112th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers Back at Atomic Insights

The 112th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers is now posted at Atomic Insights.  Rod Adams is hosting the Carnival again, after a too-long absence.

This is a great Carnival.

Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat and Margaret Harding of 4FactorConsulting describe the relationship between marketing new nuclear plants world-wide, and U S Certification for these plants.   For example, Russia recently applied for NRC certification on one of its reactor designs. They did this even though very few people think that Russia plans to sell reactors in the United States.

Speaking of plant regulation, Leslie Corrice of Hiroshima Syndrome blog reviews the Japanese Diet Report on Fukushima. Most of it rings true to Corrice, though some important issues are still speculative. Corrice uses both the Diet report and Japanese news media in his post. For the record, Corrice wrote an excellent short book about the First Five Days of Fukushima.  On a similar subject, at ANS Nuclear Cafe, Rod Adams describes the low-level radiation report from the recent ANS meeting. This data should allow  the return of far more people to the Fukushima area. A controversial session and a controversial post!  Adams doesn't mince words about the way LNT threshold theories have affected people's lives--for the worse.

In lighter fare, at Yes Vermont Yankee,  I show the state of Vermont making the foolish choice to join an intervenor lawsuit against the NRC.  The lawsuit was about water quality permits, and the state and the intervenors lost big-time.  When the NRC won, Vermont Yankee won also.  After all, the point of the lawsuit had been to force the NRC to shut down Vermont Yankee.

Some more light fare, including fare you can eat.  Health food! Back to bananas!  A new blog on Science and Technology, by Dr. Robert Hayes, has a post on Radioactive Food.  Many "healthy foods" are more radioactive than "junk foods."  It's the potassium.

Oh, I can't resist.  I have to show this picture I took at an anti-Vermont Yankee rally a few years ago.  The bicyclists are filling up on bananas before starting their "Race to Replace" Vermont Yankee. (You can click on the picture to make it larger.)

Though it's a holiday week, it's been a great week for substantive blog posts. We are all glad to see Rod Adams hosting the Carnival!

Potassium Iodide Is Not Your Friend: To Be Taken Only as Directed

Real Pills

Our local health food store sold out of potassium iodide within two days of the start of the Fukushima problems. There has been a run on potassium iodide tablets all over the world.

Potassium iodide, like other drugs, should only be taken when it is needed. Yet people in Vermont seem to feel they need it to protect them from radiation, when reports say that only very low levels of radiation from Fukushima will reach our coasts.

On the other hand, people may feel it is better to be safe than sorry. What is wrong with taking some pills as a prophylactic?

A lot, it turns out.

The Endocrinologist's Letter

A group of medical societies specializing in endocrinology recently issued a letter explaining why people should not take these pills unless they are actually exposed to significant quantities of radioactive iodine. On March 18, the following medical societies and association issued a statement on Radiation Risks to Health. The associations are:

• the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists
• the American Thyroid Association
• The Endocrine Society,
• the Society of Nuclear Medicine

Here is a key quote from that letter:

However, KI should not be taken in the absence of a clear risk of exposure to a potentially dangerous level of radioactive iodine because potassium iodide can cause allergic reactions, skin rashes, salivary gland inflammation, hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism in a small percentage of people. Since radioactive iodine decays rapidly, current estimates indicate there will not be a hazardous level of radiation reaching the United States from this accident. When an exposure does warrant KI to be taken, it should be taken as directed by physicians or public health authorities until the risk for significant exposure to radioactive iodine dissipates, but probably for no more than 1-2 weeks.

That is a pretty impressive list of side effects. Plus, you should only take the pills for a week or two at a time.

Other doctors are also concerned with prophylactic use of KI. As JoNel Aleccia, MSN health writer notes in a recent blog post, doctors are already seeing people with side effects from potassium iodide, and poison control centers are getting calls. The pills are particularly dangerous for people over forty, who run a comparatively low risk of thyroid cancer (if radionuclides were actually present) and a high risk of allergic reactions to KI.

