Russia has said a leak of nuclear material detected over Scandinavia did not come from one of its power plants.
Nuclear safety watchdogs in Finland, Norway and Sweden said last week they had found higher-than-usual amounts of radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere.
A Dutch public health body said that, after analysing the data, it believed the material came “from the direction of western Russia”.
It said the material could indicate “damage to a fuel element”.
But in a statement, Russia’s nuclear energy body said its two power stations in the north-west – the Leningrad NPP and the Kola NPP – were working normally and that no leaks had been reported.
“There have been no complaints about the equipment’s work,” a spokesperson for the state controlled nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom told Tass news agency.
“Aggregated emissions of all specified isotopes in the above-mentioned period did not exceed the reference numbers.”
Radiation levels around the two powers stations “have remained unchanged in June”, the spokesperson added.
Lassina Zerbo, executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) tweeted on Friday that its Stockholm monitoring station had detected three isotopes – Cs-134, Cs-137 and Ru-103 – at higher than usual levels but not harmful to human health.
The particles were detected on 22-23 June, he said.
The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands said on Friday that the composition of the nuclear material “may indicate damage to a fuel element in a nuclear power plant”.
Nine years on, Fukushima’s mental health fallout lingers
As radiation from the Fukushima nuclear accident subsides, a damaging social and psychological legacy continues, Wired
By SOPHIE KNIGHT 24 June 20, If it were not illegal, Ayumi Iida would love to test a dead body. Recently, she tested a wild boar’s heart. She’s also tested the contents of her vacuum cleaner and the filter of her car’s air conditioner. Her children are so used to her scanning the material contents of their life that when she cuts the grass, her son asks, “Are you going to test that too?”
Iida, who is 35, forbids her children from entering the sea or into forests. She agonises over which foods to buy. But no matter what she does, she can’t completely protect her children from radiation. It even lurks in their urine.
“Maybe he’s being exposed through the school lunch,” she says, puzzling over why her nine-year-old son’s urine showed two-and-a-half times the concentration of caesium that hers did, when she takes such care shopping. “Or maybe it’s from the soil outside where he plays. Or is it because children have a faster metabolism, so he flushes more out? We don’t know.”
Iida is a public relations officer at Tarachine, a citizens’ lab in Fukushima, Japan, that tests for radioactive contamination released from the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Agricultural produce grown in the area is subject to government and supermarket testing, but Tarachine wants to provide people with an option to test anything, from foraged mushrooms to dust from their home. Iida tests anything unknown before feeding it to her four children. Recently, she threw out some rice she received as a present after finding its level of contamination – although 80 times lower than the government limit – unacceptably high. “My husband considered eating it ourselves, but it’s too much to cook two batches of rice for every meal. In the end we fed it to some seagulls.”
Tarachine is one of several citizen labs founded in the wake of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, which obliterated a swathe of the country’s northwest coast and killed more than 18,000 people. The wave knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, triggering a meltdown in three of the reactor cores and hydrogen explosions that sprayed radionuclides across the Fukushima prefecture. More than 160,000 people were forced to evacuate. A government decontamination programme has allowed evacuation orders to be lifted in many municipalities, but one zone is still off limits, with only short visits permitted.
Driven by a desire to find out precisely how much radiation there was in the environment and where, a group of volunteers launched Tarachine in Iwaki, a coastal city that escaped the worst of the radioactive plume and was not evacuated, through a crowdfunding campaign in November 2011. It is now registered as a non-profit organisation, and runs on donations.
In a windowless room controlled for temperature and humidity and dotted with screens showing graphs, two women sort and label samples, either collected by staff or sent in by the public: soil from back gardens, candied grasshoppers, seawater. In the beginning, mothers sent in litres of breastmilk. Tarachine initially charged a tenth of what a university lab would charge to make the testing accessible to as many people as possible; last year, they made it free.
To test for caesium-137, the main long-term contaminant released from the plant, staff finely chop samples and put them inside a gamma counter, a cylindrical grey machine that looks like a centrifuge. Tarachine’s machines are more accurate than the more commonly accessible measuring tools: at some public monitoring posts, shoppers can simply place their produce on top of a device to get a reading, but this can be heavily skewed by background radiation (waving a Geiger counter over food won’t give an accurate reading for the same reason). Tarachine tries to get as precise readings as possible; the lab’s machines give results to one decimal place, and they try to block out excess background radiation by placing bottles of water around the machines.
Measuring for strontium, a type of less penetrative beta radiation, is even more complicated: the food has to first be roasted to ash before being mixed with an acid and sifted. The whole process takes two to three days. Tarachine received training and advice from university radiation labs around the country, but the volunteers had to experiment with everyday food items that scientists had never tested. “There was no recipe like ‘Roast the leaf for two hours at so-and-so Celsius’, you know?” says Iida. “If it’s too burnt it’s no good. We also had to experiment with types of acid and how much of the acid to add.”
Japanese government standards for radiation are some of the most stringent in the world: the upper limit of radioactive caesium in food such as meat and vegetables is 100 becquerels per kilogram, compared with 1,250 in the European Union and 1,200 in the US (the becquerel unit measures how much ionizing radiation is released due to radioactive decay). Many supermarkets adhere to a tighter limit, proudly advertising that their produce contains less than 40 becquerels, or as few as 10. Tarachine aims for just 1 becquerel.
“How I think about it is, how much radiation was there in local rice before the accident? It was about 0.01 becquerel. So that’s what I want the standard to be,” says Iida. Continue reading →
New film helps us find it, measure it and understand it, By Linda Pentz Gunter,
There are many ways to teach people about radiation. But if you want to make that lesson accessible, compelling and even moving, then this film is the way to do it.
