EnergyPulse - Insight Analysis and Commentary on the Global Power Industry


	Email This Author
	Comment On Article
	About The Author
	More Articles By This Author

Background, Overview and Perspectives

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -- Charles Darwin.

Previous articles by me on this site examined the political baggage that has held the U.S. nuclear program back and effectively caused the Yucca mountain fiasco; showed that uranium and thorium energy resources are assured for millions of years and could meet most, if not all of our existing and projected energy needs with much less environmental effect than almost any other source of energy; and presented comparative data that showed that nuclear power was far cleaner, much safer, and generally was cost competitive with any other reasonable source of energy. This and following articles will attempt to put the issue of nuclear waste and it's assumed effects in a broader social perspective than is usually seen. Marie Curie, one of the early pioneers of radioactive research and the winner of two Nobel prizes, recognized the social value of dispelling ignorance, when she stated: 'Nothing is to be feared. It is to be understood'. Marie Curie herself was so radioactive from her 'bucket chemistry', and inhaling radon and ingesting radium and other nuclides, that when she entered any physics laboratory, it was noted that any charged electroscopes immediately lost their charge. She died, possibly of leukemia, at age 66, having outlived most of her generation. Nuclear wastes must surely be one of the most difficult and thorny topics to address in the complete absence of perspective, which is the way they are usually addressed. The general belief seems to be that only nuclear wastes are dangerous or socially damaging not only now, but also into the far distant future, and that wastes from other sources of energy are not. This general lack of perspective, and inability to compare social risks today and over time, is not only unnerving, but also expensive and hazardous to society's continued health.

The issues of nuclear power, radiation, and nuclear wastes are rife with ignorance, political manipulation, environmental obfuscation, and fear. As a result, they are either a political minefield, or a goldmine of emotions, depending upon which side of these politicized issues you stand.

Rank the Risks
Surprisingly, this perception of unconscionable danger from nuclear power and its wastes (all to do with radiation) survives, even as we are forced to accept - grudgingly - that using fossil fuels is obviously much more dangerous and limiting to both humanity and the environment; as the objective statistics (Paul Scherrer Institute) tell us. However, this is not a diatribe against fossil fuels. We need all the energy we can get from whatever sources, though some are much better than others. However, choices come from having options. It is not an option to be without adequate, reliable and affordable energy. 'No energy is more dangerous than no energy.' Homi Bhabha.

Some of us seem prepared to believe that our continued high dependence upon fossil fuels and the resulting global 'pollution' might be changing our entire environment and climate, and jeopardizing our very existence as a species. No small effect indeed, if true. Despite this, we typically avoid making rational comparison of the merits or difficulties of all of our reasonable energy choices. Even many intelligent and honest people seem prepared to judge the issue upon fearful allegations, hearsay, and junk science, without acquainting themselves of the simple facts, or of seeking a measure of balance and perspective. Such perspective would allow a more intelligent consideration and understanding of nuclear and radioactive wastes, and seeing where they fit in the overall ranking of defined social risks: which is somewhere near the very bottom, as Table 1 below, shows. Perception and fear seem to place them near the top, but obviously without any rational (statistically supported) justification for doing so.

In any society that wishes to progress and achieve the longest average life expectancy (the true measure of societal health), logic dictates that they get their risk assessment right, and that wealth be devoted primarily to addressing the risks towards the top of any valid risk ranking, while spending fewer resources further down the ranking. The most pessimistically calculated risk figures to society or even to individuals, (arrived at rationally by generally professional people, rather than those who just guess), from using nuclear power to produce electricity, and from its radioactive wastes, are shown in Table 1, along with some of the much more significant social risks. The nuclear risk data (exaggerated by calculation, as there are no obviously attributable bodies) appear because hundreds of more socially significant risks have been omitted in order to fit these onto the table. The 'all electricity - nuclear (NRC)' number, was calculated by the Nuclear Regulatory commission, and assuming that ALL electricity in the U.S. was supplied by nuclear power, rather than the almost 20% that it supplies at this time. Even the most pessimistic number, calculated by the Union of Concerned Scientists, at 1.5 days LLE, confirms its overall low effect.

One risk figure which does not appear on Cohen's original table, as it does not yet apply to the U.S. but would, if others had their way with our energy supply, is the risk figure that would exist if our society did not have adequate, assured, or affordable energy. This would plunge society into joblessness, poverty, ill health, violence, stress, etc. An average life expectancy typical of the third world would result in a loss of life expectancy likely to be in excess of maybe 15,000 days, along with the absence of a viable future for our society.

