No Immediate Danger

No Immediate Danger!

Physicians usually weigh risks and benefits when they expose patients to radioactivity through x-rays, CT scans and radioisotopes but recently even they were shocked to find out that the low levels used to examine the arteries of the heart increased the risk of cancer.

Industry and government repeat the mantra that there is “no immediate risk to human health”. Physicians for Global Survival agrees that there is no immediate danger to individual health or life from radioactivity unless the amount is enormous or prolonged.

Humans are constantly exposed to natural radioactivity from the sun, radon in the air, and naturally occurring radioactive ions such as carbon-14. People mostly don't get cancer, auto-immune diseases such as lupus and rosacea or have miscarriages or children with birth defects. There is no doubt in the minds of medical experts, however, that increasing the global burden of radioactivity will increase the incidence of cancer.

What is happening in Japan is happening to our biosphere because wind and water travel the globe. There is a complex soup of elements released by the damaged nuclear power reactors but three are of particular concern.

Tritium, a gas, enters the environment around most nuclear power plants by planned releases or in accidents. Tritium is bound with oxygen in water which makes it extremely dangerous. Living organisms cannot distinguish between radioactive water and normal water and will absorb the radioactive water to use as biological building blocks, enzymes and genetic material. Tritium has a half-life of twelve years which means that 2 tonnes released to the atmosphere becomes 1 tonne after 12 years.

Iodine-131 has a half-life of eight days releasing beta and gamma radiation in its decay. One of the risks of treatment of cancer of thyroid with this isotope is an increase of other cancers. It is especially toxic to children and fetuses because it targets the normal thyroid in growing animals. The damage to the thyroid can be mitigated by taking potassium iodide but there is no protection for the full body gamma radiation effects.

Cesium-137 is unarguably the biggest threat. Cells treat it like potassium, allowing it to literally bathe every cell in the body and concentrate it in soft tissues, muscles and bones. Double threat cesium-137 decays by beta emission to barium-137m which emits gamma radiation before becoming stable barium 137. It can affect enzymes and DNA, disrupt normal cellular function, affect germ cells and increase the risk of cancer. The United States Environmental Protection Agency says that once dispersed in the environment, cesium-137 “is impossible to avoid”. It has a half-life of 30 years.

Physicians for Global Survival and its parent body, International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, have taken the position that nuclear power cannot be made safe enough to risk the health of this planet. Dispersal of background radiation will inevitably affect human health, and the health of succeeding generations. “No immediate danger” is a short-sighted perspective.

Steam Generators

Getting steamed up about steam generators? I am.

Bruce Power wants to send 16 old radioactive steam generators, each the size of a railroad car, to Sweden where they will be melted down and separated into low radioactive and highly radioactive waste. The highly radioactive waste will be shipped back to Halifax where it will be trucked back to the Western Waste Management Facility near Kincardine, Ontario. The low radioactive material will be mixed 1:10 with scrap metal and sold to be made into anything - children's toys, cutlery, etc. The levels will be almost too low to be measured.

Is that a bad thing? After all, we have to get rid of the radioactive waste somehow. And Bruce Power wants to be a good citizen and recycle!

It is a very bad thing. Most of us are exposed to between 2 and 4 milliSeverts per year naturally - cosmic rays, radon gas for example, or medically as in x-rays and CT scans. Research shows that there is a linear response - the higher the amount of exposure, the more likely the biological changes. Most of us do not get cancer; the lag period between exposure and disease can be very long. However, the connection was first discovered in studies that showed that leukemia is 7x more frequent in children whose mothers were x-rayed while they were in the womb due to the greater sensitivity of the fetus. However, some of us do get cancer and none of us want to get cancer. Cancer occurs when something interferes with the normal brakes on cell growth and the cells grow wildly and out of control.

There are three (four if you count cosmic-rays) types of radiation. Gamma radiation is very much like x-rays which pass right through us but potentially dislodge ions in DNA. Alpha radiation can be blocked by skin. Which doesn't happen if it is ingested or inhaled. The little alpha-producing particle lodges in lungs, kidneys or wherever the body uses or disposes of the particular substance. There is also beta radiation which lies between the other two in terms of penetration and potential to cause damage.

The Steam Generators are highly radioactive containing a soup of radioactive salts. In 2006, Bruce Power said that they were too radioactive to transport and that they would keep them on site practically in perpetuity. They admitted in hearings in September 2010 (I was there) that they did not have a plan in place in the event that a ship capsized but that dilution would take care of the problem - well they didn't really say that about dilution but it was implied. Each tritium release to the environment and every uranium atom spread on the surface of the globe adds to background radiation. And the effect will not be reversed for thousands of years. Just as dioxins used as pesticides ended up in the fatty tissue of polar bears so the depleted uranium used in the military and the radon gas released from mining will enter the entire biosphere.

Steam generators. That's our power company at work. Potentially polluting the Great Lakes - source of drinking water for millions of people - and certainly adding more radioactivity to our environment by "re-cycling" radioactive waste.