1) The story of radioactive steel from a junkyard where cobalt-60 pellets were scrapped continues to be played up as a radioactivity scare. Note: 1) such steel can immediately be identified by a cheap Geiger counter (try and identify which Tylenol packages were poisoned);
2) to get the desired effect, the articles usually omit, or only just slip in, that the waste came from a hospital, for hospitals are benign and nuclear plants are fiendish; 3) the junk hauler involved was exposed to 420 rems, which is 4,000 times more than the antinukes try to frighten us with, and 20 rems (not millirems!) more than the median lethal dose (at which half the exposed victims die), but the man is alive and did not even have radiation sickness
¾why? Because he did not get the dose all at once. Tissue damaged by radiation heals comparatively quickly, and this is part of the reason why radiation is used to cure cancer. (See The Radiation Bogey, $2 from Golem Press, Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306.)2) Discover brings a laughable article on how to store nuclear wastes for several millenia. It gives the answers to all the wrong questions -- posed by an archaeologists. I trust when Discover plans a piece on the pharaonic dynasties, they will ask the American Nuclear Society to write it.
3) Plutonium is an alpha emitter, as are the radon daughters. Alpha radiation is absorbed within an inch of air, which is why it is not dangerous unless it gets into the body (whereas gamma radiation acts at a distance), and also why it is not as easy to detect and measure. Places like Rocky Flats or Los Alamos, however, watch very carefully for it, and it was a puzzle when alpha activity was discovered on the palm of a Los Alamos employee who had been only in uncontaminated areas. An investigation revealed the culprit: the local YMCA's racquetball court. As the balls flew through the air, they collected the alpha-active daughters of natural radon, which is always present in enclosed concrete walled spaces, and transferred them to hands and equipment.(1)
4) A very similar, and more dangerous process, often described in these pages, takes place in heat-insulated, energy-efficient homes through lack of ventilation, but the great cover-up of the Unmentionable Gas is beginning to leak. The New England Journal of Medicine of June 7 brought two articles(2) revealing that one-fifth of the lung cancers in the non-smoking population or 10,000 annual deaths in the US, are probably due to exposure to radon daughters. That even made it into a CBS newscast
¾only one, but that is one more than usual. Meanwhile a further 204-page NCRP report, including risk estimates to the general public, has been published;(3) together with no. 77 [AtE Jun 84] it is probably the fullest and most reliable source on the subject.[1] Natural Radioactivity Collection by Racquetballs, Investigation Report HSE-84-4, May 1984, LANL, Los Alamos, NM 87545.
[2] N.H. Harley, "Radon and lung cancer in mines and homes," pp. 1525-26, E.P. Radford et al., "Lung cancer in Swedish iron miners...," pp. 1485-94, both in NEJM, vol. 310, 7 June 1984.
[3] Evaluation of occupational and environmental exposures to radon and radon daughters in the US, NCRP Report 78, $15 from Natl. Council on Radiation Protection, 7910 Woodmont Ave/#1016, Bethesda, MD 20814.
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Vol. 12, No. 1
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 12, No. 1 Date: November 29, 2004 12:25 PM Title: We have been here before
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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