Chernobyl - Symbol of Unconcerned Totalitarianism

One can hardly compare the Chernobyl fire in the Ukraine to the alleged "Three Mile Island disaster" in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Thirty-one firement and plant workers were killed in the former, while the only victims at TMI were from media-caused anxiety. Volumes have been written by analysts on the mistakes made a both power plants. But Chernobyl, with its graphite reactor designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium as well as electricity - and with no containment building - cannot even be compared with the pressurized water reactor (PWR) at TMI in which the nuclear reaction is stopped by the laws of physics when there is a loss of coolant water. Of course that hasn't stopped the anti-nuclear, anti-technologists from trying. But perhaps the strangest story out of Chernobyl was that the Soviet hierarchy, who had strongly supported the anti-nuclear activists in the United States, were apparently led to believe their own propaganda about radiation dangers.

The accident at Chernobyl provided both good and bad news for anti-nuclear activists. For decades, they had been attempting to come up with some reasonable way that radioactive products from nuclear power plants could be spread over the countryside. The best they'd been able to come up with for U.S. power plants went like this:

(a) A loss-of-coolant accident occurs, and the emergency core cooling systems fail to operate, leading to a meltdown of the fuel assemblies inside the reactor.

(b) Although the nuclear reaction stops when the coolant is lost (the water acts as a moderator to slow down the neutrons so they can be captured and allow the reaction to continue), there is still heat generated from the decay of the "daughters" of the reaction. This is supposedly so intense that it melts through six inches of steel in the reactor vessel, and continues through many feet of high-strength, reinforced concrete.

(c) But it can't stop there. The molten mass must then continue to melt through perhaps a few hundred feet of earth until reaching an aquifer. There the steam generated causes "blow holes" to develop, and the steam carries the radioactive products back to the surface. (Hold on, we're almost there.)

(d) The weather must cooperate with a gentle breeze blowing toward a populated area. (Too much wind and our "cloud" dissipates; under calm conditions, the product settles to the earth at the facility and is taken care of there.)

But the graphite fire at Chernobyl provided an actual way that about 90 million curies of radioactive material could be efficiently spread around the countryside. Yes, the anti-nukes got their dream of a large scale nuclear disaster - which had been becoming more and more difficult to conjure up, given the fact that Three Mile Island showed that the uncovered fuel elements couldn't even melt through the reactor vessel.

But there was bad news for them also. There weren't any bodies on the streets. Aside from those who died on-site, mostly firemen who expired from burns with possibly complications from radiation, there is no sign of a cancer epidemic or any other chronic problems.

Oh, sorry, there's one. The governments involved are going broke (broker?) from the payments they are making to victims. Victims? Didn't I just say there weren't any victims? Yes, but I meant from the radiation. The victims as defined by the governments involved are those who were traumatized by fear of radiation or from the trauma of being evicted from their homes and forced into refugee camps.

Of the radionuclides escaping from the burning graphite reactor at Chernobyl, the one of most concern was cesium 137. A gamma emitter with a half-life of thirty years, this reactor product settled to Earth over much of Europe. Yes sir, it did. But nobody seemed to notice it settled right on top of soil that already contained naturally occurring radioisotopes such as U238, Th232, and K40. In a mistaken spirit of humanitarianism, the Soviet Army evacuated its citizens when the dose from the Earth exceeded 0.5 cGy (500 mrad) per year. [One of the purposes of this book is to show how some authorities - even nuclear officials - have no connection with reality and, indeed, make recommendations and rules that cause great harm. This example shows nationality is no barrier.]

They apparently didn't notice they were already sitting on "highly radioactive" dirt. Figure 5 shows the Chernobyl contamination relative to naturally occurring radiation. Is it any wonder that the "Project Team's Main Recommendations" included the following?

"Measures with less impact on traditional agriculture should be investigated; better public information is needed, particularly on doses and risks, and studies of the acceptability to people of living in contaminated areas." [Emphasis added.]