Let’s go on a journey. A journey to learn about radiation exposure from fallout after a nuclear power plant accident. We have the perfect guide. It is the independent French radiation research laboratory known as CRIIRAD, and its director, Dr. Bruno Chareyron.
The organization’s full name in French is Commission de Recherche et d’Information Indépendantes sur la RADioactivité, hence the acronym. In English it is translated as Commission for Independent Research and Information about RADiation.
For those not familiar with CRIIRAD, our journey begins with a little history, and so does CRIIRAD’s brilliant new 45-minute film — Invisible Fallout (Invisibles retombées is the French title), which can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube and above. The film, written and produced by CRIIRAD staff and directed by Cris Ubermann, is in French and Japanese with English subtitles.
When the Chernobyl nuclear disaster hit in April 1986, the French government engaged in a notorious cover-up, claiming that France “has totally escaped any radioactive fallout.” The whole thing was a lie. Five days before the government denial, Chernobyl’s radioactive cloud had covered all of France.
As Invisible Fallout recounts, after Chernobyl, it took 15 years until the French government published fallout maps of France. But the CRIIRAD laboratory, formed right after Chernobyl precisely to establish that France’s immunity was a myth, had already done the work that debunked the official line that the disaster was just a Soviet problem. French citizens not only got dosed by Chernobyl fallout, but would live in perpetual danger of a similar catastrophe at home, with a country almost 80% reliant on nuclear-generated electricity from its 58 reactors.
But Invisible Fallout does not linger long in the past. It segues quickly to the next nuclear catastrophe — the 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi meltdowns in Japan — and it is there that the CRIIRAD team, led by Chareyron, take us to learn about the effects of radiation exposure from nuclear power plants.
Just sixteen days after the Fukushima disaster, Japanese citizens began to detect fallout. They desperately needed to do independent monitoring but found it hard to get their hands on Geiger counters. The downplays and cover-ups by Japanese authorities, attempting to minimize the dangers and avoid mass evacuations, meant official figures could not be trusted.
An unlikely leader stepped forward in the person of composer and artist, Wataru Iwata, who, one month after the disaster, asked CRIIRAD for Geiger counters. They sent them, along with email tutorials on radioactivity, its health risks and how to protect against them. The laboratory also prepared a series of simple, clear, instructional “emergency” videos in English, designed for non-specialists, which they put online for everyone to access. This included an instructional segment on how to use a Scintillometer, one of the dozen devices CRIIRAD had sent to the Japanese activists.
We then get a short instructional video of our own on exactly how the Scintillometer is able to rapidly detect Gamma radiation in counts per second, and what those measurements mean. It glides into clarity for us, abetted by the smooth tones of the film’s excellent French narrator, Nicolas Planchais. We forget completely we are in class. Everything is, indeed, illuminated.
And we see Iwata taking his device into Fukushima Prefecture where he helps others measure the radiation levels. At a restaurant 55km away from the destroyed reactors, where people were going about their daily lives, he is shocked to record radiation levels that are 50 times higher than normal. In other areas, levels are 1,000 times higher.
Two months after the accident, CRIIRAD decided to show up in person, and Japan’s Citizens Radioactivity Monitoring Stations (CRMS), were born. CRIIRAD set up nine CRMS in Fukushima Prefecture and one in Tokyo.
Quickly realizing that ingestion of radioactively contaminated foodstuffs was as much of a threat as external exposure, Iwata asked for ways to measure radiation in food. This would help the people who had stayed — or who had been forced to remain — in contaminated areas to make informed choices about the food they consumed. CRIIRAD brought over a device sensitive enough to detect radiation in food, then conducted a seminar for residents of Fukushima City on on how to use it. We too, as viewers, get the tutorial.
Indeed, all of these lessons in science are subtly woven into the film, but cleverly attached to the lived experiences of real people in Japan, making it relevant and relatable.
And then, as we learn how to measure radiation levels and what they mean, we start to meet the people to whom it matters the most. We encounter a farmer who abided by the rules not to sell contaminated crops but whose family ate the food themselves so it would not go to waste. And we watch his palpable emotion as he recounts his attachment to the land and the known risks he and his family took.
CRIIRAD and its Japanese partners begin to find radioactive particles everywhere— on rooftops, in soil and vegetation, at the foot of trees, in the cracks of tarmac, even inside greenhouses.
At a school which, in denial, refused to have radiation measurements taken, Iwata is shown taking readings in the school grounds. They start at 6,000 to 7,000 counts per second, but rise to 27,000 counts per second at ground level.
The CRIIRAD team encounter what they describe as their most difficult moment when an elderly peasant farmer asks them to conduct measurements on her land just 30km away from the nuclear site. She herself was forced to evacuate, but her farm was not in the zone designated for permanent evacuation. So she came back with CRIIRAD to assess the situation.
We watch them take measurements, then gently show the results to her. She begins to sob. Then she tells them, “Thank you for coming all this way. I was in darkness and you have brought me light.” But, she knows she must now abandon the farm forever.
After an interlude for another lesson, this time on gamma rays, we are back to some chilling truths about their effects. In Fukushima City, we learn that at an elementary school there, children are asked to frequently change places in class so that the same children are not always sitting by the window where the radiation levels are higher.
This prompts CRIIRAD to remind us that, “when it comes to radiation protection, there is no threshold below which it is harmless.” And they point out that the Japanese decision to raise the annual allowable radiation dose from 1mSv to 20mSv, “means accepting a risk of cancer 20 times higher, and this applies equally to children and pregnant women” for whom such doses present a far higher risk.