Dr. Edward Maher, president of the Health Physics Society and on the board of the Ethan Allen Institute Energy Education Project, also forward this recently updated KI fact sheet, written in February of this year.

The conclusions are all the same. Don't take KI unless you need it.

And if that isn't enough, remember that K (potassium) is a beta-emitter, like tritium. It is the basis for the radioactivity in bananas. By taking a KI pill, you are deliberately increasing your exposure to internal beta radiation. As noted in my posts about bananas, you are not increasing your exposure by any significant amount. However, avoiding radiation may be another reason to not take the pills. Better to be safe than to be sorry?

Imaginary Pills

Last week, I gave a talk about Vermont and Japan to a local meeting of the American Nuclear Society. The discussion was serious and interesting, and we were lucky enough to have David Ropeik in attendance at the meeting. He is an expert in how people perceive risk. He pointed out that people like to feel they have some control over events. If keeping KI pills in the medicine cabinet makes a person feel prepared, what is the harm in it?

In all honesty, I had never looked at it this way. I presumed if you had the pills, you would take the pills. But maybe not. Maybe having the pills is an insurance policy. In my opinion, the person buying the KI pills is insuring against something that is extraordinarily unlikely to happen. Something it is not worth insuring against. For me, buying KI pills would be the equivalent of buying a special policy that insured me only against the possibility that a plane might fall into my house.

Still, that is my opinion, and obviously other people don't share this view of radiation risk in Vermont.

So my current advice would be: if you are worried about radioactive iodine from Japan affecting you in Vermont, buy KI pills. But for Pete's sake, don't take them!

Potassium Iodide Crystal Structure Graphic from Wikimedia

Snake Oil from Wikimedia

Vermont Farmers, Vermont Yankee and VT4VY

Picking Potatoes

My husband and I have a share in a CSA program (Community Supported Agriculture) of Killdeer Farm in Norwich. Once a year, Killdeer opens their potato fields to CSA people, and we can each pick about a peck of potatoes and/or carrots. For free!

Yesterday I drove to the upland fields to pick my potatoes. Following directions in the Killdeer email, I drove north about ten miles from my house along Route 5, with the Connecticut River on my right. At Farrel Farm road I made a left uphill to the potato fields. A VY4VT lawn sign was prominently displayed at the intersection with Route 5, undoubtedly put there by someone who lives on Farrel Farm Road. I have no idea who placed that sign. There about ten houses on that road, so I am unlikely to find out who put the sign up.

VY for Farmers

Diary Farms: I suspect that a farmer put that sign in place. Farmers and small manufacturers are very sensitive to electricity prices. While the potato fields are mostly tilled with fossil fuels, potatoes are a very minor part of Vermont agriculture. Dairy farms are more typical of Vermont, and dairy farms require a lot of electricity: milk pumpers, fans in the barns, milk chillers. Selling milk to the Cabot Cheese cooperative is the mainstay of many a Vermont farm family.

Maple Syrup: The other iconic Vermont product is maple syrup, and maple syrup depends on electricity these days. Many sugar makers use vacuum pumps on the trees, a new way of collecting sap. Once you have the sap, you traditionally started boiling it down to make syrup. Many sugar makers are moving away from that. They start the concentration process without boiling. Instead, they find it is far more fuel-efficient lower the water content of the sap with a reverse-osmosis (RO) machine that uses electricity.

At the end of the process, syrup is finished by boiling. Clouds of steam will rise each spring from the sugar houses, and that is not going to change. But the first steps in the process are changing drastically, even as we speak.

Last spring, I interviewed a young man setting up his sugar house on his dad's land. (His dad had never bothered with sugaring.) This young man goes to University of Vermont, and he believes that top quality syrup depends on using wood for your fires. He believes that oil-based fires can give the sugar an off-taste. So this young man has a RO machine to start the process, and a huge woodpile to finish the sugar.

