Areva and Helen Caldicott, plus More on Hurricanes

Areva and Helen Caldicott

Helen Caldicott recently went to Canada to talk about uranium mining.  She called the nuclear industry "immoral" and compared it to Hitler.  On a radio show, she refused to back up her statements, becoming angry instead.  The radio interviewer wrote that  she “sounded like a person unhinged.”  Today, I was pleased to see Jarret Adams of Areva refute her statements about Canadian mining in his blog post: Helen Caldicott Stays One Step Ahead of the Facts.

I thought I should illustrate this post with a picture of Caldicott, but I couldn't bear to do so.  Instead, here's a picture of a bunch of us at Areva's nuclear fuel recycling facility in France, about two years ago.  That's Jarret standing behind me (I'm the white-haired woman on the right).  Rod Adams is standing next to Jarrett and behind Gwyneth Cravens.

Okay, the rest of the names are Jack Gamble (next to Rod) and Steve Aplin (next to Jack) and a very knowledgeable Areva manager at the left side of the picture.  I am so sorry I don't have his name in front of me!  I guess that is why you can amend blog posts.

Update: We are standing in front of the Melox facility, and the man on the left is Regis Faure of Areva. Thank you to Jarret Adams for this update!

Do read Jarret's post: Helen Caldicott Stays One Step Ahead of the Facts.

More About Hurricanes

Since I have already mentioned Rod Adams, I want to say that Margaret Harding, William Davis and I were on Rod's most recent podcast.  Atomic Show #190: Nuclear Plant Performance During Hurricane Sandy. I linked to  the announcement of the podcast. Here's a link to the podcast itself.  It was a great discussion. I learned a lot from Margaret Harding's honest, blunt and basically optimistic discussion.

Meanwhile, my blog post Hurricane Sandy and Nuclear Plants in the Main Stream Media has been posted at The Energy Collective.  I am always proud when they choose one of my posts.

51st Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs

The 51st Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs is up at Charles Barton's Nuclear Green Revolution Blog. The posts at the Carnival are wide-ranging. Dan Yurman and Rod Adams write about Helen Caldicott's attempt to avoid describing her "sources" while "describing her sources." Charles Barton writes a forward-looking summary of molten salt reactor development. Kirk Sorenson post a review of the first five years of the Energy From Thorium Internet forum. Brian Wang updates several cutting-edge projects, such as fusion and photovoltaics that capture waste heat. Steve Aplin of Canadian Energy Issues describes politics and funding (also known as The Bottom Line) for the nuclear industry in Canada. Meanwhile, Rod Adams follows the money as Royal Dutch Shell declares "The End of Nuclear Power." (They wish!)

Two important posts cover the NRC in this country and its equivalent in Japan. David Bradish reports on hearings about the NRC in the House of Representatives, while Gail Marcus, who lived and worked in Japan, explains the long history of the too-close relationships between regulated industries and their regulators in Japan.

Come to the Carnival. Politics and cutting edge research. Follow-the-Money and five years of collaborative effort on thorium reactors. It's a treat for all!

Post Script: I looked at my blog and realized I haven't posted since I announced last week's Carnival. I have excuses, of course. I think this is the only full-week gap in over a year of blogging. However, as Scarlett O'Hara said: "Tomorrow is another day."

A Radioactive Fish Story

The Strontium Fish from the Connecticut River

There was a fish caught in the Connecticut river. It had radioactive strontium in its bones. How much radioactive strontium? The measurement was 59 picocuries per kilogram of fish. Or maybe it was 59 picocuries of strontium per kilogram of fish bones. I couldn't completely understand this sentence:

Irwin said the 59 picocuries per kilogram found in the perch's bones was actually at the low end of measurements taken from fish caught even much farther from nuclear plants.

Bill Irwin made the above statement about the Connecticut River fish. He is the radiological health chief in the Department of Public Health in Vermont.

Meanwhile, the radiological health chief of New Hampshire, Michael Dumond, had this to say about the strontium in the fish:

"It's clearly consistent with the background levels from Chernobyl and weapons testing that went on until 1965."

Similarly, a consultant in radioactive testing, John Till, president of South Carolina-based Risk Assessment Corp. said that the amounts of strontium were too tiny to be a concern. Remembering that a pico is a trillionth of a curie, "tiny" is indeed the correct word.

If there had been 1000 picocuries per kilogram, we would have a billionth of a curie per kilogram in the fish's bones. Thank heavens, there were only 59 picocuries. 59 trillionths! Whew!

As I investigated, by the way, I realized that the confusing sentence about picocuries in fish bones was correct. The reporter referred to picocuries per kilogram of bone. Similar measurements of radioactive strontium in fish from the Hudson River ranged from 200 to 270 picocuries per kg of bone, while measurements of strontium in the flesh ranged of those fish ranged from undetectable to 8 picocuries per kg.

Helen Caldicott

In a rational world, the story might end there. There are incredibly tiny amounts of radioactive strontium in the fish. Three professionals, one from Vermont, one from New Hampshire, and one from a consulting company, said the equivalent of: "Don't worry about eating the fish. The fish are fine." The amounts of strontium are consistent with background radiation from old atomic testing.