CRIIRAD warns that people living in the contaminated region will be exposed for decades and across vast areas. They will be exposed to external radiation from powerful gamma rays emitted by the soil and contaminated surfaces. They will be exposed through inhalation of radioactive dust suspended every time the wind blows, and by activities such as sowing crops, ploughing and construction work. And they will be exposed through eating foodstuffs cultivated on contaminated land in contaminated soil.
But thanks to CRIIRAD, many of them will now know how to measure these levels, what they mean and how to protect themselves. It’s a lesson that’s well worth learning for all of us.
For more information, please see the CRIIRAD website, in its original French, and in English.
UNIVERSITY OF MÜNSTER A mysterious cloud containing radioactive ruthenium-106, which moved across Europe in autumn 2017, is still bothering Europe’s radiation protection entities. Although the activity concentrations were innocuous, they reached up to 100 times the levels of what had been detected over Europe in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident. Since no government has assumed responsibility so far, a military background could not be ruled out.
Researchers at the Leibniz University Hannover and the University of Münster (both Germany) now found out that the cloud did not originate from military sources – but rather from civilian nuclear activities. Hence, the release of ruthenium from a reprocessing plant for nuclear fuels is the most conclusive scenario for explaining the incident in autumn 2017. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Background:
It is impossible to make a clear distinction between civilian and military sources solely based on measurements of radioactive isotopes of ruthenium. For the first time, researchers from the Institute of Radioecology and Radiation Protection at Leibniz University of Hannover and the Institute of Planetology at Münster University succeeded in quantifying stable ruthenium isotopes in air filters that were released with the radioactive ruthenium.
Within the scope of the study, the team left conventional scientific paths: “We usually measure ruthenium isotopes to study the formation history of Earth”, says Prof. Thorsten Kleine from the University of Münster, adding that the methods originally developed to address research questions in planetology were instrumental in solving this mystery. The fact that the airborne ruthenium stemming from nuclear activities occurred in minuscule amounts and were diluted with natural stable ruthenium presented a significant challenge.
Through the clean chemical separation of ruthenium fractions from air filters and subsequent high-precision measurements via mass spectrometry, the researchers determined the ratio of stable ruthenium from the nuclear source. The ruthenium isotopic ratios found in the filter are consistent with the signature of a civilian source, in particular the signature of spent nuclear fuel from a nuclear power plant. A military background (such as the production of weapons-grade plutonium) can be ruled out.
Furthermore, high-precision measurements enabled the researchers to draw further conclusions. “The isotope signature discovered in the air filter exhibits no similarities with nuclear fuels of conventional Western pressurised or boiling water reactors. Instead, it is consistent with the isotope signature of a specific type of Russian pressurised water reactors – the VVER series. Worldwide, approximately 20 reactors of this type of VVER are currently operational”, specifies Professor Georg Steinhauser from Leibniz University Hannover.
Original publication:
T. Hopp et al. (2020): Non-natural ruthenium isotope ratios of the undeclared 2017 atmospheric release consistent with civilian nuclear activities. Nature Communications; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16316-3
Research is needed to map out exactly what the exposure to electromagnetic fields is as soon as the new frequencies come into effect for communicating data wirelessly with 5G. In the interim, 4G will coexist with 5G. This means that levels of electromagnetic fields might experience an overall increase. So says Professor Hans Kromhout, who is chair of the Exposure Assessment and Occupational Hygiene group at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Kromhout is also chair of the Committee Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) Health Council of the Netherlands. This committee is investigating the possible health risks associated with 5G at the request of the Dutch House of Representatives. The advisory report is due by the end of July, as stipulated by the Health Council of the Netherlands.
“The level of expected exposure to radiofrequency fields can be easily mapped out. The people who devised the technology for 5G are very smart physicists. They should be able to do this.”
Resistance to 5G
Several individuals and groups in The Netherlands are actively opposing the introduction of 5G because they are convinced that radiofrequency waves are harmful. Some claim that there is a conspiracy to harm the population. Over the past few months, it has frequently been reported in the news that activists had set fire to telecom companies’ masts. Some of these new 5G antennas will have to be placed on the same masts that are currently used for 4G.
Another group has filed a preliminary injunction against the government which is to auction off the new frequencies starting this summer.
Several documents circulate among activists, such as a pamphlet written by Martin Pallan, an American emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington. The pamphlet claims that electromagnetic fields used for 5G can lead to, among other things, damage to DNA, increased risk of infertility, cancer, ADHD, and Alzheimer’s disease.
No scientific evidence linked to cancer
According to Kromhout, there isn’t any substantiated evidence-based scientific research that proves that such diseases are caused by the use of mobile phones and exposure to radiofrequency fields from transmission masts. Kromhout himself participated in research into the effect that mobile phone usage might have on the onset of headaches, tinnitus (a hearing disorder whereby you constantly hear peeping sounds in your ear when in reality there’s no sound), hearing impairment and insomnia. This study did not show a connection between the radiofrequency fields and the health complaints that were studied. Although it did show a connection with the (excessive) use of a mobile phone.
Kromhout also took part in a study into the effect of electromagnetic fields on people who consider themselves to be ‘electrohypersensitive.’ This experimental double-blind study showed that the test subjects were unable to perceive whether or not they were exposed to electromagnetic fields. This made the claim that their complaints were related to these fields far more improbable.