His opinions are not necessarily those of all sugar-makers. I know people who use fuel oil boiling from start to finish, and the syrup tastes great. I gather the issue is how you handle the oil-fired start-up, but I am no expert on this. However, many people are going to RO for purely economic reasons. Electricity prices have been stable and fuel oil prices have not been stable. Using electricity means you need to use less oil. Vermont Yankee is a major reason for the electric price stability.

VT4VY: A New Website

In a recent post, I made the case for IBM needing inexpensive electricity in order to stay in Vermont. In an earlier post, I also talked about the economics of smaller manufacturers and Vermont Yankee. The same is true for farmers, who are small manufacturers in their own way. They manufacture food.

I was happy to find that Entergy has a new website about how Vermont Yankee supports Vermont businesses: VT4VY.com. On this site, they post interviews with a ski operator, wood pellet maker, and farmer (among others). These people's words are very convincing. You can hear them when you got to the VT4VY supporters page and watch the thirty-second video clips. I particularly recommend the clip with the dairy farmer.

In conclusion, I saw a Vermont Yankee support sign in a very rural area because Vermont needs Vermont Yankee. Vermont farmers need Vermont Yankee. From IBM to the dairy farm, Vermont Yankee supports the businesses of this state.

Addendum

I want to welcome the Nuclear Fissionary blog, which was on a long hiatus. Glad to see it back!

Graphics: Picture from his study window, courtesy of my husband, George Angwin (that's the Connecticut River in the foreground.) Graphic of VY4VT sign courtesy of Entergy.

Taking It Personal. Shumlin Accuses Dubie of Serving the Interests of "Entergy Louisiana"

The link below shows part of a debate between the two gubernatorial candidates in Vermont: Lt. Governor Brian Dubie and Senator Peter Shumlin. The energy section of the debate starts when reporter Terri Hallenbeck of the Burlington Free Press says "turning now to the environment." (Note, I have not been able to embed the video successfully, as you can see by the comments on this post. Therefore, I am providing a link.)

Link to the video here.


This is what passes for political discourse in Vermont, with one of the ugliest campaigns I have ever seen. If Shumlin were just getting nasty with Dubie, it would be too bad, but it wouldn't be much of a subject for a blog called "Yes Vermont Yankee." However, Shumlin is running against Vermont Yankee as much as he is running against Dubie. If you listen to the clip, you will hear Dubie respond to Shumlin's accusation that Dubie is most concerned about the "shareholders of Entergy Louisiana"

(Dubie) "I don't work for the shareholders. I resent you questioning my integrity. I take it personal. I'm a lieutenant governor who's served my state. I'll continue to serve my state. Please refrain from questioning my integrity, senator, and I won't question yours."

.......

(Shumlin) "My experience with both you and the governor is that you are an apologist for Entergy Louisiana stockholders and Entergy Louisiana and you won't stand up for Vermonters."

Transcript from Vermont Public Radio.

A few minutes after this insulting exchange, Shumlin says that Entergy Louisiana doesn't want to sell power to Vermont anyway!

Shumlin is on the attack partially because 1000 picocuries per liter tritium was found in one drinking water well on the plant site. This is 1/20th of the EPA limit for tritium in drinking water. When I discuss 1000 (as opposed to 20,000) picocuries per liter, I can't really use bananas as an analogy anymore. 1/400 part of a banana? This is not easy to visualize. I may have to move on to comparisons with potatoes, a less potent source of dietary potassium and beta radiation. Beta irradiation from mashed potatoes kind of matches the level of radiation from drinking the water in this well.

Oh yeah. Did I mention? The well is on the plant site, and has been closed as a precautionary measure for months. Nobody drinks the water.

In his post at ANS Nuclear Cafe this week, Howard Shaffer has a concise summary of the differences between the two candidates.

• Lt. Governor Dubie thinks that regulatory agencies should be allowed to regulate.
• Senator Shumlin wants to take over the regulatory roles himself.

Howard also some quotes from Shumlin. For example: The NRC is a wholly owned subsidiary of the industry.

Out of State is Evil?