If the EPA is to be believed about radon in our homes, then the effect on the public of radon in their homes is almost 1,000 times more dangerous than nuclear power to produce electricity (NRC) and is about 3.5 million times more dangerous than nuclear waste disposal (derived from the EPA). Please read that sentence again, and think what it means in terms of perspective. Based upon this, and carefully avoiding cost/benefit considerations (they generally do NOT do them), the EPA might thus consider that about $34E12 ($34 trillion of a $10 trillion-a-year economy!) should be directed at radon mitigation, as they are prepared to see $34 billion spent to reduce the 1,000 times less risk from radiation emissions from nuclear power facilities (Table 2). I wonder what they would like to see spent on the social risks that are even mildly serious. In our society we have obviously managed to turn such risk-ranking logic on its ear, and through the crippling actions of political intervention by way of unscientific and mostly unjustified regulations, which avoid cost/benefit comparisons, can actually spend the lion's share of society's resources - its scarce wealth - (about 1 trillion dollars each year of our 10 trillion dollar economy) upon minor risks which harm few, if any individuals, one of which risks, is high level nuclear wastes. Some others are shown in Table 2, below:

On the benefit side of the table, where certain interventions - especially preventive medicine - return immensely more benefit to society than they cost, I would very firmly place EDUCATION. As one cynic noted, if we got rid of the EPA altogether, and some other organizations too, society would be immensely safer and much more prosperous. As a result, the environment would be improved too. Social and Environmental Stupidity 101
The raw examples above should make you wonder how society could possibly survive such an onslaught of bureaucratic ineptitude. But that is not the end of the story. Depending upon how radioactive waste is defined, many commonplace and naturally radioactive things around us could and, in some extreme cases, have become unjustifiably labeled as unsafely radioactive - usually because of political posturing; because of social mischief or willful ignorance; because of an ingrained fear of radiation; or because of the unscientific and socially destructive Precautionary Principle, and its sister insanity of zero tolerance (unless applied to violence). If the definition is too restrictive, radioactive wastes can include discarded food wastes, building materials, concrete, soil, wood, most water supplies, beer, milk, blood, meat, fish, sewage, animal manure and even human beings themselves.

Efforts to legislate an extreme degree of public safety concerning radiation usually have the opposite effect, and make society much poorer and less safe (both tend to go together). Nonetheless, concerned and sincere individuals in some states, various municipalities, and other local governments, at one time or another have decided to attempt to legislate a 'zero tolerance' to anything radioactive. In 1979, Colorado State politicians decided to prohibit all radioactive waste disposal (zero tolerance). Such legislators appear not to have realized that everything is radioactive, or were not aware of the thousands of beneficial uses of radiation throughout society, and the difficulties that might be caused by such legislation. They soon learned, but other states and jurisdictions occasionally are tempted to tread the same path. Among the many 'difficulties' would be those with transporting and disposing of cadavers; cremation; burial; transporting fertilizer; moving meat, eggs or milk from farms or to stores; collecting blood donations; letting some patients out of hospital; disposing of hospital wastes and even of using medical supplies and some drugs; disposing of sewage; disposing of ash from fireplaces as well as from coal-burning power plants; garbage disposal; supplying drinking water from municipal wells; providing medical diagnostic procedures, as well as creating difficulties for most food transportation and use. Clearly, this would not have been the intent of the legislators, though this could have been the outcome. Fortunately, most such proposed legislative changes are caught early enough before they become politically embarrassing. But sometimes they are not.

What are Radioactive Wastes?
Radioactive wastes - simply defined - are any byproduct material which contains radioactivity above that level typically found in naturally occurring materials, and for which no use is presently evident.

Many such wastes are byproducts of processes that have been going on for hundreds of years (e.g., many base-metal mining operations, phosphate mining, gold mining). The wastes are generally ignored, as to address them would be to overload society with needless expense and concern, and too many restrictions on industrial development and many social activities.