Research into the effect of static magnetic fields from MRI scanners on nurses and workers in the production of MRI scanners showed that after prolonged exposure, they are more likely to suffer from dizziness, abnormal bleeding in the uterus, and an increased risk of developing high blood pressure. “The levels of radiation to which these people are exposed are significantly higher than those of people using a mobile phone,” Kromhout adds. “You cannot use those tests to determine any potential effects of 4G or 5G on health.”
Absence of test procedures for determining health effects stemming from 5G
In spite of this, Kromhout thinks it is appropriate to carry out research into any eventual effects. “When a company introduces a new medicine, it has to go through all kinds of test procedures to be certain that they are safe to public health. This hasn’t taken place at all here.”
It is difficult to establish with 100% certainty that there is no damage to health without scientific research because you just don’t know exactly what the influence of 4G and 5G is. “But I don’t think it’s likely that the damage could be more severe as a result of the use of these higher frequencies. Electromagnetic fields with lower frequencies are able to penetrate deeper into your head. These seem to me to be more dangerous than high frequencies like 5G. Research should, therefore, focus more on the skin. Skin is what is most likely to come into contact with electromagnetic fields at higher frequencies.”
The fact that there will be more transmission masts as a result of 5G does not necessarily lead to more exposure, Kromhout believes that as the increasingly higher frequencies that will come into use have a shorter range than existing lower frequencies. “Exposure to radiation in the times of 1G and 2G was many times higher than it is now.”
Yet as 5G will become active alongside 4G, and in light of the fact that there will be a greater number of applications, the total amount of exposure to radiation is still likely to increase for today’s user.
Pacific nuclear bomb tests made it rain 1,000s of miles away in UK, Reading University scientists find, Berkshire Live
During the Cold War, detonations in locations as remote as the Nevada Desert or Pacific islands had unforeseen consequences elsewhere in the world By Ian Hughes 17 MAY 2020
Nuclear bomb tests during the Cold War changed rainfall patterns thousands of miles from the detonation sites, according to scientists at the University of Reading.
They found electric charge released by radiation from detonations – carried out predominantly by the US and Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s – affected rain clouds at the time.
It means tests in remote locations such as the Nevada Desert or Pacific islands, had an effect on precipitation as far away as the Shetlands – 300 miles off the coast of Scotland.
A study used historic records between 1962-64 from a research station on the Scottish island.
Scientists compared days with high and low radioactively-generated charge, finding that clouds were visibly thicker, and there was 24 per cent more rain on average on the days with more radioactivity…………
It is thought researchers will now have a better understanding of important weather processes.
Although detonations were carried out in remote parts of the world during the Cold War, radioactive pollution spread widely throughout the atmosphere.
Radioactivity ionises the air, releasing electric charge.
The researchers, from the Universities of Reading, Bath and Bristol, studied records from well-equipped Met Office research weather stations at Kew near London and Lerwick in the Shetland Isles.
Shetland, in particular, was relatively unaffected by other sources of anthropogenic pollution. This made it well suited as a test site to observe rainfall effects which, although likely to have occurred elsewhere too, would be much more difficult to detect.
The Shetland rainfall on more than 150 days showed differences which vanished after the major radioactivity episodes were over.
By Dahyun Kang, April 28, 2020 Watching the HBO drama Chernobyl about the nuclear disaster that occurred in April 1986 gave me a whole new perspective on how destructive radioactive particles can be. One scene depicted local men and women fearfully looking toward the nuclear site, a dim red glow against the night sky. Highly radioactive cesium-137-contaminated dust fell like snow on children running in the streets. Plant workers and firefighters died gruesomely after exposure to acute radiation doses unleashed by the debris that exploded from the nuclear reactor. No one knew what to do because Soviet bureaucrats delayed accident announcements and evacuation orders.
The lack of information about radiation levels meant that people were exposed to radiation for a longer duration than if they had received timely warnings. The Chernobyl drama not only helped me realize the disastrous consequences and hazards of radiation, but also inspired me to create a radiation estimator that could provide estimations of environmental radiation levels in places where there are no stationed detectors.
A focus on Fukushima. To develop my estimator, I focused on the Fukushima region in Japan. I chose this area because of the nuclear disaster there in March 2011, when three nuclear power plant cores melted down and released radionuclides into the atmosphere. The Japanese government chose this region to hold a couple of events that are part of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and Paralympics, branded as the “Reconstruction Olympics.”
The environmental group Greenpeace has raised concerns about whether people attending these Olympic events—which have now been postponed until 2021—could be exposed to lingering radiation. In a report published last month, Greenpeace claimed measurements taken by a survey team detected radioactive hotspots at the Fukushima Azuma Baseball Stadium near Fukushima City, in the area around the city’s central station, and at the J-Village sports complex where the Olympic torch relay will start. According to Greenpeace, the highest measurement at J-Village on October 26, 2019, was 71 microsieverts per hour close to the ground, a reading more than 1,750 times higher than pre-2011 background levels. The forested mountains covering roughly 70 percent of the Fukushima prefecture cannot be decontaminated and therefore pose a recontamination risk to areas when heavy rainfall or typhoons mobilize radionuclides, which Greenpeace says happened during two intense typhoons in 2019.
Japan’s Shinzo Abe administration plans to host the Olympics baseball and softball games at the Azuma stadium, approximately 80 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant site where the nuclear accident occurred. J-Village, where the torch relay will begin, is located about 20 kilometers south of Fukushima Daiichi.
