found," and you think you should be taken seriously?

As for HF, I noted that you did not call for the shutdown of either the refrigeration industry or the aluminum industry which use HF on a scale that is 20 times larger than the nuclear industry (which by the way is EQUAL to amount used by the solar industry - which produces less than 1/20 th the amount of the energy that the nuclear industry produces, at over 20X the cost.)

Now, I am going to repeat myself understanding completely the poor ability of members of the anti-nuke religion to think: Nuclear power saves lives.

Nuclear power produces 20% of the world's energy, a fraction that is increasing every day. Watt for Watt it is the safest form of energy currently available at a large and affordable scale. This does not mean that it is harmless and that zero people will have adverse effects from the use of nuclear energy. This means that nuclear energy is the risk minimized solution available to the planet in 2004.

Now I know that people will mindlessly stumble with very little critical thinking finding the cases of 50 guys who got cancer while working at a nuclear plant. Necessarily these claims will be unaccompanied with any analysis of the health history of these individuals (i.e. whether they smoke, drank or had worked as asbestos miners, or lived in Los Angeles smog for a few decades or coal miners) and make a defacto assignment of "radiation induced cancer". Fine. I'll buy it. Let's say that everyone you mentioned was killed or will be killed by the Uranium fuel cycle. How many exajoules of nuclear power generation, how many centuries of operations will it take to equal the deaths attributable to coal operations in the last two months? Any idea? I thought not.

Specious thinking in the time when the earth's atmosphere is quite literally in danger of collapse is completely unjustifiable. Let me put this out for the benefit of fools: One measures expectation values by multiplying a probability times the number of cases that probability will involve. Let us say that there is a 10% chance of a nuclear accident that will kill 100,000 people, in other words 100 times more than the deadliest nuclear accident, Chernobyl. The expectation value is therefore 0.10 X 100,000 = 10,000. Let us compare that with a one tenth of one percent chance that the Greenhouse effect will enter a feedback loop and wipe out everyone on the planet. That would be 6,000,000,000,000 X 0.001 = 6,000,000. Now I realize that appreciating this requires the ability to compare integers, which hardly represents a strength of the faithful in the anti-nuclear power religion, but to help them along I will explain that the expectation values of these two scenarios differ by a factor of 600.

Now, it happens that the experimental values for non-nuclear energy deaths/nuclear energy deaths is much greater than this theoretical value imagined in this "back of the envelope calculation," but I know in some cases, I'm nonetheless pissing into an irrational wind. I know for instance that even such a stark calculation that considers the end of human life itself in no way should be expected to interfere with the mindless unethical arguments that couch themselves as concern for human life at they very same time that they work to perpetuate the loss of human life. I know from bitter experience that we will see here, time after time after time after time, arguments exactly like this.

I am certainly old enough to understand that facts sometimes cannot dissaude the dogmatic from their mantras. Hell, that's the whole point of the Bush administration, isn't it? I am entering the last phases of my life though, and when finally my time comes, I want to look into my spirit and say that at the end, I confronted lies whenever I saw them. Running down specious crap like this will certainly let me die easier.