Following the EPA radon efforts, such restrictions could have excluded building and development upon certain geological formations; control or extreme remediation of many natural water supplies to millions of households; and even ventilation of buildings. Many of the homes in large swathes of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut (on the Reading Prong formation), as well as other locations across the U.S. and in many other countries are built on geological formations that are notably radioactive and could become candidates for draconian controls if society is not careful to limit the powers of bureaucrats. Most of this came to light in 1984 after one contractor at a nuclear plant tried to enter the facility after being in his house basement before going to work. He tripped the alarms on his way IN (common with discharged medical patients too) and thus began an investigation. The natural radon levels in his home basement were said (by the EPA) to be equivalent to him receiving 80,000 chest X-rays in a year and were said to be about 675 times the maximum levels permitted in a uranium mine. They concurred that he should evacuate his house, and despite most homes in the area exceeding guideline standards, probably did not recommend evacuation of the entire area as it would have involved evacuating thousands of homes from large chunks of at least four states, and the resulting flack would have put them out of business along with their bosses once the epidemiology showed that there were no observed health effects from this, no matter how many thousands of lung cancer deaths the EPA might have been able to calculate.

The EPA's ongoing efforts to spook the public about radon in the U.S. have generally been unsuccessful. It is one example of a poorly-definable radiation risk that the public generally ignores, as it would hit each home-owner very hard in the pocket-book. It already does, if one tries to move real estate in these locations, though the hysteria may be diminishing a little by now after 20 years of a lack of obvious radiation-related deaths - just like the EMF hysteria (another risk that does not appear anywhere on even a much-expanded table of risks) that was in vogue a few years ago and now may also be subsiding, as the body count does not exist. Radioactive Wastes include wastes produced from:

Nuclear fuel cycle operations such as mining, refining, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, power production, and spent fuel reprocessing. Spent fuel is not true 'waste' as it can be recycled (and will be eventually), and is recycled in some countries;
Operational and maintenance activities at nuclear power facilities;
Decontamination and decommissioning activities at nuclear facilities;
Uranium and thorium mining and processing activities and some base-metal mining operations;
Various industrial processes: coal burning solids and fly ash; oil and gas drilling scale, sludges and water; water treatment and filtration solids; geothermal deposits; phosphate fertilizer processing residues, which are also a source of commercial uranium;
Some low grade coals and coal ash with up to 1000 ppm uranium (the Dakotas and Montana in the U.S.) as well as some alum shales (Sweden), some gold mine wastes - all of which were, or still are used as sources of commercial uranium;
Accelerator wastes, following production of medical and research radionuclides;
Spent sealed radiation sources, including medical therapy devices and industrial radiography and irradiation sources;
Institutional uses (industry, hospital, university research) of radioisotopes;
Some hospital medical wastes and other discarded radiological materials;
Some hospital biological wastes, including some hospital sewage;
Military weapons-program wastes;
A few materials that are radioactive wastes but are not regarded as such. These include hardwood ash in the U.S. Northeast, which contains fallout cesium-137 and strontium-90 (the only two significant fairly-long half-life fission nuclides) from atmospheric bomb testing since 1945. As a gentle aside, Marshall Brucer noted that the 'downwind' cows that had been exposed to a high dose of ingested fallout radiation (about 1500 millisieverts) from the 1946 trinity bomb test, and which were presumably kept alive for observation of their likely imminent deaths from cancer, were quietly euthanized in 1964, because of extreme old age.

Classification of Radioactive Wastes
Radioactive Wastes can be subdivided into Low Level Wastes (LLW), Intermediate (ILW) and High Level Wastes (HLW). Some broad definitions, internationally accepted, are shown in Table 3, derived mostly from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but different jurisdictions apply their own interpretations and guidelines, often for political purposes, such as serving as trade barriers (for tobacco, meat, venison and other game meats, agricultural produce, chocolate, nuts, peat moss, etc).

What 'Radioactive Waste' Quantities are produced in Society?
In the U.S., the produced quantities of some radioactive wastes are shown in Table 4, below. 'Technologically Enhanced', means concentrated by some social or industrial process such as water filtration, ventilation filters, and oil drilling or fertilizer production.

Lint traps on clothes dryers in homes in some radon rich locations are notably radioactive for several hours after use, as are the air cleaners on most cars after a moderate drive, and vacuum bags on vacuum cleaners after use, as well as the water softening units of some household water purifiers. The public gets more radiation dose from living close to these items than it might ever get from true nuclear wastes, which they never get near, but no-one would reasonably believe that these radiation sources in the home are a serious problem, as they aren't, even if the public knew about them, which they don't.

Many patients, following certain treatments and discharged from many hundreds of medical facilities each day, are major sources of significant radioactivity around most hospitals. No one cares. Following thyroid diagnosis and treatment, thousands of patients, each year, eliminate iodine-131 into the air, and into the sewage systems, as well as significantly irradiating family members and others close by if they are released from hospital too soon. Iodine-131, originating in Montreal, Canada, is readily detectable in the St Lawrence River at Quebec City, about 140 miles downstream. Similar situations apply at all major hospitals across the continent and throughout advanced societies.

