Sunday 30 May 2021

Jay M Gould

In 2005, my latest hero in uncovering the truth about the effects of ionizing radiation on human health died. Dr. Jay M Gould was a statistician and epidemiologist. He was a thorn in the side of the nuclear industry. And in the side of the medical profession that supported it.

With In 1985, with Linus Pauling, Ernest Sternglass, Benjamin Goldman, Jannet Sherman and Joseph Mangano, he founded the Radiation and Public Health Project which is best known for the second iteration of the "Tooth Fairy Project" - the first iteration occurring during the 1950's and credited with cessation of atmospheric nuclear bomb testing. 

Originally an economist, he founded a successful company that used computer forecasting to project economic growth. He was appointed to an environmental protection board by President Carter in 1980 and used his expertise as a statistician to assess population health against the presence of toxic waste, which eventually led him to nuclear waste. 

With Dr. Benjamin A Golding, he wrote Deadly Deceit: Low-Level Radiation High-Level Cover-Up, published in 1990. In it he makes the outstanding claim that government has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the effects of radiation on health, particularly radiation from nuclear power plants, nuclear bomb tests and nuclear power plant accidents both in the US and abroad on health. 

The Radiation and Public Health Project has published more than 30 peer reviewed scientific articles. Repudiated by the nuclear industry and called "junk science" in Popular Science, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission used a Brookhaven National Laboratory statement to widely discredit the findings by attacking the researchers as "ice-cream epidemiologists".

I think that the US NRC has a circle of spin-doctors who devise words to slander and means to enter the public domain.

Dr. Louise Reiss was the original "Tooth Fairy" collecting children's baby teeth in 1959 to 1970, cataloguing them and analyzing them for strontium-90 content.


My new heroes, Jay M. Gould and Benjamin A Golding. 


Golding apparently wrote another book that sounds like something I'd like: 


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Saturday 22 May 2021

Small Nuclear Reactors and Light Cigarettes

Small Modular Reactors or SMRs sound like something that everyone would like to have. They seem to fulfill the promise of fifty-nine years ago that reactors would be small - almost the size of a toaster - and produce electricity that would be “too cheap to monitor”. Knowing that every industry likes to overplay its latest fantasy, what is this kind of gimmick?


The first thing to notice is the absence of the letter “N” for nuclear. These are nuclear reactors, they are not toaster-ovens. They are a long way from risk-free.


Small Modular Nuclear Reactors had been in the nuclear undercurrent since 2016 at least. The nuclear industry had widely advertised its nuclear Renaissance almost twenty years earlier. The Renaissance became more of a funeral. Three of the flagship reactors, Olkiluoto in Finland and Vogtle 3 & Vogtle 4 in the United States, failed to rise to the promise of “rapid, efficient and safe builds”. In fact, Olkiluoto, noisily advertised to be operational four years after construction started in 2005, might be turned on in 2022. The completion date for Vogtle 3 , estimated to now be more than 12 billion over budget, has been pushed back from 2021 to 2022.


Add to the difficulty of getting its Renaissance off the ground were the articles in the Economist and Blah blah which attacked the industry on economic grounds and got in a few other hits as well.


The industry has been desperate to regain access to taxpayers dollars. After bankruptcies of two major reactor-building companies, Westinghouse and Areva, they worked with business, media and lobbiests to create a business case for “modular” builds that would theoretically be such a good product that they would be marketed abroad. All they needed was starter funds. As the fantasy goes, these little toaster-ovens would be rolling off the assembly line to be sold to anyone who wanted to have their own nuclear reactor - mining companies, small Northern communities, for example. 

The nuclear industry have been preparing today’s media releases for years. In XXXX, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission lobbied the federal government to eliminate environmental assessments for reactors that produced lass than 300 MW of electricity - or were co-located on existing nuclear power sites. Removing this important challenge to licensing gives the industry carte-Blanche to choose its model without regard to the location.

There have been at least $50,000,000 in research and development funds turned over to the industry for SMNR development. New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta have agreed to support this endeavour. 

Think of the fantasy! No one who has lived in an isolated community would not want to pick something off the shelf, take home, turn it on and have unlimited electrical energy for decades. Ditto for mining company, even greater if it’s a uranium mining company because it can see the profits. 

