Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Radio Show & Podcast Feedback => Topic started by: Stevie Bain on 10/08/2017 14:35:31
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Feedback on "Are we ready for the next Chernobyl?"
Link to the published programme: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-scientists-podcast/can-nature-clean-nuclear-contamination
Geoff says:
This segment started with a bunch of assumptions, made no effort to explore the decades of good science on Chernobyl, and on the causes of cancer and the relative potency of radiation as a carcinogen. I suggest the Graihagh read "Nuclear for Life" by Wade Allison.
But briefly ... 41,000 cancers by 2065? Please think about this number. The 3 countries affected by Chernobyl get around 600,000 cancers each year (easily checked). So between 1986 and 2065 there'll be very roughly 54 million cancers. 41,000/54 million is a very small number. Is epidemiology good enough to detect such small impacts? No. And they didn't. The number is a theoretical estimate based on a theory of radiation and cancer that's not approved of by any major body ... it uses an LNT (linear no threshhold) estimate. This is a concept used for radiation safety decisions (where it is reasonable) but has epidemiological value at all.
Why spend so long interviewing a person obviously, like many, psychologically scarred by the experience, but not interview experts who study the fear surrounding this event. The major investigations into Chernobyl show that the fear of radiation has done far more damage than radiation and now Naked Scientists are just spreading that fear instead of spreading the science that could dispel it.
The cancer rate in Ukraine is just under 200 per 100,000 per annum ... and in the UK? About 272/100,000 per annum. How many extra cancers would Ukraine/Russia/Belarus have by 2065 if they had UK cancer rates instead of their own? Work it out. Back when radiophobia got started, people didn't know anything that could cause cancer EXCEPT radiation. We now know that radiation is relatively innocuous compared to something really carcinogenic ... like being fat ... or eating plenty of red meat ... or smoking.
Lastly. People in Kerala in Southern India live with background radiation that is higher than almost anywhere around Fukushima and even Chernobyl ... why don't your remediation people offer to help out? What's the rate of cancer in Kerala? About 100/100,000 per year (age standardised of course). This is a solution desperately seeking a problem.
It's estimated that over a thousand people died as a result of the ill-advised evacuation of Fukushima. It wasn't indicated by IAEA guidelines and people could have stayed put and got on with their lives. Instead the sick and elderly were herded onto buses in the middle of the night in a devastating testimony to the power of ignorance and panic to turn an expensive, but relatively innocuous accident (death toll zero) into a disaster.
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Full marks.
Kerala is interesting in having a very high incidence of birth defects and malformations. My hypothesis is that, as the background radiation there is mostly alpha, it may be comparable with the UK childhood leukemia clusters reported in the 1980s which were uniquely associated with those sites handling bare plutonium (Sellafield, Dounreay, Burghfield) or emitting polonium (Capper Pass). Chemically active alpha emitters are associated with all sorts of birth defects in mice but there may be some hormesis going on, such that the survivors of in utero exposure are less prone to developing later-in-life tumors. Turns out that Kerala has the highest life expectancy of any Indian province, even though cleft palates and club feet are unusually common.
Fact remains that radiophobia at Fukushima was the second greatest problem after the tsunami itself (18,000 dead or missing, 200,000 homeless, but not newsworthy because it is a natural event). The response at Chernobyl, on the other hand, was far more measured and effective, with a cautious, planned evacuation over several days and casualties restricted to the frontline firefighters in what was a genuinely serious incident .
Sorry I missed the program, but the answer to the question is "yes and no". AFAIK no more RBMK reactors are being built, and operators of those still working are under pain of severe discipline to read the bloody handbook instead of carrying out ad hoc shutdown experiments without considering the physics. No similar problems that I know of elsewhere. So yes, the RBMK operators are now on the ball and the local response was correct, and no, it's unlikely to happen again because the lessons for design and operation really have been learned.
Fortunately the first railway fatality was a politician (William Huskisson), in a more robust age. Had it been a useful civilian, or happened on a slow news day in this century, I doubt that modern transport would have evolved beyond the horse and cart (which killed Pierre Curie, but horses are furry, Green, Organic and Natural, so it doesn't count).
