SUBMISSION TO:
Parliamentary Inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia
Terms of Reference Addressed in this Submission:
a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, and j. any other relevant matter.
Name of Submission author Paul Langley
Dated 15 September 2019
1 Introductory Summary
Medical controversy surrounds the nuclear power industry. In this submission I point out that the unit of risk used by nuclear authorities, the Sievert, predates the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003. The completion of this Project ushered in the age of Personalized Medicine.
The ICRP is at the present time accepting public submissions on its “new” draft document, “Radiological Protection of People and the Environment in the Event of a large Nuclear Accident.” This has drawn some scathing observations from people who have made public submissions to the ICRP in this matter. The arbitrary nature of what is deemed to be “acceptable risk” by nuclear authorities provokes conflict and anger from affected people and observers all over the world. Public submissions to the ICRP can be read here: http://www.icrp.org/consultation.asp?id=D57C344D-A250-49AE-957A- AA7EFB6BA164#comments . Australia follows ICRP policies and instructions. Rarely does the Australian people have the opportunity to lobby the ICRP prior to it telling Australian authorities what to do and how to treat us.
Late in August 2019 a small Russian nuclear reactor exploded, killing a number of people. For the people involved in Russia, this was a large incident in their lives.
The perceptions of nuclear power depend upon where one stands on certain vital topics, what one knows and what one has experienced. Perceptions in the popular culture have been formed over many years by nuclear industry public relations and the public’s perceptions of the nuclear regulatory culture. I examine the culture of nuclear regulation and compare it to other large industry cultures. Futurism has long been a prominent feature of nuclear industry public relations. Today the industry in Australia promotes itself as being able to render commercially viable reactor types proven dirty and unviable many years ago.
My work record includes that of a radiation worker with appropriate technical and on the job training.
Nuclear reactors depend upon the grid for safety and in order to sell and distribute electrical power. The electrical grid in the modern is undergoing rapid transformation. If nuclear power comes to Australia how will this impact the cost of the grid? Will nuclear power limit the choices for alternative power supply and storage which are available right now and which are becoming ever cheaper?
The environmental costs of nuclear power in England are looked at in this submission. The costs of cleanup in the UK are enormous and will not be finished for about 70 years. Reactor emissions are looked in detail, and power reactor emissions are compared to our small research reactor. A power
2 reactor has over 200 fuel rods in its core, our research reactor has only 3. The “small” routine emissions of a nuclear power reactor are many times more than that of our research reactor. Despite this, research links reactor emissions to at least one cancer cluster (Germany).
I look at gaseous emissions and liquid emissions in particular from nuclear fuel reprocessing. I show that since the 1970s US authorities and other authorities have been concerned about the rapidly accumulating amounts of gaseous radionuclides, which are building up in the Northern Hemisphere.
In the wake of nuclear accidents PR takes precedence over reality in discussing the effects. And this amplifies argument about medical effects and risks. I use two examples to examine this. Prior to the events in Japan in 2011, world medical authorities gave latent periods for certain childhood illnesses with a degree of uniformity. This changed post 3/11. I give sources and discuss a spike in childhood disease in Japan that predates 3/11 as an example of medical uncertainties.
Climate change due to CO2 build up in the atmosphere is a reality. The consequences of this reality will be added by the continued accretion of fission and fuel products as they continue to be released into land, sea and air, mainly via spent fuel reprocessing. I cite expert papers which show that in areas of the world local sinks, such the Irish Sea, may be approaching the limits. The industry standard procedure of “dilution”, used around the world for liquid nuclear waste, is actually already resulting in re-concentration of fission products in some environments, including British marshlands. While the nuclear industry and its advocates scoff at this today, I remind the committee that in the 1800s, which CO2 led climate change was first put forward as a risk, industry and the ignorant scoffed. A world burdened by climate change will also be burdened by the emissions of all other industries, including nuclear industry, especially spent fuel reprocessing.
I lament what the IAEA calls the “rudimentary” level of today’s medical understanding about the synergistic interaction between ionizing radiation doses and toxic chemicals, using the example off benzene. The matter remains unresolved. Diesel and petrol engines will continue to be used for many years to come. Even if Australia becomes nuclear powered.
Around the world many nuclear power plants were never designed to withstand the consequences of sudden climate change. The risks of this are looked at.
China is investing heavily in small thorium reactors with a view to producing a nuclear powered navy. This heavy investment is taking place in the Gobi Desert. Jiang Mianheng is heading the research effort. Thorium reactors of this type were proven in the USA to be commercially unviable. The security implications of any Australia purchase of Chinese thorium reactors needs study. A thorium reactor may suite the needs of China’s navy - however there
3 is no free market provenance for these reactors and in fact the history shows them to be unviable. The waste from the US 60s thorium reactor experiment still costs the American taxpayer money today.
Australia has access to abundant wind and solar power. Australia’s Chief Scientist favors a hydrogen future. The are many ways by which hydrogen can be produced and safely handled. CSIRO has developed technology for this. Minister Birmingham has highlighted Australia’s abundant high grade Lithium ore reserves. The way is clear for Australia to economically store abundant renewable energy and use to use it in the context of a highly modified grid which can cater for industry needs, the needs of grid connected consumers and for consumers who are independent of the grid.
That nuclear controversy continues to exist across many fields is shown by email exchanges between myself and Dr. David Chanin. Dr. Chanin is a US decontamination expert. He has authored important texts which enable the calculation and prediction of the effects of nuclear accidents. Dr. Chanin authored, for example US NUREG/CR—4691- Vol.3, “MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System (MACCS)” Manuscript Completed: December 1989 Date Published: February 1990 Prepared by J. A. Rollstin, D. I. Chanin, H-N Jow Sandia National Laboratories Albuquerque, NM 87185 available for Barnaby Joyce and Tania Constable to scoff at https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/21/094/21094910.p df
Dr. Aaron Datesman has reviewed my work contained in this submission and has provided his views of my work for your consideration. Dr. Datesman has worked for Bechtel Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, the US Department of Energy, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
I trust you find this submission interesting.
Paul Langley
4 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page Section Heading 8 REVIEW OF THE SUBMISSION TO THE PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO THE PREREQUISITES FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY IN AUSTRALIA. Dr. Aaron Datesman PhD. 11 1. The Sievert vs Personalised Medicine. Terms of Reference: b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. 13 2 Industry and Organisational Cultures Block Internal Awareness Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage,b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, and j. any other relevant matter. 15 3 Nuclear Futurism – Science perverted into mere PR. Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, and j. any other relevant matter. 17 4 My Training as a Radiation Worker. Terms of Reference: b. health and safety, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability. 18 5 The Planet’s Ability to Absorb Human Waste Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety c. environmental impacts. e. economic feasibility, h. security implications.
22 6 Nuclear Power Plants Depend Upon the Power Grid for Safe Operation and Shut Down. Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, and j. any other relevant matter. 29 7 The Economic Future of a Nuclear Powered Australian Power Grid Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications.
5
Page Section Heading 33 8 Reactor Emissions Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. 50 9 Emissions from Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
61 10 High Level Nuclear Waste Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. 68 11 Findings on Variations in the Latency period for radiation induced thyroid cancer in Children. Terms of Reference b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. 72 12 A Mysterious Spike in Childhood in Japan which extended from the late 1980s to the 1990s Terms of Reference: b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. 80 13 Synergistic Radiological and Chemical Effects. Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. 85 14 The Vulnerability of Nuclear Power Plants to the Effects of Sudden Climate Change Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security
6 implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
Page Section Heading 90 15 Nuclear Futurism Writ Large Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. 91 16 The Chinese Naval Thorium Reactor Program Terms of Reference a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter 93 17 Alternatives to Nuclear Power Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. 96 18 Dr. David Chanin’s Written Correspondence to me Regarding Reactor Emissions Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. 100 19 Recommendations 101 Appendix 1
7 REVIEW OF THE SUBMISSION TO THE PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO THE PREREQUISITES FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY IN AUSTRALIA BY MR. PAUL LANGLEY
September 11, 2019
Dear Sir or Madam,
It is my pleasure to offer a brief review of the Submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry offered by Mr. Paul Langley. I am writing from Washington, DC, in the United States, where my professional scientific career has encompassed roles at the Bechtel Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, the US Department of Energy, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). My curriculum vitae is included as an attachment.
I have been acquainted with Mr. Langley through his writings and through correspondence for more than five years. Because of my familiarity with his work and his style of communication, I am of the opinion that your Inquiry should seriously consider the information offered. While the document contains significant technical content – primarily from the open, mainstream, peer- reviewed scientific literature – I believe the submission is best understood as a sociological document with three major themes. The thematic areas are Arrogance, Ignorance, and Privilege.
Mr. Langley is correct, for instance, when he writes in Section 2 (“Industry and Organizational Cultures Block Internal Awareness”) that organizations belonging to the nuclear industry “use the knowledge they hold as a basis for an arrogant self-image which is antagonist to outside expertise held in other fields.” I experienced the reality of this view at first hand when I was employed as a materials scientist at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in Pennsylvania. Because virtually no imaginable event would prompt the United States government to withdraw support for the Naval Reactors program, the culture within its laboratories was insular, not dynamic, and simultaneously unaccountable and untrustworthy.
In other areas, the nuclear industry asserts its privilege to demand the world be shaped to its needs. Drawing on guidance from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Section 6 (“Nuclear Power Plants Depend Upon the Power Grid for Safe Operation and Shutdown”) the author notes that
For a Member State that does not yet use nuclear power, the introduction and development of nuclear power is a major undertaking. It requires the country to build physical infrastructure and develop human resources so it can construct and operate a nuclear power plant (NPP) in a safe, secure, and technically sound manner.
It is therefore at least very likely, as Mr. Langley states in Section 7 (“The Economic Future of a Nuclear Powered Australian Power Grid”), that “it is clear
8 that for nuclear power to proceed people will need to pay more, not less, money for our electrical infrastructure and delivery.” Certainly it has been the case in the United States in recent years that electricity ratepayers have borne the cost of enormous subsidies to the nuclear industry – and this at a time when the price of energy from renewable sources (solar and wind) has been falling precipitously.
Ignorance is the third thematic area. As an example, I find the case Mr. Langley makes for the existence of synergistic effects in Section 13 (“Synergistic Radiological and Chemical Effects”) to be convincing. He concludes,
It is into such a culture setting – which assumes that nuclear authorities have a duty only in regards to radiation related exposures of workers and the public – that the theory of synergy is thrust. The effects of the unknown relationships (between ionizing radiation and chemical toxins) on the effectiveness of a unit of absorbed dose of radiation is judged to possibly exist but cannot be described as “proven”.
The example is useful because it illustrates that the three thematic areas exist in a self-reinforcing cycle: it is arrogant to assert comprehensive knowledge which does not exist, leading to ignorance regarding synergistic effects, which is maintained due to the privilege extended to examine only those effects for which ionizing radiation is directly responsible. I would like to close with another example, drawing upon my own work in the areas of radiobiology and health physics.
In peer-reviewed work recently published in the journal Health Physics (“Shot Noise Explains the Petkau 22Na+ Result for Rupture of a Model Phospholipid Membrane” doi: 10.1097/HP.0000000000001094), I pointed out that a well- established result from applied mathematics known as “shot noise” indicates that a certain class of internally incorporated radionuclides are far more hazardous than conventionally understood. In short: the health physics profession (whose task is radiation protection) is fundamentally wrong about an important question of practical interest. An upcoming publication will demonstrate that the new shot noise framework about which I have written does, in fact, extrapolate to real, living, human beings.
The shot noise framework may resolve many longstanding questions regarding the health impacts of “routine” or “low” exposures to radioactive pollutants. For instance, in Section 8 (“Reactor Emissions”), Mr. Langley notes that
In all senses the official record shows very small ‘amounts’, in all senses, being emitted by US nuclear reactors. But we have evidence of disease clusters in Germany and Great Britain. The Sellafield clusters persisted for many years.
Later, in Section 12 (“A Mysterious Spike in Childhood in Japan which Extended from the Late 1980s to the 1990s”), he notes that “In Japan fallout from the reactor at Chernobyl was first detected on May 3, 1986, a week after the
9 accident.” The implication is that “low” levels of radioactive fallout may have been responsible for serious, discernible health impacts.
Nuclear industry experts, health physicists, and mainstream medical science all discount the possibility of this outcome. Their belief, however, arises from ignorance of the shot noise phenomenon, which very likely suffices to explain the outcomes observed epidemiologically. The nuclear industry is privileged to rely upon the expertise of the health physics profession (which, amazingly, holds incorrect beliefs about a fundamental matter), which it utilizes to arrogantly dispute findings of harm or medical impacts, leading to deepening ignorance and an expanding assertion of its privileged position within society.
The nation of Australia has the option of not participating in this negative cycle. I recommend that your Inquiry consider the recommendations offered by Mr. Langley seriously.
With best regards,
Aaron M. Datesman, Ph.D. Washington, DC United States
10 1. The Sievert vs Personalised Medicine. Terms of Reference: b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
The Human Genome Project was launched in 1990 and was considered complete in April 2003. Source: Wikipedia.
“The language of “personalized medicine” and “personal genomics” has now entered the common lexicon. The idea of personalized medicine is the integration of genomic risk assessment alongside other clinical investigations. Consistent with this approach, testing is delivered by health care professionals who are not medical geneticists, and where results represent risks, as opposed to clinical diagnosis of disease, to be interpreted alongside the entirety of a patient’s health and medical data. In this review we consider the evidence concerning the application of such personalized genomics within the context of population screening, and potential implications that arise from this.” Source: “The Human Genome Project, and recent advances in personalized genomics”, Wilson, B.J., Nicholls, S.G., Risk Manag Healthc Policy. 2015; 8: 9–20. Published online 2015 Feb 16.
The Sievert was introduced by the ICRP in 1977. Source: ICRP Publication 109, The History of ICRP and the Evolution of its Policies, ICRP, 2009
What is the Sievert and what does it measure and it is compatible with modern knowledge?
ARPANSA informs the public of the Units of ionizing radiation measurements at the following link: https://www.arpansa.gov.au/understanding- radiation/what-is-radiation/radiation/measurement This information explains the factors which determine the safe use of radioactive substances in Australia. A key unit of measure is the Sievert. Wikipedia provides a short summary of the uses of the Sievert:
“The sievert is used for radiation dose quantities such as equivalent dose and effective dose, which represent the risk of external radiation from sources outside the body, and committed dose which represents the risk of internal irradiation due to inhaled or ingested radioactive substances. The sievert is intended to represent the stochastic health risk, which for radiation dose assessment is defined as the probability of radiation-induced cancer and genetic damage. One sievert carries with it a 5.5% chance of eventually developing cancer based on the linear no-threshold model. ” Source: Wikipedia.
Also, “The Sievert is not a measurement of dose, it is a measurement of risk.” Source: Joseph L Alvarez, Ph.D, Physics, at https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_dose_geiger_measure_radiation_dos e_in_sivert_unit_Does_it_use_any_discrimination_circuit
11
I submit that the Sievert as the basis for population wide assurances of uniform low risk promised by people employed as power industry employees is ancient anachronism in the post April 2003 world. It is an inadequate, inaccurate unit which over estimates risk for some people and grossly under estimates risk for others. The unit makes no account of advances from 2003 until today which are widely known outside of the nuclear industry. Power industry employees are not skilled in the concepts which have existed only since April 2003. The management of the average nuclear power plant, the workers and the regulators are not qualified to assess risk based upon medical insights based upon the findings of the Human Genome Project. These insights ushered in the era of personalised medicine 16 years ago. The most recent foray into the area of the meaning of the assessment of risk by the industry and the regulators is to propose that “radiation is like a vitamin” needed by all people. Source: Prof P. Sykes, Flinders University, South Australia, 2011. I have previously shown to a South Australian Royal Commission into these matters that such concepts are old and unproven. I will not repeat my rebuttal here.
The unit of measure known as the Sievert is one of the units of measure which allows nuclear industry in Australia to be regulated. If risk is below accepted regulatory limits, a nuclear undertaking is seen to be complying with regulatory requirements. Regulations for various industries set also limits on such things as benzene emissions from motor vehicles and so on. Each pollutant has been studied and maximum permissible levels have been determined for most by authorities.
Nuclear authorities and nuclear industry advocates often complain that “ordinary” people fail to possess a realistic appreciation of risk. To the contrary, I maintain that electrical engineering workers and their regulators have no place to tell me how much risk I must accept in order to plug in a kettle to the electrical supply in order to make a coffee. Why should I need to bother when alternatives to nuclear power exist?
In this submission I show in another section that the knowledge base related to the health effects caused by exposure to multiple chemical and radiological stressors is considered as “rudimentary” by some scientists. Some scientists accept that synergistic effects are observed to occur between ionising radiation and benzene. I also show that Australian authorities have ignored the facts of synergistic effects in one case in the current era (2006). I show via an IAEA research document that synergy is not considered valid by nuclear industry. I disagree with this and I show in a later section the evidence which supports my opinion and knowledge base.
12 2. Industry and Organisational Cultures Block Internal Awareness. Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, and j. any other relevant matter.
Reality is complex and human insight depends upon perceptions. Perceptions are molded by experiences and knowledge. In the modern world education is increasingly specialized.
What is accepted as evidenced based thought in one school may be considered alien and irrelevant in another school.
What is blocking Nuclear Industry from understanding the impact of knowledge gained since April 2003? It’s a cultural thing:
Conclusions drawn from cultural studies of organisations are not focussed on individuals. Rather it is the norms of the organisations that are subject to scrutiny. A culture which is not self correcting is a dubious asset in society. This is not a judgement of any individual. This is a question which asks how does an organisation strive toward better performance?
Take the aircraft industry as a brief example in contrast:
In it’s explanation for repeated aircraft crashes, the manufacturer of the suspect aircraft type has yet to disclose why an automatic flight control system had no input or “awareness” of ground proximity, (altitude) or why it had no back ups for a single sensor attitude input. An aircraft company so proud of its dedication to keeping planes in the air, it forgot to plug the automatic system into the relevant data – altitude. The system therefore drove multiple aircraft into the ground because of lack of data about the position of the ground . This logical truth is not in the public discourse – yet. This is an example of how organisational culture manifests in company products. In my opinion. I am not an engineer, I am just a layman. However, the suspect aircraft remain grounded globally by order of authorities the manufacturer previously used as its personal and corporate tools. We shall wait and see. It is hard to cover up and deny the dangers of a plane crash.
13 I submit that nuclear industry is not self correcting. History shows that the industry has to be discovered by the public when the light of day reveals its true nature. Only then does change occur. For example, the need for failsafe emergency core cooling systems has been known by the industry since 1967 (Ergen, AEC). Yet, as late as 2006 the industry was claiming the Westinghouse AP1000 as being the break through design which finally met the criteria. I will show that in terms of the relevant nuclear regulations, which calls for “long term emergency cooling” even that design fails the common sense meaning of the regulation. In between, each design released and built by the industry from the GE Mk1 onward, were launched with fan fare as being fail safe reactors with in depth infallible defences.
The cultures that produce such products and such outcomes are clearly ones that render intelligent people extremely functionally stupid. They are probably highly disciplined, command orientated, intolerant of dissent, rigid in terms of behaviour, thinking and expression, hierarchical, with a high degree of status at the top of the tree and very little at the bottom. Such organisations probably use the knowledge they hold as a basis for an arrogant self-image that is antagonist to outside expertise held in other fields. Creative, innovative, freethinking and courageous people are rarely welcome in such “group think” organisations.
The same elements are seen in relation to a nuclear accident:
The report of the Committee which investigated the Fukushima Diiachi event for the Japanese Diet (parliament) identified these same flaws in Japan’s nuclear industry and its regulatory agencies. It is the view of many people that nuclear industry worldwide is at great risk of suffering from the same flaws in its cultural structures and norms.
TEPCO chose to vary GE’s Fukushima Diiachi reactor building plans by demanding the electrical switchgear and emergency generators be placed in the basements, instead of on the 4th floor of the buildings as specified. This saved money. Further both the Japanese nuclear authorities and TEPCO ignored and victimised geologists who urged that a far bigger sea wall be built at the plant. The Japanese people largely blame TEPCO and government authorities for what happened at Fukushima Diiachi. Fukushima changed the perceptions of an entire nation, wiped out an entire in-bred and defective regulatory regime, gave long overdue credit to long victimised scientists, and displayed the courage and skill of reactor workers. Disgraced management took to golden parachutes, sailing into oblivion and shame. The response to this reality is perceived by Tania Constable, CEO of the Mineral Council of Australia, as proof that “Fukushima changes nothing.” (The Australian newspaper, page 22, 5 August 2019.). The Constable article has been a great to me in writing this submission, and I thank her for this help. I submit that Ms. Constable is clearly wrong in her assessments.
I shall come to the NIMBY concept in a later section. The origins of that term in Australia are quite ironic.
14 3. Nuclear Futurism – Science perverted into mere PR. Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, and j. any other relevant matter.
Nuclear Industry seeks the social licence to greatly expand its activities in Australia. I recall that it has always sought this and over the course of my 66 years of life it has invariably used popular cultural themes as vehicles to achieve this goal. It used the threat of communism from the 1946 to the 80s, it used the oil price shock of the 70s and now it claims that it is a primary way to successfully mitigate against sudden climate change. EG:
Source: “Back to the Future”, Josh Freed, Brookings Institute, 12.12.2014 at http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/backtothefuture.ht ml as I will show later, nuclear power plants are at particular risk from the growing effects of Sudden Climate Change. There are now, increasingly, safer, better, ways of building a secure future. The people of Japan must surely be insulted by such a twisted view of what they went through, as portrayed by Josh Freed. It certainly is josh in my opinion.
In the 1960s Edward Teller in the USA and Prof Titterton in Australia promoted nuclear power. Part of their pitch was a promise to replace the use of fossil fuels with the introduction of emissions free vehicles powered by nuclear technology. Promised designs included radioisotope thermal electric generators, commonly called RTGs today. These devices exist and are in use. Such are the dangers of these devices though, that they will never be permitted to be sold on the retail market to ordinary people to power our homes. Surely Teller and Titterton knew the falsehood of their promises to us. The idea of emission free vehicles powered by RTGs was phony and remains so. However emissions free vehicles are slowly gaining traction in the car market. Many people charge theirs up via roof top mounted solar panels. They use Lithium batteries and electric motors and have no need for high level nuclear waste as an energy source.
The facts are that the risks of RTGs outweigh the benefits. Even now. Which takes us back to human perceptions and cultural norms.
15
Nuclear reactors could have maintained emergency electrical power for emergency coolant plumbing solenoids and water pumps in their emergency integral cooling loops. There is nothing stopping a nuclear power plant using RTGs for this purpose. The industry has never used them though. Nor does any Nuclear power plant use solar panels to ensure that its emergency batteries remain charged. Go figure. My home has a more sophisticated power supply than any AP1000 reactor.