To add to the fantasy, advertising has called nuclear power and, by association, small modular reactors, “clean, green, safe and necessary” for a transition to a sustainable energy future.

But it doesn’t work that way.

Nuclear Power is not “clean”. All nuclear reactors release toxic emissions either intentionally or accidentally. The most frequent is that of tritium which must be regularly released. Tritium is radioactive hydrogen. The industry calls it “short-lived” at 12.3 years. A half-lifeof12.3yearsmeansthatitwilltake123years,morethanacenturytodisappeartoalmostzero.


All nuclear reactors create toxic radioactive waste - the “spent” fuel bundles, the reactor vessel, all the metallic components and ultimately the concrete structure becomes contaminated as nuclear waste. Only a very small amount of this can be “recycled” or “reprocessed”. 


Nuclear Power is not “green”. At no stage is it green. Theoretically it could be green when operating - if the definition of “green” was limited to “emits no carbon dioxide while operating. 


Nuclear power has a massive carbon dioxide foot print during mining, milling, fuel fabrication, reprocessing, enrichment, transportation, decommissioning and waste management. The energy demand for enrichment alone would power a city of 50,000 people. 


Nuclear power production pollutes routinely and discharges toxic effluents all along the fuel chain. Northern Saskatchewan already has waste sites that have been abandoned without clean-up and decommissioning particularly in and around Uranium City. Declaring itself “Green” should be considered fraudulent. 


Is nuclear power “safe”? Accident for accident, there are probably less on-the-job deaths in the industry than even in hydro dams but when an accident occurs, the area contaminated and the long-term effects of the radioactive fall-out can be devastating. The spent fuel rods are lethal within a few seconds exposure and must be held in a pool of water for up to ten years before the level of radioactivity decreases enough to be parked in concrete storage, dry casks. 


It is difficult to reconcile the term “safe” with an industry that requires so many serious precautions with used or “spent” fuel. The question of safety during operation has been studied for over thirty years, the most thorough being the “KiKK study” from Germany. This remarkable study was designed to prove that there was no increase in leukaemia around nuclear power plants and did exactly the opposite.  


Calling their new reactors “small” is somewhat disingenuous. “Small”, most people conclude, is about the size of someone’s kitchen when the term really applies only to the amount of electricity, not the physical size of the reactor. They could, with the containment building, exclusion zone, shielding, steam generator, and turbine, be as large as any medium-sized power plant. 


Necessary? The idea touted is that solar and wind are intermittent so some form of energy is required to provide a “baseline”, a form of energy supply that chugs along constantly. In fact, with smart technology and integrated grids, the concept of baseline is out-dated. Nuclear cannot be readily powered up or down and lacks the resiliency that the future will demand. Between wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric and battery technology, electrical energy will not need the incredible expense and lack of resilience that comes with nuclear. Why then the hype? Why the federal and provincial eagerness to invest? 


The nuclear industry has delivered poorly and inconsistently. Canadian taxpayers have invested a billion dollars and still counting into it with limited pay back. It is the biggest “welfare bum” in the world. The only things that see this kind of investment without significant returns are addictions. 


This is not our first rodeo. Public health has had a similar battle and can be said cautiously to have won.


In the middle seventies when I was in medical college, one of our professors never overlooked an opportunity to rail against cigarette smoking. He had few supporters in his own institution. In fact, whenever he rose to speak, an audible sigh would envelope the room. Dr. John Owen was persistent even as he was ridiculed behind his back. He was a short man, a round head and an obvious comb-over. He had a hard sell - his surgical colleagues hastened to their lounge to pull back on their cigarettes between operations. 


We had front row seats to their habits because the lounge, hanging blue with smoke, was the place to get free coffee. 


Nationally and internationally he was not alone. In Canada, Dr. Andrew Pipe from Ottawa became a national voice for the anti-smoking campaign, a campaign that actually began in earnest in 1953 after a forceful New York Times article was published. The article linked lung cancer (and other lung diseases like emphysema and chronic obstructive lung disease) and heart disease to smoking. 


The article also resulted in a push-back campaign from the tobacco industry. In December 1953, representatives of the “Big Five” of cigarettes met in New York with a marketing firm. To their surprise, they were advised to support research, create their own research board and publicly state their concern about the health of their smokers. 


