X-rays are Bad for Your Health

This is not new news - it has been known practically from the time they were first made by Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895. Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, had a research assistant who died following his exposures to x-rays leading Edison to say, "don't talk to me about x-rays, I'm afraid of them." During WW1 field x-ray injuries were so frequent that physicians were forced to address the problem. 

For many years, doctors believed that any x-ray dose that did not cause reddening of the skin was safe. Then Dr. Alice Stewart in the 1950's and Dr. Rosalie Bertell in the 1960's, working independently and in population health studies, discovered that x-raying a pregnant woman doubled the risk of leukemia in the baby. It took twenty years before lead aprons and shields became standard cover for unexposed parts of the body in all x-ray facilities including dental offices.

So why, in 2014 do we have patients demanding x-rays (or CAT scans- more sophisticated x-rays) for the most trivial of reasons? And why do physicians order them under the same trivial circumstances?

The actual taking of an x-ray seems like nothing. The technician arranges us on the table or in the chair and steps back. We are asked to "hold our breath" or "bite down". We feel nothing. It is over - whatever it was - in seconds. Aside from the tech standing behind a screen, nothing suggests anything dangerous.

During that "nothing", waves of energy are emitted by electrons that become "excited" by electricity. Machines focus the waves so that they pass through us and land on a photographic sheet (or digital equivalent). Great way to identify broken bones or the roots of abscessed teeth.

The actual passage of the x-ray through the human tissue leaves a path of ionized molecules. Herein lies the danger. Ions are broken bits of their former selves. They are electrically charged. Molecules or atoms that are electrically charged try to become neutral again. They seek their opposite. If they are positively charged, they will seek a negatively charged ion and vice versa. The ionized molecule can be an enzyme, a cell membrane, or even a DNA molecule (the basis of life).

Almost all of the time the reconnection between positive and negative ions is benign. There is no way to identify the ones that are not - and, were you to kill someone with x-rays it would be the perfect crime. It would be many years, long after the x-ray itself is forgotten, that the badly reconnected ions developed into cancer - or other diseases (auto-immune diseases, high blood pressure, heart disease). Furthermore, there could also be no connection between the person's TB screening in the 1950's and their cancer in the 1980's. Frankly we don't know.

The American Cancer Society flat out admits that x-rays cause cancer. Another site lets you calculate your personal additional risk. http://www.xrayrisk.com/calculator/calculator-normal-studies.php

What to do? In the emergency room last week, a young woman questioned me about the x-ray that I had ordered for her child. She was totally right to do so. No matter what I saw, I was going to treat the bronchitis. Even if the child had pneumonia on the x-ray, the treatment would be the same. When I saw the child later that week, he was just fine.

Everyone can do that - ask whether the x-ray would change the treatment. Sometimes the doctor orders one out of habit (like I did). Also be aware that some x-rays are highly unlikely to be helpful - for example, CAT scans of the head for headaches, x-rays for "charley-horse" back pain. The biggest contribution to the average person's lifetime dose of radioactivity is from health care professionals. We can all increase our awareness of the potential danger.

Is a Half-life Better Than No Life?

How can something have half a life? In biology, something is either dead or alive. In the world of rocks and other non-living things, there is such a thing as having a half-life; elements that are radioactive have half-lives. 

An atom is the smallest form of an element such as gold, iodine or uranium. An atom is like a tiny solar system with a centre called a "nucleus" and tiny planets called "electrons" flying around it. Radioactive atoms change into other atoms; the rate at which they change is called a “half-life”. When there is a bunch of radioactive atoms together, the speed at which the element becomes something else is always the same for that particular element. 

The most common iodine released from a nuclear power plant accident, iodine-131, has a half-life of about eight days - 8.0197 days to be exact. Half of its radioactivity will be gone as half of the iodine changes into xenon in eight days. Half of the remaining iodine-131 changes in the next eight days and so on; it takes ten half-lives before the radioactive element is gone – so, for iodine-131, it takes eighty days (10 x 8.0197 = 80.197 days) before it has all changed into xenon-131. Xenon-131 cannot change back to Iodine-131.
In fact, since the change always involves the loss of atomic energy, however small, it is called "decay".