How I built my radiation estimator. The nonprofit organization Safecast, which collects radiation readings taken by volunteers and makes them publicly available at no charge, provides data for a number of locations worldwide—particularly in Japan, where the monitoring network began as a response to the Fukushima disaster. Using the Safecast website, I collected data from the Fukushima prefecture. With the help of mathematical software called Mathematica, I then developed a mathematical equation that takes the Safecast Fukushima data and provides estimates of radiation values at any other location in Fukushima. With the help of a relative who works as a coding programmer, I also created a Radiation Estimation website that uses the mathematical equation to estimate radiation values, in microsieverts per hour, for any latitude and longitude entered by a user.
For example, if the user enters the latitude and longitude of the Azuma stadium, the equation gives an estimate of 0.103 microsieverts per hour. According to the International Commission on Radiological Protection, anything less than 0.23 microsieverts per hour is considered a safe dose, based on the recommended public dose limit of 1 millisievert per year (1 millisievert is equivalent to 1,000 microsieverts).
Future efforts. Currently, my radiation estimator inevitably contains some degree of uncertainty due to limited available data from the Fukushima prefecture, which covers about 13,700 square kilometers. The estimates would be more precise and could be applied beyond Fukushima if there were more disclosed data available to reference.
What about the radiation levels in my own city and others in the United States? Unfortunately, I was unable to find enough open radiation data available to make a good estimate. The US Environmental Protection Agency runs a nationwide environmental radiation monitoring system, RadNet, which has 140 radiation air monitors spread across 50 states, mostly in the heart of big cities. Although these monitors run 24/7, collecting near-real-time measurements of gamma radiation, the number and locations of the monitors are inadequate to cover all of the United States.
There are 96 US nuclear power reactors in operation. Who can assure the American public that no nuclear catastrophe on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima will occur in the United States? It is natural for the public to be worried and to insist that the US government install more radiation monitors near reactors and the surrounding populated areas to protect the public. Information collected by the monitors should also be disclosed to the public.
Once sufficient environmental radiation data are available, my radiation estimator would be applicable in my own city and others in America as well. I hope to raise awareness of environmental radiation and offer people information about what kind of environment they are living in. Since my radiation estimator is only a first step in that direction, I hope that someone with more expertise can build upon my idea to create a more precise tool that provides information about environmental radiation anywhere on the globe.
Occupational Radiation Exposure: Serious Risks and Safety Solutions, https://www.diagnosticimaging.com/patient-safety/occupational-radiation-exposure-serious-risks-and-safety-solutionsMina S. Makary, MDNicholas Mannix, BS-April 6, 2020, Patient Safety, DI ExecutiveWhile the radiation doses utilized in image-guided procedures are generally considered low, recent studies have demonstrated significant effects of chronic low-dose radiation exposure to the procedural staff. Recent work demonstrated an alarming incidence of brain cancer, higher incidence of skin, thyroid, breast cancers and melanomas, higher incidence of stroke and atherosclerotic disease, increased risk of developing cataracts, decreased memory and verbal fluency, and a higher frequency of chromosomal abnormalities in those who performed fluoroscopically-guided interventional procedures compared to control groups.
The deleterious effects of radiation exposure are not only related to dose thresholds of specific exposures, but they are also a function of the cumulative doses over one’s lifetime exposure. These risks prompt increased awareness and education, improved radiation protection techniques, and further research efforts.
Robust radiation safety and risk reduction approaches are multi-faceted. It goes without saying that the ALRA (as low as reasonably achievable) principle is the cornerstone guiding rule. This means using intermittent fluoroscopy whenever possible, minimizing the pulse rate for standard fluoroscopy, minimizing the frame rate for digital angiography/digital subtraction angiography, collimating and avoiding magnification if feasible, and utilizing the “last image hold” function rather than obtaining new unwarranted images.
Next, capitalizing upon the nature and distribution of scatter radiation, which is the primary source of occupational exposure, further reduces one’s dose. This translates to stepping back as far as possible from the radiation source and angulating the tube towards the operator when oblique views are desired to avoid back scatter. Furthermore, utilizing shielding is the third effective strategy, and this approach includes personal aprons, caps, thyroid shields, eyewear, table shields, mounted side shields, and patient drape shields. Lastly, monitoring of the amount of radiation utilized, staff doses, and patient exposure rates utilizing personal dosimeter and equipment data is key to addressing any significant doses that were delivered.
In addition to protecting the procedural team, good radiation safety habits are good patient care. Minimizing fluoroscopy time and overall dose as reasonably achievable reduces patient exposure. Interestingly, techniques, such as collimation, actually improve image contrast and quality in addition to reducing the dose – an ultimate win-win situation. With the growth of both diagnostic imaging and imaging-guided procedures that require ionizing radiation, patient exposures have significantly increased at an alarming rate over the past three decades, and it is estimated that medical imaging contributed to 48 percent of the public’s radiation exposure in 2006 compared to only 15 percent in the 1980s.
For patients, the most concerning effects are due to direct radiation beam exposure, such as radiation skin burns, but rarer risks may potentially include cataracts and sterility. In addition to the previously discussed occupational radiation reduction techniques, additional approaches to reduce patient dose include using non-ionizing radiation for procedural guidance, such as ultrasound and MRI, as much as possible, maximizing pre-procedural imaging for planning to minimize procedural time, and avoiding unnecessary procedures.
Occupational radiation safety is critical for many reasons. It protects our proceduralists and staff, as well as our patients while also ensuring the patient receives the best care possible. Challenges, such as hardware costs, buy-in of institutional stakeholders, staff training, the heavy weight of shielding, and time to setup do exist, but education and awareness of the significant health risks, the benefits of appropriate protection, good habits, a culture of safety, and research efforts can overcome any barriers. The risks are real. The benefits are real. Radiation safety is both an occupational safety issue, as well as a patient care issue. It is not a luxury, and chronic low-dose radiation does matter. The time is now to prioritize radiation safety in our daily practice.