One heap of coalmine residue at Aberfan killed more people, in the production of less energy, that the entire UK nuclear power industry to date. Coal mining worldwide kills about 12,000 people a year.
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How many people have been killed or made seriously ill in the uranium/pitchblende mining industries around the world?
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I heard a guesstimate that the death toll from radiation at Fukishima would be about 6 people.
It would only take a slip with a weak girder during the reactor deconstruction to double that number.
Japan (unfortunately) has the most first-hand experience in dealing with radiation exposure, since the second world war.
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How many people have been killed or made seriously ill in the uranium/pitchblende mining industries around the world?
The mechanical and explosion hazards of uranium mining seem to be negligible in comparison with coal, so very few "immediate" death rates per unit energy extracted, but there is an enhanced risk from inhalation of radon, which may account for 100 - 200 "early" deaths per annum.
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Fortunately the first railway fatality was a politician (William Huskisson),
I bet he was chuffed to bits...
"Radon may account for deaths...", so there is a distinct risk from radiation?
The unitiated (ie. Me) reading this thread could be forgiven for believing that radiation is such a small risk that it is not worth worrying about.
I understand that the thorium cycle is much better than the uranium cycle from the points of view of safety, efficiency, availability of fuel, amount and toxicity of waste produced. I wonder then why the nuclear industry has largely continued on the uranium cycle, even after Windscale, Chernobyl and Fukushima? Not to mention the ongoing problem of disposal of waste.
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Radiation is always a hazard but we have evolved on a radioactive planet so at low doserates it does negligible harm and may even do some good. The problem is that we can concentrate natural (such as radon) sources and generate new ones to produce very high dose rates. I carry around a very simple instrument with a measuring range of 1011, from background to radiotherapy and radiosterilisation levels, all in a day's work.
Fortunately as it is quite easy to detect most ionising radiations and to control all man-made sources, the risk in practice is negligible and all professionals are nowadays considered to be employed in a "safe industry", with occupational risks about half those of staying at home.
Windscale was a result of an then-unknown problem (Wigner release) that is accounted for in the operating manuals of all subsequent reactors. Chernobyl was as close to deliberate sabotage as you could wish for: the problem was in the handbook and the operators deliberately ignored it, with exactly the result predicted in the manual. Fukushima produced a detectable but negligible offsite hazard compared with the damage done by the initiating event.
Problem with thorium is that nobody has produced a commercially viable reactor. It's much more complicated than uranium, but will probably happen when we finally abandon fusion and put public money into something with a foreseeable future.
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The unitiated (ie. Me) reading this thread could be forgiven for believing that radiation is such a small risk that it is not worth worrying about.
Not exactly.
It's a major hazard, but usually very carefully controlled.
Some would say it's over-controlled.
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Flying in a commercial jet at 40,000 feet will give you about 50 times the cosmic ray radiation dose than you get at ground level.
And the cosmic ray intensity has increased 13% in the past 2 years, due to the declining number of sunspots (intense solar wind protects Earth from cosmic rays).
See: http://spaceweather.com/
This is not a problem for the occasional flyer, but could build up a slight risk for airline pilots, over a lifetime.
NASA monitors the effects of radiation on astronauts, and is reportedly limiting exposure for some astronauts who seem to be more severely affected by the radiation environment of the ISS.
See: https://three.jsc.nasa.gov/cellDamage/BrooksBiomarkers062812.pdf
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The excess cosmic radiation exposure of airline crews is about 4 millisievert per year.
This poses an interesting legal question: it is clearly an occupational hazard, and can exceed 3/10 of an occupational exposure limit (i.e. 6 mSv/yr) for frequent polar routes, so it could be argued that aircrew should be personally monitored and subject to health checks and recordkeeping as classified radiation workers.
But exposure to naturally occuring radiation sources, unless such exposure is part of the job (e.g. mining and processing radioactive rocks) is not classed as "occupational", since if, say, a civil servant was posted from London UK to Boulder, Co (it happens - especially if you are working on time standards) he would exceed the 3/10 criterion.
The Brooks paper is interesting in contaiing no numbers, but NASA https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1043.html suggests that around 100 mGy/yr is experienced in the ISS. This theoretically puts astronauts in the category of an inherently hazardous profession but is pretty well negligble compared with the rest of the job.
