Whistleblower claims uranium workers exposed to unsafe radiation levels

A company whistleblower claims that mining giant BHP Billiton is risking the lives of employees at Olympic Dam mine in South Australia. Of particular concern is the radioisotope, polonium-210 which is leathal in very small doses, as small as the weight of a butterfly wing scale. Polonium-210 was used to murder Alexader Litvinenko, a Soviet intelligence operative, in 2006. Workers at Olympic Dam are exposed to polonium-210 because it is a decay product of uranium. The full story is in the June 4 issue of The Independent Weekly.

Leukemia-causing radioisotope Sr-90 detected leaking into soil at Vermont Yankee

Entergy Nuclear has now admitted that the bone-seeking radioisotope Strontium-90 has been discovered in soil near underground leaking pipes at its Vermont Yankee atomic reactor on the bank of the Connecticut River. Several years ago, Sr-90 was also detected leaking from the high-level radioactive waste storage pool at Entergy Nuclear's Indian Point atomic reactors on the bank of the Hudson River in New York State. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates warns that Sr-90, which is highly soluble in water, can concentrate in bones and cause leukemia, and thus is the most hazardous radioisotope yet discovered leaking into the environment at the 38 year old reactor just across the Connecticut River from New Hampshire, and just several miles upstream from Massachusetts. Other leaking elements discovered into the site's groundwater and soil include tritium, cobalt-60, cesium-137, manganese-54 and zinc-65. Raymond Shadis of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution is very skeptical that Entergy Nuclear's assurances that all Sr-90 contamination at Vermont Yankee has now been accounted for and cleaned up.

Nuclear industry leader pulls out of health study

In a May 10, 2010 letter, Dr. Richard Meserve recues himself as Chair of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) from all committee activity related to a massive national health study that is taking shape around nuclear power facilities in the United States. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has requested that the NAS conduct a health study around past, present and future nuclear power facilities.   As Beyond Nuclear identified in an April 29, 2010 letter requesting that the NAS conduct a conflict-of-interest review, Dr. Meserve currently serves on the Board of Directors for Luminant Corporation which owns the Comanche Peak nuclear power station in Texas and Pacific Gas and Electric which operates the Diablo Canyon reactors in California.  Dr. Meserve also serves on an advisory board to UniStar Nuclear Corporation (Constellation Energy and Electricite de France) which has applied to the NRC to build new reactors around the United States.

The time for a full-scale bona-fide health study on the impacts of radiation exposure to communities downwind and downstream of US nuclear power facilities is long overdue. The responsibilities to assure that this colossal undertaken is fair and an independent study are immense. Given the growing political promotion of nuclear power currently underway, the study’s development, execution and interpretation will no doubt be a tug-of-war. The effort for an independent health study on the impacts from nuclear power facilities raises many of the same questions that have dogged the nuclear industry from the exposure of “down winders” in St. George, Utah to atomic testing fallout, the communities around the Three Mile Island accident, entire countries affected by the Chernobyl explosion and the Massachusetts cancer study around the Pilgrim nuclear power plant. Among the myriad of questions and tasks, one continuing focus will need to be on how this same NAS policy will engage the review and vetting of hundreds of potential committee members for final committee selection on this unprecedented radiation health study.  The recusal of Dr. Meserve’s with his obvious “impaired objectivity” is a good first step and welcome sign. However, the task to watchdog this massive government effort in the public interest is only beginning.

Chernobyl reactor explosion impacts greater than claimed, especially for children

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, claims that by 2004, 985,000 additional deaths worldwide were caused by the disaster, 212,000 of them within European Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. These numbers contrast greatly with the United Nations’ Chernobyl Forum 2006 estimate of 9000 cancer deaths in the same areas for the period of 90 years after the meltdown. Children have been and continue to be particularly affected with multiple adverse health outcomes. Before Chernobyl exploded, eighty percent of children were considered healthy. After the explosion only twenty percent of children are healthy in some areas.

This report summarizes published data from the many regions contaminated by radioactive fallout, and is based on over 5000 studies, most of which were not available in English or outside of the former Soviet Union. Contact the New York Academy of Sciences to purchase a copy www.nyas.org. See Beyond Nuclear’s press release for more detail.

Higher birth-defect rate seen in Chernobyl area counters UN reports

Reuters reports that higher-than-normal rates of certain birth defects plague one Ukrainian region affected by fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power reactor explosion. The findings were reported in April’s journal of Pediatrics and counter a 2005 United Nations report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which stated that there was no increase in birth defects. Dr. Wladimir Wertelecki, researcher at the University of Southern Alabama, says that this official conclusion had a “chilling effect” on study of prenatal disease and that these findings show more research is needed into congenital defects, especially in regions of chronic, low-dose radiation.