Table 11 – Chernobyl Cs 137 Burden in Various Areas vs. Natural Background
Location	Range (Bq/m^2)
European Cs 137 contamination outside former USSR	20,000 to 23,000
Cs 137 contamination inside former USSR	40,000 to 5,000,000
Natural radionuclides in soil of above areas	177,000 to 6,500,000
Source: Table 2 in 1997 statement by U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) member Zbigniew Jaworowski

Table 11 gives another look at the Cs 137 "fallout" and the natural radionuclides in the top 10 cm (about four inches) of soil in several locations around Chernobyl. Note the range of natural soil radiation. Wouldn't you think that someone would have noticed a variation in the detrimental effects of natural radiation when some areas had thirty-six times the soil radioisotopes of others - if indeed there were any detrimental effects? Would you think one area would be known as Cancervania - because of regular affliction of the populace from radiation, while another area would go by Vitalia, because of superior health derived from a dearth of radiation exposure? But we don't see Europe having such disparities in cancer or other immune disorders on the basis of location, do we?

Well, actually we do: the health resorts are almost always located on springs with a high radon content.

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

If an increase in low-level background radiation caused any problems, decades of anecdotal evidence would have made Denver a ghost town.

No one escapes radiation. As mentioned earlier, the average person receives 15,000 "hits" each second, while a medical X-ray may easily score some 100 billion cellular incidents. [Risk of Nuclear Power by Bernard L. Cohen, University of Pittsburg professor. You can read the entire article at http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm.]

Those who say that "it takes only one gamma ray to cause cancer" may be technically correct, but they neglect to mention a small statistical detail: The odds against any particular gamma ray causing cancer in an affected cell are 1 out of 30,000,000,000,000,000. (That's 30 quadrillion, or 30 x 10^15, to one.) Besides, hormesis evidence indicates that the gamma ray of concern is more likely to prevent cancer than to cause it.

Before defining the units used to measure radiation exposure, you may recall we used the SXR (shoe X-ray) as a yardstick to compare the dangers posed by various radiation sources. As you may have guessed, the SXR is not exactly a reference unit recognized by the scientific community. A more convenient benchmark would be the average background exposure that we receive from the various natural and man-made sources. But, as we'll see, this "natural background" value varies by a factor of a hundred or so in different locales on planet Earth - almost all of which is the fault of nature, not man. Still, it would be desirable to reference other levels of radiation to some normal amount; so we'll arbitrarily use, as a definition of "natural background," the exposure to the average U.S. citizen - previously mentioned to be 300 mrem from natural sources and 63 mrem from man-made (mostly medical) origins.

Until the twentieth century, the average background dose of radiation for a human being had continually decreased over our specie's existence because of the slow decay of the primordial radionuclides such as thorium 232, uranium 238, and potassium 40. So what happened during the 1900s that turned the curve upward?

Most people would answer (a) fallout from atom/hydrogen bomb testing, and (b) nuclear power plants. Nice try, but no cigar. Bomb tests did inject huge amounts of highly radioactive materials into the atmosphere, where most decayed to safe levels within ten days of testing. Other longer-half-life isotopes from fallout caused a temporary worldwide increase of background radiation in the neighborhood of 1% to 4% depending mainly on location. [The one of primary concern being strontium 90 with a half-life of twenty-nine years and a propensity to replace calcium in bones.] Today it amounts to less than 1/1000 of the average background level. As mentioned, there has been only a single "fall-out fatality" from atom/hydrogen bomb testing, which occurred on the misnamed Lucky Dragon. While anti-nuclear statistics have killed off many (theoretical) thousands in their quest for an atomic scapegoat, our inaccurate friends have been unable to directly attribute any other death or injury to radiation from fallout, except as a statistical article-of-faith based on the discredited LNT and "collective dose" theories.

