"Large Radiation Release a Major Health Risk for 20 Million in NY area"

[phantom power]

(This report was authored by the Union of Concerned Scientists, so I imagine that NNadir might have something to say about it...)


NEW YORK - September 8 - A study released today finds that the potential health consequences of a successful terrorist attack on the Indian Point nuclear plant could cause as many as 518,000 long-term deaths from cancer and as many as 44,000 near-term deaths from acute radiation poisoning, depending on weather conditions. The study was commissioned by Riverkeeper, a Hudson River-based environmental group. Dr. Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, authored the report entitled "Chernobyl-on-the-Hudson?: The Health and Economic Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant."

Dr. Lyman performed the calculations in the study with the same computer models and methodology used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy to analyze the health and economic impacts of radiological accidents. The study updates a 1982 congressional report based on Sandia National Laboratories' CRAC-2 (Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences) study. CRAC-2 found that a core meltdown and consequent radiological release at one of the two operating Indian Point reactors could cause 50,000 early fatalities from acute radiation syndrome and 14,000 latent fatalities from cancer.

Dr. Lyman's report found that the potential for early deaths - 44,000 cases - is comparable to the 1982 CRAC-2 estimate and the peak number of latent cancer fatalities - 518,000 cases - is over 35 times greater than the CRAC-2 estimate, corresponding to a scenario where weather conditions maximize the rain-related fallout of radioactivity over New York City.
http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0908-20.htm

[Soloflecks]

1. Let's face it.

That would be a horrendous catastrophe in which the reality would be more dire than the best attempts at predictions.

[phantom power]

2. Maybe. I've become somewhat skeptical about radiation damage.

The intensity of radiation falls off rapidly with distance. The effects of lower levels of radiation aren't clear to me. We now know that our cells contain quite an array of genetic repair machinery.

Not that I'm eager to see it all tested out via an attack on a reactor.

[TO Kid]

3. Not only that

It would take one helluva jolt to breach a reactor. Most are designed to hold up against earthquakes and lots of other stuff- even a hijacked plane crashing into one wouldn't cause a breach (aluminum vs. concrete == concrete wins), and it would be quite a job to smuggle in enough explosives to do the job.

[meow mix]

4. ive learned from this science board that its actually very good for u

Ms. De Leo's film "Chernobyl Heart," which won the 2003 Academy Award for best documentary short, is not easy to talk about or watch. It takes the viewer into children's hospitals in Belarus and Ukraine and into the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the reactor. According to the United Nations, birth defects in Belarus have increased 250 percent since the accident, and the lives of the children in the film are tragic.

One girl, Julia, was born with her brain outside her skull; another child, 4, is the size of a 4-month-old.

"I had to show enough of the kids with deformities, but if I showed too many, nobody would want to watch," Ms. De Leo said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/arts/television/08lunc.html

i mean cmon admit it.. everyone wants thier BABIES born with the brains on the OUTSIDE!! its good for our evolution!

[NNadir]

5. Why would a complete meltdown at Indian Point be worse than

Chernobyl? At Chernobyl most of the radioactive inventory at the end of a fuel cycle was distributed to the atmosphere over a period of weeks.

At Chernobyl the core was flammable; at Indian Point it is not. I also note that a 1982 report is based on theory; not experiment. The events at Chernobyl are based not on theoretical modeling, but on an actual event.

Apparently, Dr. Lyman is completely unaware of the nature and effects of the Chernobyl accident, even though there are many thousands of articles in the scientific literature on the subject. If Dr. Lyman were interested in reading these references, which I strongly suspect he is not, since he evokes a 1982 study rather than any of thing actually examining a phenomenological outcome, before announcing that Indian Point is a potential "Chernobyl," he might actually make sense. He could start by reviewing those listed in the UNSCEAR 2000 report on Chernobyl. The report can be found here: http://www.unscear.org/ Dr. Lyman would do himself well to read some of these, but that would rather invalidate his reliance on superstition and fear.

I really can't imagine what the fuck the Union of Concerned "Scientists" is all about. I can tell right off the bat that whatever it is about, science is involved peripherally. Maybe it's like Christian "Science," or Creation "Science." The words "science" or "scientists" have a certain talimanic power I guess, like "Chernobyl," seems to have as well.

This is bullshit. The fact is that the worst effect of a failure at Indian Point, even an intentional failure, assuming that causing such a failure is even possible, would be almost certainly be smaller than at Chernobyl, simply because the reactor would not burn for weeks as it did at Chernobyl. This has to do with the chemistry of an element of which Dr. Lyman seems blissfully unaware, carbon. (Billions and billions of tons of this element are being released into the atmosphere each year, in case Dr. Lyman has not noticed.) The core of Chernobyl was made of this element, carbon, which, were he to look at a periodic table, Dr. Lyman would find in the sixth position. The reactor at Indian point is made of Ziralloy and steel. These elements can be found in a different place in the periodic table, the transition series.

In fact over 40,000 New Yorkers die every year from Air pollution, in part from the chemistry of carbon (particulates and carbon based carcinogens) year in and year out, under normal operating conditions (as opposed to imaginary failure modes) completely unremarked by River keeper or by Dr. Lyman. (See for instance, Science, Vol. 293, pp1257-1259 August 17, 2001)

Here is what would happen if Indian Point underwent a complete meltdown (an extremely impropable event). Morons would raise a hysterial reaction that would kill more people (in crazed evacuations) than the radiation resulting from accident. The fact is that as long as Indian Point operates, and I'm not counting greenhouse related events like say four Hurricanes in a single season at Category three or greater, it saves lives.

"The Union of Concerned Scientists" is once again demonstrating why its name is rather Bushian in its doublespeak.

You have to be completely crazy to hope for the shutdown of Indian Point. It is really to dangerous to contemplate shutting this plant down before building a nuclear plant to replace it. In fact we could save lots of New Yorker lives and New Jerseyan lives by building more nuclear plants to replace coal plants which now operate in Ohio and other places in the Midwest. I would be thrilled (because of the tax revenue, but also for the peace of mind) to have such a reactor in my home town.