One of Shumlin's tricks is to constantly describe the plant as "Entergy Louisiana" as if it were not located in Vermont at all. This is a deliberate policy. As I noted in May, Shumlin issued a press release addressed to Entergy Louisiana, on the subject of a photographer visiting the plant during an outage. Some TV anchors have picked these words up, and are now referring to Vermont Yankee as Entergy Louisiana.

This is so weird and naive. What kind of yokels does Shumlin think we are, here in Vermont? What on earth is wrong with a plant being owned by a Louisiana company?

When I lived in California, most of the big companies I worked for were "Delaware Corporations." Meanwhile, my husband worked for a startup, a nice little homegrown place. The startup was sold and went through a series of owners, including Sony (Japan) and TeleAtlas (Holland and Belgium). The layoffs at each merger were certainly subjects for discussion. The fact that the new owners were out-of-state (or out-of-country) was not considered as important.

Letter to the Editor

We are not hayseeds up here, Mr. Shumlin! We are willing to work for out-of-state companies!

I just wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper. It may be printed soon. But you have read it here first.

Senator Shumlin says that "Entergy Louisiana" and its "stockholders" are a major source of evil in Vermont. He accuses Lt. Governor Dubie of being in league with these out-of-staters. Senator Shumlin has said "Entergy Louisiana" so often that TV commentators are beginning to refer to the company the same way.

I find Senator Shumlin's statements quite bizarre. Many Vermont employers are owned by bigger companies from out of state. Will we begin scornfully saying "IBM New York" or "Energizer Missouri" or (heaven help us) "Ben and Jerry's Rotterdam" ? After all, Ben and Jerry's is part of Unilever, a Dutch-British food conglomerate.

Most states actively recruit national or multinational companies to open branches and factories. Right now, Governor Douglas is headed to China to encourage Chinese investment and tourism in Vermont. Except for Senator Shumlin, I have never heard of a politician who choses to attack a company as undesirable because its headquarters are out of state. This attitude does not bode well for jobs in Vermont if he becomes governor.

For Sticklers About Facts

Entergy Louisiana is a real company, which has nothing to do with Vermont Yankee. It is a utility serving Louisiana. Entergy Nuclear owns Vermont Yankee. Both are owned by Entergy itself. Why Shumlin would accuse anyone of being an apologist for Entergy Louisiana stockholders is unclear.

Not that this matters to Shumlin, who has never needed a fact-checker. He just makes them up as he goes along.

• Entergy is behaving like the Republic of China. (Like Taiwan?)
• Germany gets 30% of its juice from solar. (It took him days to admit it didn't.)
• Children's teeth are being attacked by radioactive strontium in fish due to Vermont Yankee. (Only background levels of strontium have ever been found in local fish.)

Need a fact to bolster an anti-Vermont Yankee argument? Shumlin has one! Of course, it isn't a fact. It's a fantasy.

Carnival of Nuclear Energy (Fresh New Information) and Tritium (Old News Rewarmed)

The 22nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy

The latest Carnival of Nuclear Energy is posted now at ANS Nuclear Cafe, the American Nuclear Society blog. Gail Marcus introduces her new book, Nuclear Firsts, which covers the early days of nuclear power development. Dr. Marcus has been Deputy Director at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Energy Agency at the Office of Economic Development. She holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from M. I. T. Her book describes advances during the development of nuclear power, covering eighty facilities and ten countries. This book is a real asset to the industry. I sometimes get tired of reading about Mr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the big boom. I'd rather read something upbeat once in a while, and Dr. Marcus has provided the book.

Meanwhile, at Nuclear Green Revolution, Charles Barton reverse-engineers the future of energy, and makes an excellent case for advanced reactors that can provide load-following and process heat. At PopAtomic, Suzanne Hobbs has designed a nutritional label for utilities. Gosh, who knew coal had so many calories? Oops, I mean: Who knew coal had such huge carbon dioxide emissions? Well, yeah, we all knew it, but the graphic makes it visible.

And there's more! Update on Vogtle construction, the true story of the SL-1 reactor accident, the future of nuclear fabrication. Always something new at the Carnival!