An individual patient who has received iodine-131 treatment to ablate (destroy) the thyroid emits more iodine-131 into the environment in the first few hours following treatment (breathing and waste elimination), than an operating nuclear power facility typically emits to the environment in a full year of continuous operation. Public toilets in malls near major hospitals are interesting repositories of dribbled wastes, which people scuff around on their feet, to shops and back to their homes and laundry hampers. It's generally more comforting to them, that they are NOT aware of this. The nuclear waste of most public, media or political importance, and which generates a degree of political passion and misplaced fear in inverse proportion to its actual risk, is spent fuel and related radioactive wastes. Anyone who is following the YUCCA farce must recognize the hysteria value of this issue to opposing politicians and various environmental groups. It is not just an expensive hole in the ground (albeit a small one), almost like any other mine with similar concerns and safeguards - and then some - but it is a gold plated hole in the ground that will be milked for every last drop of emotion, bad science, and political 'pork' that can be wrung from it before any waste is brought near it. The 70,000 tonnes of wastes designated to be PUT INTO it over the decades of its lifetime, is actually close to the DAILY tonnage production of ore FROM many large base metal mines. One consideration that is rarely addressed, is that in creating this mine, more radioactivity (natural uranium and thorium) is likely to be brought to the surface and released into the air space from the volcanic tuffs removed, than is likely ever to escape from the completed facility.

Underground disposal is essentially a knee jerk reaction to the fear that if civilized society were to collapse totally in the future, at least our present day nuclear wastes would be out of their way. By the time that might happen, if ever, not only will such wastes be essentially innocuous, but the new risks in that collapsed society would make even the supposed chronic risks from nuclear materials at the surface seem like a belch in a hurricane. So much for perspective, or protecting future society.

What Radioactivity Is Typically Found In Society?
Everything is naturally radioactive and is impacted by radiation as shown below. You should perhaps not read this list, as it might provide too much disturbing perspective.

From the sky there are about 100,000 cosmic ray protons and neutrons, and about 400,000 secondary cosmic rays, which pass into and sometimes through us each hour, as well as billions of neutrinos which pass through us each hour without being slowed or stopped.
From the air we breathe there are about 30,000 atoms of radon and radon progeny, which disintegrate (decay) in our lungs every hour (about 8 Bq each and every second) and deposit their energy in lung tissue. In some regions this number of radon atoms continuously decaying in the lungs may reach millions each hour.
From our diets there are about 15,000,000 potassium-40 atoms, and about 7,000 uranium atoms, which decay in each of our bodies every hour, and emit alpha and beta particles (stopped in the body) and gamma energies (which mostly escape to irradiate everything around us). Bananas are an excellent source of potassium in our diets, and therefore of radiation. Brazil nuts (as well as Brazilian beaches) are a well-known source of natural radiation. Tobacco use is a major source of radiation dose to smokers (up to about 80 mSv of chronic dose in a year to the mouth and trachea of a pack-a-day smoker) from polonium-210 (a daughter of radium-226) in the tobacco leaf. It's the other carcinogens that kill smokers.
From soil and building materials, there are over 200,000,000 gamma rays which pass through each of us every hour. In locations with much higher natural radiation backgrounds, this figure may be in the billions.

Although we cannot see or sense any of these events, it is intriguing to consider that in light of the numbers of interactions happening inside us and around us all of the time, all of humanity lives immersed in a soup of natural radiation energies.

Some of the major sources of radioactive materials and wastes throughout society are shown in Table 5. A becquerel (Bq) is one radioactive disintegration each second. A liter of cow's milk (and blood and urine), with its natural potassium-40 (half-life of 12.7 billion years), is radioactive at the level of about 50 Bq each and every second. Cheers! Human milk, blood and urine are similar. One institute estimate points out (accurately, although exaggerating a little) that any individual in North American society gets more of a radiation dose from eating one banana, than they would ever be likely to get from Yucca in a year, when completed. The comparison indicates either, how socially safe Yucca will be (true), and how fatuously expensive it is considering the risks incurred or avoided (true), or how dangerous bananas are (false).

Perspective on Radiation Dose from Radiation Uses in Society
The last century of increasing uses of radiation in society (since 1896), has shown that though radioactive materials and wastes in modern hospitals constitute only about 1% of the radioactive materials in society, they contribute about 99% of all non-natural radiation doses to the public while generally saving tens of thousands of lives each year and improving the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of patients.

