HEALTH HAZARDS

2) Natural deposits of radioactive ores can be a health hazard if radionuclides get into the drinking water. The radiological hazard is comparable to (and in some cases less than) that presented by repositories of spent nuclear fuel, report Battelle Pacific NW Labs researchers O.J. Wick and M.O. Cloninger in Report PNL-3540, Comparison of potential radiological consequences from a spent-fuel repository and natural uranium deposits, $4 from NTIS, 5285 Port Royal Rd., Springfield, VA 22151.

3) Investigation of the radiological safety concerns and medical history of the late Joseph T. Harding, former employee of the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant, is a report to the Secretary of Energy following a complaint charging radiation-induced illness and death. There must be a large amount of such reports, and all presumably show how thoroughly such complaints are handled (also how easy it is to lift single statements from the context). What makes this report particularly interesting is the testimony of Karl Z. Morgan, and the rebuttal of his testimony by health physicist Vallario and H.R. Wolfe, M.D. Anyone who thought Morgan, a widely quoted and vehemently antinuclear professor at Georgia Tech, to be a competent and unbiased scientist should look up this report (DOE/EP-0001, March 1981). $10 from NTIS, address above.

4) The evacuation plans called for in a radioactive release after a nuclear accident "seem an example of regulatory caution that do not necessarily constitute wisdom and that could be counterproductive to the optimum protection of the public," says Dr Andrew P. Hull and suggests preparing for the more probable rather than for the most extreme. See "Emergency preparedness for what?" Nuclear News, April 1981. (Preprint from AIF, 7101 Wisconsin Ave., Washington, DC 20014.)

(5) So stringent were the standards imposed on coal-fired plants in the Australian state of Victoria, we read in the Melbourne Standard of 3/25/81, that the State Electricity Commission "threatened" to build nuclear plants. "It took exactly 24 hours for the [state] government to capitulate," said MP Lewis Kent in the Australian Federal Parliament. "It announced next day that the EPA standards would be relaxed." The imminent disaster of cleaner air and reduced health hazards, glory be, had been averted. Alas, it is feared the relief might only be temporary. "The immediate nuclear threat has been removed," Mr Kent lamented, "but it will only be a matter of time before the SEC proposes to introduce nuclear reactors again."

6) There is little scientific evidence for the "linear" hypothesis, which assumes that there is no threshold below which the health effects of radiation are totally absent rather than merely very small. The linear hypothesis is not recommended by the National Academy of Sciences radiation protection committee or by any other radiological body. But it is often used both by serious risk assessors who would rather err on the safe side, and by scaremongers like Gofman who conjure up tens of cancers by "Pro-rating." In an as yet unpublished paper, Prof. Bernard Cohen uses the linear hypothesis on the cancers due to cadmium; if the hypothesis is correct, then the cadmium released in coal burning would cause no less than 200 fatal cancers per gigawatt-year, and the cadmium used in solar cells twice as much.