I disagree with BC's suggestion that radiation is overcontrolled. The problem is that the entirely reasonable and sensible Regulations are interpreted by "consultants" who seem not to have read the Regs, and enforced by people who are institutionally infected with Dunning-Kruger syndrome, regard simple arithmetic with suspicion, and are apparently paid to mislead the Courts.
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Problem with thorium is that nobody has produced a commercially viable reactor
Should the words "commercialy viable" and "nuclear reactor" (of any type) appear in the same sentence?
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Obviously. Around 50% of French electricity is nuclear-generated and has been for ages. It is profitable.
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Just a quick thing on Radon is that it is present in all underground mines, as it is a naturally occurring gas that permeates up from the inside of the planet, and is present in all mining operations, and is also present in natural gas that you pipe into your house, along with being present in almost all rock like granites.
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Obviously. Around 50% of French electricity is nuclear-generated and has been for ages. It is profitable.
Quote from Wiki:-
The French nuclear power is almost entirely owned by the French government and its electricity is sold to the government. According to Al Gore the degree of the government subsidy is difficult to ascertain because of a lack of transparencies in the finances of the operation.[2]
The European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) at Flamanville, the first new nuclear reactor to be built in France in 15 years, is now expected to open in 2016 instead of the original starting date of 2012, and will cost €8.5bn instead of the original estimate of €3.3bn.[11]
Wiki again:-
The EPR (Flamanville 3) aimed to be safer than any previous reactor, but as of 2016 the project is three times over budget and years behind schedule. In September 2015 EDF announced that the estimated costs had escalated to €10.5 billion, (from 3.3billion) and the start-up of the reactor was delayed to the fourth quarter of 2018.[17]
Who knows when the cost of Hinkley Point C will stop escalating?
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I think that we are not ready for this. And anyway, we can not be ready for this anyway. It should be prevented that this would never happen in the future and will do everything possible to protect our future generation from the tragedy.
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I think that we are not ready for this. And anyway, we can not be ready for this anyway. It should be prevented that this would never happen in the future and will do everything possible to protect our future generation from the tragedy.
You appear to be using your posts to advertise your homework/essay writing business.
We’ve replaced your commercial link with our own so you won’t show on search engines.
Oh, and by the way, you are banned.
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I think that the power station mishap that caused the most casualties was the three mile island reactor meltdown, no immediate casualties resulted but the panic that resulted stopped the development of clean nuclear power in the USA for 30 years with the continuation of polluting coal powered generation
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My hypothesis is that, as the background radiation there is mostly alpha, it may be comparable with the UK childhood leukemia clusters reported in the 1980s which were uniquely associated with those sites handling bare plutonium
Spoiler alert; they weren't.
How many people have been killed or made seriously ill in the uranium/pitchblende mining industries around the world?
Good question.
This report suggests that the excess risk from being a uranium miner (compared to a miner of a different mineral like coal) is about a factor of two.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pgms/worknotify/uranium.html
However, because uranium carries a lot more energy than coal you don't need anything like as many miners for the same energy .
So the same amount of energy mined as coal would kill more people.
In short, using uranium saves miners' lives.
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My hypothesis is that, as the background radiation there is mostly alpha, it may be comparable with the UK childhood leukemia clusters reported in the 1980s which were uniquely associated with those sites handling bare plutonium
Spoiler alert; they weren't.
Sellafield, Dounreay and Burghfield were the prime "nuclear" hotspots, with another at Capper Pass (polonium emissions from lead smelting). If you can identify others, I'd be very interested.
There was some misleading fog at Sellafield due to an apparent correlation between paternal gamma dose and childhood leukemia, which led to an indecently quick cash settlement between management and unions, but private chats with a union officer revealed that a more probable factor was "dirty workers" - the guys in any organisation who always have accidents and ignore safety procedures - taking home hot particles. Metallic Pu is a reactive bone-seeker in biological systems but very difficult to detect against natural (unreactive) radon.
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https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/8/e008432
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3rd the congrats although with this honor I fear the RPPR crew will become too big for all of us forum folk.