Half lives can be extremely short - iodine-109 has a half-life of 93.5 microseconds. That's short! One microsecond is one millionth of a second. On the other hand, iodine-129 has a half life of 15.7 million years.

Iodine-109 and iodine-129 are different isotopes of iodine. Isotopes are different kinds of the same element just as a terrier and a German shepherd are different kinds of dogs. There are 37 known isotopes of iodine; almost all of them products of nuclear nuclear reactors. Iodine-127 is the only iodine that is not radioactive. It is the one that is essential for healthy thyroids for healthy people. It is the one that should be taken immediately after a nuclear accident. The only other natural iodine is iodine-129, found normally in nature in very small amounts.

If iodine has an atomic weight of 131 and xenon has an atomic weight of 131, how do we know which is which? The atomic number, based on the number of protons in the nucleus, is different. Iodine’s atomic number is 53 while xenon has 54 protons in its nucleus. 
Each proton has a positive electrical charge. To maintain neutrality, the number of electrons in orbit around the nucleus will be the same.  All of the characteristics – colour, chemical reactivity, boiling point, freezing point and so on – of an element depend upon the number of protons in the nucleus. The atomic number is another way to name an element.

All of the iodines have 53 protons in their nuclei. The electrons flying around the nucleus are considered to be weightless. What makes the weights different (109, 131, 127, etc) are the number of neutrons in the nucleus. A neutron is "glue" to hold the nucleus together - it is made up of an electron and a proton so has the same weight as a proton. When iodine decays into xenon, it loses one of the electrons from the nucleus (and some energy). This leaves one more proton in the nucleus than before the decay. The atomic number goes from 53 to 54. Iodine has become a different element!

So, is a half life better than no life? Half lives are useful for dating the age of the universe, dead bodies, and for some industrial and medical purposes. In those cases, a half-life is a good thing. However, the vast majority of radioactive elements have entered the world through atomic bomb testing and nuclear power plant emissions (or accidents). Their half-lives are part of environmental pollution. Half-lives are not good things.

Remembering D-Day: It could be Nuclear this time

And learn from our past. Could the terrible loss of life and environmental destruction that was World War II been prevented? If we don‘t learn from our past, we are bound to repeat our mistakes; honouring the battle of D-Day and the men who lost their lives should include  answering the question, “how could it have been prevented?”

My aunt lost two sons in the war; she spent almost a decade depressively in mourning. She spoke resentfully of people who got rich during the war while she lost her children. 

So as the US and Russia face off over the Ukraine, what could we learn from World War II?

When someone, a leader or a country says that it wants world domination or implies that it is somehow “above the law”, they mean it! Hitler said it. Now the US says it. 

US exceptionalism was recognized as fact in the eighteenth century; unfortunately the more recent US leadership have mistaken exceptionalism for superiority. Paul Bolt, on taking his position as US representative to the UN said (and I paraphrase) that there wasn’t really a United Nations, the world was governed by one super-power and everyone else had to go along. In fact, the failure to understand the nature of US exceptionalism has lead to universal blindness about the invasions and bombings of more than seven different countries in the last century, the building of military bases in more than 25 countries, the surrounding of China, Russia and the Korean Peninsula – and acceptance of US hegemony at the UN Security Council. Finally, the United States does believe that it is above the law; it does not accept the existence of the International Criminal Court.

The US wealthy need have wars. They even support the use of drones so the sales of arms will continue but US citizens don’t actually have to get killed. Obama has made threats to Iran, Syria and now Russia – none of which have threatened the US. So the US is on a war path.

Why do we (the rest of the world) stand silent?

1. Denial:  We can’t believe that war will actually happen. Chamberlain so wanted to believe Hitler that he proudly referred to the “Munich Agreement” of 1938 which “gave” Czechoslovakia to Hitler, as a “Peace agreement”.