Mina Makary, M.D., is an interventional radiologist at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He also serves on the Diagnostic Imaging Editorial Board. This article was co-written wth Nicholas Mannix, BS, a medical student at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.
Japanese engineers trying to dismantle the melted reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant face a new hazard — radioactive sandbags so deadly that standing next to them for a few minutes could be fatal.
The sandbags were intended to make life easier for the teams dealing with the aftermath of the nuclear disaster in 2011 when three reactors melted after a tsunami destroyed their cooling systems. Twenty-six tonnes of the bags were placed in basements beneath two of the reactors to absorb radioactivity from waste water.
They were stuffed with zeolite, minerals that can absorb caesium. Nine years after the disaster, the submerged sandbags have sucked up so much radiation that they now represent a deadly danger themselves.
Samples of zeolite removed from the bags contain caesium, producing huge amounts of radiation, while the sandbags are giving off up to four sieverts of radiation an hour. Fifteen minutes of exposure to this could cause haemorrhaging. After an hour, half of those exposed would eventually die as a result. The maximum lifetime recommended dose of radiation for humans is less than half a sievert.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), which operates the plant, had intended to remove the contaminated water by the end of 2020. The complication caused by the sand means it will take three years longer, the latest delay to the decommissioning.
Tepco managers have admitted that the technology needed to finish the job does not exist and they do not have a full idea of how it will be achieved. Their stated goal of decommissioning by 2051 may be impossible, they said.
One of the biggest problems is the 170 tonnes of irradiated water coming out of the plant every day, much of it natural ground water that flows through the earth towards the sea, picking up radiation on the way. Tepco pumps it out and stores it in huge storage tanks, filtered of some, but not all, of its contaminants — 1.17 million tonnes so far. In two years, the storage space will run out.
The government wants to pour the water away, insisting that the diluting effect of the Pacific will render the radiation harmless, but it is opposed by North and South Korea and the local fishing industry, whose reputation has been ruined by the disaster.
LANL Plans to Release Twice the Amount of Tritium Allowed http://nuclearactive.org/ March 26th, 2020 The Department of Energy (DOE) and its contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) plan to vent radioactive tritium into the air in an amount twice the federal standard of 10 millirems a year. LANL estimates a possible offsite dose to the public of 20.2 he Department of Energy (DOE) and its contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) plan to vent radioactive tritium into the air in an amount twice the federal standard of 10 millirems a year. LANL estimates a possible offsite dose to the public of 20.2
In 2019, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a 2018 LANL plan under the Clean Air Act. This month, the New Mexico Environment Department approved the plan under the state’s Hazardous Waste Act because there are lead tools present in the containers. But there are inconsistencies between the two plans.
For instance, the earlier Clean Air Act plan proposed using “getters” to capture a portion of the vented tritium before it is released through an open door in the prefabricated shed. The later plan deleted the use of a “getter bed” and replaced it with an unnamed air emissions control system. Nevertheless, the Hazardous Waste Act plan states the gases will pass through a molecular sieve bed and through a metering value before release. https://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/eprr/ESHID-603412
New Mexicans are concerned about the proposed venting. Tritium is radioactive hydrogen and is highly mobile moving from air to water and back. It can cross the placenta and affect a developing fetus. The 10 millirem standard is based on a 154-pound, five feet 6 inch, Anglo “reference man,” between the ages of 20 to 30, who consumes a European diet.
Beata Tsosie, a Community Doula and Gardener, from Santa Clara Pueblo, said, “As a Pueblo woman living downwind and downstream from Los Alamos nuclear weapons production, I am very concerned about the lab’s intentions to go forward with releasing radioactive tritium vapor into our air, land, waters, and ecosystems. During mid April is when our land-based community is outdoors for longer periods of time preparing their fields and gardens for planting. What will it mean to also have cumulative exposure when we consume these crops? There are also increased exposures due to active foraging of wild plants, gathering of clays, fishing, hunting, and ceremony.
“Our children are also outdoors for longer periods of time due to the school shutdown for COVID-19, which is scheduled to go on indefinitely. I watch my son playing in his backyard, making his own gardens, running, getting out of breath and breathing deeply the air that I need to know is safe for him to be exposed to. We live 20 minutes away from these planned releases, and now in addition to an already stressful self-quarantine I need to worry about my family being outside enjoying their birthright.
“It is my understanding that in the documents submitted to the EPA and NMED in 2018, there is no inclusion of alternatives to these releases. There should not be a rush to put our communities in harms way when all solutions have not even been discussed. I know that the federal standards for tritium exposure are not protective of land-based people of color, or pregnant families and infants who are more vulnerable to radioactive toxicity. Tritium can cross placental boundaries. These standards of exposure are still based on an obsolete model of an adult, white male of European descent and custom.
There must be an informed public process that prioritizes protecting those most vulnerable. I do not consent to these toxic releases in my ancestral homelands; it is the continuation of nuclear colonialism and violence on Indigenous lands and bodies and a sorrowful history of environmental racism in our sacred Jemez Plateau. I call on all of our Congressional delegation, EPA and NMED directors to put an immediate halt and suspension to these planned tritium releases and increase in LANL production. Our communities deserve reprieve, health, calm, and wellness in these challenging times.”
Given the cumulative health consequences from the proposed venting, organizations and individuals are requesting the Environment Department hold a public comment period and a public hearing.
tests for statistical significance have been misused in epidemiological studies on cancers near nuclear facilities. These in the past have often concluded that such effects do not occur or they downplayed any effects which did occur. In fact, copious evidence exists throughout the world – over 60 studies – of raised cancer levels near NPPs.
