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	Questions about Helen Caldicott's nuclear energy article,
	Iraqi reactor's intended uses
	TMI clipping servic - part 8
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Date: 19 Jun 1981 1440-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: re: nuclear energy article
To: energy at MIT-MC
cc: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE

I've heard before the claim that one microgram of plutonium in
your lungs will give you lung cancer and wondered about it.  
They seem to assume that the one particle is going to stay in
the lungs for 20 years, but surely the lungs have some power to clean
themselves.  My glasses get dusty after just a few hours, so the
lungs must collect tremendous amounts of the stuff.  They must
dispose of it somehow or they would be clogged in short order.
   Also, what does Helen Caldicott mean when she says that driving
past a hot fuel rod at ninety miles an hour would kill you?  Would it
kill you immediately, in a couple of days, or in thirty years? After all
it's very likely that you will die within a hundred years after crossing
the street, but that doesn't mean much.  I've seen a lot of this sort
of sloppiness in reporting in science articles.
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RWG@MIT-MC 06/19/81 19:12:56
To: ENERGY at MIT-MC
The following is repeated (without permission) from the July 81
Access to Energy.

> > >      STOP PRESS      < < <
  The Iraqi nuclear reactor destroyed by Israeli jets was NOT an
electric power reactor - or it would not have worried the Israelis.
The 3.5% enriched uranium used in light water power reactors is
useless for bombs, and it would be utterly inept to get plutonium
from what little accumulates in the hot fuel rods.  The Iraqi
reactor was built to run on highly enriched uranium, which can be
used as the initial charge to breed, for evermore, plutonium from
plentiful (unenriched) uranium 238.
  Only the irrational will use the episode to berate nuclear power.
(Personally, we think of it as the first successful international
act of non-proliferation.)
[More: "Nuclear Proliferation - How to blunder into it" (1976); $2
from Golem Press, Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306.]

        --------
Aside from this, it was a pretty good issue.  But if,
as implied by ICL.REDFORD, the Iraqis planned to extract 75MW from
25lb of fuel, the Israelis could have saved themselves the trouble
of trashing the reactor. --rwg


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Date:  19 June 1981 03:01 edt
From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Clipping Service - Nuclear Industry Series, part 8
To:  energy at MIT-AI

This is the eighth in a many part transcription of a Phoenix Gazette
series on Three Mile Island and the nuclear industry. All material is
by Andrew Zipser, Gazette reporter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

		   Experts debate the odds


    If there is anything like a bible for the nuclear industry, the
prophet who penned its contents is a man named Norman Rasmussen.

    Rasmussen, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was
commissioned by the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission) to analyze the risks associated with nuclear
power plants. The result, released in late 1975, was a foot-thick
compilation of graphs, charts, and analyses concluding that the
operation of a nuclear reactor was far less hazardous than just about
anything else you could think of.

    Known variously as WASH-1400, the Rasmussen Study, or, more
properly, as the "Reactor Safety Study, An Assessment of Accident
Risks in U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plants," Rasmussen's analysis
indicated that the chances of a fatality in a nuclear accident were
about as great as being hit by a meteor and 10,000 times less than
being killed by a tornado. More specifically, it concluded that with
100 reactors operating: 

  - The probability of an accident causing 10 acute fatalities was
    once in 30,000 years; of 10 acute illnesses, once in 1,600 years;
    of 10 latent cancers, once in 500 years; and of 10 genetic
    effects, once in 600 years.
    
  - The probability of an accident causing $1 million in property
    damage was once in 200 years; of causing $560 million (the limit
    on Federally guaranteed insurance against nuclear damage) in
    damage, once in 5,200 years.
    
  - The reprecussions of a reactor melt-down (such as partially
    occurred at Three Mile Island) in which radiation was released
    would be less than one injury or immediate death per accident,
    less than one occurrence of thyroid damage or later death, and
    less than one genetic defect per year, and that the cost of
    evacuating the surrounding area while contamination was removed
    would be less than $1 million.
    
    These findings, at a time when the nuclear industry was being
affected by alarming predictions of the effects of a nuclear
accident, were embraced with open arms. Yet even before Three Mile
Island the study was the subject of intense criticism. There were
those who claimed that a nuclear system is too complex to quantify,
that Rasmussen's data base did not support his conclusions, that
improper and incorrect statistical procedures were used.

    Others -- with almost prophetic insight -- argued that the
effects of human behavior were inadequately treated.

    Concerned by these observations, the NRC eventually solicited the
report of yet another committee, the Risk Assessment Review Group.
Chaired by Harold Lewis, professor of physics at the University of
California, the committee spent a year reviewing WASH-1400. Its
conclusion? That although the committee "strongly supported the
objective of quantitative safety analysis." it nevertheless found
"that the calculations of the Reactor Safety Study were not as good
as had been claimed," according to Lewis.

    Although the NRC subsequently withdrew its support of the
Rasmussen Study -- just three months before TMI -- the Rasmussen
calculations are still quoted by industry officials as being
reflective of reactor safety. And when the Lewis report is mentioned,
they tend to repeat its support of risk quantification while
overlooking its assessment of Rasmussen's calculations.

    The greatest uncertainty in Rasmussen's figures, and the factor
most stressed by the Kemeny Commission, is the unpredictability of
human behavior. As noted by Lewis, automatic control systems can
sense disruptions of normal operations, but "the proliferation of
possible scenarios soon exceeds the capability of any automatic
system to sense the proper response, and human judgement comes into
play."

    "At this point," he adds, "human action may be curative, it may
be ineffective, or it may aggravate the problem in the reactor... It
is extremely difficult, in fact impossible at present, to quantify
human behavior on the average, let alone under stressful conditions."

    Much of the damage at TMI was the result not of mechanical
failure but of improper human response. And although Rasmussen had
forseen the possibility of relief valves being left in the wrong
position, he did not foresee such subsequent developments as the
formation of the hydrogen bubble.

    Three Mile Island must also cast doubt on some other aspects of
Rasmussen's analysis. Certainly the financial impact projections in
the study are questionable, since more than $125 million has already
been approved for the claims of area residents and clean-up costs are
now estimated at $1.5 billion. Similarly, an assessment that an
accident with large public consequences would occur once in 200 years
(with 100 reactors operating), while statistically not proven
incorrect, is subject to question.

    Finally, one area WASH-1400 did not deal with that concerns
nuclear critics is the possibility of sabatoge. Although industry
officials maintain that reactor security systems would be difficult
to penetrate, experts in terrorism have similarly maintained that
reactors present attractive targets for terrorists. Should those
terrorists succeed, their sabotage may (or may not) alter the *degree*
of damage -- but the possibility of sabotage certainly changes the
*probability* of a tragic result.


End of energy digest
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