The promised future in 1954: A radioisotope thermal electric generator powered car proposed in the 1950s:
"Genestatom," a 40-kW nuclear generator that used a thermal-electric effect to drive a motor with radioactive waste. The nuclear fuel-heating source would only need to be switched out every five years.” Source: “Nuclear-powered concept cars from the Atomic Age” at https://www.autoblog.com/2014/07/17/nuclear-powered-atomic-age-classic- cars/
16 4. My Training as a Radiation Worker. Terms of Reference: b. health and safety, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability.
Proof of my military radiological safety training and work experience is contained in Appendix 1.
In my late teenage years I was employed as a base level radiation worker in the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineer Corps. I was technical and a storeman. The stores in that Radiac unit were interesting. I received 2 years of both formal and on the job training and had a role as a Radiological Safety Corporal. Proof of this basic radiological safety training is contained in Appendix One. Later I achieved Certificate 3 level qualifications in the Human Services areas of Youth Work and other topics. When aspects of social work are combined with other relevant training, one has the basic ability to communicate and report to a certain level.
I am a layman. I submit this work in the interests of open debate and in order to participate in Australian democracy. I wish my views and my evidence to be considered by the committee. In the end it is the people who decide the matter of Nuclear power in Australia. It should not be left to a handful of politicians. Politicians excel at selling themselves. A skill shared by any sales person, whether of vacuum cleaners or of national resources or of national options.
Human society strives to be rational. A willingness to test one’s beliefs and knowledge against the true nature of reality is a sign of rationality. When challenged, nuclear history reveals that the industry kicks against impartial insights that contradict the holy writ of nuclear PR. That is why the AP1000 was not built in 1967. It emerged in 2018 as the allegedly sole example of a light water reactor with a fail safe ECCS. But as I will show in a later section even this design fails to comply with the nuclear regulation which demands the ECCS must provide long term emergency cooling to remove decay heat from the longest lived radio isotopes present in fissioned multi megawatt core. That takes not hours, but months. Even the AP1000 fails this plain English reading of the regs. It took from 1934 (the date of the fission patents) to 2006 to achieve this feeble non compliance! That is, 72 years. In the meantime, reactors decried as poor by critics in the sixties, and defended with fevered rigour by industry from 1967 on, captured a whopping 11% of the world energy supply market.
How many thousands of years have the concepts of gravity fed water flow and convention cooling been known? The Roman Empire used such principles in the Ancient World.
17 5. The Planet’s Ability to Absorb Human Waste Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety c. environmental impacts. e. economic feasibility, h. security implications.
As the earth’s ability to absorb the residue and waste of human activity approaches it limits, it cannot be said that nuclear industry is immune to the natural limits of growth. How long has the technology left? How many decades? How is the competition doing? What alternatives are there?
How many years are left before the dilution throughout the biosphere of nuclear emissions results in concentrations in the tissues of apex predators that endanger those species? Humans are the apex predator.
Carbon Dioxide sinks are long exhausted and we are endangered.
How full are the Strontium sinks, the Cesium sinks, the Plutonium sinks?
I will show in this submission that we are beyond the limits to growth for Nuclear Industry.
“Perfectly Safe, and if you disagree you are a radio phobe” paraphrase of Marvin Goldman, AEC, DoE, IAEA, University of California, retired. Marvin was the last man standing to deny the thyroid effects of Chernobyl, as he did prior to 1992. See “A Cancer Legacy From Chernobyl”, Kolata, G., New York Times, 3 Sept 1992, at https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/03/world/a-cancer- legacy-from-chernobyl.html see also https://news.flinders.edu.au/blog/2011/07/14/radiation-response-a-meltdown- in-reason/
Prior to this Mr. Goldman observed the aftermath of the Chernobyl event via data transmitted by US satellite. He described the experience in a paper written close to that time. Quote:
“We were able to use satellite images to delineate the Chernobyl damage to the adjacent radiosensitive pine forest that runs 8 to 10 km west of the Chernobyl reactor (5)]. Infrared images were taken weekly by the Landsat 4 Thematic Mapper Satellite as it passed over most of the Earth. Images from the Chernobyl region were used and by enhancing the infrared reflectance wavelengths for those bands corresponding to chlorophyll and moisture, it was possible to discern living from dead pine trees. Thus, from an altitude of about 700 km, a crude spatial and temporal map of the heaviest hit region was developed. Because pine trees have about a median lethal dose of 6 Gy , the images, beginning approximately 3 weeks after the accident, indicated a western swath of dying and dead trees, the so-called red forest. It was later learned that the map was correct but the doses were not. The trees actually had received doses of over 100 Gy, but regardless of the dose, the technique showed where the doses exceeded a 6-Gy detection threshold. Over the next 10 years, much of the damaged forest left standing has shown major regrowth and repair. The more resistant deciduous trees showed significantly less
18 radiation damage than other types of trees….
“Another consequence of the accident is related to communication, miscommunication, and lack of communication. A serious cloud of doubt arose, especially about the manner in which the initial official information was disseminated. Fear precipitated by exaggeration in the popular press was mixed with public pronouncements attempting to minimize the risks. This contributed to a resulting widespread radiophobia. An underlying assumption of this condition gives credibility to the notion that many adverse health conditions stem from hidden radiation exposures, sometimes synergistically interacting with chemical environmental pollution. Although there now is no dosimetric support for this belief, its consequent psychological stress is quite real to many of the residents near and far from the reactor. The effects of this widespread stress may have ramifications beyond the area of psychology; whether it exacerbates a wide spectrum of adverse consequences has yet to be proven.” End quotes. Source: “The Russian Radiation Legacy: Its Integrated Impact and Lessons Marvin Goldman Professor of Radiobiology Emeritus, University of California, Davis, California, at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1469939/pdf/envhper00331- 0015.pdf
This article by Goldman is the first trace I can find of a nuclear power industry communicator using the word “Radiophobia”. Previously, in the bomb test era, the term had been used against people protesting that era. The main proponent of the term was the Atomic Energy Commission’s Marshall Brucer.
Goldman uses the term in the literal and medical sense. Even though it does not exist as a condition described in the relevant medical text, the Diagnostic Statistics Manual, DSM V. Not withstanding the fact that the illness does not exist, Australian authorities use it with gusto when describing the alleged ailings of their critics. Such has been the cultural norm of the industry in Australia and the world ever since 1986 at least. It conforms closely to the concepts used famously by Soviet Psychiatry in order to isolate and punish internal critics of the Soviet state. Prior to the revolution there. Perhaps we need one here as well.
I read Goldman’s paper, firstly his account of watching an entire forest die. He found it, clearly, very, very, interesting. Academic. Of course, he would, wouldn’t he? It was not his forest, not his homeland. As mile after mile of trees died from the huge radiation exposure, they changed colour. He could only imagine that from the data printouts from the satellite transmission.
What I found most revealing of his mentality and the nature of his ethical stand point was his assessment of the people who lived near that forest. They were the ones who actually watched the forest, the huge forest, die over weeks. He gives his rationale and then he gives his judgement of those people: Radiophobes.
19 How cruel. How symptomatic of the culture which raised him up as a man. I submit, on the basis of the stock industry treatment of people who oppose it or disagree with it or challenge it, that the industry is the same today in the West as it was in 1986. Marvin Goldman has a long history in the nuclear industry. He was the first American to identify a plutonium hot particle in the lung of a sheep. The sheep being tethered to a post outside the lethal blast area but inside the LD 100 area at Mercury nuclear weapons test site, Nevada, USA. Funny how people like Goldman can say what they like with “authority” but if I have the alleged gall to mention bomb research and nuclear power reactors in the same sentence.
In May 2019 the University of Bristol, UK, issued a press release that informed the pubic that university authorities had produced drone and aircraft radiological mappings of the Chernobyl Forest and other areas. The press release states in part that : “the team created 3D maps that not only reaffirmed the current understanding of the radiation distribution at an unprecedented spatial resolution, but also revealed previously undetected radiation ‘hot-spots’. The two-week expedition, led by Professor Tom Scott of the Interface Analysis Centre and member of the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics, in April was the first of several survey missions NCNR will undertake in Ukraine over the coming 12 months. Having now reached 33 years since the catastrophic accident at the number-4 reactor, the Chernobyl exclusion zone attracted 70,000 tourists last year, and national authorities urgently required accurate radiation maps to update safety protocols that will inform both future tourism activity and the planned construction of new solar energy farms. Cleaning up legacy nuclear waste is not only an issue at Chernobyl, with the UK itself possessing 4.9 million tons of contaminated material requiring safe long-term disposal, some of which being over 70 years old. The National Centre for Nuclear Robotics (NCNR) was created to accelerate and reduce the cost of Britain’s nuclear cleanup task by developing state of the art automation able to work in complex and hazardous environments. That expertise is now being called upon internationally. Working alongside colleagues from Ukraine’s SSE “Eco Centre”, the body responsible for gathering survey and research data within the 2600 km2Exclusion Zone around the failed reactor, the NCNR team flew 50 sorties over 10 days, spending 24 hours in the air to map an area of 15 km2. Starting at the lowest risk site first, the village of Buriakivka, located 13km from the accident epicenter, researchers moved on to the partially-demolished settlement of Kopachi before tackling the Red Forest – one of the most highly-contaminated natural sites on Earth.” Source: “New Radiation Hot Spots Identified in Chernobyl by Bristol Researchers”, Press Release, University of Bristol, 8 May 2019, at https://www.bristol.ac.uk/physics/news/2019/iac-drones-chernobyl- research.html
This account of the Chernobyl exclusion zone differs radically from the information issued by Flinders University of South Australia here: https://news.flinders.edu.au/blog/2011/07/14/radiation-response-a-meltdown- in-reason/
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It differs radically from the standpoint of ethical awareness published by Marvin Goldman, then of the IAEA.
One outcome of the Chernobyl disaster was the teaming up of Soviet and American scientists. One of the joint programs worked on by these joint teams was a study of the radiation syndrome identified by Soviet doctors as Chronic Radiation Sickness.
I refer the reader to the following publication: “Chronic Radiation Sickness Among Techa Riverside Residents”, Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine Chelyabinsk, Russia, Principal Investigator and Executive Editor Mira M. Kossenko, M.D., Head, Epidemiology Laboratory Investigators and Coauthors Lidiya A. Nikolayenko, Database Manager Svetlana B. Yepifanova, Engineer-Programmer Yevghenya V. Ostroumova, Researcher, Epidemiology Laboratory Translator Catherine M. Zhidkova, Head, International Collaboration Division Published by Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute Bethesda, Maryland, USA Editor and NIS Initiatives Coordinator Glen I. Reeves, M.D., AFRRI Contract Report 98-1 Printed February 1998 Defense Nuclear Agency Contract DNA001-95-C-0156 , available for download from the United States Defence Technical Information Centre at https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a337640.pdf The publication confirms that Chronic Radiation Sickness has been a medical syndrome described, diagnosed and treated by Soviet and Russian medicine since the 1950s. In contrast Chronic Radiation Sickness is completely missing from the lexicon of Western medicine. And this omission is crucially important for the health and welfare of people living in the Western world.
I submit that Western nuclear authorities, in particular civilian authorities, are ignorant of specific disease diagnostic and treatment regimes. In the 1970s, at a time when the Western world was busy denying the radiological contamination events which occurred in the Soviet Urals, I was employed at a place which was producing a radiation safety manual. As part of my duties I was asked to provide a synopsis from the following book: “Radiation Sickness in Man (Outlines), Guskova, A. K., Baysogolov, G.D. Moscow, Meditsina, 1971, via U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. I had a very interesting read. For the purposes of a recent South Australian Royal Commission, I obtained a copy of the US issue of this book. It is very rare in the West. I urge the members of this Committee to download and read my copy of the book, which available for free download here: Part 1 : https://www.academia.edu/8442376/Radiation_Sickness_in_Man_Outlines_P art_1_of_2 Part 2: https://www.academia.edu/8441920/Radiation_Sickness_in_Man_Outlines_Pt 2_Chronic_Radiation_Sickness It is part 2 of this text which describes Chronic Radiation Sickness. Why is it still missing from the Australian Medical Lexicon? Any ideas anyone? The book was never secret, nor was it’s contents. I urge Australian politicians to get up to speed on this. Your knowledge base is 46 years out of date.
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6. Nuclear Power Plants Depend Upon the Power Grid for Safe Operation and Shut Down. Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, and j. any other relevant matter.
“The safe and economic operation of a nuclear power plant (NPP) requires the plant to be connected to an electrical grid system that has adequate capacity for exporting the power from the NPP, and for providing a reliable electrical supply to the NPP for safe startup, operation and normal or emergency shutdown of the plant….
“Connection of any large new power plant to the electrical grid system in a country may require significant modification and strengthening of the grid system, but for NPPs there may be added requirements to the structure of the grid system and the way it is controlled and maintained to ensure adequate reliability…..
“For a Member State that does not yet use nuclear power, the introduction and development of nuclear power is a major undertaking. It requires the country to build physical infrastructure and develop human resources so it can construct and operate a nuclear power plant (NPP) in a safe, secure and technically sound manner. ” end quote. Source: “ELECTRIC GRID RELIABILITY AND INTERFACE WITH NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS” IAEA NUCLEAR ENERGY SERIES No. NG- T-3.8, IAEA, COPYRIGHT NOTICE All IAEA scientific and technical publications are protected by the terms of the Universal Copyright Convention as adopted in 1952 (Berne) and as revised in 1972 (Paris). Reproduced for study purposes and fair use in the interest of public debate and in submission to government.
I recall the wind damage that caused, among other things, the collapse of high tension main grid support pylons and other damage to electrical generation equipment. The resultant 2016 statewide black out in South Australia at the time was extended for some hours. SA has one national grid interconnector. SA is a net exporter of electrical power. However given the routine occurrence of high winds in this state, it is shown that poles and wires in this state are vulnerable. Though not the sole cause of the famous blackout, grid vulnerabilities and failures at the time were significant factors in that event. Undergrounding of high tension national grid transmission cables may result in a grid infrastructure compatible with the needs of nuclear power plants, as required by IAEA NG-T-3-8 quoted above. However, such a grid might be vulnerable to flooding.
I recall the photos of collapsed national grid pylons, which were reduced to masses of tangled metal merely by the wind in remote areas of this state.
22 Had a multi megawatt nuclear power plant existed in South Australia at the time of the famous state wide black out, with the existing infrastructure, there would have been some concern and change of procedure at that plant. I refer to the following document: “U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION August 1988 REGULATORY GUIDE OFFICE OF NUCLEAR REGULATORY RESEARCH Reissued to correct REGULATORY GUIDE 1.155 Tables 1, (Task SI 5014) 5, and 6. STATION BLACKOUT” US NRC, USA available at https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0037/ML003740034.pdf
This document states in part : ““The term “station blackout” refers to the complete loss of alternating current electric power to the essential and nonessential switchgear buses in a nuclear power plant. Station blackout therefore involves the loss of offsite power concurrent with turbine trip and failure of the onsite emergency ac power system, but not the loss of available ac power to buses fed by station batteries through inverters or the loss of power from “alternate ac sources.”
“Station blackout and alternate ac source are defined in § 50.2. Because many safety systems required for reactor core decay heat removal and containment heat removal are dependent on ac power, the consequences of a station blackout could be severe.
“In the event of a station blackout, the capability to cool the reactor core would be dependent on the availability of systems that do not require ac power from the essential and nonessential switchgear buses and on the ability to restore ac power in a timely manner.
“The concern about station blackout arose because of the accumulated experience regarding the reliability of ac power supplies. Many operating plants have experienced a total loss of offsite electric power, and more occurrences are expected in the future. In almost every one of these loss-of-offsite-power events, the onsite emergency ac power supplies have been available immediately to supply the power needed by vital safety equipment.
“However, in some instances, one of the redundant emergency ac power supplies -has been unavailable. In a few cases there has been a complete loss of ac power, but during these events ac power was restored in a short time without any serious consequences. In addition, there have been numerous instances when emergency diesel generators have failed to start and run in response to tests conducted at operating plants.
“The results of the Reactor Safety Study (Ref. 1) showed that, for one of the two plants evaluated, a station blackout event could be an important contributor to the total risk from nuclear power plant accidents. Although this total risk was found to be small, the relative importance of station blackout events was established. This finding and the accumulated diesel generator failure experience increased the concern about station blackout.
23 In a Commission proceeding addressing station black out, it was determined that the issue should be analysed to identify preventive or mitigative measures that can or should be taken. …The issue of station blackout involves the likelihood and duration of the loss of offsite power, the redundancy and reliability of onsite emergency ac power systems, and the potential for severe accident sequences after a loss of all ac power.
“References 2 through 7 provide detailed analyses of these topics. Based on risk studies performed to date, the results indicate that estimated core melt frequencies from station blackout vary considerably for different plants and could be a significant risk contributor for some plants. In order to reduce this risk, action should be taken to resolve the safety concern stemming from station blackout. The issue is of concern for both PWRs and BWRs.” end quote. Source: as given above.
The quotes above are dated August 1988. The concerns expressed were confirmed to be valid in 2011, and the response in 2013 by the US NRC was to mandate the permanent siting of mobile diesel powered electrical generators at all vulnerable nuclear power plants in the USA. I don’t trust this industry to drive a pedal car in a straight line.
There is continuing debate in the United States as to whether the NRC’s definition of vulnerable plant types is wide enough.
There is continuing concern there about the issue of station blackout even in the case of current design Nuclear Power Plants. The view that only modern designs be considered in learning lessons appropriate for Australia is in my view false as vulnerable plants are admitted by industry to exist today, they continue to operate and are therefore modern problems of concern to both authorities and the public all over the globe.
Even the newest nuclear power plant to be commissioned in China, the Westinghouse AP1000 has the same dependence upon on the power grid for long-term safety and normal operation. Westinghouse documents state that the AP1000 Emergency Core Cooling System can operate for a period of 72 hours maximum. While this is a great advance over the earlier 8 hour designed operating life of earlier reactor designs (extended out to 36 hours by some miracle by TEPCO workers), it must be remembered that it took Japan, together with the assistance of the US nuclear experts, nine months to achieve cold shut down.
It has taken a very, very long time to get to the point where an Emergency Core Cooling System can operate continuously for even 72 hours. And this fact actually seems to me to be in breach of a long standing US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulation.
For many years – at least since the 1970s - the US nuclear regulation called “Acceptance criteria for emergency core cooling systems for light-water nuclear power reactors” has stated that : “(5) Long-term cooling. After any
24 calculated successful initial operation of the ECCS, the calculated core temperature shall be maintained at an acceptably low value and decay heat shall be removed for the extended period of time required by the long-lived radioactivity remaining in the core.” ( sub para (5), 50.46 Acceptance criteria for emergency core cooling systems for light-water nuclear power reactors”, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 50.46. at https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part050/part050-0046.html
This requirement is difficult . Apparently. Because right from the word go the difficulty of cooling the fuel core in a multi megawatt nuclear reactor was foreseen. Some reactors are more vulnerable than others to extreme overheating in the event of primary loop cooling system failure –even the AP1000 has mains powered primary coolant pumps. The first power reactors in the United States were small, and generated less than a megawatt of power each. These reactors rapidly became too expensive for the power companies at the time (1960s). A discussion of the problem is contained within the publication “A Short History of Nuclear Regulation, 1946 - 1999 by J. Samuel Walker Historian Office of the Secretary Nuclear Regulatory Commission " : . January 2000, USA available at https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0037/ML003726170.pdf
This problem is not solved by deciding that it is too hard to design an ECCS which can actually provide “long term cooling” . Rather the definition needs to be based in the terms of the regulation. And that is by the reality presented by the time span over which the longest lived radio isotopes in the fuel core generate heat which needs to be removed.
To say that reactor types other than water cooled ones could be used in Australia ignores the fact that no Western nuclear reactor of alternate design currently, as far as I know, has a proven commercial track record. I can see the sense in a liquid metal coolant. So long as it is not a highly reactive metal such as sodium. I refer the committee to the history of such cooling systems at the Fermi 1 reactor USA and at the Monju reactor, Japan. Gas cooled reactors do have a track record. I refer the reader to the British Windscale reactor and its history.
I refer the reader to the original patent papers for the fission processes and for the nuclear reactor: I urge the reader to consider the facts in the light of the industry view (Constable, 5 August 2019) for people to only consider “modern” nuclear industry innovations. The design basis of all fission reactors dictates that the “modern” era in this matter commenced in 1934:
Silizard’s fission patents 440,023 & 630,726 were lodged in London in 1934. At his request these patents were kept secret and passed to the British Navy for security. Today the original patent papers are held by the University of California, San Diego. A draft letter of 1934 in which Leo discusses “nuclear chain reactions and their bearing on the question of power production” is located in Box Box 29 Folder 5 (Leo Szilard Papers, 1898 - 1998 (MSS 0032) at the University of California San Diego Library.
25 The release of the fission patent was with held from the world until 1949 for security reasons. The patents were used exclusively by the US government, first by the President’s Uranium Committee, established in 1939, and then, under civilian oversight throughout the period of World War 2. The first nuclear reactor came into being in 1942. Every fission reactor on earth applies the techniques first described in those 1934 patents. A concept is as old as its origins. The questions is: are the fission patents the current high point of energy science? No they are not.
It is now 85 years since Szilard invented and patented the concept of nuclear fission via neutron bombardment of meta-stable nuclear fuel.
“In June 1942, a group headed by Arthur Compton's chief engineer, Thomas V. Moore, began designing the first production reactor (pile). It quickly became clear that a production pile would differ significantly in design from Enrico Fermi's planned experimental reactor (CP-1). Radiation and containment shielding would be necessary, as would a cooling system. Although experimental piles like Fermi's did not generate enough power to need cooling systems, any reactor large enough to produce non-trivial amounts of plutonium would have to operate at high power levels and require coolants of some kind. “ End quote. Source: “The Manhattan Project, an Interactive History”, Us Department of Energy, USA, at https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/index.htm
Nuclear industry has been trying to perfect its cooling systems since 1942. It is now 2019 with no end in sight.
The wonder of it all is this: In terms of wasted energy, in terms of ignored means and ways of assuring long term emergency core cooling, Nuclear Power Plants as currently deployed waste a huge amount of energy. Such reactors have to renew their fuel every 2 years or so. The old fuel sits around in a glorified bath, which is cooled by refrigeration for a period. Large amounts of heat escape into the air from these baths. The refrigeration takes power. Though the fuel “rapidly” cools down, the fuel is still hot after 4 years.
Fukushima changed many things. It changed the perceptions of millions of people about many things. Despite what the industry PR states. In fact decades ago even the industry regulators held grave doubts about aspects of Nuclear Power Reactors in aspects. I refer the reader to Ralph Lapp’s essay, “The Problem of Nuclear Plumbing”, and to his employer’s report, the Atomic Energy Commission’s “entitled “Emergency Core Cooling - Report of Advisory Task Force on Power Reactor Emergency Cooling” U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1968. The official link for the full text download is: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4526348/ . I would urge Barnaby Joyce to read this text. There is much I can say about the contents of the documents, but for now I will keep my powder dry.