Most (>75%) of these studies found cancer increases but because they were small, their findings were often dismissed as not statistically significant. In other words, they were chucked in the bin marked “not significant” without further consideration.
Just as people were misled about tobacco smoking in previous decades, perhaps we are being misled about raised cancers near NPPs nowadays.
The Hazards of Tritium, Dr Ian Fairlie, March 13, 2020
Summary
Nuclear facilities emit very large amounts of tritium, 3H, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Much evidence from cell/animal studies and radiation biology theory indicates that tritium is more hazardous than gamma rays and most X-rays. However the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) continues to underestimate tritium’s hazard by recommending a radiation weighting factor (wR) of unity for tritium’s beta particle emissions. Tritium’s exceptionally high molecular exchange rate with hydrogen atoms on adjacent molecules makes it extremely mobile in the environment. This plus the fact that the most common form of tritium is water, ie radioactive water, means that, when tritium is emitted from nuclear facilities, it rapidly contaminates all biota in adjacent areas. Tritium binds with organic matter to form organically bound tritium (OBT) with long residence times in tissues and organs making it more radiotoxic than tritiated water (HTO). Epidemiology studies indicate increases in cancers and congenital malformations near nuclear facilities. It is recommended that nuclear operators and scientists should be properly informed about tritium’s hazards; that tritium’s safety factors should be strengthened; and that a hazard scheme for common radionuclides be established. Continue reading →
The Hazards of Tritium,https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/the-hazards-of-tritium/ ,Dr Ian Fairlie, March 13, 2020 “……….Epidemiological Evidence of Risks Because of methodological limitations, epidemiology studies are a blunt tool for discovering whether adverse effects result from radiation exposures. These limitations include:
under-ascertainment, …
strict data requirements….
confounding factors: the true causes of morbidity or mortality can be uncertain due to confounding factors such as socio-economic status and competing causes of death.
bias: ……
poor signal to noise…..
uncertain doses:……
wide confidence intervals……
Many epidemiology studies are ecologic studies, that is, quick inexpensive studies which look at health statistics in tables and notate individual data. Their findings are usually regarded as indicative, but not conclusive. If their findings suggest an adverse effect then these should be investigated further by more detailed cohort or case-control studies. The latter match “cases” (i.e. those with an adverse health effect) with randomly-selected similar individuals without an adverse effect, in order to minimise under-ascertainment. However few of these are actually carried out because of their expense and long time-spans. Sometimes they are not carried out for political reasons because findings of increased cancers are not welcome.
A disconcerting finding is that a substantial number of epi studies near NPPs conclude there are no findings of ill health even though positive increases were in fact observed. That is, the researchers were unable to accept the evidence of their own work. It is difficult to comment on this cognitive dissonance (few studies seem to exist on this phenomenon) but it is apparently often due to unacknowledged biases or to group-think re the impossibility for ill-health effects to exist near nuclear facilities. In their conclusions, such authors have discounted their findings using a variety of reasons ………
However there is a serious problem here. If similarly increased health effects had been observed near, say, a lead smelting factory or an asbestos mine, would they be dismissed by referring to these rationales? I rather doubt it. In other words, what is occurring here is that hidden biases in favour of nuclear power are in play. In my view, such conflicts of bias should be declared at the outset just as conflicts of interest are nowadays.
The Abuse of Statistical Significance Tests
Many epi studies of cancer near NPPs have found increased risks but dismissed them as not “statistically significant”. This wording often misleads lay readers into thinking that a reported increase is unimportant or irrelevant. But, in statistics, the adjective “significant” is a specialist word used to convey a narrow meaning, ie that the likelihood of an observation being a fluke is less than 5% (assuming a p = 5% test were used). It does not mean important or relevant.
Also this phrase is usually employed without explaining that the chosen significance level is quite arbitrary. There is no scientific justification for using a 5% level or any other test level: it is merely a matter of convenience. In other words, it is quite possible for results which are “not significant” when a 5% test is applied, could become “significant” when a 10% or other test level were used.
The existence of this practice has historical parallels. In the 1950s, dozens of health studies financed by tobacco companies acted to sow seeds of doubt about the health effects of cigarette smoking for many years. Continue reading →
Ian Fairlie 13th March 2020, The Nuclear facilities emit very large amounts of tritium, 3H, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Much evidence from cell/animal studies and radiation biology theory indicates that tritium is more hazardous than gamma rays and most X-rays.
However the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) continues to underestimate tritium’s hazard by recommending a radiation weighting factor (wR) of unity for
tritium’s beta particle emissions. Tritium’s exceptionally high molecular exchange rate with hydrogen atoms on adjacent molecules makes it extremely mobile in the environment.
This plus the fact that the most common form of tritium is water, i.e. radioactive water, means that, when tritium is emitted from nuclear facilities, it rapidly contaminates all biota in adjacent areas. Tritium binds with organic matter to form organically bound tritium (OBT) with long residence times in tissues and organs making it more radiotoxic than tritiated water (HTO).
Epidemiology studies indicate increases in cancers and congenital malformations near
nuclear facilities. It is recommended that nuclear operators and scientists should be properly informed about tritium’s hazards; that tritium’s safety factors should be strengthened; and that a hazard scheme for common radionuclides be established.
When Linus Pauling accepted the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning against hydrogen bombs, he said that carbon 14 “deserves our special concern” because it “shows the extent to which the earth is being changed by the tests of nuclear weapons.”