Something Old: Tritium

Rewarmed news. The tritium leak has been fixed for months, but you would never know it if you read the papers around here.

Months ago, when Vermont Yankee found tritium in shallow wells near the plant, they immediately closed down an on-site drinking water well. A sample from this well now shows 1,300 picocuries per liter of tritium. The drinking water standard is 20,000 picocuries of tritium per liter. On the banana scale, the sample in this well isn't even measurable. Maybe 1/400th of a banana? Since two liters at 20,000 picocuries is about 1/20 a banana's worth of radiation, then 2 liters at 1,00o picocuries is 1/20th of 1/20th of a banana. Feel free to check my math (20 x 20 equals 400)

Of course, the local outcry from plant opponents is terrific. People who were very anxious that the tritium was going into the river are now equally anxious that some of it may go into an aquifer. They generally admit that the tritium will be diluted and probably undetectable but Dilution is No Solution to Pollution.

Aside: Plant opponents say Dilution is No Solution to Pollution frequently, whenever someone says that the amount of tritium is not detectable in some body of water. I have noticed that the opponents still get their chimneys cleaned. They cheerfully put all their combustion pollution into the atmosphere, instead of blocking their chimneys and containing the smoke in their homes. Don't they know dilution is no solution? I hope they learn the error of their ways. End Aside.

Anything special happening with this warmed-over news? Well, according to the Brattleboro Reformer, Arnie Gundersen is worried about radioactive strontium turning up in the groundwater, despite the fact that radioactive strontium has never found in test well water. (A small amount was found in a soil sample near the leak.) Mr. Gundersen believes the situation is a gravity problem.

What worries Gunderson (sic) and many others is the possibility of Strontium-90 and Cesium-137, radioactive isotopes, moving into the ground water. "If Entergy keeps shucking and sucking the tritium out of the soil, it'll prevent the isotope from moving," he said. Gunderson (sic) added that the recent rainfall had nothing to do with the sample being found. "Rainfall can't be attributed to anything 2 or 3 feet below the ground," he said. "This a gravity problem, which is pulling the tritiated water down further into the groundwater."

According the same article: more than 265,000 gallons of tritiated water have been remediated from the ground into storage tanks.

The Worst Thing That Ever Happens To You

No Vermont Yankee problem would be complete without a pronouncement from Peter Shumlin. Here's Shumlin's take on the problem, according to WPTZ.

"I have been saying for some time, the leaks at Vermont Yankee from the underground pipes will result in the biggest environmental disaster in the history of the state. The next governor needs to have the courage to stand up to Entergy Louisiana."

This reminds me of my grandmother. She didn't put up with whining. If I complained about something, she would stare me down and say: "May that be the worst thing that ever happens to you." Kind of kept my problems in perspective.

In this spirit, I do hope these leaks are the worst environmental disaster Vermont ever has. However, Vermont already has some environmental problems that are far worse.

Strafford is a lovely town about ten miles from me. It is home to a beautiful Meeting House with a summer series of poetry and fiction readings. Less elegantly, Strafford is home to an old copper mine, the Elizabeth Mine, an unremediated Superfund site that leaks acid drainage into the Ompompanoosuc River, occasionally turning the river orange.

I usually don't write about such things, because I have taken the informal Vermont Oath. According to this oath, I have promised to always say that Vermont is lovely and unspoiled and free of industrial pollution. I have broken the Vermont Oath now! But I had to say it.

The Elizabeth Mine is an environmental disaster, and the VY tritium leak is no big deal.

Tritium, Oil, and Kale

With all the endless hassles about "who said what to whom" about piping at Vermont Yankee, I decided to do a cheerful post for once. Just for a change. Then I will return to our regularly scheduled difficulties.

First of all, a big thanks to Rod Adams for his perspective on the tritium leak at Vermont Yankee. He points out that the EPA describes tritium as one of the "least dangerous radionuclides." A person would have to drink swimming-pools worth of the stuff to receive a lethal dose. They'd drown first. Rod compares this tritium leak to massive oil spills that are ignored by the press.

