Karl Grossman on radio interview on move to make radiation good for you

Investigative journalist Karl Grossman is interviewed on Talk Nation Radio on the move by the nuclear industry and its government deregulators efforts to change the rules and "make radiation good for you."

“Radiation is Good for You!” and Other Tall Tales of the Nuclear Industry

"The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a move to eliminate the “Linear No-Threshold” (LNT) basis of radiation protection that the U.S. has used for decades and replace it with the “radiation hormesis” theory—which holds that low doses of radioactivity are good for people. 

"In the wake of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. crash program during World War II to build atomic bombs and the spin-offs of that program—led by nuclear power plants, there was a belief, for a time, that there was a certain “threshold” below which radioactivity wasn’t dangerous.

"But as the years went by it became clear there was no threshold—that any amount of radiation could injure and kill, that there was no “safe” dose." Karl Grossman, Beyond Nuclear board member and contributor to  Counterpunch

"36 Years of Three Mile Island’s Lethal Lies…and Still Counting"

Photo by Robert Del Tredichi, from his 1980 book "The People of Three Mile Island."Harvey Wasserman has written in commeration of the meltdown at Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 2 on March 28, 1979. He writes:

"The lies that killed people at Three Mile Island 36 years ago tomorrow are still being told at Chernobyl, Fukushima, Diablo Canyon, Davis-Besse … and at TMI itself.

As the first major reactor accident that was made known to the public is sadly commemorated, and as the global nuclear industry collapses, let’s count just 36 tip-of-the iceberg ways the nuclear industry’s radioactive legacy continues to fester:

For the full article, go to: http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/27/three-mile-island-36-anniversary/."

Wasserman reported directly on TMI’s death toll from central Pennsylvania. He co-wrote KILLING OUR OWN:  THE DISASTER OF AMERICA’S EXPERIENCE WITH ATOMIC RADIATION. Wasserman has invited Beyond Nuclear to Columbus, Ohio on April 11 and 12 to speak out at events in opposition to the crumbling Davis-Besse atomic reactor's proposed multi-billion dollar ratepayer bailout.

A year ago, Beyond Nuclear published a newsletter and website section devoted to telling the truth about TMI. And a quarter century ago, Beyond Nuclear board member, and investigative journalist, Karl Grossman narrated EnviroVideo's first documentary, "Three Mile Island Revisited."

Around 185 Entergy Palisades workers exposed to 2.8 R in month-long job

Workers pictured at Palisades last spring doing repair work on top of the reactor vessel head. Entergy provided this and other photos of the work to the NRC.As reported by Lindsey Smith at Michigan Radio, around 185 workers at Entergy's Palisades atomic reactor in Michigan were exposed to 2.8 Rem of radioactivity exposure on a single project last year. From Feb. to March, 2014, the Control Rod Drive Mechanisms at Palisades were replaced, due to chronic seal and through-wall leakage that dates back to 1972.

2.8 Rem of exposure violates Entergy's self-imposed ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) limits of 2 Rem/year for workers. 2 Rem/year for nuclear workers is the national standard in Germany, which will completely phase out reactor operations by 2022 as a direct response to the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

However, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows, or permits, up to 5 Rem/year of exposure to nuclear workers. Members of the general public, by comparison, are only allowed to receive 100 milliRem, or 0.1 Rem, per year of exposure to artificial radioactivity from the nuclear power industry. Thus, in a single month, 185 workers at Palisades were exposed to 28 times the amount of harmful radioactivity allowed for members of the general public in an entire year.

Update on January 13, 2015 by admin

Note that while MI Radio initially reported that 185 workers were involved in the incident, Entergy Nuclear's Site Vice President, Anthony Vitale, confirmed at the Jan. 13th regulatory conference that 192 workers were involved.

Update on February 12, 2015 by admin

NRC has just released it meeting summary of the Jan. 13th regulatory conference. However, a month after the regulatory conference, and a full year after the over-exposure of 192 Palisades' workers, NRC has still not determined the severity level of the violations. NRC preliminarily had determined the violations to be a White Finding, but Entergy Nuclear has urged NRC to lower the violations to a Green Finding.

A White Finding could put Palisades back on NRC's degraded performance, increased oversight, short list, something Entergy would very much like to avoid.

Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates, and the expert witness in the reactor pressure vessel embrittlement/pressurized thermal shock intervention filed by a coalition of environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, at Palisades, prepared a statement for the Jan. 13 regulatory conference. However, after listening in by phone, and waiting through, the 3.5 hour long regulatory conference (which was only supposed to last 1.5 hours), when Arnie went to read his prepared statement out loud, via phone, NRC cut him off. They wouldn't let him.

NRC announced that questions only would be allowed, but no comments (an arbitrary rule they hadn't announced before that very moment!). So Arnie asked, why isn't this violation being elevated to a more serious Yellow Finding? (In increasing order of severity, NRC's color coded violation designations go from Green, to White, to Yellow, to Red.)

The NRC's summary list of questions and NRC's "answers," does not even list Arnie's question, much less address it.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, who attended the regulatory conference in person, also asked questions not listed there, let alone addressed. Kevin asked, for example, why NRC allowed 192 Palisades' workers to receive 2.8 Rem each, on average, in a month-long job, when Germany's nuclear workers are only allowed to receive 2 Rem in an entire year.

NRC also censored other questions that day. One public listener had emailed questions to the NRC point of contact for the meeting, as instructed, only to be told that Kevin had already asked that question, so it wouldn't be asked again. However, the person's questions had included a number Kevin had not asked.

Another member of the public tried to ask a question by phone, but was never allowed to.

So it seems NRC only acknowledges certain questions, ones it wants to deal with, and ignores the ones it doesn't want to deal with.

In over two decades of interacting with NRC, Kevin has stated this was one of the worst, most disrespectful, most upsetting treatments of the public he has ever experienced, which is really saying something. He considers NRC a rogue agency colluding with the industry it is supposed to be regulating. This entire episode is a real case in point.

But the worst part is, 192 Palisades workers were exposed to large, harmful radiation doses in just this single, month-long job.

As the U.S. National Academy of Science has affirmed, over and over again for decades now, in its seven Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) reports, any exposure to ionizing radiation, no matter how small the dose, carries a health risk for cancer. And these risks accumulate for a lifetime.

(Of course, genetic damage is also a distinct possibility -- and in this incident, workers' reproductive organs were exposed.)

Update on February 23, 2015 by admin

On Feb. 23, 2015, NRC officially concluded that the Feb.-March, 2014 over-exposure of 192 workers at Palisades to an average dose of 2.8 Rem constituted a White Finding. See the NRC's Final Significance Determination, here.

NRC to hold regulatory conference with Entergy re: worker overexposures at Palisades

As reported by the Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will hold a regulatory conference with Entergy Nuclear Palisades to discuss the radiological overexposure of around 185 workers during Control Rod Drive Mechanisms replacement in Feb. to March, 2014. The problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor is located on the Lake Michigan shore in Covert, MI (photo, left).