We can’t believe that there would be unscrupulous people in the arms industry who would lobby for war for their own profit – of course, that’s not what they say.  They say that the war is for “education for women”, saving “babies from being thrown out of their incubators” or “to establish democracy”.

We don't face the fact that the sales of arms is considered ethical; we can’t conceive that the arms profiteers don't realize that they carry a responsibility for arming terrorists, underground militia, or despotic governments – or draw a line between their profits and the deaths of very ordinary people.

2. Personal Gain: This played a role in the delay with which the US entered WWII. It plays a role among nations currently allied with the US; disagreeing with the US might mean imposition of some new sanctions, some passport hassle or trade issue. Additionally, of course, other countries may have arms industries equally eager to see a war break out. Canada could become very wealthy if a major war occurred in Eastern Europe.

3. Bad-mouthing the US: No one wants to be labeled as “anti-American” partly because the term “American” is equally applicable to Mexicans, Central and South Americans and partly because mostly we like the citizens of the United States even as their government doesn’t represent them on the world stage.

Even so, the United States is behaving like a big bully; it must accept the same rules as everyone else. Why is it in the Ukraine in the first place? Why is it leading the inflammatory remarks towards Russia? Why cannot world leaders become civilized and behave like adults, sit down at a table and start negotiating a peace process. It is the US that refuses to meet with Russia.

The fact that Russia and the United States both have nuclear weapons means that no one will be left unaffected if war occurs - we cannot afford to just watch the process - we need to be vocal. 

Taking out the Garbage: Nuclear Waste Disposal

“Let’s just put it back into the ground – isn’t that where it came from in the first place?”

The problem with radioactive waste is that no one knows what to do with it. “Spent fuel” is thousands of times more radioactive than before it entered the reactor as fuel.  As the “spent fuel” decays, it produces gasses and heat – the build-up of either can cause explosions. No one knows exactly how many new radioactive elements are in the waste nor do they know exactly how the decay will proceed. Radioactive decay is like a river flowing in one direction that cannot be stopped or dammed nor have its course changed. Each element eventually will reach a stable status, in the case of radioactive waste, about 250,000 years from now or more.

The fact that the nuclear industry has been looking for solutions to the waste problem for over fifty years doesn’t mean that they have found a solution. It means that they have done a lot of looking. Currently the Canadian "solution" for low and intermediate level waste is an "out of sight, out of mind" solution, a “Deep Geologic Repository” (DGR) which the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) claims will be monitored for a hundred years.  NWMO is continuing its search for a site for high level waste.

NWMO reassuringly states that waste will be safely surrounded by bedrock – seemingly unaware that bedrock is no longer bedrock when it is broken into and chopped up into caverns.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico, after twenty years of preparation, was opened in 1999 to store nuclear weapons waste for 10,000 years. A mere fifteen years into operation, in February 2014, it spewed radioactivity into the atmosphere from storage areas located 2,130 feet underground.  Twenty-one workers were contaminated with plutonium-239 (half-life of 24,000 years) and americium-242 (half life of 141 years). Other workers were hampered in their search for the leak by the high radioactivity in the caverns.

The problem with a plan, any plan to contain the waste, is that radiation changes the atoms with which it comes in contact. Gamma rays can bump electrons out of nuclei turning an atom of iron or steel into something else. Alpha and beta particles can be absorbed by an atom of nickel turning it into something else – perhaps a radioactive gas? In any case, no container can be guaranteed to outlast the waste itself.

Since any waste depository will have the same result: unmonitored waste decaying its way through its containers to eventually contaminate the environment, in 1995 the US National Research Council introduced the concept of “Rolling Stewardship”, essentially continuing to do what is currently done but in a formal manner. Nuclear waste is monitored in above the ground containers, the responsibility for which is passed from one generation to another. The waste is immediately accessible should leaks occur but also in the event that new technology be found that would either harness its potential or somehow “neutralize” it. Generations of jobs would be assured. The problem of leaving a detailed message for our descendants – what language, what signs, etc – would be solved.  (more at http://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/050/documents/p17520/95904E.pdf)

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization calls their plan “Adaptive Phase Management,” an admission that all is not known. It sounds a lot like “Rolling Stewardship”, adapting as they go along.