Both Lapp’s Essay and a copy of the Ergen Report can downloaded here: https://www.academia.edu/8424123/AEC._Ergen_Report._Advisory_Task_Fo rce_on_Power_Reactor_Emergency_Cooling._1967 72 hours is a time limit. It
26 is not “long term cooling”. The attributes of the AP1000 design have not yet been exposed to the worst weather conditions to be exhibited as the planet moves further and further into an age determined by the effects of Sudden Climate Change. The existing reactor fleet were not designed with regular extreme events in mind. They weren’t even designed in accordance with the historic weather and geologic history held by science. Neither were the world’s power grids.
Given the importance the grid plays in relation to a nuclear power plant, which includes, according to the IAEA, providing safe start up, running and shut down, it can be seen that such a grid has to be of a very high standard and specification. The IAEA documents make this very clear. The infrastructure needed, the IAEA states is a may undertaking. This grid infrastructure will not be cheap, especially, according to the IAEA, in nations which are considering the construction of a first Nuclear Power Plant.
How will Australia cope ?
Canstar Blue says this about the present costs of the Australian grid delivery of power in Australia: “An electricity usage charge is what households must pay simply for being continuously connected to the energy network. This is a cost usually charged daily in cents, with retailers adding up each daily charge to give you on your next bill. Supply costs typically range from about 80c per day at their cheapest, to more than $1.20 at their most expensive, depending on your retailer and where you live. As long as you want to be connected to the electricity network and receive power to your home, you’ll need to pay a supply charge. While ‘supply charge’ is now the most common term used to describe this cost, you may previously have seen it referred to as: • Fixed Charge • Daily Supply Charge • Service Charge (or Service to Property Charge) The supply charge is not related to your usage – instead this figure on your bill is a daily amount your energy provider charges your property for being connected to the network. Even if you don’t use any electricity in a billing period, this rate will still be deducted provided that your supply is connected. If you’ve ever gone away for a few weeks and come home to a large power bill. Chances are your daily supply charge is the main reason for it….
“The cost of energy distribution (i.e. maintaining the poles and wires) makes up a significant part of your overall power costs, with distributors in each state passing their costs onto the retailers, who then pass them onto their customers. You could think of supply charges as the costs incurred by your retailer for supplying energy to your property, especially given that it’s the
27 local distribution company that actually sends someone to read your energy meter (if you don’t have a smart meter) every few months…..
State Average Electricity Supply Rates
New South Wales 90.45 c/day
South Australia 92.90 c/day
Queensland 112.32 c/day
Victoria 119.41 c/day
End quot. Source: https://www.canstarblue.com.au/electricity/electricity-supply-charges/
On the subject of the electrical grid, the clean energy council states the following;
“There is over 850,000 km of distribution grid and 45,000 km of transmission grid in operation across Australia, with the eastern and south-eastern states boasting the National Electricity Market – one of the longest interconnected electricity markets in the world. “Electricity is an essential service and, unsurprisingly, the value Australia places on electricity is high and about half of every electricity bill funds the operation, maintenance and expansion of our grids.“The combination of the Renewable Energy Target, declining clean energy technology costs and, most importantly, consumer preferences to control their electricity consumption are drastically changing the nature of our grids.” End quote https://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/resources/technologies/grid
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7. The Economic Future of a Nuclear Powered Australian Power Grid Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, and j. any other relevant matter.
Currently Australians are discussing and are concerned about the cost of electrical power. The cost of the electrical grid has become more and more expensive. Australian energy market authorities have noted that this fixed cost is increasing. Australian households have begun, in small numbers, to disconnect their homes from the grid. Projections into the future result in the concern that the costs of the grid, included in each power bill, will increase for remaining users of the grid. (AEMO, 2018).
On 28 August 2019 “The Australian” Newspaper, on page 20, reported that: “Electricity network owner Spark Infrastructure has warned that low rates of return may force it to back away from critically needed investments in transmission, potentially increasing the long term risk of blackouts in the nations fragile power grid…..” end quote. Hardly an indication of the successful implementation of IAEA requirements for a nuclear proof and compliant and nuclear safe grid. See previous section.
The situation is a culmination of years of government dithering. Where does it think sunshine comes from? (Let the reader understand).
The Australian grid is a fragile and expensive system. For the grid to comply with the specifications demanded of nuclear capable infrastructure, it is clear that for nuclear power to proceed people will need to pay more, not less, money for our electrical infrastructure and delivery.
We see a continuing decline in the effective purchase price of both solar panels and home power lithium storage batteries. Nuclear industry has a product that might compete in this market. It is too dangerous for people to use. That is why RTG thermal batteries have never been sold to the public. We cannot be trusted with them. However government and industry claim we can trust them with nuclear fission devices.
I have shown above that base load nuclear power plants are reliant upon the grid to both sell their power and for their safe operation and safe shut down. I cited earlier an International Atomic Energy Agency document which strongly suggests that were Australia to purchase and construct nuclear power plants, “major resources” would have to be expended in order to render the national grid suitable for the safe operation of any nuclear power plants. This represents an added cost burden grid reliant consumers will have to bear.
Seriously thinking about the power grid as it is, the cost of it, the nature of the challenges and changes the current grid faces into the future, the rise of home
29 and business small scale power generation and storage, the anticipated rise in micro grids and shared power generation - all lead to various possibilities.
Most of these possibilities pose serious questions on many levels. Access and equity being a most important one, one that so far has not, substantially, been included in planning for either the present or the future. It is certain, in my opinion, that over time more and more Australians will live grid independent lives. It may be that in future, industry will need it’s own source of grid based power, but in the future perhaps the majority of houses will be independent of a grid. The challenge of access and equity for all energy users, particularly the less well off and bulk users (ie the consumer subsidised industrial users), will grow in the future unless planned for now. However since 2013 Australia has failed to produce a stable energy and emission policy. The current electricity cost and peak demand crises have been engineered by serial acts of neglect and hide bound ideology on the part of successive governments in this nation.
There are no small scale modular reactors in mass production, none with a proven commercial track record and the vast bulk exist only as concepts, designs and prototypes. A nation which installed a current model small modular reactor would be foolish to do so. They are unproven. They would certainly not compete with nor suppress, the sale of solar panels and lithium storage batteries. Further, the history of the multi mega watt power reactor shows that this technology arose out the demand by power companies for profitable nuclear power plants. The first nuclear power plants produced were small and some would say modular. Though their cores developed only small and non threatening amounts of decay heat, they did not result in profitability for the power companies which used them. (NRC Official History of nuclear regulation).
I refer to the article “Army discovery opens path to safer batteries, By CCDC Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs May 10, 2019, USA, at https://www.army.mil/article/221700/army_discovery_opens_path_to_safer_b atteries the article in part states: “….researchers at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory, the Army's corporate research laboratory known as ARL, and the University of Maryland demonstrated a transformative step in battery technology with the identification of a new cathode chemistry…. Building on their previous discoveries of the intrinsically safe "water-in-salt electrolytes (WiSE)" and the technique to stabilize graphite anodes in WiSE, the team's development of the novel cathode chemistry further extends available energy for aqueous batteries to a previously unachievable level.” End quote. Source as cited above. Such advances in the state of the art are mere promises based on the ideology of futurism. These advances are happening now. Patents are being issued now. Every product and technology obeys the laws of the Technology Life Cycle described here: http://oer2go.org/mods/en- boundless/www.boundless.com/management/textbooks/boundless- management-textbook/organizational-culture-and-innovation-4/technology- and-innovation-37/the-technology-life-cycle-202-3486/index.html
30 Where is nuclear power in relation to its technological life cycle? Nearing the end?
As we debate nuclear power, we also need to consider hydrogen generated by many means, including solar and wind electrolysis of water, produced on the site of thermal power stations which burn the hydrogen as fuel, producing fresh water as “exhaust”. Industrial users and others could still have a grid. How that would be priced I don’t know. The issue of intermittent electrical generation may be completely overcome with sufficient hydrogen generation. Extending the use of both centralised and home based battery storage may completely solve the problem. One thing is for sure. Australia desperately needs investment in large scale grid capable battery storage.
What will the cost of the grid be in 10 years time? In 20 years time? I do not know. However government must surely be aware of projections based on present trends. I would anticipate that the grid is projected to become more and more expensive for those fewer and fewer people who remain totally dependent upon it.
What does nuclear power require to become viable in such an energy market setting? Compulsory use of the grid? The banning of the sale and fitment of solar panels and lithium batteries? Will grid independent house holds have to pay for the grid even though they do not use the grid?
I refer the reader to the following news item: “Living off the grid and driving an electric car is this former farmer's idea of heaven” ABC News, Australia, August 2019 at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-09/sylvia- wilson-lives-off-grid-and-drives-an-electric-car/11391552
The reality is we are on the verge of the onset of the effects of sudden climate change. We are also in a transition phase in terms of energy technology. The power grid is one of the oldest components of the old energy production and distribution order. It is in for a period of rapid change. Will nuclear power increase costs and reduce free choice? Yes it will.
The barriers to the widespread use of RTG generators, which could power a home for 80 years off grid, actually, in my view, apply also to the full nuclear fuel cycle at the national and global level. (eg, Nuclear powered Iran emits 2% of global CO2 emissions and has dubious compliance intentions regarding prohibited nuclear activities, and is busy impeding the oil trade, threatening its neighbours and the world, and calling down a Western military response onto itself. Non Nuclear Australia emits 1% of global CO2).
Why should I trust the Australian political system with a nuclear power reactor, trust them to build a compliant grid, allow them to make fuel rods and to reprocess the spent fuel? Why would any thinking free person trust government with that much power and enable that much arrogance and bullshit? The behaviour of the Australian political class is well known and members of it are proud to be photographed during their full flights of arrogant and maladjusted delusion.
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On the matter of small scale nuclear industry sourced power sources, such as small reactors, portable RTG devices and so on, I wish to quote from the following document:
I refer the Committee to the publication: “Review of Radioisotopes as Radiological Weapons”, Carl A. Curling Alex Lodge, INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES, June 2016 Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. IDA Document D-8048 Log: H 16-000770, INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES 4850 Mark Center Drive Alexandria, Virginia 22311- 1882. Copyright: Copyright Notice © 2016 Institute for Defense Analyses 4850 Mark Center Drive, Alexandria, Virginia 22311-1882 • (703) 845-2000 This material may be reproduced by or for the U.S. Government pursuant to the copyright license under the clause at DFARS 252.227-7013 (a)(16) [June 2013].
The following information is reproduced as fair use in the interests of open debate. In relation to portable small nuclear electrical generators the publication says this:
“Despite IAEA guidance, many nations still fail to regulate and protect their dangerous sources adequately. For example, in December 2001 in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, an abandoned Russian RTG, which contained significant quantities of 90Sr, was discovered. Three woodsmen encountered the source and unknowingly exposed themselves to high doses of radiation. Two of the woodsmen developed serious symptoms of Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) and beta radiation burns that required immediate medical treatment.
“Another example, from Mexico, occurred when a transport vehicle carrying a significant amount of 60Co was hijacked by criminals.
“These incidents demonstrate a lack of security and the opportunity that surrounds the acquisition of radiological material. A high demand for illicit radioactive material has resulted in heavy black-market trade, notably in Former Soviet Union (FSU) states.” End quotes. Source given above.
This publication explains the misuse to which fission products can be put. It rationally explains the actual dangers of fission products. It explains the risks of abandoned nuclear and radiological devices. These are facts. An abandoned solar panel is unlikely to be used as a weapon.
Nuclear industry and government does not trust individuals to own their own fission product powered thermal electric generators (RTGs). Yet that industry and its customer governments demand of us that we trust both the industry and the government with industrial scale devices which mass produce both energy and fission products. Szilard’s 1934 fission patents clearly state these facts. Regaining public trust? Ha!! These idiots are incapable of understanding that they lost our trust decades ago!!!
32 8. Reactor Emissions Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, and j. any other relevant matter.
I paraphrase the self acclaimed nuclear expert, Barnaby Joyce MP. Who said, in brief, in 2019, that those want emissions free electrical power generation but who do not want nuclear power “should shut up.” Source: Barnaby Joyce. Really. Should we trust democracy to leaders such as this?
Source of Table 8: “Radiological Impacts of Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Options: A Comparative Study. “ Nuclear Energy Agency Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development. This table refers to a Nuclear Power Reactor. The table does NOT refer to the original Australian research reactor operated in the past nor the research reactor Australia which operates today. Our research reactor contains 3 fuel rods. A Power reactor contains very many more.
When the original Lucas Heights reactor was built and became operational in 1958, it was in a remote location. But by the 1970s, housing estates were began encroaching upon the reactor site. Nuclear Scientists then made the discovery that the soil in the closer in housing estate down wind of the reactor was contaminated with radioactive substances. These substances had been emitted in a fallout plume from the original Lucas Heights research reactor.
Expert authorities determined that the contaminated soil had to be removed.
33 And so the topsoil had to be removed from the front and back yards of these houses. The tons of soil was scrapped up and replaced with good soil. (ie soil with no nuclear exhaust precipitate in it). The contaminated soil was stored in many “44 gallon” sized drums at the Lucas Heights reactor site.
Decades later, after much public debate, the Howard government established an interim low level waste repository. This repository is located at Woomera rocket range, and is located behind the line of the instrumented range.
(Original proposals for the dump site included Oxley, Qld, a military gunnery range in Victoria, and an area near Coober Pedy. Risk of flooding and objections from farmers ruled out Oxley - the prediction of flooding came true some years later in regards to Oxley. The Air Force objected to the use of the gunnery range. South Australians in the Coober Pedy area successfully ruled out the use of their neighbourhood for the dump. The “Irati Wanti“ campaign and a legal challenge by the SA government meant that Federal authorities abandoned the idea. And so Woomera rocket range was chosen for the dump site.
Trucks took the contaminated fission product contaminated home garden soil to that repository at Woomera. The soil from those front and backyards remains at the low level nuclear waste interim repository today. A little piece of Woomera will always be Sutherland Shire, Sydney. Until they find a permanent site for the low level repository.
Over the years, various politicians and nuclear advocates have called members of the Australian community “NIMBY” or “NIMBIES” (which means people who refuse to accept living with nuclear facilities, and who metaphorically or actually chant “not in my backyard”.)
The irony is that the first people to effectively cry “NIMBY” were nuclear scientists. Modern nuclear advocates must surely remember our history – that the fallout from a mere research reactor was so pervasive that tons of soil from Australian backyards (and front yards) had to be removed and canned in metal drums for safe storage. That decontamination was entirely appropriate and it tells the truth about the matter.
Do modern nuclear reactors emit radioactive substances? The politician B. Joyce claims the answer is no. -50/10 Barnaby. You fail badly.
In regard to the following, the detection of radiation by a highly sensitive instrument is not an indicator of risk! It is merely a testament to the state of the art in the field of detector sensitivity.
I refer to the following paper: “Evaluation of radioxenon releases in Australia using atmospheric dispersion modelling tools” Author links open overlay panel RickTinkeraBlakeOrraMarcusGrzechnikaEmmyHoffmannbPaulSaeycStephenS olomona Journal of Environmental Radioactivity Volume 101, Issue 5, May 2010, Pages 353-361
34
Abstract: “The origin of a series of atmospheric radioxenon events detected at the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) International Monitoring System site in Melbourne, Australia, between November 2008 and February 2009 was investigated. Backward tracking analyses indicated that the events were consistent with releases associated with hot commission testing of the Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (ANSTO) radiopharmaceutical production facility in Sydney, Australia. Forward dispersion analyses were used to estimate release magnitudes and transport times. The estimated 133Xe release magnitude of the largest event (between 0.2 and 34 TBq over a 2 d window), was in close agreement with the stack emission releases estimated by the facility for this time period (between 0.5 and 2 TBq). Modelling of irradiation conditions and theoretical radioxenon emission rates were undertaken and provided further evidence that the Melbourne detections originated from this radiopharmaceutical production facility. These findings do not have public health implications. This is the first comprehensive study of atmospheric radioxenon measurements and releases in Australia.” End quotre. Contrary to the report by Barnaby Joyce that people who did not want nuclear power should shut up because such reactors do not emit pollution, the paper by Tinker et al quoted in part above proves Joyce to be incorrect.
Tickner et al provides maps based on modelling of emissions dispersion from the reactor’ stacks:
35
Source: Tinker et al.
Source: Tinker et al.
The view that nuclear reactors do not emit pollutants in the course of routine operations and procedures, such as refuelling, is incorrect. I do not suggest that the emissions from a single research reactor should cause any concern. However, various people have diverse views on what emissions are acceptable.
I expect various nuclear advocates will claim I am against nuclear medicine. This view is shown to be incorrect by the following proof:
I refer to the book available for free download at https://www.academia.edu/11176794/Medicine_and_the_Bomb_Deceptions_f rom_Trinity_to_Maralinga which is “Medicine and the Bomb: : Deceptions from Trinity to Maralinga”, by me. My research was assisted by both the daughter (in Belgium) and grand niece (in Texas) of Charles Pecher. (Charles Pecher was the originator of a soluble form of Sr89. He created it by use of the Lawrence cyclotron from 1939 on. He used this as a palliative care treatment in the case of metastatic bone cancer from prostate and breast
36 cancer. It’s modern form is called Metastron in oncology. ) My book is about the behaviour of nuclear authorities and governments. These people deliberately delayed the widespread use of Metastron for decades. The substance has great pain relieving effectiveness in end stage metastatic bone cancer. It was withheld from general medicine until 1993. (Slightly earlier in Canada.)
Dr. Pecher’s daughter, Evelyne, wrote ““Dear Paul, I read your book. It is fantastic. It is an extraordinary inquiry. I think your book is unique: that no comparable analysis has ever been done. It could become a classic, as you qualify the book of Brucer. We sometimes qualify as “bible” the reference books that contain a huge quantity of informations! So is your book!” – Evelyne Cerf-Pecher, daughter of Dr Charles Pecher. Evelyne is a qualified person. Carla is well known in higher education circles in Houston Texas. I am merely discussing reactor emissions. I am not attacking nuclear medicine.
Modern production methods include the use of accelerators in place of reactors. So Barnaby, what was it about the chemical safety datasheet which prevented the public release of Strontium 89 in its medical form which nuclear authorities were loathe to allow to be released to the public? It’s a fission fallout product produced at 4 times the quantity as Sr90. From 1942 to 1993. That amounts to a lot of needless suffering sir.
Nuclear authorities are aware of the technical anomaly involved in the regulation of radio strontium in medicine and in regard to total nuclear fuel cycle radio strontium emissions. Medical Regulations state that Sr89 may only be administered to people in strictly defined and enforced medical situations. The diagnosis must be confirmed, the need obvious, a benefit of pain relief firm and the patient be in an end stage palliative care situations. Medical staff who permitted Sr89 to be administered to a healthy person or persons would commit a grave crime and would be subject to penalty. Clearly, the laws which allow environmental releases of radio strontium from the whole fuel cycle are governed by industry regulations, not medical ones. But of course, this example is probably seen as only a technical anomaly, and not a real concern to industry or to the people of the world. It is only an anomaly which has existed since 1993. I refer the reader to the material data safety sheet for Strontium 89, trade name Metastron.
In response to a request for information I lodged at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission contact web page, on 26 January 2006, I received the following email from Mr. Scott Burnell of the US NRC:
“Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 11:51:06 -0500 From: “Scott Burnell” paullangley@<> Subject: Re: Response from “Contact the Web Site Staff
”Mr.Langley; The_NRC’s_Regulatory_Guide1.121 specifically addresses waste stream products; sampling of radionuclides, types of radionuclides to sample, how to characterize, reporting requirements, etc. Sr-89 is routinely looked for in NPP waste streams. Typically, the levels of Sr 89/90 are so low,
37 in many cases below the measuring device’s detection limit, that they are not seen in the waste stream at the plant. If they are not detectable at the plant in the waste stream, then they will not be seen in the environment.
“Radio nuclides can enter the environment either through gaseous releases or liquid releases. All releases are quantified and most are typically monitored.
“The NRC’s comments on the “Tooth Fairy” project can be found on the agency’s Web site: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact- sheets/rad-monitoring-and-tooth-fairy.html http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc- collections/fact-sheets/tooth-fairy.html Please let me know if you have any further questions. Thank you. Scott Burnell Public Affairs Officer Nuclear Regulatory Commission >>> NRCWEB 01/26/06 7:19 AM >>> Thank you for your inquiry. We have forwarded your question to the NRC Office of Public Affairs for response directly back to you. –NRC Web Staff end quote.
I also received a response from Mr Scott Burnell on 27 January 2006, as follows:
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 10:03:28 -0500 From: “Scott Burnell” paullangley@<> Subject: Re: Response from “Contact the Web Site Staff” Mr. Langley; I apologize for the technological snafu. I’ve attached an image file of the Regulatory Guide in TIFF format, I hope you can use that. I’ll be sending separate e-mails with PDF files of related Regulatory Guides. With regards to emissions from coal-fired plants, the NRC has no jurisdiction in that area. You would most likely have the best luck in contacting the Nuclear Energy Institute ( http://www.nei.org ) or the National Council on Radiation Protection ( http://www.ncrponline.org ) for more information. Thank you. Scott Burnell end quotes.
The US NRC therefore confirms the emission of fission products from US power reactors.
In order to confirm the NRC information given in the above emails, I referred to the US text available at :
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp159-c6.pdf
This is a link to chapter 6 of a document entitled “CIS 04-28 Toxicological Profile for Strontium”, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Division of Toxicology, Toxicology Information Branch, 1600 Clifton Road NE, E-29, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA, Apr. 2004.
38 The title of Chapter 6 of this document is “Potential for Human Exposure”.
This document contains the multi page “Table 6-1. Radiostrontium Releases from Nuclear Power Plants for 1993” I have reproduced the final page of the table below. It contains the total emissions of the US nuclear power reactors for 1993 for the strontium fission product isotopes:
Source: Toxicological Profile for Strontium, Chapter 6, US ATSDR, USA.
Of this data, which is only for the radio Strontium emissions from nuclear power plants in routine operation, the US ATDSR states: “The general population is exposed to very small amounts of radioactive strontium from the ingestion of contaminated water and food; inhalation exposure is negligible. The average concentration of 90Sr in drinking water in 1994 was estimated as 0.1 pCi/L; after 1994, estimates were based on gross beta activity and not reported by individual elements since the amounts were so small. Fresh vegetables contribute more than one third of the yearly dietary intake of 90Sr, followed by grains and dairy products. The current total daily exposure
39 levels to radioactive strontium are estimated to be approximately 5.2 pCi/day (0.16 Bq/day; 0.074 pCi/kg/day): 5 pCi/day from food and 0.2 pCi/day from drinking water.” Toxicological Profile for Strontium”, US U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, Public Health Service Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry April 2004, pdf page 38, text page 16, see above for web download address.
