Earlier this week, NEI announced an industry initiative to...
I bring all of this up only because last week during an NRC briefing on emergency planning (transcript not yet available online), our old friend Paul Gunter of Nuclear Information and Resource Service decided to go off topic, and include a short statement on the tritium releases at Exelon's Braidwood nuclear power plant. And it was his statement that led to a rather tart response from Commissioner Edward McGaffigan, an appointee of President Clinton [emphasis in bold face --EMc]:
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Environment, Energy, Tritium, Paul Gunter, NIRS
...[E]nhance detection, management and communication about inadvertent radiological releases in groundwater that are below federal standards at nuclear power plants.The program, of course, was generated in response to the tritium issue we've dealt with from time to time here on NEI Nuclear Notes. Click here for an AP account of the announcement.
I bring all of this up only because last week during an NRC briefing on emergency planning (transcript not yet available online), our old friend Paul Gunter of Nuclear Information and Resource Service decided to go off topic, and include a short statement on the tritium releases at Exelon's Braidwood nuclear power plant. And it was his statement that led to a rather tart response from Commissioner Edward McGaffigan, an appointee of President Clinton [emphasis in bold face --EMc]:
COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: Okay, Mr. Gunter. We'’re coming back to you. I'm going to stay off the point of the purpose of the meeting because you went off the point. But your last remark in my last round was to get to, tritium passes through the placenta, which I honestly think you specialize in factoids and irrelevant facts. Potassium 40 passes through the placenta. So, again, I ask you a rhetorical question. And it isn't meant to be rhetorical because I guess I'm just trying to understand how extreme your organization is.For more from our archives on NIRS and their activities, click here.
Do we tell women who are pregnant to give up Brazil nuts and bananas for fear of -- because potassium 40 is going to end up in their baby, in their fetus, in a far higher dose than anything that they'’d ever get from drinking tritiated water. I mean, factors of 100 higher. So tell me, two millirem a year is what a woman gets from eating a banana a day. Is NIRS'’ position that we give up bananas?
MR. GUNTER: Commissioner McGaffigan, again, our concern is unplanned and unmonitored release paths
COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: You'’re not answering the question.
MR. GUNTER: What I'’m saying is that we'’re talking about regulatory practices governing unmonitored and unplanned release paths
COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: Okay.
MR. GUNTER: And the right of the public to be alerted to such events. That'’s the -–-
COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: Then you go to Illinois and you use factoids or made-up facts or irrelevant facts in order to try to condition the public to -–- and to spur fear in the public. You yourself have done that. I mean, you yourself go and do this placenta thing, and you -–-
MR. GUNTER: It was actually Dr. Arjun Makhajani who made that -–-
COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: He'’s another --–
MR. GUNTER: And also -–-
COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: He'’s another person who doesn'’t know anything about radiation.
MR. GUNTER: And also an obstetrician made that statement. It wasn'’t me. I repeated it.
COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: Yes, well, you'’ll repeat anything that serves to spur -–-
COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Mr. Chairman, I --–
COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: I have a right to use my time as I see fit, Mr. Jaczko. So I honestly think that you should --– if the Nuclear Disinformation Resource Service wants to produce disinformation, you should, as a matter of consistency, tell pregnant women to avoid air travel, to obviously avoid the Capitol, to avoid bananas, to avoid Brazil nuts, and to do all sorts of other stupid things.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Environment, Energy, Tritium, Paul Gunter, NIRS
Comments
Just watch them and be ready to point out their incompetance to the media.
Despite McGaffigan's repeated bullying tirades, the fact is that unplanned and unmonitored offsite radioactive releases and groundwater contamination are now a much broader concern to public health and safety than those of expressed by NIRS. Trying to shore up the damaged credibilty with specious arguments like "bananas and brazil nuts" does nothing other than to show the Commissioner can readily parrot NEI rhetoric.
I take the Commissioner's display to be an example of what his staff have to put up with to defend a Differing Professional View or Opinion?
You all have obviously missed McGaffigan's previous tantrums where he has abandoned prepared statements at various NRC Regulatory critics in flares of temper. I've come to expect this behavior of the Commissioner along with the disingenuious arguments.
As for calling us a "disinformation service," well, I suppose its as fair as our reframing of their acronym for an agency that has been repeatedly been caught subordinating public health, safety and security to industry production and profit margins.