However, that would have been a rather one-sided story, so the enterprising AP reporter called Helen Caldicott at her home in Australia.

We all know what Caldicott said: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(rephrased by me of course, not a quote)

However, I must give one of Caldicott's statements some respect. Irwin said they hadn't been testing the fish in the river until recently, and Caldicott said that since this was the first fish they tested, they didn't have a baseline for comparison of strontium in fish. Caldicott's implication was that the plant is leaking strontium like crazy. Nevertheless, she was right about the baseline. You don't have a baseline when you catch the first fish, and that's a fact.

Getting a baseline for radioactive strontium in fish due to fallout. How hard can it be? I have access to Google. I decided to try.

Update: Arnie Gundersen feels the fish "raises a lot of concerns." A great blogpost, Blinky, on this fish story in Capacity Factor.

Strontium in Fish

How hard can it be? Very hard.

The first thing I noticed is that most of the strontium-in-fish stories were repeats of the same AP story that I referenced above. Google "advanced search" came to the rescue. I looked for strontium in fish without the word "Vermont" in it, and I got some moderately useful results.

The first was the one listed above: fish in the Hudson, near and far from Indian Point. 200 t0 270 picocuries per kilogram in the bone, less than 10 picocuries in the flesh.

Then there was an entire set of literature about tracing fish lives through the strontium in their ear otoliths (who knew?) Turns out that natural strontium isotopes vary in different areas, and you can trace a fish's migration by the measuring the isotopes in the layers of strontium in its ears.

I also learned that strontium is necessary for reef building organisms, and you can buy strontium to add to your advanced aquarium. Similarly, I learned that fish segregate strontium to their bones and their scales, parts of the fish that we rarely eat.

Unfortunately, there really does not seem to be baseline measurements of radioactive strontium in fish. I found fish measured in the Hudson River near Indian Point. I found warnings about removing the bones from fish from the Savannah River before eating them. I even found an article about fish in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. In other words, nobody measures the radioactive strontium in fish unless there's some reason to believe there might be some radioactive strontium in the fish.

Or as my friend Howard said: "Why don't they measure some fish from Lake Champlain for a baseline?" I agree.

Radioactive Strontium and Food

Finally, after all of this, I found radioactive strontium as a toxic substance in the Center for Disease Control archives. A quote from section 1.3 of their toxic assessment:

90Sr is found nearly everywhere in small amounts from past nuclear accidents and fallout from nuclear explosions. You can be exposed to low levels of 90Sr by eating food, drinking water, or accidentally eating soil or dust that contains 90Sr. Food and drinking water are the largest sources of exposure to 90Sr. Because of the nature of 90Sr, some of it gets into fish, vegetables, and livestock. Grain, leafy vegetables, and dairy products contribute the greatest percentage of dietary 90Sr to humans. The concentration of 90Sr in fresh vegetables grown in the United States is less than 9 pCi (or 0.3 Bq) in 1 kg of dried vegetables (in a hot oven). The intake of radioactive strontium for most people will be small.

In other words, the picoCuries of strontium in fresh vegetables (less than 9 picocuries per kilogram) is about the same as in Hudson River fish (less than 10 picocuries/kg in the flesh). Fish are not a source of radioactive strontium in the diet.

The Other Fish Story

This "radioactive" fish was truly Much Ado about Nothing. I wasted my time with fish ear-bones and picocuries. There is no baseline for strontium in fish, but considering the tiny amount of radioactivity present, there probably doesn't need to be a baseline. There's less radioactive strontium in fish flesh than in fresh vegetables. In either case, we are talking about less than ten trillionths of a curie. (1o picocuries).

Meanwhile, the entire Gulf of Mexico is being contaminated by carcinogenic, toxic oil. Fisheries are being wiped out and may not recover for decades. I don't like to knock other technologies (nuclear good! everybody else bad!) There's no free lunch, and everything has its downside. And yet, when I think of the truly horrible devastation in the Gulf, I wonder how Vermonters can waste time and energy on the picocuries in this fish.

I imagine myself back in geothermal energy, at the geopressured zones near Houston. I remember eating the most magnificent seafood I have every had in my life. Houston has restaurants that serve seafood Cajun style, French style, Japanese style. Every style. You name it. That is a city where they know how to cook fish.

Is that world gone forever? And all the people who made a living at catching fish and cooking it and serving it in little tiny restaurants or fancy white-tablecloth restaurants. Is that world gone? Has our thirst for oil destroyed it?

I believe that more nuclear power and less oil and gas drilling would be a very good thing for the world.

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Postcard image from the Safe and Green Campaign, aka the Anti-Vermont Yankee walkers. I think the image is supposed to show that Vermont Yankee is ripe for a disaster. To me, it shows that so many other disasters have happened, and all Vermont Yankee has done is release a small amount of radioactivity to the ground within the plant boundaries.

Letter about the Caldicott Show

Yesterday, April 9, my local newspaper ran a letter to the editor under the heading A Voice Against Nuclear Power. Sighing, I settled in to read. I discovered it wasn't an anti-nuclear letter at all! The letter was a strong critique of Helen Caldicott's recent presentation at Dartmouth.