Note that this statement does not include other fission products and the other strontium isotopes which are fission products, and released, as measured, by the ATSDR. Radioactive forms of strontium do not occur naturally. They exist on earth only as the emissions from the fission process. Other sources account for all fission products emitted by nuclear power plants in the USA. I am confining myself to radio strontium here for simplicity and in order to explain a point simply.
The ATSDR document cited above gives the total annual release of Sr89 into the environment from US nuclear power reactors as being 207 mCuries. A milli Curie is a thousandth of a Curie. A Curie, briefly, is equal to the radioactivity of 1 gram of radium 226. This method gives a rough mental picture of the material and its radioactivity. (In reality the biological effects of alpha radiation and beta radiation are quite different as their energies are different and their ionising effectiveness is very different. The higher the ionising effectiveness, the shorter the range of the radiation. Etc etc.)
We can see that indeed the emissions of Sr89 from nuclear reactors in this example are very small. Very small in both mass and in radioactivity. Sr89 has a half life of about 52 days. It’s accretion rate in the biosphere is very slow, and would only occur if releases of the substance were made fairly continually at a given rate which was greater than its decay rate. This, as we shall come to see, forms a part of a concern which applies to the total emissions into the biosphere from the whole nuclear fuel cycle. And that concern is centred upon the contradictory but functional relationship between emission, dilution, concentration, capacity of sinks, “leeching” - remobilisation, transport via the food chain, accumulation in the top of the food chain, the biological half time and the equilibrium dose to which all people on earth are and will increasingly subject to.
Table 6-1 shows also that in 1993 a total of 404 mCuries of all strontium fission isotopes combined were emitted. A bit less than half a gram of radium equivalent. (confining ourselves to curie units which are NOT a measurement of dose, but a measurement of activity. The curie unit is simple to use as an aid to physical weight and radioactivity. Everyone knows what a gram is. Most people know Radium 226 is radioactive.) The amount of Stronium 89 needed to produce the same radioactivity as one gram of radium is a very small amount. But the amount of Sr89 emitted by a nuclear reactor per annum is measured in thousandths of a Curie, in the milli-curie range. It really is not much in my opinion. There is an incompatibility in the technical sense between the medical control of the medical form of radio strontium and the ease with which nuclear industry is allowed to release the substance according to it’s needs. It is an ethical dilemma that seems to be way beyond
40 the moral basis of the industry to cope with. Unsurprisingly. It needs to run at a profit after all. Arrest the errant doctor, allow the reactors to keep venting the same amount a doctor might spill by accident.
It is possible to simply graph the accretion minus decay of Strontium 90 in the US biosphere. The substance will be accreting in the US biosphere. I have no idea how many reactor hours will be needed to reach the same upper limit on Strontium 90 in the biosphere that US nuclear authorities imposed in 1953. (Which was 25,000 megatons of bomb yield). In order to determine the safe upper limit of contamination. But this was motivated by needs stemming from nuclear weapons testing. Source: “Thirty-sixth Meeting of the General Advisory Committee to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission”, August 17, 18, 19, 1953, Washington D.C., redacted version only. (And only industry insiders such as Dr Goldman etc are allowed to mention fission products in the context of both bombs and reactors and the whole fuel cycle. So I expect experts in the Australian parliament will leap on this with gusto. )
The report of this meeting included a discussion in which it was pointed out that those closest to the source of the emissions would be exposed to higher levels of Strontium 90. And that even if the global limit of Strontium 90 contamination was not reached, the safety those people closest in to repeated strontium 90 deposition would still be at much higher risk. I am citing this source because this committee was comprised of high ranking and apparently sensible and informed personnel with the best interests of the world at heart.
They worked for the same organisation that was responsible for both the regulation of nuclear power and for the testing of nuclear weapons. The US Atomic Energy Commission. The nuclear elite can do and say what they like apparently. When a lay person presents information issued by nuclear authorities, such as the 1953 text above, we are accused of “conflating” bombs and reactors. AEC Chairman Seaborg was clearly guilty of the same “offence”. He and his subordinate authorities were in charge of both activities. So just wear the reality Barnaby.
In the United Kingdom, nuclear authorities continued the examination of the presence of fission and nuclear fuel products in human tissues until the early 1990s. This research was done in secret. Even after the UK government had apologised to the British people for the body stealing of Project Sunshine. I submit the following document, found in the British National Archives:
41 “Prime Minister’s files (PREM) – 1986 Environmental affairs Report on leak at Windscale: policy towards Sellafield; environmental pollution; report on incidence of cancer in west Cumbria; report of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment; part 1” British National Archives at https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a bout/news/newly-released-files-1985-1986/prime-ministers-files-prem-1986/ which “Catalogue reference: PREM 19/1741 Date range: 28 July 1980 – 22 July 1986 Patrick Jenkin suggests a ‘Sellafield dimension’ to Government policies where financial compensation would be given to areas near nuclear plants, such as the Workington Enterprise Zone. This is rejected by David Pascall of the Policy Unit (1 June 1984). The Black Report published in July 1984 causes concern as it looks at leukaemia among young people in Seascale, near Sellafield (17 July 1984). Correspondence between Thatcher and the Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald in March 1986 demonstrates Irish concerns over the safety of Sellafield. Advisor Michael Addison describes the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) report as having come at ‘an unfortunate time, after Chernobyl.’” End quote. Source as above. UK government. Nothing to do with bombs. Purely civil nuclear industry. Nuclear industry pollution. However, British nuclear weapons experts were involved in these and related considerations. (Aldermaston).
As recently as the late 1990s, British Nuclear Fuels Limited (now bankrupt) stole body parts from deceased nuclear workers, deceased school children and deceased British nuclear veterans in order to check for the presence of plutonium from fuel processing at Sellafield in England. (See the British Government’s Parliamentary report The Redfern Report” here : https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/229155/0571_i.pdf )
““The Redfern Inquiry into human tissue analysis in UK nuclear facilities - Volume 2: Summary” . states: “Between 1955 and 1992 organs were removed at post mortem examinations of nuclear workers and subjected to radiochemical analysis at various nuclear laboratory facilities. Individual chapters examine: British Nuclear Fuels Ltd: the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority; the trade unions and the compensation scheme; the National Radiological Protection Board; the Atomic Weapons Establishment; registries; strontium and the Medical Research Council; West Cumberland Hospital; the families.
“Evidence and assistance was received from all these stakeholders to discover the extent of the practice of organ removal. The Inquiry directed particular attention towards coronial and pathology practice, the number of deceased persons involved, the extent of organ removal and what was done
42 with those organs that had been removed, the uses to which the resulting data were put, issues of knowledge and consent and the role of management.
“The Inquiry concludes that, in many cases, the families had been wronged. Organs were removed at post mortem and provided for analysis despite being of no possible relevance to the cause of death. The results of radiochemical analysis were seldom taken into account when the death was certified: they were important not for the coronial investigation but primarily for research. The blame lies mainly at the door of the pathologists who performed the post mortems. They were ignorant of the law and had not satisfied themselves that the relatives’ consent had been obtained. In coronial cases, proper supervision would have prevented the abuse.” End quote. Source as above.
As a result of the Redfern Inquiry findings, British law was changed to enforce, once again, ethical and legal behaviour upon the British nuclear industry. Such things are common in nuclear history and the British industry still reels from the public discovery of its behaviour and from the response from a government which was revealed to stand naked before the British people. The industry acclaimed total knowledge was in reality so poor that that is what they did. Yet:
I refer the Committee to “Movement of fallout radionuclides through the biosphere and man.” Comar C.L. Annu Rev Nucl Sci. 1965;15:175-206.
I refer the Committee to the paper “Variations in the concentration of plutonium, strontium-90 and total alpha-emitters in human teeth collected within the British Isles”, O’Donnell, et. al., Science of The Total Environment Volume 201, Issue 3, 18 August 1997, Pages 235-243.” This paper finds that the concentration of plutonium from Sellafield is widely detected in the teeth of British School Children. It also finds that the closer a person lives to the Sellafield nuclear facilities, the higher the concentration the plutonium is found to be. The paper also finds that the amount of plutonium in any of the people’s teeth is perfectly safe. The abstract of this paper states: “Concentrations of plutonium-239, plutonium-240, strontium- 90 and total α-emitters have been measured in children's teeth collected throughout Great Britain and Ireland. The concentrations of plutonium and strontium-90 were measured in batched samples, each containing approximately 50 teeth, using low-background radiochemical methods.
“The concentrations of total α-emitters were determined in single teeth using α-sensitive plastic track detectors. The results showed that the average concentrations of total α-emitters and strontium-90 were approximately one to three orders of magnitude greater than the equivalent concentrations of plutonium-239, 240. Regression analyses indicated that the concentrations of plutonium, but not strontium-90 or total α-emitters, decreased with increasing distance from the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant — suggesting that this plant is a source of plutonium contamination in the wider population of the British Isles. Nevertheless, the measured absolute concentrations of plutonium (mean = 5 ± 4 mBq kg−1 ash wt.) were so low that they are
43 considered to present an insignificant radiological hazard.” End quote. Source as given above. I wonder what the average British and Scottish and Irish Mum and Dad think about these statements.
Nuclear power provides 11% of the world’s electricity. 55 nuclear power plants are under construction, and 440 more planned. (Constable, 2019). There are 450 nuclear power plants currently operating. On those figures, the contribution of nuclear power plants will about double to 22% of global energy production within the relatively near future.
This section is related to emissions from nuclear reactors. However, reactors are only a minor part of the atmospheric emissions of radioactive substances contributed to the biosphere by the nuclear fuel cycle. The reprocessing of nuclear fuel is, by far, the largest contributor of these substances to the biosphere. Nuclear reactors are a minor segment of the nuclear fuel cycle in terms of emissions. The more nuclear power plants there are, the more radiological emissions from the whole fuel cycle there will be. If Australia commissions nuclear power plants, it is hardly going to import it’s fuel rods. It will make it’s own and will reprocess it’s own. Eyre Peninsular or somewhere like it may become Sellafield Mark 2.
Number of NPPs both under construction and planed: 495 (Constable, 2019) Number of NPPs currently operating world wide: 450 (World Nucler Organisation at https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and- future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx )
This totals 945 nuclear power plants to be in operation within 1 or 2 decades.
If one were to project the 1993 US nuclear power reactor emissions data onto that 945 global NPP population, then the physical image in the mind’s eye of the weight of the total strontium emissions would still be very small when imposed upon the whole earth. The degree of risk nuclear industry considers acceptable to impose is hard for a lay person to argue with. And nuclear industry demonstrably has a history of form in it’s treatment of dissenters, whether from within its rank or the general population. The European experience is a prime example of what happens and the venom which is unleashed by industry advocates when evidence contrary to industry imposed conventions is presented.
The paper “Leukemia in the Proximity of a German Boiling-water Nuclear Reactor: Evidence of Population Exposure by Chromosome Studies and Environmental Radioactivity” by Schmitz-Feuerhake, Et. al., , Department of Physics, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, was published in Environmental Health Perspectives - Vol 105, Supplement 6 * December 1997.
The abstract of this paper states: “Exceptional elevation of children's leukemia appearing 5 years after the 1983 startup of the Krimmel nuclear power plant, accompanied by a significant increase of adult leukemia cases, led to investigations of radiation exposures of the population living near the plant.
44 The rate of dicentric chromosomes in peripheral blood lymphocytes of seven parents of children with leukemia and in 14 other inhabitants near the plant was significantly elevated and indicated ongoing exposures over the years of its operation. These findings led to the hypothesis that chronic reactor leakages had occurred. This assumption is supported by identification of artificial radioactivity in air, rainwater, soil, and vegetation by the environmental monitoring program at the nuclear power plant. Calculations of the corresponding source terms show that emissions must have been well above authorized annual limits. Bone marrow doses supposedly result primarily through incorporation of bone-seeking ,- and a-emitters. Environ Health Perspect 105(Suppl 6):1499-1 504(1997)” end quote, Source as given above.
Such reports from qualified authors have, over the period of many years, provided a scientific base for the nuclear debate. Such debate is valid. I have shown above that the official strontium emissions figures from US authorities show very low rates of radionuclide emissions from US power plants. Yet something is wrong.
The German health studies which found cancer clusters around the specific German reactor. These studies have, since they were published, produced responses of extreme doubt (often expressed in very unprofessional terms by the industry) from the nuclear industry, intense interest and concern in the German and world public. Who is correct? The researchers who report the findings or the nuclear industry which, on the whole, denies that normal Nuclear Power Plant emissions cause any health issues at all? What does the Committee think? On what basis do you think?
What if Schmitz-Feuerhake et. al. are correct? What if the evidence is valid, and that the findings demand more research at the very least?
The Sellafield disease controversy, at least in the mass media, substantially commenced here: https://youtu.be/UQmFeAGCpC0 Video: First Tuesday 01 November 1983. Windscale: The Nuclear Laundry. This looks at the finding of Childhood cancer excesses in a village called Seascale. 1 Mile from the Sellafield Reprocessing facility.
In the consideration of the disease events in the vicinity of the Windscale/Sellafield nuclear facilities the following texts are useful: “Sellafield and Other Clusters of Childhood Cancers in the Vicinity of Nuclear Installations”, Kendall et.al., Radiation Environmental Medicine, 2016, Vol 5, No1. At http://crss.hirosaki-u.ac.jp/wp- content/files_mf/1466605925rem_vol.5no.16_gerald_kendall.pdf?fbclid=IwAR 3DH4Yir22X6xjBcz48zCKE3Zs4KWhHdRWURe2C19kcEwoGxy-axW2Gb-Q
BBC on this day 23 July 1984, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/23/newsid_4521000/4521 673.stm
45 “Investigation of the possible increased incidence of cancer in West Cumbria”. Black, D. 1984. OHMS. at https://pdf.library.soton.ac.uk/BOPCRIS/22690/pdf/22690_1.pdf (part 1) and https://pdf.library.soton.ac.uk/BOPCRIS/22690/pdf/22690_2.pdf (part 2)
When all this information, from Germany, Great Britain and the United States is taken into account, we have a severe problem. In all senses the official record shows very small “amounts”, in all senses (physical weight, activity), being emitted by US nuclear reactors. But we have evidence of disease clusters in Germany and Great Britain. The Sellafield clusters persisted for many years. Though nuclear authorities in England consider, I think, that the clusters have ended. I am not sure that everyone in Great Britain agrees with the authorities on that. Such was the concern of the Thatcher government, compensation payments were considered. Sadly the Chernobyl disaster was considered a complicating coincidence by that British government and the matter did not proceed. Not a good look for the industry at the time I suppose.
Dr Ian Fairlie holds a degree in radiation biology from Bart’s Hospital in London and his doctoral studies at Imperial College in London and (briefly) Princeton University in the US concerned the radiological hazards of nuclear fuel reprocessing. (https://www.ianfairlie.org/about-ian-fairlie/) Fairlie is an independent consultant. His current primary interest lies in radiation doses and risks arising from the radioactive releases at nuclear facilities. His research appears to displease at least some sections of nuclear industry. As such Dr. Fairlie may be expected to be labelled as controversial by nuclear industry. Is the matter actually centred around an evidenced based theory the industry, for some reason or another, has no interest in? In my view, probably.
I refer to Dr. Fairlie’s paper “Radioactive spikes from nuclear plants - a likely cause of childhood leukemia” Dr. Ian Fairlie 29 September 2014. This available at https://theecologist.org/2014/sep/29/radioactive-spikes- nuclear-plants-likely-cause-childhood-leukemia In the absence of any sensible industry response, I consider it here. It refers to the emissions of large multi mega watt nuclear reactors. The opening paragraph of the piece states:
” When nuclear reactors are refuelled, a 12-hour spike in radioactive emissions exposes local people to levels of radioactivity up to 500 times greater than during normal operation, writes Ian Fairlie. The spikes may explain infant leukemia increases near nuclear plants - but operators provide no warnings and take no measures to reduce exposures.” Dr. Fairlie continues :” Operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) contain large volumes of radioactive gases at high pressures and temperatures. When their reactors are depressurised and opened to refuel every 12-18 months, these gases escape creating a spiked emission and a large radioactive plume downwind of the station lasting for 12 hours or so.
46 “However the emissions and plumes are invisible, and no advance warning is ever given of these spikes. The public is effectively kept in the dark about them, despite their possible health dangers.
“For years, I had tried to obtain data on these spikes, but ever since the start of the nuclear era back in 1956, governments and nuclear power operators have been extremely loath to divulge this data.
“Only annual emissions are made public and these effectively disguise the spikes. No data is ever given on daily or hourly emissions. Is this important? Yes: these spikes could help answer a question which has puzzled the public and radiation protection agencies for decades - the reason for the large increases in childhood leukemias near NPPs all over the world. Governments have insisted that these increased leukemias could not be caused by radioactive emissions from NPPs as their estimated radiation doses were ~1,000 times too low. But these don't take the time patterns of radioactive emissions into account, and so are riddled with uncertainties.” End quote, Source as given above.
Australia’s research reactor at Lucas Heights in fact has a published schedule for refuelling (ie operating cycle time table) which is available over the internet. The link for it is here: https://www.ansto.gov.au/research/facilities/opal-multi-purpose-reactor/opal- operating-cycles Being a radio isotope production reactor, the fuel rods are changed at this reactor far more frequently than in a nuclear power plant. These gaseous emissions are of minute amounts.
A typical Western nuclear power reactor contains a very large mass of nuclear fuel rods. The Opal reactor at Lucas Heights contains three fuel rods. That the emissions of the Opal reactor are measureable sometimes says more about the sensitivity of the detecting equipment than it does about risk.
ANSTO states on the linked page that “OPAL typically operates in cycles of 30 to 35 days, followed by a short refuelling outage to remove three spent fuel assemblies and replace them with new fuel assemblies. During these types of outages, the OPAL team also performs maintenance and undertakes a series of inspections and surveillances. These refuelling outages typically last around four to six days.” (ANSTO, as above.) . We can read the measured ionising radiation detected levels around the Lucas Heights reactor here: https://www.ansto.gov.au/environmental- monitoring/radiation-monitoring
The important point is that the data needed by Dr. Fairlie is available for our research reactor. If nuclear power does come to Australia, the Australian practice of publishing the refuelling timetable must of course continue and apply to any Australian nuclear power reactor. Even as the average Australian family slowly goes broke paying for the nuclear grid and the nuclear full fuel cycle.
47 Dr. Fairlie and others seem to have a point which might be valid and which should be investigated. The only thing missing apparently is adequate information of the type Fairlie specified. This investigation should be carried out prior to any consideration of nuclear power being established in Australia.
I wonder why it is so hard for world nuclear industry to comply with Dr. Fairlie’s request. After all, nuclear industry is not the banking industry. Honest Johns all. They say.
As an aid in the consideration of reactor emissions and their relation, if any, to disease clusters associated with the sites of those emissions, I quote the following passage from a scientific paper:
“According to the (US) Code of Federal Regulations, releases of radioactive effluents from operating nuclear power plants are permitted so long as doses to individuals in unrestricted areas do not exceed 0.02 mSv in any hour and 0.5 mSv in a year (Code of Federal Regulations 10 CFR 20)….
“Consider therefore a batch release consisting solely of the radioactive noble gas krypton-85, a beta-emitter with Q = 687 keV. At a highly dilute but constant ambient concentration of 1 µCi per liter, an individual exposed to this release will receive a whole-body gamma dose of approximately 0.02 mSv in one hour (Soldat et al. 1973). Using a value of λ = 0.046 ml g-1 for the blood- gas partition coefficient (Turkin and Moskalev 1973), the activity of krypton-85 in the bloodstream of that person would be c = 1.7 Bq ml-1….
“Monte Carlo analysis reveals an interaction volume for krypton-85 of approximately 3.2 mm3; the expected value of the beta particle energy is Eo = 296 keV (Stabin and da Luz 2002). Applying Eqn. (6), one therefore finds that the individual immersed in the batch release receives a shot noise reference dose of 50 mSv. If the results presented in this report do indeed correctly describe the biological action of internally-incorporated beta-emitting radionuclides, then one can only conclude that the regulation 10 CFR 20 fails (by several orders of magnitude) to meet the protective standard it intends. “ end quote. Source: “Shot Noise Explains the Petkau 22 Na + Result for Rupture of a Model Phospholipid Membrane”, Datesman, Aaron M., pp. 14, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD USA. University of Virginia Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Charlottesville, VA USA. Pub: Health Phys. 2019 May 21, Abstract available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31211753
In discussions I have had with Dr. Datesman, over a period of some time, I have learned that the conventional calculation of risk from exposures may well result in an unrealistic and optimistic result. Dr. Datesman shows that the observation of absorption of energy in a specific case results in a proof of far greater dose effectiveness than conventionally thought.
Datesman accounts for observations made over very many years regarding chemical effects of ionising radiation. Peter Alexander provides an early and
48 easily understood account of these process in his work “Atomic Radiation and Life”, Pelican Books, 1965. (the relevant topic, in my opinion, being “the chemical effect”).
That leading research, published for the first time in 2019 (Datesman) continues to observe and explain new findings regarding the nature of ionising radiation and its interaction with matter and life systems, from the level of the atom to the level of the cell, the organ, the system and the organism should not be surprising to anyone.
The only people surprised by it seem to be nuclear industry itself and its sales staff.
Science did not stop with the invention of nuclear fission. Fission in itself is a dated idea. Nuclear power plants rely on ideas first manifest in the field of boiler making and welding. The knowledge of James Watt is relied on by the industry. Hardly new technology.
In the Bombastic yet uncertain world of nuclear energy, it could well be that those who admit their uncertainty are the most scientific, with the rest being mere sales staff.
49 9. Emissions from Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
Source of Table 9 : Radiological Impacts of Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Options: A Comparative Study. Nuclear Energy Agency Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development
1. Gaseous Emissions
Kr85 is emitted into the atmosphere in a known proportion to other fission product emissions. Kr85 is easy to detect and monitor and can be used to calculate total emissions in the low level radioactive waste stream discharges from spent fuel reprocessing. These emissions are acknowledged by nuclear authorities.
Kr 85 monitoring allows the detection of illicit nuclear reprocessing.
50
The constant upward trend in global Kr 85 concentrations is directly related to the amount of nuclear fuel reprocessed.
Many emission substances are similarly markers for the global use of fossil fuels, such as benzene and CO2 .
The growing trend in Kr85 atmospheric concentration is confirmed by A. T. Korsakov, E. G. Tertyshnik. These scientists advise the Russian government to recommence the monitoring of Kr85 in Russia:
“Measurement results are presented on 85Kr content in the atmosphere over the European part of Russia in 1971-1995 based on the analysis of the commercial krypton, which is separated from air by industrial plants. Our results are by 15 per cent lower then 85Kr activities observed over West Europe. According our prediction by 2030 85Kr content in the atmosphere over Europe will amount to 1,5-3 Bq in m3 air. Average 85Kr release to the atmosphere from regeneration of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is estimated, some 180 TBq per a ton SNF. It is advisable to recommence monitoring of 85Kr content within Russia.” End quote. A. T. Korsakov, E. G. Tertyshnik, “Krypton-85 in the atmosphere”, arXiv:1307.2804v1 [physics.ao-ph], 2013.