The transcript is dry. Go to the Commission Webcast Archive if you want a more entertaining view of the exchange.
Moreover, the fact that his outbreak was followed with the announcement of NEI's proposed groundwater contamination exit strategy and public trust damage control, speaks more to the impact of these disclosures and legitimacy of the issue than further efforts to trivialize underground plumes moving offsite in groundwater.
Gunter,NIRS
So exactly what is NIRS's position on bananas and brazil nuts?
The topic has been brought up several times here, yet I don't think that this point has ever been clarified.
Thank you.
Radiation from potassium in bananas and nuts and from uranium, thorium, and radium in coal doesn't have the fear factor that "unplanned and unmonitored offsite radioactive releases" of tritium (which "passes through the placenta" .. ooh ... ah) has.
After all, if your full-time job is to "use factoids or made-up facts or irrelevant facts in order to ... spur fear in the public," you should choose your irrelevant facts carefully. Every effective activist knows that.
Tritium -> scary
Bananas -> not so scary
The "facts" that the folks from NIRS choose to use speak for themselves.
But you are right ... Mr. Gunter should answer the question or shut up.
Hey, here are a few choice pieces of information or "disinformation," as you all prefer.
Mull it over, anyways.
Cosmogenically generated tritium according to ICRP is 6-24 pCi/L in surface water. Any of you have a problem with that, take it up with the ICRP.
According to the March 2006 rootcause analysis prepared for Exelon by Conestoga-Rovers Associates on the Braidwood spills, which NIRS got hold of, for your "information" it says the Braidwood tritium releases which occur on the average of every 3 days from the radwaste storage tank into the circulating water blowdown pipe at a particular Vacuum Breaker Valve that leaked in November 2000 were averaged for tritium at 1,305,000 pCi/L with maximum tritium levels at 3,103,000 pCi/L. Of course, we've seen tritium levels from Dresden's broken underground pipe break from the radwaste storage tank (August 2004) in excess of 10,000,000 pCi/L in monitoring wells. (Source: FOIA of Illinois EPA)
Now, there's a bunch of bananas and a big pile of brazil nuts for you.
The flowrates for the blowdown pipe run from 8,000 to 25,000 gpm, historically.
That same month, just under 4 million gallons leaked from a busted float (negligence) on a vacuum breaker valve on the blowdown line over an unknown number of days. A neighboring resident reported offsite flooding which then came to the attention of operators.
According to the Conestoga-Rover report, a circulating water blowdown vacuum breaker leak "could occur during a release from the radwaste tank and not become well mixed before entering the ground."
(Page 9)
These are the unplanned and unmonitored radioactive releases that legitimately warrant the current investigation and not just by NIRS, fellas. And, despite Commissioner McGaffigan's livid disagreement, warrants public notification in context of emergency planning.
You all can sing in chorus with the good Commissioner about "bananas and brazil nuts", no one is disputing the presence of naturally occuring radiation in our environment and whatever element of risk that it carries. That's not the point.
These continued attempts to trivalize and obfuscate multiple uncontrolled and ongoing radioactive leaks into groundwater spur on the investigation and as we unravel more accelerate the already crumbling credibility of the same nuclear industry that deliberately sought to hide these radioactive leaks from the public for more than a decade.
Good night,
And yet again, he includes more irrelevant facts: the concentration of radioactivity from cosmogenically produced tritium. It is useful to show how rare cosmogenically produced tritium is, but it has nothing to do with the risks associated with tritiated water.
Strangely enough, he leaves out the most important number of all: the number of people harmed by all of this. At the end of the day, that's all that matters; all the rest are just the games that NIRS and other groups play. But zero is not a very scary number, so you won't see it on any NIRS "factsheets."
By the way, he still hasn't answered the question.
http://www.nirs.org/press/05-25-2006/1
Dr. Makhijani? Some expert -- I'll bet he wouldn't answer the Commissioner's question either. But I'm sure he knows a lot of tritium and placenta factoids.
If he (they) truly gives a darn about unplanned and/or unmonitored radioactive releases, they need to look no further than their friendly neighborhood coal plant which has been releasing lots and lots of radioactivitry unabated since the dawn of the industrial age.
Well, maybe he does carry on about coal's radiaoctivity on an anti-coal website or somewhere else, I don't know. But his holier than thou attitude here leaves me wondering about his true motivations and true commitment to the cause.