In the summer of 1972, I was unwittingly the recipient of some of that research money. I was hired by a professor to inject nicotine into fertilized eggs. He concluded that nicotine caused growth retardation. He published his research. He was happy because he was able to publish, a requirement of his professorship. He would also be able to apply for more funds to inject pregnant mice. The tobacco company was happy because they had funded research although chickens may have nothing to do with humans and no one really cares about the smoking habits of chickens. 


The tobacco industry fought back with advertising tools as well. Their new-found concern about health resulted in filter-cigarettes in the late 1960’s. They made use of the woman’s movement by selling “Virginia Slims” as a “life-style choice”. Although mentholated cigarettes had been sold for decades, their new marketed niche was “easy on the throat”. The final stage before they were kicked out of public dining places and pubs was the “low-tar” or “light” cigarette. 


The Small Modular Nuclear Reactor is the “light” cigarette of the nuclear industry.











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Monday 17 May 2021

Bags of Ions

 There are many types of radiation, heat, electromagnetic, microwaves, even sound can be considered a radiation of sorts. But the distinctive damaging qualities of ionizing radiation is exactly as it name states, it is radiation that causes ions, unexpected and unplanned ions.

The building blocks of life are cells - skin cells, bone and muscle cells and more. The cells, in turn are made of molecules. If the molecules are broken by the ionizing particles or rays, the effect on the cell might be insignificant but it could also be catastrophic.

Positively charged atoms of potassium, calcium and magnesium move into and out of cells through electrical charged little holes. Their movement makes our muscles move. The body is very precise about the amount of ions that it wants. 

It is through electrical charge that oxygen is transported to the cells of the body, it is also through electrical charge that the blood protein, heme, carried iron. One of the most amazing things to me is that if the body notices that it needs more iron, it sets up a special assembly line to absorb more from our foods - hormone-like molecules carry messages back and forth - "i need iron." Orders are the carried to the "heme manufacturing unit which also go back to the walls of the bowel including increasing the acid in the stomach". Protein is collected in bone marrow to be constructed into heme and a transfer enzyme brings the iron from the bowel to the marrow. The point of this is that the entire process is very complex.

Enzymes from the thyroid pick up iodine ions and carry them to their thyroid-hormone manufacturing sites. The bowel ionizes foodstuffs in order to absorb them. DNA twists and bends as it responds to the body's needs - or for reproduction - all based upon ions and electrical charges.

Bone marrow, the thin linings of mouth and bowel, are the fastest multiplying cells in the body. Because of this, they are the first to show the effects of ionizing radiation. Reports of anemia and nose bleeds abounded among nuclear workers of all kinds. The permissible level of exposure was about 25 x that allowed today.

It is a little important to remember that, in the entire world only a few people were working on atomic weapons' projects and only a few knew what ionizing radiation was. Scientists knew that it was dangerous, but they rarely conveyed that information to their workers. They probably under-estimated the risk of something that they couldn't see, smell or taste and which rarely gave them immediate side effects. 

For example there was a sign close to Great Bear Lake warning people that they were entering a dangerously radioactive zone in the Northwest Territories. It was written in English. The porters, the men who carried burlap bars of radium ore on their backs, spoke Dene; it is very doubtful that they could read English. (This story was the subject of a film called "Village of Widows" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSReqj1JX-c). 

The human body is constructed and operated by the formation and destruction of ions and molecules. The body manages these ions to keep the blood at a pH of close to 7.4 and the stomach acid below 3.5. It keeps the potassium level within a mere 2 milliEquivalents - higher and our heart might beat too fast, lower and our muscles feel weak.

To reiterate, the body is made of ions, helping our cells how to hold us upright, thinking, walking and everything else that we do. Ions are electrical charged atoms as in potassium and calcium or charged molecules like heme and other carrying proteins in the blood.

The marvellously fine-tuned manufacturing unit that is a cell can be disrupted when alpha, or beta particles, gamma, cosmic or x-rays pass through the cells. Holes might develop in the cellular walls, enzymes may be broken up and DNA molecules fail to twist appropriately.

The passage of an x-ray or gamma ray can be followed though the body by following the trail of newly formed ions.