“Current atmospheric 85Kr inventory is mainly attributable to nuclear fuel reprocessing activities. It has long been the most abundant man-made radioactive isotope in the troposphere1. The content of 85Kr in the entire atmosphere continuously increased and reached 5.5 × 1015 Bq at the end of 20092. A measurable disturbance of atmospheric electric properties due to 85Kr has been examined3. The global exchange time of 85Kr, mainly transport from the northern mid-latitudes to the southern hemisphere, was estimated to be 1.1 year4. As a noble gas isotope and with a half-life of 10.76 y, 85Kr resides and mixes thoroughly in the atmosphere, reaching an isotopic abundance of ~10−11.” End quote. Source: “Analysis of 85Kr: a comparison at the 10-14level using micro-liter samples” G. -M. Yang, C. -F. Cheng, W. Jiang, Z. -T. Lu, R. Purtschert, Y.R. Sun, L. Y. Tu & S. -M. Hu Scientific Reports volume3, Article number: 1596 (2013). Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
“Krypton-85 atmospheric contamination produced by the nuclear industry has been investigated on the basis of regular measurements. 85Kr concentrations observed in ground-level air of Prague between 1983 and 1993 are presented and their time-related changes analyzed. The long-term trend of 85Kr activity increased steadily over the monitored period with the growth rate of 38 mBq.m-3 (STP)/yr and reached about 1.2 Bq.m-3 (STP) in 1992. Short-term variations of the baseline level with the average amplitude of 12% show a seasonal periodicity. Occasionally detected extreme values of up to 2.5 Bq.m-3 (STP) indicate undispersed emissions from distant nuclear fuel reprocessing plants.” End Quote. Source: Wilhelmová L, Tomásek M, Stukheil K., “The measurement of low concentrations of Kr-85 in atmospheric air samples.”, Biol Trace Elem Res. 1994 Fall;43-45:725-30.
51
Source of Table 1 above: “Detecting clandestine plutonium separation activities with krypton-85”, Michael Schoeppner, Alexander Glaser and Mark E. Walker, INMM 56th Annual Meeting, July 12-16, 2015, Princeton University, Program on Science and Global Security.
Source of Figure 1 above: Schoeppner, et .al., 2015 as above.
52
, Source of Figure 2 above : Schoeppner et. al., 20015, above. Note the relative cleanliness of the Southern Hemisphere and Australia. Compare with Russian predictions for the future concentration of Kr85 and therefore other radionuclide emissions from all phases of the nuclear cycle. The map above is a contrast map showing relative concentrations. These concentrations are very easy to detect and are very low. However, as nuclear industry expands, the emissions will increase.
53 Source of Kr85 graphs above: IAEA Bulletin Vol.38, No.2, 1996, Vienna Austria. See also : Boeck, 1976.
“In reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel, current practice is to release to the environment virtually all the krypton-85, carbon-14 and tritium and a fraction of the iodine-129 which are formed as fission products in the fuel. As nuclear power programmes expand, the global inventory of these long-lived nuclides will increase. It has been estimated that the amounts of the three nuchdes, krypton-85, tritium and iodme-129 that arise annually will be 500 X 106 , 75 X 106 and 6000 Ci respectively, by the year 2000 and that, if released, their cumulative levels by that year would be 5500 X 106 , 400 X 106 and 40 000 Ci respectively. In this context, the release of long-lived gaseous radionuclides may constitiue significant long term sources of radioactivity. The principal source of krypton-85 and iodine-129 emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle is the fuel reprocessing plant. Carbon-14 and tritium may be emitted in appreciable amounts from both reactors and reprocessing plants.” End quote. Source: Y.V. Zabaluev, “Management of Radionuclides from Reprocessing Plant Gaseous Effluents”, page 1. IAEA BULLETIN-VOL 21, NO 1. Mr Zabaluev , Waste Management Section, Division of Nuclear Safety and Environmental Protection, IAEA 1976.
What is the current state of play regarding gaseous releases from nuclear fuel reprocessing? Are radioactive gases from the activity accumulating in the atmosphere? What is the result of the permanent and possibly increasing amounts of radio active gases in the atmosphere?
None of these questions have been posed or answered by influence leaders in the 2019 Australian nuclear debate. To the contrary one Federal politician entered the debate by informing the public that “ those who want zero emissions but no nuclear option should “shut up.” Source: Richard Ferguson, reporter, “The Australian” newspaper, front page, 11 July 2019. Mr. Joyce’s statement is contradicted by IAEA scientific and technical papers published over many years. These emissions have been of long standing world and industry concern. Of course, Mr. Joyce has proven the depth of his knowledge regarding agriculture over the years in which he was the Minister for this. His manner of stimulating public debate certainly works. However, the idea of a politician telling Australians to shut up, actually suggests perhaps that Mr. Joyce might prefer the way things work in North Korea. Nuclear power and agriculture have been a controversial mix in recent years. In North Korea, subsistence farming families go hungry, as they till contaminated land in the shadow of the arcs traced in the sky by despotic missiles. Lovely image there Barnaby.
About 93% of the carbon 14 released by nuclear fuel reprocessing rapidly converts to a radioactive form of carbon monoxide. This more slowly converts to a radioactive form of CO2. (Source: Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14. )
The gaseous emissions from nuclear fuel reprocessing, and to much lesser extent, routine reactor operation, have remained a long standing issue both at
54 the level of IAEA (as demonstrated by the 1976 IAEA paper cited above) and at the national level in the USA. The US Department of Energy began researching the atmospheric effects of projected Kr 85 in the 1970s The earliest such document I have been able to find in it’s complete form is “Environmental Consequences of Atmospheric Krypton-85, Final Report for Period January 1 1977 - September 1979”, W.L. Boeck, Niagara University, New York, USA. The report was prepared for the U. S. Energy Research and Development Administration Under Contract No. EE-77-S-02- 4364.
The Abstract of the report states in part that : “Krypton-85 is a radioactive inert gas produced during normal operations of the nuclear fuel cycle. The quantities of krypton-85, that will be produced in the next century, are sufficient, if released, to alter the electrical state of the atmosphere. The principal hypothesis is that an anthropogenic-- alteration of the electrical state of the atmosphere could alter other meterological phenomena and lead to significant environmental impacts. “ end quote. Source as cited above.
Although this topic is little known by the general public, research into Kr85 is not, for the scientists involved, a strange and esoteric activity. Boeck’s 1970s report contains references to and citations for a number of papers written in multiple nations on the same subject by qualified researchers. The hysteria unleashed by industry advocates against any mention of the work of Boeck is very revealing about the industry. As usual, the responses from the nuclear cultural entity shows that it’s responses are determined by it’s apparent to maintain the edifice of public relations information in the face of the advance of modern science and the consequential advance of awareness in modern democratic societies, which by and large, tend to live in the real world. There is an American saying. “We are all Downwinders”. And this is true. The populations of the world are no longer as remote as we were in previous eras. And that is a problem for nuclear institutions. Such as the IAEA – given its twin missions of both framing nuclear regulations and its role in promoting nuclear power. The tension between the two is insufferable.
In addition to the stated specific effects Kr-85 might invoke in regard to environmental impacts of a singular nature, Krypton is a minor greenhouse gas.
Accepting nuclear power into Australia is to accept the whole nuclear fuel cycle into Australia. The gaseous emissions which have accumulated rapidly as a result of French and to a lesser extent, British nuclear fuel reprocessing have released a large amount of Kr-85 and other radioactive fission gases into the atmosphere. This is shown by the following chart:
Environmental Atmospheric Krypton 85 released by nuclear industry in the Northern Hemisphere :
55
Source: “Simulations of atmospheric krypton-85 to assess the detectability of clandestine nuclear reprocessing” Ross,O. Ahlswede, J., Annewandter, R., Rast, S. , Schlünzen, K.H, Kalinowski, M. B. Centre for Science and Peace Research, University of Hamburg, Meteorological Institute, University of Hamburg, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, IAEA-CN-184/034 available at http://www.iaea.org/safeguards/symposium/2010/Documents/PapersReposito ry/034.pdf
The downturn in the emission rate and atmospheric concentration of Kr85 seen in the mid period of the first decade of the 21st century is apparently related to the variation in the quantities of fuel being reprocessed. Sellafield ceased reprocessing nuclear fuel in 2012 due to a lack of demand for it’s services. It will be used to store high level nuclear waste until the 2070s. Source: Reprocessing ceases at UK's Thorp plant 14 November 2018, World Nuclear News at http://world-nuclear- news.org/Articles/Reprocessing-ceases-at-UKs-Thorp-plant
The question as to whether Australia should operate a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility is one that will obviously need to be considered by the public. The experience of the United States seems relevant. At the current time the USA does not reprocess its spent nuclear fuel. It has some experience in the operation dating from prior to 1977, and this was in relation to production of bomb fuel. Due to a 2005 policy change, reprocessing again became possible in the USA. Establishing a major nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in the USA is estimated to cost $25 billion US. Whether the USA will recommence nuclear fuel reprocessing for use in power reactors is unknown. Given concerns about environmental releases in the USA, at the current time it is probably unlikely USA will resume reprocessing spent fuel.
Liquid Wastes.
During the years of the operation of the Sellafield site in England, nuclear authorities claimed the place as a jewel in the crown of British science and
56 technology. Over the years critics have particularly voiced their concerns about the liquid discharges from the place into the Irish Sea.
Nuclear industry worldwide relies upon the “dilution” of low level nuclear waste, particularly of liquid waste. Conventional practice relies upon knowledge of the dispersion patterns of liquid nuclear waste in systems such as sewage and environment. This long standing practice is discussed in the paper “METHOD TO DETERMINE THE RELEASE DILUTION FACTOR FOR LIQUID RADIOACTIVE EFFLUENT”, Nisti, M.l., et. al, 2009 International Nuclear Atlantic Conference - INAC 2009 Rio de Janeiro,RJ, Brazil, September27 to October 2, 2009 ASSOCIAÇÃO BRASILEIRA DE ENERGIA NUCLEAR - ABEN ISBN: 978-85-99141-03-8. This paper cites examples from the Brazilian nuclear industry. The practices followed are global norms. It is the long standing view of the nuclear industry that dilution works to produce levels of nuclear waste exposure doses of no consequence to any species on earth, with a particular focus on human beings.
However dilution as a concept sits uneasily with information, known for years, that fission products and fuels which act as biochemical analogues for actual nutrient elements (strontium analogue - calcium (Pecher, Hamilton, 1939, 1942), Cesium - potassium (Hamilton, 1942), Plutonium - Iron (Sagcoff, Argonne National Laboratory, 2011) and so on) and which therefore become biochemically bound in tissues with various biological half lives (resident time in tissue prior to excretion).
As a result of the these facts, nuclear emissions, while capable of being diluted in the environment on the one hand, tend to accumulate in the food chain due to bio accumulation in tissue on the other. (Comar,1965).
ARPANSA publications, including those authored by Wise and Moroney et. al., describe also a process called leeching, which tends on the one hand to account for the movement through the physical world by various processes, including drainage, erosion and so on. Emissions move via dilution away from source, tend to concentrate in numerous sinks, and from there to move again and so on. So there are processes that tend to disperse and dilute nuclear pollution and processes which tend to concentrate such substances.
For example if nuclear fallout deposits on the roof of a house due to rain out (wet deposition), it is rational to think that the fallout, dispersed and diluted from its point of origin by wind, would tend to concentrate in any rain water tank connected to that roof. Further, nuclear pollutants would concentrate in gutter outlets and at the ends of down pipes where those terminated in backyards. Many people allow such an arrangement in this dry land in order to water lawns and gardens and vegetable plots. I cannot see any nuclear authority monitoring such known places of nuclear deposition accretion in every dwelling site in the land. That would be an expensive undertaking. There are numerous scientific papers that discuss the issue. I list some below:
57 1. “Sellafield waste radionuclides in Irish sea intertidal and salt marsh sediments”, MacKenzie, A.B. & Scott, R.D. Environ Geochem Health (1993) 15: 173. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02627835 Received03 November 1992 Accepted01 February 1993 DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1007/BF02627835 Publisher NameKluwer Academic PublishersPrint ISSN0269-4042 Online ISSN1573-2983 at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02627835
“Data on temporal and spatial trends in radionuclide concentrations and activity ratios are collated from a number of sources to show that the dominant mechanism of radionuclide supply to intertidal areas is by redistribution of the contaminated marine sediment. The implications of this mechanism of supply for trends in critical group radiation exposure are considered.” End quote from abstract.
2. “Ecosystem uptake and transfer of Sellafield-derived radiocarbon (14C). Part 1. The Irish Sea.”, G.K.P. Muir et. al., Marine Pollution Bulletin Volume 114, Issue 2, 30 January 2017, Pages 792-804, at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X16308876 This paper states that:
“Ecosystem 14C uptake and transfer processes examined for the Irish Sea. All biotic components of east basin ecosystem near to Sellafield enriched in 14C. Significant 14C enrichment observed in some western Irish Sea benthic organisms. Organic sediments near Sellafield less enriched in 14C than associated benthic species. Feeding ecology and carbon integration period key in organism 14C uptake. …. Highly variable activities in sediment, seawater and biota indicate complex 14C dispersal and uptake dynamics. All east basin biota exhibited 14C enrichments above ambient background while most west basin biota had 14C activities close to background, although four organisms including two slow-moving species were significantly enriched. The western Irish Sea gyre is a suggested pathway for transfer of 14C to the west basin and retention therein. “ end quote. End quote from abstract.
3. “Evidence for the Remobilization of Sellafield Waste Radionuclides in an Intertidal Salt Marsh, West Cumbria, U.K.” K. Morris, et. al., Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science Volume 51, Issue 5, November 2000, Pages 613-625
“In this paper, the behaviour of99Tc,137Cs,237Np,238Pu,239Pu,240Pu,239+240Pu and241Am in an intertidal marsh sediment is described. The radionuclide data, together with stable element data, allow detailed interpretation of the behaviour of these artificial radionuclides in a natural environment. …
“There is strong evidence that significant post-depositional remobilization of a proportion of the most labile elements,237Np,137Cs and99Tc, is occurring at the marsh.” End quote.
58
4. “Distribution of caesium-137 in British coastal waters”, D.FJefferiesAPrestonA.KSteele, Marine Pollution Bulletin Volume 4, Issue 8, August 1973, Pages 118-122
“The safe discharge of wastes into the sea depends upon achieving adequate dilution of the effluent, otherwise inshore biological reserves may be damaged. Water in the north-east Irish Sea can be identified because of its content of radioactive caesium emanating from the Windscale nuclear fuel processing plant. A survey shows how closely this water hugs the coasts as it travels across the Irish Sea and along the west and north coasts of Scotland. Inshore waters receive almost all our effluents and this report suggests that the dilution capacity of the sea may be far less than is supposed.” End quote.
Reports such as the above relating to the discharge of reactor, spent fuel pool, and fuel reprocessing waste by pipeline from the Sellafied nuclear facilities are very numerous.
Australia might proceed with nuclear power production that includes all segments of the nuclear fuel cycle. Prior to such a decision being made, government needs to plainly and publically identify the areas in which it will use for the disposal of liquid nuclear waste. Spencer Gulf?
I note that the Sellafield nuclear sites are now bankrupt. I note the immensity of the clean up task at Sellafield. I submit to government that the costs and uncertainties shown by a cursory look at Sellafield reveal lingering doubts and dangers.
The radionuclides of most concern are those of radio-biological significance. Given the time allowed by government for the writing of this submission (about a month), it is impossible to compile all the relevant research, cite it and discuss it within the allowed time frame. The identification of the fission products and the understanding of the metabolism of these by mammals and other life forms first proceeded from the 1940s. For example: “Progress Report on Metabolism of Fission Products for Period Ending October 15, 1943”, Corporate Author : TECHNICAL INFORMATION SERVICE (AEC) OAK RIDGE TN Personal Author(s) : Overstreet, Roy ; Jacobson, Louis ; Fisher, Harvey ; Scott, Kenneth ; Axelrod, Dorothy Full Text : https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a321702.pdf Report Date : 15 OCT 1943 Pagination or Media Count : 52”. This report was produced in secret. It’s use on publication was for both the protection of reactor workers and the American population and as a means of predicting weapon effects (Compton, Met. Lab, Manhattan Engineers District, 1942). The reports were critical in the safe operation and releases from the US war time nuclear reactors. (How successfully the drive to safety was is open to debate.) All of the current radio biological and health physics record has this initial research at its base. It is quite useless for the industry to say that because this basic and original research was related to a war effort, and involved, in the terms of Hamilton’s
59 contract, “the identification of radiations effective against the enemy and to identify protection methods for US troops and civilians” that this knowledge should not be openly discussed today. Science is not PR. Science is not bombast. Sales Pitch and science can clearly be identified by the lack of bombast in one compared to its over-abundance in the other. For example Constable’s 5 August piece in the Australian newspaper is not based on science, it is sales pitch bombast issued as an edict by the Mineral Council of Australia.
The hope of the nuclear industry is that the number of nuclear power reactors will double to nearly 1,000 globally in the future. (Constable, 2019) Given the findings of research, both old and new, not the Irish Sea, nor any other sea, will be able to provide the degree of stable sediment storage needed nor the degree of dilution demanded as the nuclides piped, vented and buried persist, move via many vectors and accrete in the food chain. Concentrations increase over time in the highest levels in the species at the top of food chains. The industry cannot say that because it’s motive is to supply electrical power that the study of over 60 years of research regarding the fission fuels and fission products, their transport through the biosphere and their concentration in the species is irrelevant. The converse is true. And so the issue demands to be discussed in public.
60 10. High Level Nuclear Waste Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
A pond containing spent fuel rods at Sellafield. Source: “ Nuclear Safety Expert claims there is “Significant risk “ due to poor condition of storage ponds containing highly radioactive fuel rods”, the Guardian, the Ecologist. At https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/29/sellafield- nuclear-radioactive-risk-storage-ponds-fears
High level nuclear waste will remain the Sellafield Site until 2070. Source: World Nuclear News at http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Reprocessing-ceases-at- UKs-Thorp-plant
Australians have a right to know where the nuclear fuel reprocessing centre in this country will be and where the sludge and liquid and solid wastes from it will go.
I refer the parliamentary committee to my submission “Submission to the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission” available at https://file.ejatlas.org/docs/Paul-Langley-04-08-2015_Maralinga.pdf which covers aspects of high level waste and other matters, in particular a cultural analysis of Australia’s nuclear safety regime from 2006 to 2015. Of particular are the attitudes and incomplete analysis demonstrated in the 2006 Health Survey of Nuclear Veterans at that time.
61 I also refer the parliamentary committee to my submission “Response to the Tentative Findings of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission A Submission by Paul Langley 15 March 2016 Response to Tentative Finding 74”, available at http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/app/uploads/2016/05/Langley-Paul.pdf
As the Commonwealth Parliament, and presumably, this committee has full access to the resources of Australia’s nuclear regulatory and operational bodies, such as ARPANSA and ANSTO, I will not attempt to show global high level nuclear waste repositories. I will merely cite and quote an IAEA document that succinctly describes the social and financial costs of storing nuclear waste. As we shall see, the actual amount of global nuclear waste is merely an estimate officially. The IAEA, a global peak nuclear regulatory body, does not know firmly how much of this waste is presently occupying space and resources on this planet. The following is a quote is taken from text authored by K. Hioki of the Division of Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety. IAEA. Full citation given at the end of the quotes.
“The production of electricity by nuclear means has created radioactive residues which have to be carefully managed and accounted for because they are potentially hazardous to human health. Similar residues have been generated as a result of the defence programmes in several countries. The residues include solid and liquid radioactive waste from civilian nuclear power production and from the production of nuclear weapons and residues from the above surface or underground testing of nuclear weapons….
“The accumulations of radioactive materials can be considered a burden for human society, both at present and in the future, since they require continuing monitoring and control. Knowing the amounts and types of such radioactive inventories can help in the assessment of the relative burdens. Knowledge of the national or regional radioactive waste inventory is necessary for planning management operations, including the sizing and design of conditioning, storage and disposal facilities. A global inventory, either of radioactive waste or of other environmental accumulations of radioactive material, could be used to provide a perspective on the requirements and burdens associated with their management, by means of comparisons with the burdens caused by other types of waste or other environmental threats. The IAEA officer responsible for this publication was K. Hioki of the Division of Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety” end quote. Source: “ESTIMATION OF GLOBAL INVENTORIES OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE AND OTHER RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS” IAEA, VIENNA, 2008 IAEA-TECDOC-1591 ISBN 978–92–0–105608–5 ISSN 1011–4289 © IAEA, 2008 Printed by the IAEA in Austria June 2008. At https://www- pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/te_1591_web.pdf
A comparison of the burdens of waste management imposed by a proposed fuel cycle nuclear power industry in Australia compared the burdens imposed by the guarding of worn out solar panels must burn much midnight oil at IAEA HQ, Vienna.
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One may study the amount of carbon dioxide and ash material and other waste generated by fossil fuel industry from the time of the first use of coal, which replaced wood as a fuel, and from the of the introduction of the internal combustion engine. I look at the graphs demonstrating the increasing rates of emission and deposition of these wastes, based upon the oxidation of hydro carbon based organic chemicals. I consider the elapse of time since the observation that fossil fuel use may pose risks to climate stability and may pose what the US military name ‘sudden climate change” (DTIC, USA). For climate variability due to increased retention of heat clearly affects natural thermal “pumps” or modes of circulation of air and water on this planet. For most of the time since the debate among scientists commenced in the 1800s until the current time, evidence has been collected and studied.
There will always scientists who seem prescient in their learned observations of the present and the possible futures on offer to us. There will always be scientists who prefer more conclusive proof than is presently available. Stability is a necessary characteristic of civilisation. So is the ability to learn and adapt to reality.
In the case of Exxon, there is proof that the corporation was in possession of its own confirmatory evidence regarding the link between its fossils fuels and sudden climate change. Having its own researchers, and its own knowledge repository, Exxon suppressed its own research from publication, and sat on it. It then issued PR publications which cast doubt of the fossil fuel link to sudden climate change. Knowing all the while it claims were false.
There are many sources which discuss this suppression of the truth by energy companies. For example: “Climate Change Research Distorted and Suppressed”, CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, Union of Concerned Scientists, at https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science- and-democracy/promoting-scientific-integrity/climate-change.html
The notion and fashion of “modernity” and “futurism” is a long standing cultural norm within the nuclear industry in its interactions with the general public. I showed this earlier in relation to the promise made to Australians and Americans in the mid fifties by nuclear authorities. Those authorities knew at the time that ordinary Australians would never be permitted to own cars powered by the use of high level nuclear waste (ie plutonium and strontium RTG, such as used by NASA) .