There are no examples of “Rolling Stewardship” just as there are not examples of successful Deep Geologic Repositories. As time goes on, one by one the DGR’s fail, the Carlsbad event being the most recent. Without planning to do so, rolling stewardship is happening. Already the generation that made the waste (and benefited from the nuclear power) has bequeathed it to another generation. It is time to quit wasting money looking for a DGR, admit that we are going to have to continue to monitor it in site and call it what it is - garbage for our descendants. What a way to be remembered!

Baby-sitting Nuclear Power in Saskatchewan?

The recent burst of opinion polls on the topic of nuclear power are merely advertising tools or the nuclear industry. Saskatchewan residents soundly defeated the Uranium Development Partnership in 2009 with a mere 12% supporting the nuclear power option. (See page 105 of The Future of Uranium Public Consultation Process (2009).

Why is this happening now?

The uranium market is flat with no recovery. Only the emerging nations of India and China – still locked in the industrial age - have planned new builds while the more developed nations, United States, Europe and even Eastern Canada are cutting back.

Why fall out of love with nuclear power? Maybe because it is a financial disaster – no nuclear power plant (NPP) has ever been built on time or remotely close to budget; or maybe it's because nuclear power plants can't get liability insurance (if they have an accident, the public pays); or maybe it's because no one knows what to do with the waste (deep geological repositories, otherwise known as “dumps,” leak, e.g. this year at Carlsbad in the US); but maybe the real reason people fall out of love with nuclear power is because it is an entirely unforgiving technology. The fuel, once used, is highly radioactive, essentially forever.

A nuclear power plant is very needy:

1. Electrical Needs

A nuclear power plant (NPP) has to be in a grid with a steady-state base load mode; it cannot respond quickly to changes in demand. Hence, they are usually situated close to large industrial or urban customers that have a consistent need for electrical energy from the grid. For a province like Saskatchewan where the population is relatively sparse and widely distributed, the current grid would have to be entirely re-designed.

A NPP is also a recipient of electricity, requiring electrical power for start-up, for ventilation, for cooling systems and for emergency procedures. The watchdog regulatory body for nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), requires each NPP to have two completely separate electrical systems. Thus, the province would still require a separate source of electricity for nuclear power and customers when each NPP is shut down for routine maintenance.

2. Water Needs:

Water is used as a coolant in all steam-cycle power plants - coal, gas and nuclear - but only in a NPP does its absence constitute a catastrophe. IAEA regulations require each NNP to be sited next to a body of water. The source is crucial - during the heat wave in France in 2007, seventeen reactors had to reduce electrical production or shut down entirely when they were unable to obtain cool enough water.

Besides the need for water that is cold, nuclear reactors require an enormous amount of it. A typical, one-thousand-megawatt, pressurized water reactor sucks in seventy-six thousand litres of water per minute for cooling. Twenty percent of it is returned to the river or lake; the rest is either recovered or blown off in the cooling towers.

In addition to an operating supply of water, IAEA regulations require a nuclear power plant to have an emergency supply of water that can be made available at 110,000 litres per minute. For a NPP in a potential drought area such as Saskatchewan, a dam would need to be built to have a secured supply.

Each NPP has cooling ponds for “spent” fuel – rods of extremely radioactive broken bits of uranium and plutonium atoms. These Olympic-sized swimming pools must be kept filled with constantly circulating water. Water lost through evaporation must be replaced.

What about staving off climate change?

Nuclear power plants produce only electricity, only about 12 per cent of the world’s electricity which is less than 2 per cent of the world’s total energy use. They are only “green” when operating at full capacity – which they usually do not – and their operational “greenness” does not include the petroleum dependent mining, refining and enriching of uranium, its transportation, manufacture of the fuel rods, care of the waste and decommissioning.