If people’s teeth have a very low level of radiocarbon, it means that they were born well before Castle Bravo. [thermonuclear atom bomb test] People born in the early 1960s have high levels of radiocarbon in their molars, which develop early, and lower levels in their wisdom teeth, which grow years later. By matching each tooth in a jaw to the bomb curve, forensic scientists can estimate the age of a skeleton to within one or two years.
Even after childhood, bomb radiocarbon chronicles the history of our body.
Your Inner H-Bomb Nuclear testing left a signature of radioactive carbon all around the world—in trees and sharks, in oceans and human bodies. Even as that signal disappears, it’s revealing new secrets to scientists. The Atlantic, Story by Carl Zimmer, 2 Mar 20,
“…… Among the isotopes created by a thermonuclear blast is a rare, radioactive version of carbon, called carbon 14. Castle Bravo and the hydrogen-bomb tests that followed it created vast amounts of carbon 14, which have endured ever since. A little of this carbon 14 made its way into Clark’s body, into his blood, his fat, his gut, and his muscles. Clark carried a signature of the nuclear weapons he tested to his grave.
I can state this with confidence, even though I did not carry out an autopsy on Clark. I know this because the carbon 14 produced by hydrogen bombs spread over the entire world. It worked itself into the atmosphere, the oceans, and practically every living thing. As it spread, it exposed secrets. It can reveal when we were born. It tracks hidden changes to our hearts and brains. It lights up the cryptic channels that join the entire biosphere into a single network of chemical flux. This man-made burst of carbon 14 has been such a revelation that scientists refer to it as “the bomb spike.” Only now is the bomb spike close to disappearing, but as it vanishes, scientists have found a new use for it: to track global warming, the next self-inflicted threat to our survival. ……. Continue reading →
What happened inside the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Lab? Finding the facts in the forest with Dr. James Mahaffey Jessica Taylor Dawson News jtaylor@dawsonnews.com Feb. 19, 2020,
Over half a century later, rumors still swirl around Dawson Forest and the mysterious remnants of Dawson County’s past in the Cold War.
Though the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Facility has been out of commission for nearly 50 years, local residents can still be heard whispering about two-headed deer and oak leaves the size of elephant ears spotted around the nuclear facility’s remains.
For nuclear engineer and author, Dr. James Mahaffey, the task of unraveling the history behind Dawson County’s top-secret nuclear test site and separating facts from the fiction has led to decades of research and hard work. ………
On paper, it seemed feasible as an incredible amount of power could be housed in a very small space, however the findings from the Dawsonville laboratory proved that nuclear aircraft would take more than what was originally thought.
“Any nuclear reactor on this earth has shielding,” Mahaffey explained. “It’s got lead, concrete, steel, you know, heavy things to keep it from killing everybody, but you put it in an airplane and you can’t have concrete and steel and lead. It’s got to be naked.”
Components for nuclear-powered engines were assembled in a facility in Idaho then brought to Dawsonville for testing inside the reactor. In Mahaffey’s research, he discovered that the facility found that rubber tires either melted or turned to rock when exposed to different radiation. Hydraulic fluids turned into a tacky substance akin to chewing gum. Transistors in the radio system were immediately killed by radiation.
The other aspect of the Dawsonville facility was testing the effects of radiation on the environment and living creatures.
“What does flying over a farm with a nuclear aircraft do to the farm? Well, it kills everything on the ground. It kills trees, grass, crops, insects, birds, anything. It might even kill the farmer if he’s out looking at it so what are you going to do about that? And also, what happens when one of these things crashes,” Mahaffey said. “If a jet plane crashes you clean it up and you pay the people for the house that it destroyed and all that, but what if it’s a nuclear aircraft? Nuclear aircraft – when it crashes – it makes a five mile radius area contaminated with long lasting radionuclides and you have to fence it off so nobody can go there. Are you really willing to have that as part of your Air Force operations?”
The effects of radiation were tested through controlled experimentation but also through observation of what Mahaffey describes as “instant taxidermy” of animals caught inside the kill zone around the outside of the operational reactor.
“Any animal like a toad frog that happened to be hopping around on the ground when the reactor was turned on, he died and interestingly it also killed all the bacteria in and around the frog,” Mahaffey said.
“When those [bacteria] die, it doesn’t deteriorate so you have this dead frog that you can put on your mantle and it’ll just stay there.”
According to Mahaffey, the scientists conducted many experiments with animals including releasing rats and studying the effects of radiation on them.
“I heard a rumor that the largest animal they ever irradiated was a mule and the mule died of course, and like a toad frog it would not deteriorate in a normal way,” Mahaffey said.
Billions of dollars were poured into the Nuclear Aircraft Project that GNAL was part of during the 1960s, but funding was cut in the John F. Kennedy administration. The GNAL was closed in pieces and shut its completely in 1971.
The GNAL buildings inside Dawson Forest were dismantled and hauled away. The hot cell building, the only remaining structure still standing, was boarded up with stainless steel to keep intruders from entering the radioactive building. To this day, the building remains radioactive with particulates of Cobalt 60. ……
What makes Dawsonville’s secret nuclear facility stand out from other nuclear facilities for Mahaffey is the very detailed extent to which they dug into the dangers of nuclear fission products.
“An enormous amount of work was done to find out how having this reactor affects the environment. I’ll give them that,” Mahaffey said. “They wanted to find out how groundwater would transport radiation and they dug wells all over the facility, and they would have monitors monitoring what type of radiation, how much radiation and knew how fast radiation could transport in the environment.”
Great care went into studying radiation in the Etowah River including the construction of rafts to track and map the flow of radiation as well as the atmospheric effects of radiation.
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