In the current era the nuclear industry claims it can save the planet, and that it’s emissions are perfectly safe. However as I have shown throughout this submission, there is strong evidence that emissions in particular to bodies of water (such as the Irish Sea) even to date are approaching the limits of the local natural systems ability to cope with them. When an environmental “sink” is “full” we have concentrations of pollutants which are then redistributed. In the manner as described early on by Wise and Moroney of ARPANSA.
63 Given this evidence, it does not surprise me that the nuclear industry and its authorities continue to maintain that the industry and its emissions are perfectly safe. A reading of the official nuclear industry and regulatory knowledge base actually indicates that the nuclear industry is just another fuel industry, selling energy based upon the consumption of a fuel. Albeit one which can be reprocessed and reused, but there in lies an issue: It is reprocessing which is the dirtiest aspect of the industry in terms of the emission of fission radio nuclides such as strontium, cesium and others of biological significance. The biological half life of plutonium is greater than the life span of any human, yet plutonium continues to be emitted by the industry.
The substance is now everywhere, even in the teeth of British children. The closer the child lives to Sellafield, the greater the concentration of Pu there is in that child’s teeth. The converse is also true. What will be the levels of Pu in the teeth of these individuals in 50 years time if they don’t move to Australia? Double what it is today? Four times? Who knows?
There are alternatives to nuclear power in Australia. From my perspective the Northern Hemisphere industry is starting to look a bit desperate as it eyes Australia as a new green field place to convert into part of its domain. No thanks.
I refer again to the nuclear industry’s dictate that only modern findings and technology be considered in “mature” submissions to this Parliamentary committee. The industry effectively issued this order on 5 August 2019 in Ms Constable’s Australian newspaper “opinion piece” for the industry she represents. Only modern nuclear knowledge and technology bears talking about in the industry view. Is History dead, with nothing to teach us? The following is a mere slither, the merest fragment, a tiny morsel of what the industry asks us and asks me to forget. When you read it you will see why it is that the imposed social pressure to stay “modernist” or “futurist” is null and void and a disgrace and an insult to my awareness of facts. The following images have been cropped for copyright reasons. The original journals are available from the archivist at Flinders University, Bedford Park SA.
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Source: “Secretion of Radio-Strontium in Milk of Two Cows Following Intravenous Administration” L. A.Erf, C. Pecher, Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Vol 45, Oct-Dec 1940. USA.
66 Volume 45, October – December, 1940, New York, USA. Contrary to the dictates of the Mineral Council of Australia, we gnore the primary research at our peril.
This information lay, as if asleep, in Australia and around the world throughout the entire reactor age and before, the age of the atomic bombs, which set the standard of what the people of the world would be forced to tolerate.
Every time the authorities are found out, they reply “Oh well, we didn’t know.”
67 11. Findings on Variations in the Latency period for radiation induced thyroid cancer in Children. Terms of Reference b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
Various authorities report on the latent period for childhood thyroid cancer. I present various findings as follow:
1. “The high incidence of childhood thyroid cancer in Belarus is suspected to be due to radiation exposure after the Chernobyl reactor accident…
“All of the preceding thyroid carcinomas developed after longer latency periods, whereas tumors arising in the Chernobyl population began developing with surprising rapidity and short latency.” End quote. Source: Childhood thyroid cancer: comparison of Japan and Belarus. Yamashita S., Shirahige Y., Ito M., Ashizawa K., Motomura T., Yokoyama N., Namba H., Fukata S., Yokozawa T., Ishikawa N., Mimura T., Sekine I., Kuma K., Ito K., Nagataki S., Endocr J. 1998 Apr;45(2):203-9. Academic Centre: First Department of Internal Medicine, Nagasaki University School of Medicine, Japan. Download link: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/endocrj1993/45/2/45_2_203/_pdf Free Full Text.
2. “2.5 years, based on low estimates used for lifetime risk modelling of low- level ionizing radiation studies” end quote. Source: US CDC publication of “Minimum Latency & Types or Categories of Cancer” John Howard, M.D., Administrator World Trade Center Health Program, 9.11 Monitoring and Treatment, Revision: 1 May 2013, http://www.cdc.gov/wtc/pdfs/wtchpminlatcancer2013-05-01.pdf
3. “Although some sporadic tumors unrelated to radiation may be included among our patients, the shortest latency period for both benign and malignant tumors was 1 year as occurred in 3 patients, whereas the longest time was 69 and 58 years, respectively (Fig. 1).” End quote. Source: Shoichi Kikuchi, MD, PhD, Nancy D. Perrier, MD, Philip Ituarte, PhD, MPH, Allan E. Siperstein, MD, Quan-Yang Duh, MD, and Orlo H. Clark, MD, “Latency Period of Thyroid Neoplasia After Radiation Exposure”, Ann Surg v.239(4); Apr 2004 PMC1356259, Academic centre: Department of Surgery, UCSF Affiliated Hospitals, San Francisco, California. available full text at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1356259/
4. “Absence of marked latency period is another feature of radiation- induced thyroid cancers caused in Belarus as a result of this accident. “ end quote. Source: Malko, M.V., “Chernobyl Radiation-induced Thyroid Cancers in Belarus”, Joint Institute of Power and Nuclear Research, National Academy
68 of Sciences of Belarus Krasin Str. 99, Minsk, Sosny, 220109, Republic of Belarus: [email protected] http://www.rri.kyoto- u.ac.jp/NSRG/reports/kr79/kr79pdf/Malko2.pdf
5. “Researchers at Fukushima Medical University, which has been taking the leading role in the study, have said they do not believe the most recent cases are related to the nuclear crisis.They point out that thyroid cancer cases were not found among children hit by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident until four to five years later.” end quote. Source: Japan Times. Kyodo. 06/05/2013 http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/06/05/national/fukushima- survey-lists-12-confirmed-15-suspected-thyroid-cancer- cases/#.UbCB7Ovrk7A
6. “…experts at Fukushima Medical University said that it is too early to link the cancer cases to the nuclear disaster. They said the 1986 Chernobyl accident showed that it takes at least four to five years before thyroid cancer is detected.” Source: Source: Thyroid cancer hits Fukushima 5 Jun 2013, 12:57 pm – Source: AAP, SBS TV Australia, http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1774837/Thyroid-cancer-hits- Fukushima
7. “After exposure to radiation, the minimum latency period for the development of thyroid cancer was 5 to 10 years. However, a shorter interval was observed after the Chernobyl accident that may be related to the large number of contaminated children among whom few cases of thyroid cancer occurred earlier, representing a significant increased incidence due to the rarity of the disease in the general population at that young age .The risk increases and peaks at 20-35 years, declining thereafter; but in survivors of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings, an excess risk is still present at 60 years after exposure .” end quote. Source: Iglesias M.L. et. al., “Radiation exposure and thyroid cancer: a review”, Arch. Endocrinol. Metab. vol.61 no.2 São Paulo Mar./Apr. 2017 Epub Feb 16, 2017 ePub at http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2359- 39972017000200180#B5
The authorities quoted above identify various latent periods for childhood radiation induced thyroid cancer. Given the very low incidence of the disease most authorities give, it is very surprising that since 2011 authorities note that undiagnosed pre existing pre exposure thyroid cancers should justify extending the latent period of the radiogenic form disease from “very short” (Yamashita et. al.), “2.5 years” (CDC), “1 year” (Shoichi Kikuchi et. al.), “Absence of marked Latency period”, (Malko, M.V), “4 to 5 years” (Fukushima Medical University, via media releases), “5 to 10 years” (Iglesias M.L. et. al. ) .
Though it is clear that constant research produces more highly defined and qualified results, given that normal background rates of the disease are so low, perhaps a focus on better diagnosis of radiogenic thyroid cancer is more
69 appropriate than upping the minimum latency period in order to exclude previously undiagnosed pre existing , pre nuclear disaster cases of the disease.
In any event, what I have found in the qualified literature shows that medical experts had a degree of variance in their observations of the latent period period for the disease until fairly recently. It seems that defining the latent period is difficult as variations still remain in the findings of researchers.
Yamashita has apparently changed his view between his 1990s intense study of the Chernobyl children’s thyroid cancer and the events of 3/11 in Japan. Noting that ground shine and air dose may be far more important in Japan than in the case of Chernobyl where Iodine deficiency, in many cases, rendered victims very vulnerable to contaminated milk. The Japanese diet contains one of the world’s highest levels of dietary stable Iodine. Pathways and protections which might have applied in one place may be not have the same results in another. Boosted Iodine intake via supplements has no effect on external gamma doses to the thyroid gland, which is a radio sensitive gland.
“Exposure to ionizing radiation during childhood is a well-established risk factor for thyroid cancer. However, the genetic mechanisms of radiation- associated carcinogenesis remain not fully understood.... “Driver mutations were identified in 96.9% of these thyroid cancers, including point mutations in 26.2% and gene fusions in 70.8% of cases. Novel driver fusions such as POR-BRAF, as well as STRN-ALK fusions that have not been implicated in radiation-associated cancer before, were found….. “: Our data provide support for a link between I-131 thyroid dose and generation of carcinogenic gene fusions, the predominant mechanism of thyroid cancer associated with radiation exposure from the Chernobyl accident.” End quote. Source: Alexey A. Efanov et. al, “Investigation of the Relationship Between Radiation Dose and Gene Mutations and Fusions in Post-Chernobyl Thyroid Cancer” Oxford Journals, JNCI J Natl Cancer Inst (2018) 110(4): djx209 doi: 10.1093/jnci/djx209 First published online November 18, 2017.
Various authorities report a shorter latency period for radiation induced thyroid cancer. Some report a longer period. The most radical revisions in the defined latent periods have occurred since the events of 3/11, which is very interesting. Isn’t it?
Radiation induced childhood thyroid cancer is commonly associated with known and understood dose related genetic mutations of specific kinds. (Fagin 2005),
Such knowledge may be of use in prioritising the claims of children in the medico-legal setting. In current health surveys, time elapsed since an accident is used to exclude children from consideration in the data collection. This is because the current view held by authorities is that the longer rather than shorter latent period should be considered.
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However thyroid cancers which can be confirmed as being radiation related via the presence of known point mutations and at certain doses (Fagin, 2005) should be included in such health survey data.
This aspect of current practice in Japan since 3/11 is important for Australia if it is decided to proceed with the idea of introducing nuclear power here. For an unresolved issue remains in these regards.
Where latent periods exist, there tends to be a minimum latent period, a maximum latent period, a median latent period, an average latent period. Further, in ARS, the length of latent period is used to predict survival chances. The latent period in that case is dose related. Could this fact also hold true for radiation related Childhood Thyroid Cancer? This obvious question has not been considered in the relevant literature I have been able to find. Perhaps the Committee knows the answer already. Based on the science. Not PR.
71 12. A Mysterious Spike in Childhood in Japan which extended from the late 1980s to the 1990s Terms of Reference: b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. X. Telling the truth.
Disease spikes come and ago. There have been a number in the USA, such as the cancer cluster suffered in the fairly recent past in Churchill County. The US Centres for Disease Control has published information about this cancer cluster here: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/clusters/fallon/
“Sixteen children diagnosed with acute leukemia between 1997 and 2002 lived in Churchill County, Nevada, at the time of or before their illness. Considering the county population and statewide cancer rate, fewer than two cases would be expected.” Source: Investigating Childhood Leukemia in Churchill County, Nevada. Rubin, C.S., et. al. Environ Health Perspect. 2007 Jan; 115(1): 151–157. Published online 2006 Nov 30.
Rubin et. al. state that: “Data collected in Churchill County included responses to 500 questionnaire items, levels of 139 chemicals, and eight viral markers measured in blood and urine samples, including genetic analysis of DNA specimens from whole blood collected from 205 people in 69 families. Levels of more than 200 chemicals were measured in air, water, soil, or dust from almost 80 homes. Among our 69 study children (14 case and 55 comparison), 34 were female and 61 were white. There were no significant differences in proportions of sex, race, and ethnicity between case and comparison children.
“In this study we examined ongoing environmental exposures by collecting and analyzing biologic and environmental samples at a level of detail not previously attempted or achieved in any other cancer cluster investigation. Nonetheless, no exposure consistent with leukemia risk was identified.
“Spurious findings are to be expected in any study, such as this one, that makes thousands of comparisons
“Cancer clusters can occur by chance. However, the statistical process of fully evaluating the role of chance in a suspected cluster occurrence is daunting and lacks standardization, leaving political and emotional pressures to drive cluster investigations.
“This large scale, costly, multiagency response in Churchill County was mounted because this cancer cluster greatly exceeded chance expectation. The families of the 14 case children initially included in the state investigation, plus the two subsequently diagnosed cases, made Churchill County one of the largest pediatric leukemia clusters in U.S. history.
“Nonetheless, the inability of modern science to identify the role of environmental exposures in leukemia incidence reflects the complexity of defining a relationship between exposure and cancer in a community setting. Biologic samples from Churchill County participants are being stored and will
72 be used by investigators, along with samples from other ALL clusters, to look for emerging environmental carcinogens.
These findings and conclusions are important to understand. In simple terms, though many people have their views on the causes of this significant cancer cluster, science fails to establish a cause or causes. Many things are suspected. None are scientifically proven to be the cause. There may not be a single cause. The focus of this cluster was the Fallon Naval Air Gunnery Range. Large amounts of heavy ammunition was and is fired at this range. The cited paper considered radiation not only for this reason. In addition to the need to consider every factor, Fallon is very close to an historic underground nuclear weapons test site. This site has been constantly monitored for movement of fission products off site into ground water. The area is both urban and rural. Many people have access only to bore water. Radiation from any source was not found to be a factor in the cluster. I have no idea what caused the Churchill County/Fallon cancer cluster. Multiple factors may be responsible. Over the course of years that I studied, as a lay person, the progress of this cancer cluster investigation, there twists and turns in which one suspect appeared likely. When discounted, people suggested other possible suspects.
There were many different investigating teams, very many local views. In the end the mystery remains. It is perhaps a sign that our environment has become, especially since World War 2, a complex mix of chemical and other agents which we normally tolerate but which present some people in a cohort sub group with a tipping point in response and resultant illness. Like everyone who thinks about this case, I am left wondering.
The other point to note is that this cluster, the largest in US history, consisted of 16 cases where fewer than 2 cases would normally be expected. Churchill County was 24,230 in 2017. The suffering of children and young adults in this case caused widespread grief and concern, and no single culprit found. The incident remains a matter of great concern to the people involved. The families of the affected communities noticed the increase in incidence of the disease. However it may be that globally many cases of disease spikes and clusters are not recognised by local communities, but only come to light from the study of health and disease statistics. This seems to be the case in an extended spike in disease identified by doctors in Japan.
Compared to epidemics, clusters are events in which, normally, a numerically low number of people suffer the same illness at a greater rate than usual. In contrast an outbreak of the flu affects many more people. It is the responsibility of health authorities to respond to disease outbreaks, whether they be outbreaks of viral illness or cancer clusters which generally have fewer patients and victims. Guessing cause on some basis or another in order to find a cause is not valid. Even the suspicions of skilled researchers have to be confirmed by evidence, and I emphasise, in the context of the spike of disease found by doctors in Japan, coincidence of itself is not evidence. This holds true even where a coincidence invokes a powerful emotional significance in people. Synchronicity is not evidence.
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There are situations though were the presence of a significant factor should not be considered to be a mere coincidence automatically, and some things challenge authorities to disprove them, as improper that demand may be.
The post war era saw a great increase in industrialisation in most parts of the world: increasing use of motor transport, the first use of synthetic phosphate fertiliser, and in new construction materials including interior wall cladding materials. The use of artificially produced phosphate fertilisers resulted in increased absorption of polonium by the tobacco plant, which has a special affinity for that radioactive substance. Motor transport emits benzene, and the atmospheric nuclear test era extended from the 40s to the 60s. And so the world in it’s ignorance lived in an increasingly risky mixed environmental soup.
New chemicals were rapidly introduced, as were pesticides including dioxin based and organo-chloride based ones. All these things played a role in the risk factors present in particularly the developed world. The nuclear industry and it’s advocates claim total innocence in these things. In this matter I refer the reader to the British findings, which nuclear authorities maintain is perfectly safe and of no health impact what so ever. Even though the British cabinet considered paying compensation to people living close in to Selllafield.
Japan developed rapidly after the war years and today there are more than 50 nuclear power reactors and major nuclear fuel reprocessing plants there. It is very hard to determine cause in any spike in illness. However, doctors in Japan noticed a very peculiar spike in many childhood cancers in that land, and largely the spike included a number of diseases and most, if not all, of the area of Japan. The spike in disease included a number of different diseases.
The situation was difficult because Japan did not have a nation wide mandatory cancer reporting system until the 21st century. Researchers had to travel to individual hospitals in many cases to obtain data. Though one or two Prefectures did have better than average records.
The Atomic Bomb survivors were extensively studied, and this was the sole cohort Japan for whom long term cancer records were kept, from the end of World War 2, to the end of Allied Occupation and beyond. The studies of this cohort continue, and continue to be debated. But that is a separate issue. It might shock some people to learn of the scant national data Japan had in regards to cancer statistics prior to the 21st century.
When there is a sudden and large change, particularly a transient one, in disease incidence rates and patterns, in any population cohort, it is a cause for concern and must be very difficult to investigate.
My sole focus is on disease incidence rates in Japan prior to the events of March 2011. At the time the spike arose until the time spike in disease ceased, Japan suffered no disaster or unusual event which might have released toxic substances related to the diseases which showed increased
74 incidence in the period. The Japanese doctors had strong evidence that the spike existed and I present some of their findings below.
I set out to find the Japanese information. This was a difficult task as I cannot read or write or speak Japanese. Luckily, some papers were published in English about this. This is what I found:
A “Incidence and survival trends for childhood cancer in Osaka, Japan, 1973-2001”. Baba, S., Ioka, A., Tsukuma, H., Noda, H., Aiiki, W., Iso, H. (Received June 26, 2009 Revised October 31, 2009 Accepted November 6, 2009 Online publication February 2, 2010), Cancer Science Volume 101, Issue 3, pages 787-792, March 2010. Japanese Cancer Association. Available as a full text download at : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1349-7006.2009.01443.x
The following extracts from the above source are reproduced here for study purposes and to alert interested parties of the findings of Baba et. al regarding the state of nation wide cancer reporting and recording in Japan prior to March 2011. The findings of Baba et al regarding the incidence of childhood cancer in Japan are noteworthy.
Quote “In Japan there is no nationwide cancer registry, although a large population is needed to monitor childhood trends of cancer. The Osaka Cancer Registry is one of the few registries in the world that has a long history and covers a large-enough population to monitor trends of childhood cancer. Ajiki et al. described incidence trends for childhood cancer based on 12 major cancer classifications from 1971 to 1988 by using data from the Osaka Cancer Registry.” end quote.
Quote: “This article reports incidence trends for childhood cancer in Osaka from 1973 to 2001 and survival trends from 1978 to 1997 to clarify whether the continuous decline in cancer mortality between 1973 and 2001 was caused by trends for incidence, survival, or both. ” end quote.
Quote from the Abstract of the paper with emphais added: “The age- standardized annual incidence rate of all tumors was highest in 1988–1992: 155.1 per million for males and 135.9 for females. Five-year survival for all tumors improved from 50.1% in 1978–1982 to 73.0% in 1993–1997 for males and from 52.3% to 76.3% for females. Thus, the constant decline in mortality in childhood cancer was primarily due to improved survival between the 1970s and 1980s and reduced incidence after the 1990s.” end quote.
The sources of the data are complex. The data is limited to the geographic areas area defined by the authors. The authors present the findings as they pertain to Osaka only.
Quote “Analyses for incidence are based on 5960 cases diagnosed between 1973 and 2001.” end quote.
75 Quote with emphasis added “The data presented here from the large-scale and long-term cancer : in Osaka showed a unique trend in the incidence of total childhood cancer: an increase until 1988 with an APC of 1.5% for males and until 1992 with an APC of 1.7% for females, and then successive decrease with declining APCs of 2.0% for males and 1.9% for females. These trends did not change when neuroblastomas were excluded from this analysis.....” end quote.
Quote: “The reason why the total childhood incidence in Osaka increased until 1988 with an APC of 1.5% for males and untl 1992 with an APC of 1.7% for females, and then successive decrease with declining APCs of 2.0% for males and 1.9% for females. but has declined since 1998 for males and 1992 for females is unknown. That decline is unlikely due to a systematic drift for collecting data....” end quote.
Quote: “However, the incidence of leukemia, retinoblastoma, central nervous system in males, and hepatic tumors in females did not decline over time, while other tumors such as sympathetic nervous system tumors and germ-cell tumors declined from the middle of the study period for both sexes, a ttendency which is not seen in other areas such as the USA and Europe.” end quote.
Quote: “This study was supported in part by a Grant-in Aid for Cancer Research (14-2) from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan. Authors appreciate Ms Miho Imanaka for her assistance with making graphs.” end quote.
B. “Childhood cancer in Japan: focusing on trend in mortality from 1970 To 2006.”
L.Yang1, J.Fujimoto2, D.Qiu1 and N. Sakamoto1,*
1 Department of Maternal and Child Health, National Research Institute for Health and Development. . 2 National Research Institute for Health and Development, Tokyo, Japan *Correspondence to: Dr N. Sakamoto, The Division of Epidemiology, Department of Maternal and Child Health, National Research Institute for Child Health and Development, 2-10-1 Ookura, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 157- 8535, Japan. Article link: http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/1/166.full
Quote: ” A population-based study in Osaka prefecture in Japan indicated that death due to childhood cancer declined from 1972 to 1995, while the incidence increased in the same period [1]. In the United States, an estimated 10 400 new cases and 1545 deaths are expected to occur among children
76 aged 0–14 years in 2007 [2]. During recent three decades, the incidence of childhood cancer increased ∼0.6% annually. In contrast, mortality from childhood cancer declined by 1.3% per year during 1990–2004 [3]. A population-based study among European children since the 1970s showed that the overall incidence of childhood cancer has increased by 1.0% per year, while mortality has declined by 3.6% per year in the past three decades” end quote.
Quote “There is no national childhood cancer registry system in Japan, and recent childhood cancer mortality has not been well characterized in terms of temporal and geographic trends. This paper describes the occurrence of death from childhood cancer at the population level over a 37-year period in Japan using official death certification data, which record 100% of deaths in Japan. The aim of this study was to ascertain the general mortality trend for each sex and to study the moment at which a shift in the trend occurred.”
Researchers in Japan continued to build coherent databases of health statistics by compiling data from the many hospital and other records. By the end of the first decade of the 21 century, source data encompassed wider areas of Japan.
I found the following collection of cancer incidence excel spreadsheets in around 2012:
Center for Cancer Control and Information Services, National Cancer Center, Japan, Matsuda A, Matsuda T, Shibata A, Katanoda K, Sobue T, Nishimoto H and The Japan Cancer Surveillance Research Group. “Cancer Incidence and Incidence Rates in Japan in 2007: A Study of 21 Population-based Cancer Registries for the Monitoring of Cancer Incidence in Japan (MCIJ) Project”. Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology, 43: 328-336, 2013.
