Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 18, Ed. 1 Friday, December 20, 1991 Page: 2 of 16
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Hudspeth KpuntEenaOd
BY RICHARD FURNO-TE WASHINGION POST
8
Mary ouise Lynch...
Susan Barker.-...........
C Warren......-,
Bernice M. Elder.......
Linda Polk.............
Sally Brown...__.....
*IPHECA — International Program on the Health Effects of the
Chernobyl Accident — a long-term study of Chernobyl.
The Energy Department has a
different problem. It generates vast;
amounts of low-level waste at its
nuclear bomb factories, and would
be required to comply with EPA
disposal regulations if EPA issuec
them.
Rejecting EPA's latest proposed
language, Raymond Pelletier, direc-
tor of the Energy Department’s “
EPA Is Back to Square One on Disposal
Of ‘Miscellaneous Radioactive Junk’
5 • Some Necessary Ingredients for Credible Studies
With only very rare exceptions, health effects induced by ionizing
radiation look clinically identical to the same health problems induced by
other causes. Therefore, the only way to find out that RADIATION can
cause a particular type of health problem is to count the frequency of specific
afflictions among comparable groups exposed to different amounts of
radiation. For instance, if a postulated effect shows RANDOM changes in
frequency while the radiation dose increases in a regular way, the idea of
causation is badly weakened. But the hypothesis of causation becomes
plausible if progressive increases in dose are followed by regular changes in
response, in a properly done dose-response study.
What follows is an extremely abbreviated review of some rules and
conditions required to produce scientifically credible studies of Chernobyl’s
radiation consequences.
• First Rule: Comparable Groups
As essential condition for a credible dose-response study — and a very
difficult condition to meet — is reasonable assurance that the compared
groups would have the SAME rates of disease in the absence of radiation.
Otherwise, one cannot identify radiation as the cause of a difference in
disease-rates in one dose-group compared with another dose-group. (A
zero-dose group is welcome but not essential for such studies.)
• Second Rule: A Real Difference in Dose
Another essential condition is reasonable certainty that the compared
groups truly have appreciably DIFFERENT accumulated doses. Otherwise,
when die First Rule has been met, it is pre-destined that analysts will find
"no provable difference in disease-rates between dosc-groups” if, in reality,
the compared groups received nearly the SAME total amount of radiation.
The IAEA study did not follow the Second Rule. On the contrary. The
IAEA study sampled 7 "contaminated" and 6 "control" settlements (presumec
less contaminated). According to the IAEA’s own reasoning (p.22), the
IAEA’s chosen "exposed” group received organ-doses which may have been
only HALF A REM higher than the organ-doses received by the so-called
"controls” — if higher at all. A comparison of such groups would guarantee
in advance the IAEA’s conclusion that (p.32) "There were significant
non-radiation-related health disorders in the populations of both surveyed
contaminated and surveyed control settlements studied under the Project, but
no health disorders that could be attributed directly to the radiation
exposure." The IAEA’s fatally flawed study does not support its conclusion.
• Third Rule: A Sufficiently Big Difference in Dose
The dosc-diffcrcnccs between compared groups must be large enough to
allow for statistically conclusive findings despite the random variations in
numbers and in population samples. How large is large enough? Analysts
can cope with the random fluctuations of small numbers both by assuring
large dose-differences between compared groups, and by assuring large
numbers of people in each group. Studies can be destined to find "no
provable radiation effect” before they even begin, if one or both of these
conditions are not met. The IAEA survey met neither condition.
ATOMS & WASTE______________
2311 15TH Street NW #101 ‘Washington DC 20009*(202) 328-0498-Fax 234-0433
MISCELLANEOUS RADIOACTIVE JUNK
Serving Dell Cty and Hudspeth County
290Trail Wert Park, P. O. Box 659, Dell City, Texas 79837
Seoon^ehM^poaUyeDell Qty, Texas 79837
•Its all a bit like the old country saying: if you find you've dug yourself a hole too deep to get
outo, maybe the l ust thing you should do is to stop digging. If the nuclear industry finds that
it s thrashing around in the dark with its waste management system, maybe it can be brought to
stop digging us all deeper and deeper into its ill-formulated waste programs. The solution as the
authors emphasize, is of course conservation and renewables.
Makhijani says DOE seems to have invented a new Murphy's law that dictates that the more
money you spend on a project, the more distant its completion becomes. Indeed, DOE's own top
managers joke about having a direct pipeline to the federal treasury that allows them to keep on
driving out ahead of our headlights." The utility industry also, of course, has a direct pipeline
to the pocketbooks of its ratepayers which is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into LLRW
sitings on the edge of schoolyards in Connecticut and on top of groundwater systems moving at
175 feet per year in North Carolina.
The book, High-Level Dollars, Low-Level Sense, will be available soon from Apex Press in
New York. Arjun Makhijani, who received his doctorate in engineering at Berkeley has given
expert consultation at Hanford, Fernald, and other major waste cleanup sites, and is president of
the Institute for Energy and Environmenal Research in Takoma Park, Maryland. Scott Saleska
whose baccalaureate in physics is from MIT, was author of Nuclear Legacy at Public Citizen.
The nation s system of radioactive waste management has long been criticized by independent
scientists as an irrational and scientifically disreputable hodgepodge, and the attack has been
renewed in a new book by Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska. Saleska says a much better term
that could be used instead of the jerrybuilt system of waste classifications elaborated by DOE and
the NRC would be "miscellaneous radioactive junk."