The radioactive ray or particle could pass through without ionizing a single atom or molecule in its path - rather unlikely but it could also make such disruptions that the cell can readily repair itself. The cell could repair itself accurately or it could do so making mistakes. If it made mistakes, the errors might be insignificant or fatal to the cell. 

Cells regularly die in our bodies. When a cellular death happens the body sends in a clean-up crew of white blood cells with enzymes and carrier proteins. The body may replace the lost cell from its repertoire of cell replacement material or it may simply continue without it.

The cell can also have its reproductive apparatus damaged. It can lose control of the process - usually reverting to a more primitive cell - and become a tumour when there are enough damaged progeny. Tumours can be benign or metastatic (meaning that they multiply).

Collections of testimonies from survivors of contaminated lands, and thus people who were exposed to chronic low dose radiation tend to tell the same story: they or their families have had cancers, pains in their muscles an bones, strange allergies, intense fatigue, mood and sleep disturbances, weight loss, heart murmurs, a lot of high blood pressure, and always low iron and white cell counts (so they had weakened immune systems). Women had miscarriages, low birth weight babies and 3 x the normal abnormalities.

People close to Chernobyl, people who worked with radium over a hundred years ago, scientists in the Manhattan project, residents of Richland close to Hanford and the Hanford employees themselves - all of these people made the same complaints.

The story is very different for people who receive large doses of radioactivity.

Tickling the Dragon's Tail

Manhattan scientists performed an off-repeated experiment to try to determine the correct amount of radioactive material to make a bomb. They brought two halves of a sphere to within millimetres of one another to study the neutron fluxes that would be required to create an explosion. It was a dangerous move that resulted in deaths of three men.

Louis Slotin was one of them. He was a Canadian physicist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was originally working in Chicago with nuclear "piles", the first nuclear power plant built by Enrico Fermi when, in 1942, he was recruited to work on the Manhattan project at its Los Almos lab.

Louis made a name for himself as the "chief armorer" to the United States when he assembled the Trinity bomb.

At that time, scientists had to carry out "criticality" experiments to determine the mass of explosive, the uranium or plutonium, that would form the pit of the bomb. They did this by bringing two reflecting hemispheres together close enough that the neutrons would almost reach criticality, and cause an explosion. These experiments were very dangerous. One of Louis's colleagues had already died from doing so. The dose of radioactivity received the failed experiment was around 5000 mSv, an acute radiation syndrome.

On May 21, 1946, Louis was demonstrating this "criticality" experiment when something slipped and the two hemispheres suddenly came together. Other scientists reported a flash of blue light as the air ionized and a forceful puff of hot air. 

Louis was said to have thrown himself over the hemispheres to protect his colleagues. He knocked them apart ending the criticality. No one was wearing dosimeters measuring their exposure but it was estimated in 1978 that Slotin received at least 11.14 Grey (equivalent to 1114 mSv) but likely much more.

Louis left the lab and immediately vomited several times before going to the hospital. This symptom is common at an exposure of 500 mSv or greater. It is believed to be a direct assault on the central nervous system. Bowel symptoms start on the third day and include violent diarrhea and abdominal pain. As cellular breakdown continues, the kidneys can no longer keep the body in a normal  equilibrium and, as everything is turning into ions, swelling continues. 

In Slotin's case, his left hand actually held the hemisphere that was closest to the neutron criticality and it became grotesquely swollen and excruciatingly painful. The doctors were helpless, there was nothing to do. They could only give him supportive care, painkillers and oxygen when he needed it. 

Louis Slotin died on the ninth day after the accident.

Two of his colleagues from that room also experienced acute radiation syndromes; both recovered to suffer long term sequelae and eventually die of radiation-connected diseases, aplastic anaemia and heart disease. A third observer developed myloid leukaemia.

Other criticality accidents have occurred but only that of Harry Daghlian, Louis's colleague, was due to "tickling the dragon's tail" as scientists referred to the neutron flux experiments. Ironically, Harry's accident occurred with the same plutonium pit that Slotin was using. it became known as the "demon core".

Death occurs in thirty days to half of the people who are exposed to 5000 mSv of radioactivity. As both Harry and Louis knew, their deaths were inevitable. 

This defines the upper limit of exposure. Next - what is the lower limit? Is there a lower level at which ionizing radiation is 'safe'?




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