As of 12 August 2019 the work of Cancer Control and Information Services, National Cancer Center, Japan, Matsuda A, Matsuda T, Shibata A, Katanoda K, Sobue T, Nishimoto H., has resulted in an extensive and now updated body of work.
This body of work is located at https://ganjoho.jp/en/professional/statistics/table_download.html
This download page is located at the Cancer Information Center of Japan website and is entitled “Cancer Statistic in Japan; Table download. The page was last updated 30 July 2019. The tables available for download include Mortality, Incidence (National estimates), Incidence (High Quality areas), Incidence (childhood and AYA), and Survival.
In 2012 the data originated by Matsuda et al confirmed the late 1980s – 1990s spike in childhood cancers of various kinds, including thyroid cancer, that researchers had discovered earlier (Baba et al etc as discussed earlier).
77 Coincidence is apparently a bane of epidemiological research. The long reported spike in childhood cancer incidence in Japan from the late 1980s to the early 1990s has been widely confirmed by Baba et. al. and others. These original researchers were concerned that no cause could be found to account for the spike.
I refer to the paper at the following link: http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/BF02035773.pdf
This paper is entitled : “Deposition of gamma-emitting nuclides in Japan after the reactor-IV accident at Chernobyl‘: Journal_of_Radioanalytical_and_Nuclear_Chemistry Volume_116,_Issue_2_pp_291-306_Cover_Date_1987-12-01 Authors_M._Aoyama_(1) K._Hirose_(1) Y. Sugimura (1) Author Affiliations 1. Geochemical Laboratory, Meteorological Research Institute, Nagamine 1-1, Yatabe, 305, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, (Japan) Abstract The wet and dry deposition of gamma-emitting nuclides are presented for Tsukuba and eleven stations in Japan following the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl’. In Japan fallout from the reactor at Chernobyl’ was first detected on May 3, 1986, a week after the accident. Abruptly high radioactive deposition, which mainly consists of131I,132I,103Ru,137Cs and134Cs, was observed in early May. The cumulative amount of131I,103Ru and137Cs in May at Tsukuba were 5854±838 Bq·m−2, 364±54 Bq·m−2 and 130±26 Bq·m−2 (decay was corrected to April 26), respectively. The monthly137Cs deposition in May corresponds to 2.5% of the cumulative137Cs deposition during the period from 1960 through 1982. Most of the Chernobyl’ radioactivities, especially131I, are scavenged from the atmosphere by the wet removal process. End quote. Source as cited above.
I place the co-incidence of a spike in childhood diseases of “unknown cause” in Japan, as confirmed by many doctors, and confirmed by the data collected by Matsuda et.al,, together with the findings of Hirose et. al.above, here for consideration. No matter how strongly one believes the transient spike in childhood disease in Japan at the relevant time was caused by the arrival of fallout from Chernobyl, such a cause and effect is not proven either rationally or scientifically (though science is rational) simply by the fact of the coincidence. This situation is just as perplexing as the situation in Churchill County. Then again, in my own mind, it is impossible to cast aside the thought that the deposition of Chernobyl fallout over Japan in some way may contributed to the spike in disease which manifest shortly after. We shall never know if the disease spike evidenced was caused at all or in any way by the arrival in Japan of that fallout. Uncertainties such as this are common in the modern world. What are we to make of them? If we cannot attribute cause and effect between an industry and disease clusters, can we conclude anything at all about the suitability of that industry for use?
78 There is no evidence that the burning of hydrogen would cause a disease spike of the kinds I have just examined here. I doubt that pure water is related to cancer clusters. Maybe I am biased.
Given the ability Australia has for generating copious hydrogen from sea water via many means, including wind and solar there is a competitor in the high energy density clean fuel base load market. Given solar energy and Lithium are uniquely high order in Australia, nuclear power has no answer for individuals who wish to reduce their reliance on the ever more expensive power grid. Australians continue to leave the grid entirely and current projections indicate that the grid as we have known it since the days of Edison are coming to end. In the years to come, the nature of the grid will be far more diverse and local and flexible than it is now. In contrast nuclear power demands that the grid remains as it, that it be strengthened and rendered as near to fail proof as possible for nuclear safety reasons. The economics of Nuclear Power demands that we all stay on the grid. It demands a vast creation of enrichment, fuel rod manufacture and fuel reprocessing. Tasks and systems which are complex, expensive, energy intensive and which emit, as I shall show, large amount of gaseous fission products to the atmosphere.
There is urgency about the fate of the planet. There is no social licence for the things nuclear needs to do for the sake of it’s own survival. The Chancellor of the University of Adelaide is no doubt sincere in his urgent call for us to help the industry. He says the industry is running out of time. There are many ways to remedy both the planet and society. One of them is to radically reduce entrenched privilege and to create a place to live that ensures equity and access by the decentralization of power. Ordinary people choose our own networks and our own sources of power. I do not care what nuclear advocates think of me. Do they think for themselves at all?
79
13. Synergistic Radiological and Chemical Effects. Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
The conventional determinations relating to the biological effects of ionising radiation do not take into account the risks posed by exposures to other stressors – such as chemical exposures. In addition there is evidence that the presence of some chemicals in tissue at the time of ionising radiation enhances both the deleterious effects of the chemical toxin, the ionising radiation or both. The consequences of such a multi-agent exposure may be greater than the simple addition of each consequence. This is the synergistic effect. This effect is discussed in the following paper: “Consequences of synergy between environmental carcinogens”, M.C.Berenbaum, Environmental Research Volume 38, Issue 2, December 1985, Pages 310- 318. The abstract can read online at : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0013935185900957#!
The view of the concept of synergy among nuclear authorities varies. Referring again to the knowledge base made available by the IAEA, I find the paper “Combined effect of environmental radiation and other agents: Is there a synergism trap?”, S. Hornhardt, T. Jung, W. Burkart BfS Institute for Radiation Hygiene, Oberschleiflheim, Germany, IAEA online publication at https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/33/016/33016279.p df The authors state the following in the Abstract: “Most assessments of possible deleterious outcomes from environmental and occupational exposures concentrate on single agents and neglect the potential for combined effects, i.e. synergisms or antagonisms. Biomechanistic considerations based on multistep processes such as carcinogenesis indicate the potential for highly detrimental interactions, if two or more consecutive rate limiting steps are specifically effected by different agents. However, low specificity towards molecular structure or DNA-sequence - and therefore exchangeability — of many genotoxic agents indicate little functional specificity and therefore little vulnerability towards synergism at most occupational and environmental exposure situations. The low potential for significant combined effects for those common low exposure situations where non-genotoxic agents with highly non-linear dose effect relationships and apparent thresholds are involved, is also evident. Nevertheless, a quantitative assessment of the contribution of synergistic interactions to the total detriment from natural and manmade toxicants based on experimental data is far away. The existing database on combined effects is rudimentary, mainly descriptive and rarely covers exposure ranges large enough to make direct inferences to present day low dose exposure situations.” End quote. Source as given above.
80 It is my perception that nuclear regulators are content with the current conventional regimes which aim to provide safety to workers and the general public.”, M.C.Berenbaum above finds that a “rudimentary” database relevant to synergistic effects exists. This is a call for research and not a vote in favour of the current safety and protection regime. The industry has the view that the effects of ionising radiation is the most thoroughly investigated of all potentially harmful exposures used in industry in the world. And that is most likely true of ionising radiation in terms of single agent hazards. The modern world is increasingly a man made chemical soup though. Is a nuclear regulator responsible for a population’s exposure to benzene? No.
It is into such a cultural setting – which assumes that nuclear authorities have a duty only in regards to radiation related exposures of workers and the public – that the theory of synergy is thrust. The effects of the unknown relationships (between ionising radiation and chemical toxins) on the effectiveness of a unit of absorbed dose of radiation is judged to possibly exist but cannot be described as “proven”. Because not enough is known.
This led to an interesting but typical conclusion in Australia in 2006. Ie in the modern era.
After finding that a cohort of radiation exposed Australian military personnel suffered a substantially greater incidence of many radiation related illnesses than the general public, Australian researchers state that the radiation doses suffered by those veterans was insufficient to account for the greatly increased risk of illness suffered by that cohort. The risk posed by the radiation exposures, the scientists said, was lower than that needed to prove a link between the exposure and the manifestation of disease the cohort suffers. So the cause of the excess illness, the scientists said, could not be radiation exposure.
The scientists in this case put forward a theory (and it was only a theory) that benzene emitted by military vehicles used at Maralinga was the cause of the excess disease suffered by the cohort of military personnel. But the scientists could not be sure.
The theory proposed by the scientists involved in the Health Survey of military radiation veterans was presented by them to the public as an ‘either / or’ case.
The possibility of a synergistic effect in which exposure to ionising radiation in combination with an exposure to benzene produced a disproportionate increase in risk and in the disproportionate manifestation of disease among the members of the cohort was not even considered by the involved scientists. Their brief was to consider the effects of radiation alone in relation to the health risks and diseases suffered by the cohort. Few in Australia doubt this cohort of our military veterans suffer and suffered precisely because of their duties. Their shared duties in fact define the people as a “cohort” in the first place.
81 The involved scientists had to stick to their brief and had to stick to conventional knowledge bases. In the presentation of their theory, they could have presented the occupational exposure limits for benzene, which have existed for many years. They chose not to. That also was outside of their brief.
There is a salient lesson here for the Australian public. I believe that the rules which determine acceptable limits for occupational and general public ionising radiation exposures are insufficient and are based upon “rudimentary” understandings of factors which in reality determine the results of given absorbed doses of agents. I cannot prove my position scientifically. I am a layman. However, for example:
“Analysis of combined effects of benzene with radiation on chromosomes in cultured human leukocytes.” Morimoto K. Sangyo Igaku. 1976 Jan;18(1):23-34.
“Three experiments were carried out on 53-hr cultured human leukocytes on chromosome mutagenicity of benzene with particular reference to combined effects with gamma-radiation and inhibitory effect on rejoining of radiation- induced chromosome breaks. The results and their analyses were summarized as follows: 1) Benzene can induce mainly chromatid-type deletions, especially gaps, suggesting that the cells in their late S-G2 stage have a higher susceptibility to chromosome breakage by benzene. 2) The aberration tield of dicentrics and rings induced by 100 rads irradiation can significantly be enhanced by the treatment of benzene equal to or in excess of 0.2 mM. 3) Quantitative analyses using newly defined "Synergetic effect factor" revealed that combined cytogenetic effect of benzene with radiation could be synergetic exclusively in dicentrics and rings, being almost additive in the other types of aberration. 4) The experiment with dosage fractionation method showed that the more strongly benzene could inhibit the rejoining of radiation-induced chromosome breaks, the higher concentration it was treated at. Related iwth these results, possible inducps, and the repair and its inhibition of radiation-induced DNA-strand(s) breaks. Further studies for related effects by benzene are needed on protein synthesis, activities of repair enzymes and fine structure of chromosomes.” End quote. Source as cited above.
It is passed time that the nuclear authorities should include synergistic effects in their area of research. And, if need be, amend and modernise their standards and permissible limits of exposures.
Many scientific papers report on the reality of the synergistic effects between ionising and toxic chemicals. Yet Australian regulatory and medical authorities continue to ignore them in relation to exposures of ionising radiation permitted because of a stated “national interest” need.
By it’s actions and by its own admission, science does not know all that it needs to know. Institutional cultures maintain stable habits for far too long.
82 Is the persistence of the binary “either / or” basis for modern decisions regarding the effects of radiation as an agent of illness up to date or is it ignorance?
Even though the knowledge base relating to synergistic relationships is “rudimentary” it is not an excuse for bombastic assertions that one agent is innocent and the other agent is not. In the case of radiation and benzene – perhaps the common sense of the general population is more intelligent than the expressed exclusionary views of scientists as shown in the 2006 report on the cause of the noted health effects suffered by a special group of our military veterans. The cause of the greatly elevated disease incidence among our nuclear veterans is a mystery to the scientists. It is not a mystery to most ordinary Australians. There is a word for that in ordinary language. It starts with a B.
The use of fossil fuels will continue for decades. As a result benzene may increasingly interact with ionising radiation exposures imposed by a rapidly expanding nuclear power industry. At what point will scientists engaged by that industry admit what science at the present time has already established Synergy is a probable threat to standard models of radiological safety?
The habits of nuclear authorities and nuclear industry show however that the cultural norm in nuclear circles is to ignore it or to claim more needs to be known, without contributing to the knowledge base. The need to know more is ever present. I am asking for reality to be accepted by nuclear authorities and nuclear industry.
The following is a quote from the 2006 report produced as a result of a health survey of Australian military personnel who experienced ionising radiation exposures in the course of their duties:
“Of the 26 mesothelioma cases in test participants, 16 occurred in RAN personnel, which was nearly three times the number expected in RAAF personnel, there was nearly double the expected number of deaths from melanoma, and cases of melanoma were increased by two–thirds.
“The increases in cancer rates do not appear to have been caused by exposure to radiation. No relationship could be found between overall cancer incidence or mortality and exposure to radiation. None of the above cancers occurring in excess showed any association with radiation exposure in this study. In particular, there was no link between radiation exposure and leukaemia, excluding chronic lymphatic leukaemia (non-CLL leukaemia), which is commonly found to be increased in groups exposed to radiation. These findings are consistent with the low levels of radiation exposure found in this study.
“Only 4% of the study population had an estimated radiation exposure greater than 20 millisieverts (mSv) from test participation, and 79% had an estimated exposure of less than 1 mSv. The estimated mean radiation exposure of the study population due to participation in the tests was 2.8 mSv, only slightly
83 greater than the background exposure received by every Australian every year.
“In the absence of a correlation with radiation exposure, the excess of non- CLL leukaemia is unexplained. Other than radiation, the best established cause of leukaemia is exposure to benzene, but there is no information available about benzene exposure in test participants.” End quote. Source: Australian participants in British nuclear tests in Australia Vol 1: Dosimetry May 2006, Michael Carter, Francis (Rob) Robotham, Keith Wise, Geoffrey Williams and Philip Crouch © Commonwealth of Australia 2006 ISBN 1 920720 38 3 The publication quoted above is one of two volumes which resulted from the Health Survey of Australian Veterans announced by the Howard Government in 2001.
I refer to the following scientific papers: “The combined effect of ionizing radiation and benzene on immunoreactivity indices in the spleen and lymph nodes”, Sharetskiĭ AN, Abramova MR, Zamulaeva IA, Kulish IuS. Radiats Biol Radioecol. 1997 May- Jun;37(3):387-94. The authors report: “Under the influence of the combined action of gamma irradiation (1 Gy, 1,15 Gy/min) and benzene the synergistic reduction of proportion and absolute content of B-cells and less expressed reduction of absolute content T-cells in spleen and lymph nodes was observed. In spleen the thymus-dependent humoral immune response was resistant to combined effect of irradiation and benzene, while in lymph nodes it was highly sensitive. The profound suppression of antibody formation in lymph nodes was characterized by synergism. It was accompanied by the block of specific recruitment of antigen sensitive cells within drained lymph nodes from migrating stream. The suppression of local immune response resulting from the combined effect of radiation and toxicants may be the cause of protective immunity disturbance.” End quote
The concept of synergy between ionising radiation and common chemicals such as benzene is not sufficiently understood or accepted by nuclear authorities.
The conventional view expressed by Crouch et. al. in 2006 is symptomic of the nuclear regulatory culture. They present an “Either / or” binary exclusion. They never say the words “synergistic effect” Yet they confirm a “disproportionate increase in effects” leading to “disproportionate increase in risk”, manifesting in disproportionate increase in disease incidence. Even though disproportionate increase in risk was found. A mystery? Maybe, maybe not. Should science have motives?
The body of knowledge presented by science is not sufficiently admitted by nuclear authorities. Further, the advance of science is mandated by a need to know driven by the evidence which tells us that we do not know enough. And perhaps we never will.
84 14. The Vulnerability of Nuclear Power Plants to the Effects of Sudden Climate Change Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
As large structures which generate and store high energy density waste on site, and which require to large amounts of coolant in order to maintain safe operation, nuclear power plants are quite unique. Further the safe operation of nuclear plants demands that structures remain intact at all times. When this fails to occur, the results are spectacular. This includes cooling system pipe work, spent fuel pools, all shielding, electrical hardware including switch gear, cables and so on, including a grid that is up and running at all times in all conditions.
Rules require that nuclear power plants have access to an “ultimate heat sink” in order to operate safely. (see Regulatory Guide 1.27, “ULTIMATE HEAT SINK FOR NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS” , November 2015, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, at: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1410/ML14107A411.pdf)
Nuclear power plants are often located very close to the ocean and other large and reliable sources of water.
Since 2015, design rules require that the risks of damage to a nuclear power plant posed by natural disasters are taken into account on the basis of HISTORIC data pertaining to previous events:
“Design Bases for Protection Against Natural Phenomena,” requires that SSCs (equipment) important to safety shall be designed to withstand the effects of natural phenomena such as earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, tsunami, and seiches without loss of capability to perform their safety functions. The design bases for these SSCs shall reflect: (1) appropriate consideration of the most severe of the natural phenomena that have been historically reported for the site and surrounding area, with sufficient margin for the limited accuracy, quantity, and period of time in which the historical data have been accumulated, (2) appropriate combinations of the effects of normal and accident conditions with the effects of the natural phenomena, and (3) the importance of the safety functions to be performed…
“Note: Passive light-water reactors have significantly different design bases for the UHS than traditional plants that use active systems. For passive plants, the passive containment cooling system (PCCS) may be used as the UHS. The guidance provided in this regulatory guide does not apply to passive plants that utilize a PCCS as their UHS. “ end quote. Source: Regulatory Guide 1.27, “ULTIMATE HEAT SINK FOR NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS” November 2015, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, at: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1410/ML14107A411.pdf SSC: “structures, systems, and components”.
85
I note that the above regulatory guide states that design of plants must be based upon “the most severe of the natural phenomena that have been historically reported for the site and surrounding area….” (US NRC, 2015). This regulation is not forward looking. It reflects a complete absence of appropriate foresight in regard to sudden climate change.
Existing nuclear power plants regulated by these rules therefore may likely be vulnerable in future to the environmental changes caused by sudden climate change. Plants in the planning stage today will also be vulnerable to events generated in the natural world by sudden climate change. The historic data stipulated by this regulation is an insufficient basis from which to design structures which must withstand any natural events which may occur over the coming decades. Nuclear power reactors that possess Passive Core Cooling Emergency Systems, having a radically different design, are subject to different rules than the regulation I have quoted above. Andrey Morozov, Alexandra Soshkina, Institute for Physics and Power Engineering by A.I. Leypunsky, 1 Bondarenko sq. Obninsk, 249033, Russia use the Westinghouse AP1000 as an example in their paper “Passive Core Cooling Systems for Next Generation NPPs: Characteristics and State of the Art” at https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/40/048/40048140.p df . These authors state : “The reactor passive core cooling systems include the core makeup tanks system, passive residual heat removal heat exchanger and in-containment refuelling water storage tank. “ end quote.
Westinghouse public relations material available online states that the passive gravity fed emergency core cooling system is capable of functioning for 72 continuous hours. Further, the company material indicates that after that period no risk of fuel core damage is possible.
However:
The extent to which the AP1000 is designed to withstand environmental events predicted to occur over the next 50 years is unknown to me. Such design features would include I think, resilience of the containment structures and perhaps elevation above predicted worst case flood disaster water levels, and design features which render installations such as spent fuel pools immune to projected future-scale natural events. While it seems the AP1000 design might lend itself to inland sites adjacent to large rivers, China has built some AP1000 reactors in coastal provinces.
The design of the AP1000 is new, and the world watches to see how these first units work perform in the real world over the next 50 years. Sometimes it takes decades for early observations and expectations of complex engineering plants to be either confirmed or refuted. Every reactor ever built has been opened with high hopes for a better future. Such plants have helped produce today’s world and today’s cultural norms. Not all of these are good.
86 I wonder how the Sellafield site will cope in 2080.
I refer to the following document:
“Climate change, nuclear power, and the adaptation–mitigation dilemma”, Natalie Kopytkov, The University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK John Perkins, The Evergreen State College, 1806 24th Avenue NW, Olympia, WA 98502, USA, Energy Policy Volume 39, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 318-333. At https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510007329?via%3 Dihub
This paper reports: “Many policy-makers view nuclear power as a mitigation for climate change. Efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, however, interact with existing and new nuclear power plants, and these installations must contend with dilemmas between adaptation and mitigation. This paper develops five criteria to assess the adaptation–mitigation dilemma on two major points: (1) the ability of nuclear power to adapt to climate change and (2) the potential for nuclear power operation to hinder climate change adaptation. Sea level rise models for nine coastal sites in the United States, a review of US Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents, and reports from France’s nuclear regulatory agency provided insights into issues that have arisen from sea level rise, shoreline erosion, coastal storms, floods, and heat waves. Applying the criteria to inland and coastal nuclear power plants reveals several weaknesses. Safety stands out as the primary concern at coastal locations, while inland locations encounter greater problems with interrupted operation. Adapting nuclear power to climate change entails either increased expenses for construction and operation or incurs significant costs to the environment and public health and welfare. Mere absence of greenhouse gas emissions is not sufficient to assess nuclear power as a mitigation for climate change.” End quote. Source as given above.
I expect that the majority of the world’s current reactor fleet will, over the coming years, be viewed and reviewed in terms of their vulnerability to Sudden Climate Change and from the perspectives of reliable operation, the reliability of their connected grids (for they depend upon the grid for safe shut down and operation) , and the ability of the safety systems to run continuously for lengths of time reality imposes. Many existing nuclear plants possess Emergency Core Cooling systems designed to run for only 8 hours. (American Nuclear Society, FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI: ANS Committee Report, The American Nuclear Society Special Committee on Fukushima, June 2012, which states: “In general, one should not expect the RCIC system to run much beyond 8 hours in a station blackout (SBO).” Pdf page 18. Though this reference is in relation to only one of several ECCS systems present in those old reactors , it is sufficient to show that the safety systems in many operating nuclear power plants are time limited in their design. That 3 such reactors failed due to lack of electrical power while at the same time millions of British Thermal Units of heat energy was venting through the destroyed roofs – wasted, rather than utilised – was immensely frustrating to watch at the time.
87 The vast bulk of the world’s NPP fleet is not new. How many of them will be able to respond appropriately to the future realities as presented by the natural world remains to be seen. The AP1000 has yet to “show what it is made of “ in this regard, though it is designed to do better than previous state of the art- the reactors built before it. I await the future with interest. Is the AP1000 containment and spent fuel pools suited to the natural world of 2040? Who knows?
The AP1000 was designed in 2006 with features specifically designed to exceed the limitations of the previous state of the art in terms of emergency core cooling systems. For these limitations have long been known to exist in existing light water reactors. Until the advent of the AP1000 design, nuclear authorities exhorted these reactors as being the salvation of the world. It seems to me that the statement made by Toshiba’s nuclear division that the industry “can afford a Fukushima every 30 years” is full of irony and arrogance. That division of Toshiba is now an economic hulk, and the Chinese government owns the intellectual property for the AP1000. Maybe though, if we ask nicely, Huawei , or some other Chinese government agency, will build Australia a power reactor or two. If the Australian people want.