Unforgiving? A nuclear power plant can never be fully “stopped” - the fuel rods whether partially used or “spent” must monitored forever.

Copy editors do what?

From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You

We now know why so many writers thank their copyeditors! The glitches that she picked up were amazing – the result being that she gave us a lot of work to do!

She told us things like:  What do you mean by this? Where is the reference for that? And that? In one place you say that it is 11% in another you say that it is 11.2% - which is it, and incidentally, we don’t use the % sign, we write it out “per cent”.

By having others read chapters and provide feedback – between May and September, thirty-three people had read individual chapters – I erroneously thought that there wouldn’t be much to do at this stage. Incidentally and sadly, I received Jeff Peterson’s corrections earlier in the same week that he suddenly died – his rigorous review had similarities to those of the copyeditor. A professional is able to see errors in syntax, structural and spelling errors and help improve the flow from paragraph to paragraph. There is no ego to her (in our case, the copyeditor was female).

Kirsten Craven was connected to Florian and I by internet at the end of December. We have spent an intense three months together. We have never met in real time – she’s on the West Coast and two hours behind my time (three hours from Flo). That had the advantage that Flo and I could have something completed for her hours before she saw her children off to school.

As a lay person – not scientific – she could see all our faults.

Comparing documents – BC (before copyeditor) and PC (post-copyeditor) – the improvement is outstanding!

We are almost finished ….. Please say so! Thanks so much, Kirsten.

Florian on From Hiroshima.......

How does a Student in International Affairs end up co-authoring a book on radiation?

When I originally started my internship at PGS in January of 2011, I had no idea I would end up writing a book with the then PGS Executive Director, Dr. Dale Dewar. At the start, Dale introduced me to the mandate of PGS and tasked me with finding possible research topics that matched the organization’s objectives.

During the next couple of weeks, we discussed all kinds of topics such as women’s rights, peaceful conflict resolution as well as the issue of nuclear weapons and radiation more broadly. At this point, I did my very best to create useful annotated bibliographies that would assist Dale and other members of PGS in their research. However, I thought that the internship would end with the academic semester and focused on trying to find a job for the summer…

Then, Fukushima happened….At once my research scope was narrowed down to what Dale and I referred to as “radiation and health”. [1] It became clear very quickly that the Canadian population was concerned about Fukushima, but that access to transparent, trustworthy and easily comprehensible information was hard to come by…. Dale and I often joked about the two “experts” arguing on TV, one downplaying the risk of Fukushima, the other warning of the devastating consequences.

How was the average Canadian viewer without a scientific background supposed to know who or what to trust? After all, for every argument found on google, you can find a counter argument.

It was in this context that the idea was born to create a “booklet” over the summer that would utilize information from both the pro and anti-nuclear camps. The idea was that a reader without a scientific background could create an informed opinion on the subject matter.  That is why I, a non-scientist, seemed a good fit for this task. Someone with a lot of expertise in the subject matter risked complicating thing too much for the average reader.

Thus, I had my summer job and stayed at PGS after all. However, it soon became apparent to Dale that I was “getting carried away” with my task (in a positive sense). Towards the end of the summer, she first hinted at the possibility of this project one day becoming a book. As a result, I continued to work part time at PGS on this project while I finished my Master’s Degree at Carleton University.

Dale continued to critique my work, gave me feedback, and guided me towards areas still missing in the book. All the while, she tirelessly pursued the goal of finding a publisher. A very tedious and frustrating task indeed.

I admit, without Dale, my research never would have found its way into print. She was the one who first recognized the potential of my work. She was the one who searched tirelessly for a publisher and found one. She critiqued and guided my work and included much of her own experience and research. She was the one who gave me a chance. Thank you Dale.

-Florian Oelck  

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[1] In fact, the earliest drafts of the book had this title (I must admit the new title is much better).