IMPORTANT UPDATE!

January 10, 2003 update

I am deeply indebted to Jane Nielson for the following e-mail comments which list very important and valuable updates to this nuclear information section.

I have included her e-mail:

Dear Simisters--

I found your "Nuclear Accidents" website while looking for comparisons for radioactive releases.

Several problems leaped out at me--especially the "fact" about the Three Mile Island radioactivity release. The number you cite (16 curies) represents only the release of radioactive iodine isotopes. Court documents cite a total radioactive release of 2.5 million (2,500,000) curies. See

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/tmi.html

I gather that you picked up the lower number from a Deseret News article, which apparently didn't convey the details. Incidentally, the number cited by the court was 15 curies of "radioiodines."

About Chernbobyl: Millions of curies is not wrong, but it might be more informative to note that the official Chernobyl release estimate is a range, with a low end of 100 million and high end of 200 million total curies over 10 days. An independent estimate by prestigious Soviet physicist suggests that the radioactive iodine and cesium releases by themselves amounted to 240 million curies. (Zhores A. Medvedev, The Legacy of Chernobyl (New York, W.W. Norton, 1990)).

Another fact that might interest you is that Edwin Lehman, an early radiologist, died from (unintentionally) ingesting 2.3 x 10-7 ounces of radium, equivalent to 8.1 x 10-9 (8 billionths) of a gram of radium. (Catherine Caufield, Multiple Exposures-Chronicles of the Radiation Age (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1990)).

That is MUCH LESS than the 1 curie of radiation that your site lists as having killed Mme. Curie. (1 curie is the amount of radiation emitted by 1 gram of radium, per second).

Regarding "safe" levels of radiation, the book "Multiple Exposures" by Catherine Caulfield that I cited re the fatal radium exposure of Edward Lehman, contains the (highly blemished) history of how the US government established radiation exposure standards.

There's a lot of disagreement about whether any level of radiation is bad for the body (some of it is honest disagreement), but so far the US and Canadian governments retain the policy that no extra exposure (above natural background radiation) is the only safe standard.

Other policies are trying to put more and more radwaste into landfills and other repositories, however. From there, human-manufactured radioactivity undoubtedly will get into soils and groundwater, and dust in the air.

Another issue to watch are proposals to recycle radioactive waste metals into steel for all manner of uses, including in tools, household items (including kitchenware), and much else.

Best wishes,

Jane

Many thanks to Jane Nielson for this update!