I have no idea what design flaws will be overcome by AP1000 Mk2. No doubt there will be a Mk2. Should we wait for it?
It will take a minimum, I think, of 11 years, maybe more, to build a nuclear power plant in Australia, along with modifying the specification and hardware of the Australian power grid, building the fuel enrichment plant, the fuel fabrication facility, the reprocessing plant, establishing both high and low level permanent nuclear waste sites, changing the laws to enable all this, changing the laws about who has to pay for the grid (an NPP that serves domestic users may require compulsion in some form on the part of grid independent consumers).
The cultural memory of living off grid in the 50s and 60s – pedal wireless, diesel generators, lead acid batteries and so on, is an old one. But yes, many Australians have long experience of living off grid. And today more and more are opting for it, using modern technology. How modern is fission? How current is the view that the grid, for the house hold, has to be used for all or any of one’s electrical power?
What will our future be? No doubt Australian engineers could come up with a future proof reactor structure – one that withstands winds never seen here before etc. Such design skill will need to be applied to the re engineering of the grid, and to the structure that make up all sections of the nuclear fuel cycle. And that one is a big ask. Will the resultant electricity and grid charges be cheaper than they are today? I’m not an optimist.
In terms of a cultural study of nuclear design, it is clear that the AP1000 could have been designed and built in 1967 or earlier. But it was not. There is nothing new about gravity fed coolant flow. There is nothing new about convention cooling. The Model T Ford used both (thermo siphon and
88 convection cooling). It had a totally passive “no moving parts cooling system”. It’s the pre existence of the concept that matters, not the scale or application of it. The AP1000 may be a brilliant presentation of very old ideas, paraded as Nuclear Futurism as is the industry habit.
The result of the nuclear reactor design culture is this: the world is awash with inferior Nuclear Power Plants. They will only be decommissioned when economics dictate. Yet, even prior to them being built, regulators admitted to their failings in private.
We are lumbered with a world in which most of the existing reactor fleet is ill equipped for the future realities of planet earth. What will Sudden Climate Change driven weather throw at these reactors and how will they cope? How will indeed the AP1000 cope? I don’t know.
I ask the committee this: What could possibly go wrong?
What does the nuclear regulatory regime culture today have in common with it’s 1960s and 1970s counterpart? While promising the future today, will the current regime deliver up more industrial scale vulnerability and short sightedness at huge economic and social cost? Should we believe only the PR and ignore the whole body of relevant science - All of it?
In terms of the continual accretion of fission and fuel products in the biosphere and foodchain, which sources cited here confirm, the early work of Soviet scientists in the field of chronic exposures to ionising radiation will become more and more important in the years immediately ahead. I have referred earlier to the work of Guskova et. al. In January 2011, the ICRP issued a discussion paper “Early and late effects of radiation in normal 17 tissues and organs: threshold doses for tissue reactions and other non-cancer effects of radiation in a radiation protection context” DRAFT REPORT FOR CONSULTATION ICRP ref 4844-6029-7736 2 January 20, 2011. The document considers Chronic Radiation Syndrome. As late as 1984 Los Alamos National Laboratories considered this Syndrome inapplicable in to the Western world. Due to the events of March 2011 it appears the progress of proceedings in regard to Chronic Radiation Syndrome by the ICRP has been delayed. I suggest to this Committee that it approach the ICRP and find out what is happening in this regard. This Committee must then inform the Australian public. The draft report can be downloaded here: http://www.icrp.org/docs/Tissue%20Reactions%20Report%20Draft%20for%2 0Consultation.pdf What is going on with this proposed recognition of CRS? What is the hold up? This is most important.
89 15. Nuclear Futurism Writ Large Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
Quote: “Japan Scraps Tokaimura Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Plant
“In June 2018 Japan’s nuclear authorities have approved the scrapping of the Tokaimura nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. New nuclear safety regulations, formulated in the wake of the 2011 triple nuclear reactor failures, render the plant uneconomic.
“The policy of reprocessing used nuclear fuel by extracting plutonium and uranium for re-use in reactors, has come to a dead end.
“Taxpayers will pay for the decommissioning costs of the plant, estimated to cost $US 9 billion.
“The plan to scrap the plant was first put forward in 2014. It is not known where Japan will store the nuclear waste which has accumulated at the Tokaimura plant. The long term storage of about 310 cannisters of highly radioactive vitrified nuclear waste and 360 cubic meters of radioactive waste, currently present at the plant is an issue under current consideration by authorities, as it has been for some time.
“The preparatory phase of the plan is expected to last 10 years. The whole decommissioning plan is expected to take 70 years to complete. “end quote. Source: Kyodo News at https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2018/06/e8c8d98601e3-japan-approves- 70-year-plan-to-scrap-nuclear-reprocessing-plant.html
The whole nuclear fuel cycle has to be considered by the Australian people and our government before the people’s vote on the matter of Nuclear Power in Australia is considered.
90 16 The Chinese Naval Thorium Reactor Program Terms of Reference a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter.
Jiang Mianheng has headed a number of national research programs in alternative energy and other technologies: "coal liquefaction, electric cars, mobile phone networks, particle accelerators, spaceships, lunar satellites and liquid fluoride thorium reactor. He is the son of Jiang Zemin, former paramount leader and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China.
Jiang Mianheng is currently running the Chinese government program to develop liquid fluoride thorium reactor for naval propulsion. The program is centred upon 2 prototypes being built in the Gobi Desert. The budget for this program includes the $US 3.3 billion spent so far.
There is probably little doubt that this program will result in the rapid modernisation of China’s navy. It appears that the Chinese communist party is eager to enter partnership with Western nations regarding the thorium reactor program. Sale and construction of Chinese thorium reactors in the West will reduce the costs of modernising China military with this dual use technology.
The story of the Western Thorium reactor program is very old. The US Thorium technology is now public domain. The US continues to spend billions of dollars on the clean up from its failed attempts to build a commercial thorium reactor.
I refer to the article “Thorium: the wonder fuel that wasn’t” By Robert Alvarez, May 11, 2014. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, at https://thebulletin.org/2014/05/thorium-the-wonder-fuel-that-wasnt/
Alvarez writes: “The energy potential of the element thorium was discovered in 1940 at the University of California at Berkeley, during the very early days of the US nuclear weapons program……
“With the strong endorsement of a congressionally created body, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, the United States began a major effort in the early 1960s to fund a two-track research and development effort for a new generation of reactors that would make any uranium shortage irrelevant by producing more fissile material fuel than they consumed…..
“The last serious attempt to use thorium in a commercial reactor was at the Fort St. Vrain plant in Colorado, which closed in 1989 after 10 years and hundreds of equipment failures, leaks, and fuel failures. There were four failed commercial thorium ventures, prior agreement makes the US government responsible for their wastes. “ end quote. Source given above.
91 I urge the Australian government not to aid the Chinese government’s program to nuclear power its navy. The Australian government must know that the dual use thorium reactor research program has a primarily military research function. For Australian taxpayers to be forced into subsidising the Chinese thorium program with joint undertakings by our national government is an anathema to me. I have little doubt Jiang Mianheng et. al. will solve the many problems embodied in this reactor type to the satisfaction of the Chinese navy and to the satisfaction of the Chinese Communist Party.
Australia does not need this technology for civil electricity production.
92 17. Alternatives to Nuclear Power Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. X solving the crisis of peak load and cost by end summer 2019/20. Nuke is out.
Present electricity generation technology includes coal fired, hydro-electric, gas fired, some auxiliary diesel, solar and wind. As a general theme, the older order generators use fuel to release energy. The newer order generators in general collect energy in one form and convert it into another form. An equation for the new order generators of this type might be E = e – collection and conversion losses. As this technology develops the efficiencies of collection and conversion phases will increase and will continue to become more economic.
Potential immediate or future electrical generation power sources include geo- thermal, hydrogen, wave.
Medium term future energy sources include fusion, large geo-thermal, thermo couple, space based solar coupled with microwave beaming –successful trials of this have been conducted in Japan.
Far future possible energy sources may arise from continued research into the Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field.
A state of the art coal fired power plant could be built in Australia. However, given current political and community knowledge and views, this is unlikely.
The case for a quick solution to the need to reinforce base load power generation at the current time is conflicted by the need to cut emissions.
Even a state of the art coal fired power plant is not “clean” in relation to CO2 emissions, merely improved.
Hydro-electric is being expanded at a small to moderate levels by the construction of a pumped hydro installation, powered by wind/solar.
The cost of gas, dictated by Australia’s policy of exporting the resource before taking into account Australia’s own needs first, renders this one unreliable economically. In terms of the future, fossil fuel burning will become more and more unpopular. But gas is cleaner than coal in this regard.
The use of solar and wind in conjunction with the use of lithium batteries has, since the advent of the Abbott Liberal government, come under strong fire from conservative politics.
Successive governments have had great difficulty maintaining a rational and stable energy and emissions policy. The perceived need to introduce new clean energy technology has been limited by these governments to the
93 promotion of nuclear power. This is no solution to the impeding need for Australia to survive the 2019/20 summer peak load demand spike period. It is even too late to rapidly add Lithium grid grade battery storage.
This is despite the fact that the cost and performance of both solar panels and lithium storage batteries are rapidly becoming more and attractive. In the near future the option of completely disconnecting from the increasingly expensive national power grid will be rationally considered by many households. This fact presents major economic considerations for government , industry and the public. Australia must develop a grid policy, an energy policy and an emissions policy – and all these must be stable and rational.
Lithium
I refer to Minister Simon Birmingham’s media release “Unlocking Australia’s potential in lithium-ion battery manufacturing” 11 December, 2018, at https://trademinister.gov.au/releases/Pages/2018/sb_mr_181211.aspx Minister Birmingham confirms Australia’s unique and world leading reserves of high grade lithium. The huge potential for the design, manufacturing and export of Australian lithium batteries is discussed. There is a strong case for the domestic use of these batteries.
The document confirms the growing world need for these batteries. Australia is well placed also to benefit from the use of these batteries in the field of house and industrial electrical power storage and supply. The need for these batteries in the mass market transport sphere is rapidly increasing.
The lack of a stable and rational energy and emissions policy in Australia since 2013 has held this industry, and this nation, back.
Hydrogen
The use of hydrogen has long been advocated by scientists, technologists and members of the lay public. It’s combustion produces one, and only one, substance in its exhaust stream – pure water. In the past Hydrogen has been considered in the popular mind as being unsafe in use.
To the contrary, the safe handling and use of very large volumes of hydrogen has been demonstrated by every space agency on the planet. For a discussion of this, see the NASA page at https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/hydrogen/hydrogen_fuel_of_choice.ht ml
Recently the Australian CSIRO has developed, via a chemical process, a method which converts hydrogen into a stable compound suitable for use during transport and storage. This method is economical, quick and allows for rapid and cheap conversion back to hydrogen’s natural state for use as a clean, renewable and high energy density fuel. In use hydrogen burns very efficiently. However it does have a very rapidly expanding flame front which is
94 a factor when planning safety systems at a hydrogen powered thermal electrical generation power station. Shielding structures that withstand accidental compressed hydrogen releases and it’s sudden unintended ignition can be designed.
So profound is hydrogen’s future as a clean renewable fuel that Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel AO, has issued a message to all Australians about it. The message can be read here: https://www.industry.gov.au/news- media/australias-hydrogen-potential-a-message-from-the-chief- scientist?fbclid=IwAR14KoO41eyXXP1qEfzBg_9obXJtNlTDE4fQHecGitiRXX 5p-eEe6W3smUc
As every child in this land knows, there are many hopes for the future and a strong basis for thinking that Australians in the future will meet individual and national needs, including the needs of the planet which allows us to survive and flourish.
No government edict about what we must choose can ever match the diverse and rich thinking all Australians are capable of. The manifestation of this rich and original thinking, from the boomerang, the natural insights of living in the land as it is, is a part of us, and we a manifestation of it. We have an urge to the drive into myriad futures. This is a far deeper thing than the determination of a mere government cabinet can muster. Politicians actually are vastly out gunned by the combined knowledge and imagination and will of millions of ordinary Australians.
I urge this committee examining nuclear power in Australia to read Dr. Finkel’s message. My views align with those of Doctor Finkel’s in this matter.
95 18. Dr. David Chanin’s Written Correspondence Regarding Reactor Emissions Terms of Reference: a. waste management, transport and storage, b. health and safety, c. environmental impacts, d. energy affordability and reliability, e. economic feasibility, f. community engagement, g. workforce capability, h. security implications, i. national consensus, j. any other relevant matter. X Telling the truth.
Dr. David Chanin is the author of US NUREG/CR—4691- Vol.3, “MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System (MACCS)” Manuscript Completed: December 1989 Date Published: February 1990 Prepared by J. A. Rollstin,* D. I. Chanin,** H-N Jow Sandia National Laboratories Albuquerque, NM 87185 available for Barnaby Joyce and Tania Constable to scoff at https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/21/094/21094 910.pdf
I refer the Committee to the following email sent to me by Dr. David Chanin as follows:
Quote: “On Fri, 22/4/11, David Chanin
From: David Chanin [email protected] Subject: hey, here's another favor you can do me To: "paul langley" What's amazing to me is that I seem to be the only one who thinks that I-131 levels should be decreasing with 8-day halflife because its only parents in the "standard NRC 60-nuclide list for reactors" are Te-131and Te-131m, both with shorter halflives, so they can't be causing any I-131 buildup and certainly can't cause the high levels of I-131 being reported in the flood of measurements that were published by TEPCO all on April 19, with measurements of seawater as far away as 15 km showing I:Cs rations of over 2:1 and as high as 3:1, but sometimes they're equal, with few to none where I-131 is measured at levels less than Cs-134 and Cs-137 on a Bq/gram-water basis with 1000-second counting time of 1-liter sample, which matches up with usage of a gamma spectrometry machine like the GAM-AN1 by Canberra: http://www.canberra.com/literature/994.asp Can you do me a favor and ask one of your nuclear engineer contacts how and why I-131 can be over double the reported levels of Cs-134 and Cs-137, after five halflives of I-131? I'm not a nuclear engineer who can try to run the Origen code for their reactors and the SNF pools to see what could be making the I-131. I'm the consequence analyst who developed the MACCS2 code and have used it and its predecessor MACCS since the 1980s for nuclear accident analysis. 96 All I know is that when people use the MACCS2 code, which is the NRC- approved code for reactor PRA consequence calculations, and is used worldwide for well over 500 nuclear facilities and operations since its release in 1997, the MACCS2 code shows ZERO consequences from I-131 from reactor accidents after 40 days of decay. It's not just the direct exposure doses from groundshine and inhalation, it's also the food doses calculated by the code with both of the "food models" that are available to the code user. Milk from cows grazing during a large release shows very low levels of I-131 after 40 days according to the MACCS2 calculations. And it's also my understanding that "normal levels" of I-131 in SNF pools should be practically zero, with the million-year, weak emitter, I-129 being the only iodine that should be detected to any significant degree in SNF water from an intact pool under normal operation. So, if my MACCS2 code is wrong about I-131, then all the safety analyses that use to MACCS2 to calculate nuclear accident impacts are also wrong. That's why this is an important question. Even if criticalities are ongoing, it's impossible for me to imagine that they could be creating so much I-131. I've used "standard decay tables" that all derive from ICRP 38 and were calculated by Keith Eckerman, at ORNL, who calculates the internal and external DCFs for US and international agencies which all rely on the ICRP 38 decay chains, where decay-chain calcs are necessary because of the decay and buildup of progeny after an intake both on the ground for deposited material and in the human body from inhlaed or ingested material. I have not tried to use this database from KfK to solve the puzzle.: http://www.nucleonica.net/unc.aspx So my question, which you can forward around with all the above ane below is: Why are the I-131 levels of April 19 in "plant-water" and seawater from http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html so high after 5 halflives? The NRC says that the MACCS2 code is essentially error-free. I'm curious if that's true because I learned way back in school that there is no such thing a bug- free large-scale software such as MACCS2, which has received little-to-none verification and validation for complex scenarios. I have no qualms whatsoever being known as the source of this request. I've never pretended to know everything. David Chanin http://chaninconsulting.com Re NYT article of April 5, 2011, "U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant": "Even so, the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. “I have seen no data to suggest that there is criticality ongoing,” said Mr. Wilmshurst, who was involved in the assessment." End quote. As a result of receiving this email, I complied with Dr. Chanin’s request and forwarded his email to a nuclear engineer at Oak Ridge, in the USA. I also forwarded the email to suitably qualified people who work in the UK and Japan. I submitted my suggestions – apart from the bleedingly obvious answer to Dr. Chanin. The idea of forwarding the email to Andrew Bolt or any other “journalist” in Australia repulsed me, so I confined 97 my efforts on Dr. Chanin’s behalf to sharing his email in the manner he requested. (the people I contacted as a result of Dr.Chanin’s request would, I expect be members of his usual network, as they were of mine at a particular in the earlier period of my life). I would deeply appreciate it if this present learned Parliamentary Committee would kindly consider supplying Dr. Chanin with the correct answer to his question. Thank you. By all means please contact Dr. Chanin direct. You are the Australian government. I am not your unpaid research assistant. I do not need your votes. You lot need mine. If this Committee cannot come up with the right answer, what qualifies you to be part of this Committee? Does the Honourable Barnaby Joyce actually know the answer ? His bombast published in the recent press telling me to “shut up” if I didn’t want “zero emission” nuclear power (??), want truth does the Honourable hold in this matter and who trained him? Kelloggs Corp? My reply to Dr. Chanin included the following: ““Dear David, ….. I had a brief email exchange with Imre Pazsit, who was at Chalmers University of Technology Sweden at the time….. (in regard to the creation of the fission products………. An Investigation of the Products of the Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons.” “Physical Review”, 56, 1- 9, PROLA, 1939, May 11. He identifies Antimony 127, 129 Tellurium 127, 129, 131 Iodine 131 in the one paper. So, that August, Hamilton, who had been administering I131 to patients (and so had a human dose response and biological effect dataset) from 1933 (from memory) would have been one of the first in the loop after Lawrence once the President had decided to act on the Einstein letter. There was a possible military interest in Hamilton's I131 work in 1939. ….Regards, Paul Langley.” End quote. Further on the on the matter of the press statements made in the recent past regarding nuclear emissions – either in the context of normal reactor operation, or in the state of allegedly minor and perfectly safe SNAFU of 3/11 Japan, etc: It is clear from the above what the answer to Dr.Chanin’s question actually is, despite the denials of nuclear industry. In my opinion based upon the facts by Chanin, nuclear decontamination expert, USA. So when does industry PR actually become a lie? Quote: paul langley Regards Paul Langley --- On Fri, 22/4/11, David Chanin From: David Chanin _ Paul, Hmm. I've read all three of your email replies. None of your theories conform with the physics Cheers, 98 David. Quote: “There are plenty of competent CHPs in Japan who can read and write good English. Unfortunately, competent CHPs seem to have no involvement with the events of Fukushima. The flood of garbled information with nonsense numbers coming from people driving cars around with a single pen dosimeter to take a “dose reading” is tragically funny. You’re right about ignoring the inhalation intakes. They might not know that the inhalation pathway is more important than “groundshine.” But that’s Radiation Safety 101. Every nuclear engineer in the world should know that or have it on their bookshelf. Tis a mystery. Maybe the US NRC told them they didn’t have to worry about inhalation as long as they wore face masks. But then what about analyzing their nasal swabs? Never mind. The labs are full. No need to worry. It’s perfectly safe. Time will tell … Meantime we get to do a huge experiment to see if low doses and low dose rates actually can cause any cancers other than childhood thyroid cancers. Isn’t that grand?” end quote, email to me from David Chanin 2011. And so it is clear Dr. Chanin was telling the truth. I wish the Committee to consider carefully the following email sent to me by the same Dr. David Chanin: “—– Original Message —– From: paul langley To: David Chanin Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 9:21 AM Subject: Decontamination in Fukushima David, has there been any progress or good news regarding decontamination of Fukushima City itself? Regards Paul Langley And David Chanin replied with “I think we’ll never know the truth about what’s happening there.” And you say to me, learned Parliamentary Committee, that members among you wish to empower this same industry in Australia? Who do you work for, in that case? It won’t be any different here, as it has been shown to be so in our past. Do not believe me. Test the reality yourselves by confirming the truth of what I am presenting. In this matter I have one last question of the Committee: What emotion compelled Dr. Chanin to contact me over his own superiors and over his own networks and over his own free press? Why did he consider, as he said to me, I was a “safe place” to put his knowledge and information? I not only ask this of the Committee, I ask it of the Australian people. 99 19. Recommendations A That this committee finds nuclear power with not meet Australia’s energy needs for the peak load season of summer 2019/20. Discard this waste of time and solve the immediate problem by the mass production of Australian Grid capable large scale lithium ion storage batteries using 2019 US patents and Australian workers and Australian high grade Lithium ore. B That this committee recommends the construction of hydrogen production facility using all means including biomass, photosynthesis, coal conversion technology, solar and wind electrolysis and any other means. C That this committee recommends that a thermal hydrogen baseload power plant be built adjacent to the hydrogen production plant. D That this committee recommends that CSIRO safe storage and transport patents be used by the above hydrogen production plant. E That this committee recommends that nuclear power be seen for what it is – a false promise based on empty futurism. By the time such an NPP is built and the grid modified to comply with regulations regarding NPP safety, the costs of both nuclear power and the resultant network costs will render its electricity a motivation for Australians to abandon the grid network in ever greater numbers. F That the Committee recommends that Government stop delaying Australia’s rational adjustment to the realities of the world between now and 2029. The very earliest date an NPP can come online in Austrlia. G That this committee own up to the fact that over the next 10 years, nuclear power will become clearly and obviously unable to compete in the energy market space with advancing new technologies. Nuclear power is at the end of its technology life cycle. H That this committee wake up to the increasingly urgent environmental burden of nuclear emissions. The fission product environment sinks are nearly full, dilution into the environment is increasingly becoming concentration in the food chain, and humans are the Apex predator. Even if nuclear industry, full cycle, was perfectly safe (it isn’t) in a short period of years (in terms of technology life cycles) that will clearly not be the case. Future generations will not only have to live with our legacy of CO2 emissions, but also with our 100 fission product and fuel product emissions into land, sea and air. I That this committee condemn the world nuclear industry quest to turn Australia in the last green field site for nuclear power. J That this committee instructs government to distribute the exhaust product from the burning of hydrogen in the base load power stations be freely distributed to Australian Farmers. K That the members of this committee vote No to nuclear power. Thank you for your consideration. Paul Langley 11 September 2019 Overleaf: Appendix 1. 101 Appendix 1 Proof of training and duties 1 of 2 102 2 of 2 103