Nuclear power plants, on the other hand, have known emissions of radioactive products such as xenon (a non-reactive "noble" gas), but these are so low in practice as to be immeasurable. It is calculated that the average U.S. resident receives a dose considerably less than 1 mrem from all nuclear power plants combined - again, as with fallout, about 1/1000 of the normal background radiation. For those truly troubled by potential radiation exposure, it is not necessary to avoid being in the vicinity of power plants, but you might want to stay away from the U.S. Capitol building and Grand Central Station, both of which emit considerably more radiation than would be legal for any U.S. nuclear power plant to emit.

So where did the increase come from?

If we are to believe a report from the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Biological Effect of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR IV), most of the increase came from weather-stripping storm doors, and polyethylene wrapping of new homes. Not that any of these products was unusually radioactive, but because they made houses "tight," thus causing radon gas, which bubbles up from decaying radionuclides in the soil, to be trapped in the living areas. This, they calculate, amounts to 200 mrem per year - unless, as well shall see, you are fortunate enough to get more.

The second largest component of the increase is from X-rays and nuclear medicine. The averages used for medically related exposures are somewhat misleading, however, since they range from a 1-mrem dental X-ray to about 100,000 mrem (100 cGy) for a thyroid ablation. [In 1979, the University of Michigan outfitted the husband of a woman undergoing radioactive iodine diagnosis with a dosimeter. They found that he received a dose of 2,500 mrem(!) during their vacation - which would no doubt cause the EPA to forbid them to sleep together.]

In other words, most people fall well below the combined 53 mrem medical dose, while a few have relatively massive doses. As the evidence section will show, even these huge doses of X-rays or medical radioisotopes produce no measurable increase in cancer - and indeed are seen to have a hormetic effect in those cases where low-level effects were investigated.

Finally, about 10 mrem comes from consumer products such as smoke detectors, television receivers, and tritium watch dials. None comes from the process of food irradiation for a very simple reason: The process physically can not make the food radioactive. Does having an X-ray make you radioactive? Same thing.

Table 9 gives a breakdown of sources in the United States, according to the BEIR committee. Obviously, for most of us, our largest dose of radiation comes from natural sources. The exposures from "man-made" sources are almost entirely voluntary. If you don't want to have a dental X-ray, then don't. If your doctor wants to check your thyroid function using iodine 131, tell him, "No thanks, I'll just feel awful for the rest of my life." If you don't want a smoke detector in your home, then don't buy one; burn your family up if that's your preference. Don't watch television or use a computer terminal.

Table 9
Sources of Average Annual Radiation for a U.S. Citizen
Natural Sources	mrem/yr	cSv/yr	% Total
Radon	200	0.2	55
Cosmic*	27	0.027	8
Terrestrial	28	0.028	11
Internal	39	0.039	11
Total Natural	300	0.3	82
Man-made sources
Medical X-rays	39	0.039	11
Nuclear medicine	14	0.014	4
Consumer goods	10	0.010	3
Nuclear power	< 1 **	< 0.001	-
Fallout	< 1	< 0.001	-
Total Man-made	63	0.063	18
TOTAL	363	0.363	100
* Doubles for every 6000 feet in altitude.
** The symbol “<” means “less than.”
Source: Department of Energy Report YMP-0337 from BEIR IV. Available in its entirety at http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/pdf/ymp0337rev1.pdf

But to avoid the natural background radiation, you need to take some pretty serious steps. Moving to Antarctica or living underwater in a nuclear submarine are your best bets. Or you could also move from high-background-radiation Colorado (with a low age-adjusted cancer death rate) to the low-background-radiation southeastern and eastern coastal states (with high age-adjusted cancer death rates). Then again, you might move out of your high-radon-exposure home in the Reading Prong of Pennsylvania to an area with a lower radon dose rate... but with a higher lung cancer toll.

