Phlogiston #8

Contents Editorial Page 1 The Bearded Triffid - A Column On Science Fiction Topics Page 5 Letters Page 8 Bullseye Page 9 Odds and Sods Page 12 Outback Walkabout Page 13 Art Credits - Cover by Glenn Young All Rights Reserved. Copyright on Material Reverts to Authors on Publication. Limited Copies of Issues One, Two and Three are Available for $1.50 a copy from the Editorial Address. Copies of Issue Four and Five are available for $1.25 Issue Six sold out! Issue Seven available for $1.00 All Enquires, subscriptions and contributions should be sent to: Alex Heatley (Editor). P.O Box 11-708 Manners Street Wellington NEW ZEALAND Subscriptions are available at the rate of $4:00 for four issues. Overseas Subscriptions by arrangement. Phlogiston is published every three months. Next publication date is 1st May 1986. Deadline for Contributions 1st April 1986. Readers are invited to submit material for publication, however, no promise is made of publication. Any published material entitles the contributor to a free copy of the issue in which it appears. Thanks to Nicky McLean – Proof reader and subeditor – All mistakes are his, I tell you! Editorial There are several books in my collection which, every time I read them, raise my blood pressure to life threatening levels. Fortunately for me, and my blood pressure, I can use such books as the inspiration for (what I consider) interesting and (hopefully) enlightening editorials. Into this category falls Jerry Pournelle's epic work - A Step Further Out. Some of the ideas that Jerry Pournelle expounds in this book are so tenuous that the slightest breath of common-sense should be enough to blow them into that murky quagmire reserved for all half-baked ideas. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Jerry's ideas about the use of nuclear energy and the methods whereby we might deal with its dangers. In this editorial I hope to be able to show why I feel that the use of nuclear energy may well prove fatal to the biosphere of this planet, and along the way I also hope to demolish some of Jerry's ideas on this subject. Despite this so called "Atomic Age" we live in, few people realise that there is a steady rain of radioactive particles passing through their bodies. And every one of those particles has the potential of interacting with any of the billions of cells within their bodies. This steady rain is known as the "Background Count" and it varies in level from place to place on the globe - as an example; the background count at Bikini Atoll is high enough that a lengthy stay in the area (more than a few hours) would be hazardous to the health! Every time one of these particles (and there are hundreds passing through our bodies every second) passes through a cell there is a small chance that it may damage the cell in such a way for it to become cancerous. Fortunately for us, this has been going on for millions of years and over that time our bodies have evolved mechanisms to cope with such events. This means that a cancerous cell caused by radiation has a very small chance of living long enough to grow to the point where it can kill or inconvenience its host. So why do people die from radiation poisoning? Simply because they are exposed to levels of radiation hundreds of times greater than the level of the background count. This has the effect of increasing the number of damaged cells by hundreds of times and the body soon discovers that it cannot function when many cells are either dead, dying or cancerous. The result, depending on the dosage and whether medical treatment is available, is either rapid death or a very slow painful one as the cancers within the victim's bone marrow expand to the point where they burst the surrounding bones. However, if this was the whole story then there would be no problem. We would merely avoid exposure to high levels of radiation just as we avoid burning ourselves on hot objects. Regrettably the situation is not as clear cut. While contact with a very hot object for a short period of time is safe and we may suffer minor burns - the same cannot be said for radiation. Every time a particle zips through your body there is a small chance that it will turn a cell cancerous and there is an even smaller chance that that cell will be able to multiply to the point where it can kill you. But there is nothing you can do about reducing this possibility. Even if you became a hermit you would still stand roughly the same chance of dying from radiation induced cancer as I do. And here is where Jerry Pournelle comes in. In his book he argues that the chance of dying from radiation induced cancer (let's call it radcan for short) is so low that we shouldn't worry about it. On page 327 he tosses off a little piece of arithmetic to illustrate his point. "So let's look at radioactivity in quantitative terms. Figure 34 shows the dose in millirems (thousandths of a rem) received by each US citizen on the average. Further, let's add a couple of bits of information: of the 24,000 survivors exposed to 140 rems (140,000 mrem) at Hiroshima- Nagasaki, fewer than 200 died of cancer. The probability of developing cancer from radiation exposure is about 0.018% per rem (not mrem)." Now notice the sleight of hand - he mentions that less than two hundred people died from radcan and then states that the probability of developing cancer is 0.018% per rem. It's a pity that there doesn't seem to be any way of 1 relating the figures he gives to the result he produces seeing as how at one moment he's talking about deaths from radcan and the next the probability of developing cancer. But for the moment we will accept Jerry's figures as correct. That means that if a person is exposed to 500 rems then their chance of developing cancer is about 9% which is obvious nonsense - firstly there is not a linear relationship between exposure to radiation and the development of cancer and secondly a dosage of 500 rems is quite capable of killing most people. So let's look at figure 34 - this table tells us that the annual dosage received by the average US Citizen is 131 millirems from natural sources and 121 millirems from Man-Made sources; giving a total of 252 millirems. Using this figure we can calculate, using Jerry's figure for the probability of developing radcan, that the chance of the average US Citizen contracting radcan is 0.0045% per year. Assuming that our US citizen lives "three scores years and ten" then the total chance of them contacting radcan over that period is 0.32%. Therefore three in every thousand people will "on the average" contract radcan in the course of their lives. If we multiply this figure by the population of the US (say 250 million) then 600,000 people are going to die of radcan every generation - that's quite a respectable figure. Of course - to be absolutely fair I'm just playing with numbers here. Jerry's figure is meaningless and so too are my results. What is interesting is the fact that almost half of the radiation the average US Citizen receives is man-made (the greatest amount - 103 millirems - coming from diagnostic X-rays). And of that man-made amount four millirems is from Global Fallout. Now I personally find that figure hard to believe since I remember an article about a special type of Brain-Scanner that had to be made from steel recovered from WW I sunken warships. It seems that modern steel is too radioactive (due to fallout) and ruins the readings! The question therefore before the court is whether or not four millirems is going to make that kind of difference? I suspect not. By the way, using Jerry's figures, I'd estimate that the annual dosage of New Zealanders is about 150 millirems plus or minus 50 millirems. But I'm digressing - the key point here is that there is a risk of contracting cancer from exposure to radiation in the normal course of life. Normally that risk is so low that it's not worth worrying about. But at the same time it is a risk you cannot avoid. However, such things as nuclear waste and "nuclear accidents" can very dramatically affect the amount of radiation you receive. For example : At Three Mile Island the radiation leakage was such that at half a mile away the dosage was 83 millirems (a third of the annual dosage of that "Average US Citizen"). What's more, that exposure is not a one- time occurrence - everything in that area of effect became just that bit more radioactive including the grass that cows in nearby paddocks were eating at the time. Now it is a well known fact that substances become more and more concentrated the further up the food-chain you go. In this case the cows would have received more than 83 millirems of radiation from the grass they ate, this higher level of radiation would be reflected in the milk they gave. And if humans had drunk that milk they could have received a much much higher dosage than a mere 83 millirems. It will be interesting to note the incidence of cancer among residents in that area in twenty years time.

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