Oil spills are dangerous. Oil is carcinogenic. In general, the negative health effects of petroleum hydrocarbons are ignored by the press and the population. It would be funny if it weren't sad.

In Montpelier, my friend Howard Shaffer told a legislator that this tritium leak was a spill, like spilling oil on the floor of your garage, but just like the oil, it could be cleaned up. "Well, at least the oil won't give me cancer," the legislator answered. (She will be not be named in this blog. I try to protect the clueless.)

Hydrocarbons are sources of cancer-causing compounds. Here's a nice little how-to article about changing your oil, with the usual warnings about not getting it on your skin, and a note that most landfills will not accept used oil, even in sealed containers. The government warns you to avoid prolonged contact with motor oil, as it caused skin cancer in laboratory animals.

Another thanks is due to John Wheeler, whose podcast compares this tritium leak with earlier leaks at San Onofre. John uses a Brazil nut analogy instead of the banana analogy I used, to compare drinking from the test well with ordinary exposure to beta-particles. We both point out that the amount of radiation in the test well is a fraction of the amount we get on a daily basis.

Sometimes there are unintended consequences to blogging. I fear that someone will read this and decide to give up bananas and Brazil nuts. I may have scared some people. They may be coming to the erroneous conclusion that tropical fruits are radioactive.

I hope these readers understand that potassium is slightly radioactive, but it is also a necessary part of everyone's nutrition. (However, people with some types of kidney disease must avoid potassium.) If you don't have kidney disease, and you don't want tropical fruits, please eat some spinach or kale. Half a cup of cooked greens has about the same amount of potassium as a banana.

Tritium and Health

The tritiated water was discovered in the test well around the time the walkers were headed to Montpelier. I went to Montpelier for their press conference and their cookies, and I had a sign "Yes Vermont Yankee." One woman jokingly offered me a portion of her orange juice, saying: "Here's some tritiated water, drink it." I shot back: "Yeah, give me that water, but YOU are going to have to eat a banana!"

Indeed, both bananas and tritium are beta-emitters, which means they emit an electron and some energy. It turns out that the beta emissions from the potassium in the banana are more energetic than those from tritium, and also potassium stays in the body longer than water does. I asked a friend who is a health physicist to do a calculation: 2 liters of test well water (20,000 pCi from tritium) equaled how many bananas? The answer: two liters of test-well water is the biological equivalent dose of eating part of a banana. One-twentieth of a banana, to be precise. In other words, to encounter the equivalent dose as you would receive from eating a banana, you would have to drink forty liters of test-well water. That's a lot of water.

The State of California has tritium limits which are lower than the EPA limits. For consistency, these limits should be matched with limits on banana consumption (two a year).

Idaho State University suggests that, if you get more tritium than you prefer (let's say you ate a tritium-containing rifle sight device) you could flush it out by drinking a lot of non-tritiated water. It's probably better to avoid eating the rifle sight.

Another take on the test well is described in the medicine and research blog, Big Medicine. Their calculations show that drinking water with this level of tritium for a year would yield an exposure of four millirems per year. For comparison, background radiation is about 300 millirems per year, and a cross-country plane trip increases exposure by three millirems, due to cosmic radiation.

In other words, if the test well tritium were found in drinking water it would not be a public health risk. And of course, this level isn't even in drinking water. It's in a test well. Test wells have been monitored for years around the plant, and this is the first time tritium has appeared.

If the anti-Vermont Yankee woman in Montpelier really had tritiated water available from the test well, I would have enjoyed a glass or two, quite cheerfully. We were standing near the cafeteria, so I could have bought a banana for her. Luckily for her peace of mind, I didn't.

I decided not to tell the woman in Montpelier what my doctor told me. My doctor said that since I am getting older, I need to think about protecting my bones. I should take calcium pills and vitamin D pills, and eat bananas several times a week. I'm supposed to eat the bananas for the potassium.