Marvin Resnikoffs Living Without Landfills (Radioactive Waste Campaign, 1987) subjects the
low-level classification system to serious criticism on the same grounds. Using government
data, Resnikoff shows that some "minor" components of the LLW stream—particularly Greater
Than Class C—contain most of the radiation in decommissioning wastes and are in fact more
high-level than HLW. Since then, major new waste types, including Mixed Wastes and oilfield
LLRW, have been identified as "trillion-dollar problems."
Makhijani and Saleska also denounce the fundamental LLW/HLW distinction as a "false
dichotomy" based on the momentary radioactive intensity of a waste type rather than the
characteristic upon which European classification systems have been built: longevity. Using the
High-Level concept as its mission, DOE is ramrodding ill-conceived projects like WIPP, MRS,
and Yucca Mountain into operation with a "false sense of urgency."
The authors call for an immediate halt in the present LLRW and HLRW siting programs so that a
fundamentaloverhaul of the classification system can be conducted, and they recommend a
concerted shift to onsite interim storage during a period of scientific review. For example, they
reject the immediate dismantling scenario for reactor decommissioning and oppose any further
dumping of uranium wastes containing two nuclides (radium-226 and thorium-230) which
shound first be extracted from the uranium waste stream. Like most opponents, they brand
WIPP and Yucca Mountain as gigantic, money-wasting decisions made in a period of relative
scientific ignorance.
PAGE 2, HUDSPETH COUNTY HERALD-Dell Valley Review, DEC. 20, 1991
—ssec
"HOLOCAUST" versus "NOTHING HAPPENED"
Tales from a Dirtant Place
... with a Problem Very Close to All of Us
John W. Gofman, M.D.. Ph.D., Fall 1991
E25-. :
*IPHECA
Office of Environmental Guidance, "
said in a Sept. 9 letter that the stan4 a
dards “should not be published ir l
their present form” because the, 9
are technically flawed and self s#
contradictory.
The quest for sites has touched 'The most workable and least I
off furious political and environmen- disruptive solution may be to abani J
tal battles in Illinois, New York, don their development,” he said. ' I
Texas and other proposed “host” OMB "put it back in the laps of w J
states. the agencies to solve," Gruhlke I
Before any low-level dump can be, said. We have had our differences 3
built at whatever sites are chosen; with our sister agencies.
the Nuclear Regulatory Commis- “We are trying to work out a joint I
sion must license the facility. But arrangement so licensees only have
the EPA, which has overlapping io deal with one set of rules and one I
jurisdiction, has been trying since agency, NRC spokesman Joseph —2
1983 to set standards for ground- Fouchard said. “That process is oni
water and wetland protection that going. We are talking with one am
are more stringent than those in other.
RADIOAGTIU5
loms86
- BIS SISI
agementof low-lev elnuc learwa ste rheisedmX^ ing to the congressional Office of development process,” Robert Ml
ananbasghonybrdravengneardomrore — t. NRC. nuciearnmaterai
mental Protection Agency an- likely to succeed, law requires .that the states, indi- safety director, complained to OMB;
nounced its intention to issue them. They called for the creation of an vidually or. 111 regional compacts, last year.
Ordered by the Office of Manage- independent, impartial federal develop their own sites beginning in
ment and Budget to revise the pro- agency to cut through'the conflict- 1993
posed regulations to ease the “con- ing objectives and priorities of the
cerns” of the Energy Department various agencies sharing responsi-
and the Nuclear Regulatory Com- bility for managing and disposing of
mission, EPA more or less punted radioactive waste, conflicts readily
after the Energy Department nixed visible in the documents about "low-
the latest version in September, level” waste.
government officials reported yes- By federal law, low-level waste is
terday. defined as virtually all radioactive
. -ssuanc; of regulations is "not waste that is not high level, that is,
imminent, gaid James M Gruhlke waste other than spent fuel from
of EPA's Radiation Pro- inside the cores of nuclear reactors.
This behind-the-scenes agency Low-level waste consistsofe-
turf tight came to light in docu- erything from nuclear workers dis-
ments made public yesterday by carded paper booties to dangerous-
Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska, ly radioactive pumps and valves
scientists at the Institute for Ener- from reactor cooling systems,
gy and Environmental Research in A more accurate term would be
Takoma Park. “miscellaneous radioactive junk,"
The two officials said that they Saleska said.
obtained the documents from OMB Federal law specifies that high-
staff members while writing a book level waste be stored in an under-
called “High Level Dollars, Low ground repository that the Energy
Level Sense,” a critique of the na- Department hopes to build beneath
tion’s entire program for disposing Yucca Mountain, Nev., but dispos-
of radioactive waste from power ing of low-level waste is the respon-
plants and nuclear weapons facto- sibility of the states where it is gen-
ries. erated, at power plants, hospitals
Any erroneous reflection upon the character, standing or reputation
not responsible for copy omissions or typograplical errors which may
occur other than to correct them in the next issue after it is brought
to attention, and in no case does the publisher hold himself liable for
covering the error. The right is reserved to reject or edit all advertising
copy as well as editorial and news content.
PUBLISHED ON FRIDAY OF EACH WEEK for Hudspeth County,
Texas, third largest county. Notices of church, entertainments where
a charpe of admission is made, card of thanks, resolutions of respect,
and an matter not news, will be charged at the regular rates.
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Lynch, Mary Louise. Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 18, Ed. 1 Friday, December 20, 1991, newspaper, December 20, 1991; Dell City, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1536048/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .