nuclear-news

Nuclear Regulatory Commission trickery on radiation rules favours the nuclear industry, not the public interest

The NRC needs to recall that its name is the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and so its job is to regulate the industry, rather than to work for the nuclear industry. Its job is to help the EPA keep a high safety standard for water, air, soil. They both appear to have forgotten or be oblivious to their purpose, which is to protect the people and environment from radionuclides from the nuclear industry.

Nuclear Facilities also are allowed to emit so many radionuclides, that it takes 50 pages to list them, including plutonium 239 to the air, along with the water. But, like the water, to talk about concentrations in the air – as opposed to amounts – is really meaningless for anything but the shortest-lived radionuclides.

US NRC Radioactive Dilute and Deceive Scam – Comment Deadline June 22nd (Extended) Mining Awareness Plus, 18 Mar 15 US NRC Comment Deadline extended to 22 June 2015:https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/11/20/2014-27519/radiation-protection http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=NRC-2009-0279-0098   “………..The disgusting truth is that research on ionizing radiation has been ongoing since 1895. At the beginning of the nuclear age, focus was on how dangerous radiation was. Many animal and even human experiments have been done. The human experiments were both official experiments and unofficial making the population at large act as guinea pigs. They have known from the beginning the dangers. Somewhere along the way they seem to have switched from doing experiments to see how dangerous it was to doing endless experiments in an attempt at proving that it is safe. Despite their efforts to prove the contrary, they have only succeeded in proving that ionizing radiation is even more dangerous than their early results showed. As the National Academy of Science has stated endlessly in their BEIR reports, there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation. Increased dose is increased risk. This is even more true for high-LET internal alpha radiation and high LET neutrons.

The US EPA has a “clean water” water “standard” for drinking water, though it has none for water emissions from nuclear facilities – which makes no sense. Who, if anyone, pays to clean up the difference between radionuclides emitted by nuclear facilities and that allowed in drinking water?

Furthermore, the “Clean Water” drinking water standard appears to be inadequately protective, as well. It allows 740 Bq/liter of tritium in drinking water. The Canadian nuclear lobby was reportedly satisfied with a 20 Bq/liter standard for tritium in drinking water, recommended by the Ontario Water Advisory Commission (OWAC), even though Canadian CANDU reactors produce more tritium than other reactors. OWAC started with the idea that “the target derived risk level should be 1 in a million or 10-6 (meaning 1 new excess cancer occurrence over existing background cancer rates in 1,000,000 people); the target derived risk level should be over a lifetime of exposure of 70 years, and based on cancer incidences above background (occurrences) rather than mortality (deaths);” This led to models ranging from 7 Bq/L to 109 Bq/L.http://www.odwac.gov.on.ca/reports/052109_ODWAC_Tritium_Report.pdfhttp://www.odwac.gov.on.ca/reports/052109_Tritium_Report_Cover_Letter.pdf
Notice the number was chosen based on cancer morbidity (illness), not just mortality (death). (Unfortunately, if there are cooling towers they could send the balance of tritium out into the air.) Contrary to what TEPCO, AREVA, and EnergySolutions want everyone to believe, there are several ways to filter tritium………

Yes, they need water standards but they need real standards and strict standards, which account for all radionuclides emitted in air and water and per facility. The actual quantities of the radionuclides must be measured and not the concentration!

While emissions per facility would appear obvious, apparently the current EPA air “standard” for emissions of radionuclides is national. Furthermore, none of the few radionuclides covered by the EPA, are reported as emitted into the AIR by the several nuclear facilities, we have examined, one of which we discuss here. It seems, based on their web site, that the NRC has an air “standard” of 0.10 mSv. Does the balance of 0.9 mSv go into the water?

This is a partial (or full) list of radioactive elements that should be monitored in air and water. However, each has so many isotopes that the NRC list of “standards” stretches 50 pages. Other than giving a list of isotopes, it is totally worthless as emissions are given as dilutions of microcuries per millilter, which gives no indication of what is actually released into the air or water. The US EPA, on the other hand, only names 2 for air, plus general gross Alpha emitters.

(table of elements here)

And, the EPA “clean water” drinking water standard appears weak – allowing up to 740 becquerels, radioactive disintegrations, of tritium per liter of water (two small bottles of water or cola) [See more further down]. There’s supposed to be less tritium if there is some cesium, strontium or other Beta emitters thrown in, but one is left with the impression that only tritium gets tested, if anything gets tested.

Alpha emitters, such as plutonium, are to be limited to a total of 0.55 becquerels per liter for drinking water. And, yet, the NRC rules allow “licensees” to put 7.4 Becquerels per liter, directly into the sewers – not that dilution fixes the problem, it only masks it…….

Another problem with the NRC’s dilute and deceive strategy is that in times of dry weather or drought the becquerels per liter in the water increases, as the State of Mississippi noted to its dismay at the Salmon underground nuclear test site.

Higher concentration of radionuclides in water, due to drought, in the area of the Idaho National Lab test site, could help account for the thousands of dead snow geese, which reportedly dropped from the sky within the last week.

As well, the NRC needs to recall that its name is the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and so its job is to regulate the industry, rather than to work for the nuclear industry. Its job is to help the EPA keep a high safety standard for water, air, soil. They both appear to have forgotten or be oblivious to their purpose, which is to protect the people and environment from radionuclides from the nuclear industry.

Nuclear Facilities also are allowed to emit so many radionuclides, that it takes 50 pages to list them, including plutonium 239 to the air, along with the water. But, like the water, to talk about concentrations in the air – as opposed to amounts – is really meaningless for anything but the shortest-lived radionuclides. And, the shortest-lived radionuclides can easily be kept in holding tanks until they are no longer radioactive.

Do you think that 740 radioactive emissions is clean water? The NRC wants to manipulate the mrem (mSv) now to say that it should be well over 2,000 becquerels for tritium. How that can be when it is now believed that tritium is more dangerous than previously thought, and may require a weighting factor, cannot be fathomed.

The NRC sets air and water emission limits of radionuclides at micro-curies per milliter, which is utterly deceitful. This is an old trick reportedly used by workers in the petrochemical industry in “cancer alley”, USA – to emit pollution and let it go downstream, down the Mississippi River; wait a few minutes and then measure. The several nuclear power facilities, which we have examined, actually give the real emissions and then appear forced to report it as a dilution at the behest of the NRC! The radionuclides are going someplace. Dilution is not a solution for the longer lived radionuclides nor for simultaneous and ongoing emissions.

[several good maps and pictures] …..

You can see an oil spill. You can’t see the radiation from nuclear power stations. Storms will move radionuclides (and oil) which have dropped into large bodies of water back onto land. People will see the oil. People cannot see the radionuclides from the nuclear power plants .

The supposed EPA AIR emission “limits” on nuclear facilities also make no sense on multiple fronts. First they make no sense in that the “standard” is nation-wide, rather than by facility, and, unlike Russia, the nuclear power plants are private and not government owned making it utter non-sense (For all the Putinphiles: Russia allows 7,000 Bq/liter in the water – over 10 times as much tritium in water as the USA and 70 times as much as Europe allows):………..https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/us-nrc-radioactive-dilute-and-deceive-scam-comment-deadline-march-24th/

March 21, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | radiation, spinbuster, USA