You're not going to do any of these things. Why? Because if an increase in low-level background radiation caused any problems, we would see evidence - in the form of dead bodies. Decades of anecdotal evidence would have made Denver a ghost town, and Leadville, Colorado - the city with the highest altitude, therefore the most cosmic radiation - would have only monuments to its former short-lived citizens. But the only people who think that there is any such danger are the regulators, anti-nuclear activists, "environmentalists," and government scientists - who cling to the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) Hypothesis. We will be discussing this concept as applied to ionizing radiation, but since our government is so concerned about the doses we receive in this country, let's see what the situation would be if we lived with the background radiation experienced by fellow human beings who live in places outside the United States.

Remember, the average background radiation in the United States is 300 mrem (.3 cGy) plus an average of 63 mrem, primarily from medical sources. And remember that the radiation rules-makers are out to regulate public exposures down to a single mrem (.001 cGy); they intend to put a limit on public exposures at 100 mrem (0.1 cGy).

The Radiation Death Toll

The total number of people known (or suspected by me) to have been killed directly by exposure to radiation is:

• One fisherman killed by bomb-test fallout
• Twenty-two killed in criticality accidents
• Four killed in Goia, Brazil
• Thirty-one murdered by the Soviets (yes, I do have a grudge)

A total of fifty-eight have died, or may have died, from direct exposure to radiation in about the same number of years with a world average population of around 4 billion. Five of these were members of the "general public." I may have missed a few, but the point is that, statistically, death from direct exposure to radiation is about as likely as death from the bite of a rabid cow.

What if we were to confront an anti-nuclear activist from the grossly misnamed "Union of Concerned Scientists" or the Sierra Club with this statistic? Would they deny it? Oh, maybe they would say that a fisherman on another boat at another time was a fallout victim, but in general this would not be of any concern to them. What would be important to them is the number of deaths that occurred "that we don't know about but are scientifically calculated."

Just How Dangerous is Radiation?

In March 1954, sailors onboard the Lucky Dragon were exposed to fallout from a hydrogen bomb test conducted on Bikini atoll. While his two compatriots suffered from radiation sickness, one sailor died the following September. I was a teenager at this time, and yet I can remember a huge amount of news regarding the incident. I suspect it shaped my fear of radiation.

In July 2000, a joint U.S.-Russian Federation report gave as sixty the total number of "criticality" accidents that had occurred in the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Argentina and Japan. These accidents occur when too much "fissionable" material comes together for whatever reason and produces for a few moments the same conditions as would be found inside a nuclear reactor. It doesn't cause a "nuclear explosion" but a flash of blue light and a large spike of heat energy. Mr. Harry Daghlian has the unenviable distinction of being the first criticality accident victim in August 1945, during the Manhattan Project. Since then, there have been twenty-one similar deaths, with seven having occurred in the United States.

The most recent were in 1999 when an accident at a Japanese enrichment facility killed two workers. A third worker survived after experiencing severe radiation sickness. I saved the newspaper with that story (prior to the deaths) with the headline "Japanese contain radioactive gas leak" emblazoned across five of six columns at the top of the front page. On the same page there was a notice "Deadly Quake Strikes Mexico/Page 7A." Oh well, I guess earthquake deaths just aren't as fashionable.

Yes, sadly some individuals have died from exposure to radiation. But it is surprising how few, and since there are so few we can account for all or nearly all of them. (This obviously doesn't count the unfortunates who were victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, almost all of whom died from blast and heat, but would very likely have died of radiation sickness had they survived the primary causes.)

It is unclear what killed the thirty-one firemen and rescue workers at the Chernobyl disaster. The graphite reactor was in flames (not possible in U.S. power reactors) and was convecting extremely radioactive materials from the core. The probably cause of the firemen's death was heat, since death by radiation generally takes several days to do its work on internal organs. But they, as in the case of the Japanese bomb victims, would very likely have died from radiation.

[I cannot allow Chernobyl to be considered in the same light as other nuclear power facilities. It was built by a Communist government with no concern for the safety of its citizens - as evidenced by the lack of a containment structure to prevent what did happen from happening - and constructed of graphite, rather than water, as a moderator in order that it could be used to produce bomb-grade plutonium. In my opinion, the firemen were murdered by a lack of responsibility on the part of the Soviet government.]