So TMI released about 5 times as much radioactivity as all coal burning worldwide through 2040.
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I've been lurking here for some time. However, when I see
such manifest misunderstandings and twisting of scientific
facts, as well as an attempt to invert the message of a
scientific paper, then I must enter the fray.
It's disingenuous to attempt to quantify environmental and
biological harm by a comparison of the number of "curies".
Curies are merely the unit for a rate at which radioactive
atoms decay. Curies do not measure biological damage.
First, some basic misunderstanding of elementary mathematics
is at play here. Just because a rate is high does not mean
the value of the function is also high. As an example, power
is also a rate of energy being produced or delivered. When the
lasers of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory fire, the "power" or rate of energy use of
those lasers is 200 times the total power generating capacity
of the entire USA. However, because the duration is so short,
the facility uses about $2.00 worth of electricity to fire the
lasers.
Curies only measure the rate of radioactive decay. The authors
of the article use the proper term "dose" to refer to biological
damage, and "dose" is not measured in curies, but in "rem" or
the S.I. unit is the Sievert.
Although the rate of decay is part of the calculation of dose,
the calculation is much more involved.
One aspect that must be taken into account are the properties of
the actual radionuclides under consideration. For example, here
is a link to the ruling of the judge when she dismissed the lawsuit
brought by residents near TMI against TMI's operator Metropolitan
Edison:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/tmi.html The judge mentions the two classes of radionuclides released, namely
noble gases and Iodine-131. Iodine can be uptaken by the body, and
is stored in the thyroid. Therefore, Iodine, "stays with you" and
can continue to irradiate you. The accident at TMI released 15 Curies
of Iodine-131, which is less than 5 millionths of an ounce.
TMI also released noble or inert gases. Because noble gases are inert, they
can not be uptaken by the body. They do not engage in chemical reactions.
If a cloud of noble gases sweeps by you, you will breathe some in, but you
will breathe those gases right back out. The body has no means to uptake
a noble gas, because such uptake is done chemically, and noble gases do not
participate in chemical reactions. Therefore, one will only be exposed to
radioactive noble gases for the time it takes the cloud to diffuse away.
Noble gases don't become part of you and continue to irradiate you.
Another factor that goes into the calculation of dose is the type and energy
of the emitted radiation. The radionuclides dispersed at TMI were "beta" emitters.
The radiation emitted by the radioisotopes were simply electrons. Compare this
to the alpha emitters one finds in coal effluent. Alpha radiation, when taken
internally, is much more damaging than electrons. Alpha particles are 8000 times
more massive than electrons. When an alpha particle traverses a material, its
effect on the electron clouds of the atoms is analogous to the effect of a heavy
bowling ball traversing a lane of bowling pins. On a per energy basis, alpha
radiation is much more damaging than either beta ( electrons ) or gamma (photons).
Consider the following analogy. Two pilots, Abel and Baker, will be flying over
your town scattering pills. The concern is that the pills will land on the local
playgrounds and children will incautiously consume the pills. Abel will be
dispersing 100,000 aspirin tablets. Baker will be dispersing 10,000 tablets of
cyanide.
Now if one follows bananas "logic", the bad actor here is Abel because he is
distributing 10 times as many pills as Baker. That's what bananas is essentially
saying in claiming the number of Curies released by the TMI accident is so much
greater than the number of Curies released by coal power plants.
Although statistically, there will be 10X as many aspirins consumed by the town's
children as cyanide pills, we do not expect deaths from Abel's actions as we do
from Baker's.
The authors of the Oak Ridge study calculated the "dose", the biological damage for coal
which is 100X greater than the biological damage caused by nuclear power, including
the TMI accident. The TMI accident released radionuclides that spewed lots of electrons,
thus racking up lots of counts on banana's Curie counter; but the biological damage
due to this was insignificant.
The judge dismissed the lawsuit against Metropolitan Edison without a jury trial.
The residents of TMI's surrounding communities were exposed to an average of 1.4 mrem
of radiation dose. That's the amount of biological damage the average person gets
in a day and a half of exposure to background radiation. It's the amount of biological
damage one gets from flying in an airliner for 3 hours. We don't expect such trivial
exposures to result in malignant pathologies, which is why the judge dismissed the case.
The biological effects of the TMI accident on the public were manifestly trivial. Yet,
the anti-nukes seem to persist in attempting to make a mountain from what is essentially
a proverbial ant hill, in the case of the TMI accident.
It must be difficult to be an anti-nuke. The commercial nuclear power industry has had
only a single accident that has affected the public in any measurable way. Those effects
were negligible. It is the only such accident the industry has had in over a half century
of operation, and that accident happened over 3 decades ago.
Yet the anti-nukes persist at attempting to turn that incident into something it isn't.
The true message of the Oak Ridge scientists in the paper in question is the scientific
truth that the damage from the radioactive emissions from coal exceed any damage due to
nuclear power by two orders of magnitude. The message is that it is coal that causes
more biological damage than nuclear, and not the other way around as the anti-nukes
like to portray in their desperation to follow their political goals, and to ignore
the science.
Physics Prof