In contrast, less than 1% of public doses from non-natural sources of radiation come from all industry and the entire commercial nuclear power industry wastes (95%), with an even smaller fraction of this coming from commercial power nuclear wastes, no matter how radioactive they may be. However, none of these nuclear wastes are associated with significant doses to anyone, not even to the workers who manage them, as they are strongly governed by an internationally accepted radiation dose limit (100 millisieverts in 5 years), which is very rarely approached by any worker, and is most unlikely ever to be exceeded. Most workers actually receive, on average, about the same radiation dose in a year of work (about 2 millisieverts), that they and their families get - on average - from natural radiation exposures (about 3 millisieverts, or more per year). The 'or more' can extend up to a few hundred millisieverts per year (or more) from natural radiation in many parts of the world, especially if you visit a spa or lounge on the beaches of Brazil. If you are an astronaut - forget it, even if you do manage to avoid the Van Allen Belts, where the radiation dose gets up to about 15 millisieverts per hour. You are far off the top of the picture.

What is perhaps of most interest - at least to me - is that medical patients - millions of them - are not governed by any radiation dose limits under treatment, and often are exposed to radiation doses that are tens to hundreds (sometimes thousands) of times larger than even industrial dose limits. No one gets even slightly excited or concerned over this.

The general public needs to recognize these facts, but those who tweak their perceptions and stir up their emotions about extremely low radiation doses, such as those from nuclear wastes, are unlikely to be happy that these realities are being pointed out. Some really interesting perspective (that word again) on radiation and radiation doses throughout society is shown in Table 6, below. It is a logarithmic scale of just a few doses (to materials or people) in various processes, and medical procedures; in nature; in industry; in the home; and from nuclear facility operations and nuclear waste disposal future estimates. If the plot were linear, it would need a sheet of paper many miles long to cover the same scale range. The only item on the table that is of widely publicized concern is the single item at the very bottom - the potential impact in the long-term from nuclear waste disposal. As far as most of the public, special interest factions and politicians are concerned, the other figures on the table don't even exist, and many of these groups would rather that the public did not know anything about them.

Ten sieverts (grays) of acute whole-body dose would be fatal for most humans, but this is one of the very successful (85% recovery) treatment options for leukemia. Most localized cancers are targeted with much higher doses to destroy them.

A targeted dose of about 100 sieverts is used to destroy the thyroid, without the patient feeling a thing. The process is a lot less traumatic and much safer than surgery even if the patient gets a whole body radiation dose of about 3,000 millisieverts or more over the next few hours from the procedure. If a radiation worker got this dose at work (rather than in the hospital), the entire management of the facility would be heavily fined, would probably be in jail, and the facility would likely be closed by the NRC. And then, of course, watch for the legal carrion feeders to swoop in.

Using radiation to sterilize hospital supplies ensures that surgery; receiving injections; and many other medical procedures are not the life-threatening ordeal that they used to be. When society is able to sweep aside the remaining manipulated mythology of food irradiation, then it is likely that we can notably reduce the 5,000 to 9,000 deaths from food-borne illness that the CDC estimates for the U.S. each year. Unfortunately, it takes an outbreak of hundreds of food poisoning deaths and injuries associated with undercooked and improperly prepared and stored meats, fish and poultry, at one time, to capture anyone's attention. Comparison of risk/benefits anyone?

In comparison with the use of any other source of energy, one should be impressed by the lack of bodies from any aspect of using nuclear power including management and disposal of its radioactive wastes, but the acknowledgement of that simple fact, is deafening by its silence.

Communicating Smart Meter Value

Social Media: The new frontier in recruiting, communications and marketing

Eliminating Obstacles and Delivering the Benefits of the Smart Grid - IBM's Optimized Energy Value Chain (OEVC)

Achieving Operational Excellence - What to Consider Before Implementing or Upgrading Your Distribution Management Solutions

Outsmarting the Smart Grid: IT, Security and Communication Infrastructure Challenges & Opportunities for Utilities

1st CSP Today Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Summit India

Offshore Wind Energy in North America's Great Lakes Conference

Autovation 2010

Global Sustainable Bioenergy North American Convention

GridWise Global Forum

1. Intro to Nat Gas Trading & Hedging 2. Option Applications in Energy

Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Electric Market Dynamics Seminar

Gas and Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Environmental, Emissions & Carbon Management

Do you agree or disagree with this article? Send in your own article.

Readers Comments