I quickly looked up the author in the phone book and asked if I could print his letter in my blog. He agreed and thoughtfully sent me a digital copy, including the "note" which was not printed in the paper. Dr. Trebitz is a chemist, now retired. I had never heard of him until I read his letter.

This incident illustrates some things which we should all remember. Depending on the poll, 30-40% (in Vermont) to 60% (nationwide) support nuclear power. Nuclear supporters are not a fringe group. We may be a minority or a majority, but we are mainstream.

Enjoy the letter, and don't forget the Caldicott Satire Contest!

The Editor, Valley News:

NOTE: In its Thursday 4/01 issue, Valley News provided a lengthy coverage of anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott’s visit to the Upper Valley. Unfortunately, the article contains very little information regarding the contents of Caldicott’s presentations. In my comments, below, I’m discussing some of the speaker’s statements.

When I went to Caldicott’s speech at Dartmouth I thought I’d get a balanced presentation on nuclear energy and its problems. I was disappointed.

Caldicott’s strategy in fighting nuclear power is based on raising fear. At one time she stated: “I would not live within a fifty miles radius of VT Yankee”. In her presentation she painted a frightening picture of nuclear Armageddon, always presenting her “facts” in a worst case scenario. As a physician, no doubt, she has an understanding of health effects related to radiation exposure, including cancer and birth defects. Yet, when she linked these to nuclear power generation, she ignored other (natural and manmade) causes, often carrying significantly higher risks.

A scientist is trained to observe cause and effects and place these into a meaningful relationship with the surrounding natural environment. Caldicott seems to have abandoned that process of realistic assessment a long time ago. Not surprisingly, she denies the possibility of solving the problem of nuclear waste. She deplores the fact that spent fuel is stored in vulnerable water tanks at VT Yankee (and other nuclear power plants), but offers no concept of how to deal with the submerged fuel rods when decommissioning the plant at the end of its lifetime. For her, re-processing the waste into a second generation of nuclear fuel is not a solution. And she dismisses Nevada's Yucca Mountain for underground storage as an unstable depository site riddled with geological faults.

In the end, the evening was just another rally against nuclear power generation and specifically Vermont Yankee. And, as the Valley News Staff Writer in his report on the event observed: “The crowd sounded nearly uniformly in agreement with her stances…”.

There were almost no Dartmouth students in the audience, a fact also noted by the speaker. If they had been interested in a meaningful scientific discourse, they did not miss very much.

Heinz Trebitz

Don't forget. I'm still running the Helen Caldicott Satire Contest. Why cars, toothpaste and paper (so far) are terribly dangerous. Get your entry in soon. Contest ends April 15. Enter early and often!

Fountain pen image from Wikimedia.

The Caldicott Contest

I'm holding a contest! Right here on this blog. I admit that April Fool inspired me to be slightly silly, but the contest is real.

Helen Caldicott came to Dartmouth again, spouting her usual stuff. I wrote a little satire in an email for friends: Helen Caldicott takes on the automobile. That gave me the idea for the contest.

Contest Rules

Do a "Helen Caldicott" on some non-nuclear technology. Cars, soft-freeze ice cream, poetry books, wood stoves...whatever you want. Explain why this technology will kill people and should be banned. Whatever problems the technology presents, run with them. Reductio ad absurdum. The Caldicott method. Make it funny. Enter the result as a comment on this blog post.

Your essay should be less than 300 words long and in good taste. No swear words. Attack her ideas, not her hair style. The contest runs from today till April 15. The winner will be Guest Blogger on this blog in early May. (Yeah, I know. You'd rather have a bottle of decent wine. Okay, I'll think about it.)

Who is the judge? Well, I am, but I may recruit some friends. We'll have a bottle of wine and read the contest entries. No, we won't drink YOUR bottle of wine. Honestly! Why did you even think that?

My Contest Example

Your car is going to kill you even if you don't drive it. Its battery is full of enough lead to kill your family and every family on the block. But the battery won't get a chance to kill you because your gas tank is full of highly-explosive, carcinogenic material and will kill you faster! You cannot assure me that gas will NEVER leak out of the tank as it sits in the garage. You cannot assure me that it will NEVER ignite once it is in all in a puddle on the garage floor! You say such an accident has not happened yet, but you cannot PROVE it is physically impossible. No you can't! It could happen. It WILL happen!

First your garage will explode, along with any other cars you have in there. Flames will quickly spread, the fire department will be busy elsewhere, nobody will be smart enough to leave a burning building and---well, there you have it! The entire neighborhood completely destroyed. Children killed en masse at the school. Terrible, screaming deaths....

Heck, why stop at the neighborhood and the school. The fire can spread to the city, the farms, the entire ecosystem....

Can you prove this is physically impossible? Of course you can't. All you can say it that it is not likely (HAH!) and never happened so far (HAH!) I laugh at such prevarication!

My friends, such pale assurances are simply not good enough in this modern age.

FYI, a link to Caldicott at Dartmouth.

Speaker warns of nuclear danger

Illustration of patented early Benz car (1885) that needs to go through a learning curve.