Aucbvax.1868 fa.energy utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!OAF@MIT-MC Tue Jun 23 04:47:18 1981 energy digest Questions about Helen Caldicott's nuclear energy article, Iraqi reactor's intended uses TMI clipping servic - part 8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 Jun 1981 1440-PDT From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE Subject: re: nuclear energy article To: energy at MIT-MC cc: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE I've heard before the claim that one microgram of plutonium in your lungs will give you lung cancer and wondered about it. They seem to assume that the one particle is going to stay in the lungs for 20 years, but surely the lungs have some power to clean themselves. My glasses get dusty after just a few hours, so the lungs must collect tremendous amounts of the stuff. They must dispose of it somehow or they would be clogged in short order. Also, what does Helen Caldicott mean when she says that driving past a hot fuel rod at ninety miles an hour would kill you? Would it kill you immediately, in a couple of days, or in thirty years? After all it's very likely that you will die within a hundred years after crossing the street, but that doesn't mean much. I've seen a lot of this sort of sloppiness in reporting in science articles. ------- ------------------------------ RWG@MIT-MC 06/19/81 19:12:56 To: ENERGY at MIT-MC The following is repeated (without permission) from the July 81 Access to Energy. > > > STOP PRESS < < < The Iraqi nuclear reactor destroyed by Israeli jets was NOT an electric power reactor - or it would not have worried the Israelis. The 3.5% enriched uranium used in light water power reactors is useless for bombs, and it would be utterly inept to get plutonium from what little accumulates in the hot fuel rods. The Iraqi reactor was built to run on highly enriched uranium, which can be used as the initial charge to breed, for evermore, plutonium from plentiful (unenriched) uranium 238. Only the irrational will use the episode to berate nuclear power. (Personally, we think of it as the first successful international act of non-proliferation.) [More: "Nuclear Proliferation - How to blunder into it" (1976); $2 from Golem Press, Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306.] -------- Aside from this, it was a pretty good issue. But if, as implied by ICL.REDFORD, the Iraqis planned to extract 75MW from 25lb of fuel, the Israelis could have saved themselves the trouble of trashing the reactor. --rwg ------------------------------ Date: 19 June 1981 03:01 edt From: Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics Subject: Clipping Service - Nuclear Industry Series, part 8 To: energy at MIT-AI This is the eighth in a many part transcription of a Phoenix Gazette series on Three Mile Island and the nuclear industry. All material is by Andrew Zipser, Gazette reporter. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Experts debate the odds If there is anything like a bible for the nuclear industry, the prophet who penned its contents is a man named Norman Rasmussen. Rasmussen, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was commissioned by the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to analyze the risks associated with nuclear power plants. The result, released in late 1975, was a foot-thick compilation of graphs, charts, and analyses concluding that the operation of a nuclear reactor was far less hazardous than just about anything else you could think of. Known variously as WASH-1400, the Rasmussen Study, or, more properly, as the "Reactor Safety Study, An Assessment of Accident Risks in U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plants," Rasmussen's analysis indicated that the chances of a fatality in a nuclear accident were about as great as being hit by a meteor and 10,000 times less than being killed by a tornado. More specifically, it concluded that with 100 reactors operating: - The probability of an accident causing 10 acute fatalities was once in 30,000 years; of 10 acute illnesses, once in 1,600 years; of 10 latent cancers, once in 500 years; and of 10 genetic effects, once in 600 years. - The probability of an accident causing $1 million in property damage was once in 200 years; of causing $560 million (the limit on Federally guaranteed insurance against nuclear damage) in damage, once in 5,200 years. - The reprecussions of a reactor melt-down (such as partially occurred at Three Mile Island) in which radiation was released would be less than one injury or immediate death per accident, less than one occurrence of thyroid damage or later death, and less than one genetic defect per year, and that the cost of evacuating the surrounding area while contamination was removed would be less than $1 million. These findings, at a time when the nuclear industry was being affected by alarming predictions of the effects of a nuclear accident, were embraced with open arms. Yet even before Three Mile Island the study was the subject of intense criticism. There were those who claimed that a nuclear system is too complex to quantify, that Rasmussen's data base did not support his conclusions, that improper and incorrect statistical procedures were used. Others -- with almost prophetic insight -- argued that the effects of human behavior were inadequately treated. Concerned by these observations, the NRC eventually solicited the report of yet another committee, the Risk Assessment Review Group. Chaired by Harold Lewis, professor of physics at the University of California, the committee spent a year reviewing WASH-1400. Its conclusion? That although the committee "strongly supported the objective of quantitative safety analysis." it nevertheless found "that the calculations of the Reactor Safety Study were not as good as had been claimed," according to Lewis. Although the NRC subsequently withdrew its support of the Rasmussen Study -- just three months before TMI -- the Rasmussen calculations are still quoted by industry officials as being reflective of reactor safety. And when the Lewis report is mentioned, they tend to repeat its support of risk quantification while overlooking its assessment of Rasmussen's calculations. The greatest uncertainty in Rasmussen's figures, and the factor most stressed by the Kemeny Commission, is the unpredictability of human behavior. As noted by Lewis, automatic control systems can sense disruptions of normal operations, but "the proliferation of possible scenarios soon exceeds the capability of any automatic system to sense the proper response, and human judgement comes into play." "At this point," he adds, "human action may be curative, it may be ineffective, or it may aggravate the problem in the reactor... It is extremely difficult, in fact impossible at present, to quantify human behavior on the average, let alone under stressful conditions." Much of the damage at TMI was the result not of mechanical failure but of improper human response. And although Rasmussen had forseen the possibility of relief valves being left in the wrong position, he did not foresee such subsequent developments as the formation of the hydrogen bubble. Three Mile Island must also cast doubt on some other aspects of Rasmussen's analysis. Certainly the financial impact projections in the study are questionable, since more than $125 million has already been approved for the claims of area residents and clean-up costs are now estimated at $1.5 billion. Similarly, an assessment that an accident with large public consequences would occur once in 200 years (with 100 reactors operating), while statistically not proven incorrect, is subject to question. Finally, one area WASH-1400 did not deal with that concerns nuclear critics is the possibility of sabatoge. Although industry officials maintain that reactor security systems would be difficult to penetrate, experts in terrorism have similarly maintained that reactors present attractive targets for terrorists. Should those terrorists succeed, their sabotage may (or may not) alter the *degree* of damage -- but the possibility of sabotage certainly changes the *probability* of a tragic result. End of energy digest ********************