Still more fluff, lies and radiation from TMI and the new nuke media machine

[babsbunny]

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2009/1789

November 24, 2009

Yet another "perfectly safe" release at Three Mile Island has irradiated yet another puff of hype about alleged "green" support for new reactors.

The two are inseparable.

In 1979, when TMI's brand new Unit Two melted, stack monitors and other critical safeguards crashed in tandem. Nobody knows how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it harmed. Cancers, leukemia, stillbirths, malformations, asthma, sterility, skin lesions and other radiation-related diseases erupted throughout central Pennsylvania. Some 2400 families sued, but never got a full public hearing in federal court.

Unit Two had operated just three months when it melted. By a 3-1 margin, three central Pennsylvania counties then voted that TMI-One, which opened in 1974, stay shut. But Ronald Reagan tore down that wall.

[TheWraith]

1. What a stack of total bullshit.

"Nobody knows how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it harmed."

On the contrary, people who practice ACTUAL SCIENCE, as opposed to blind fearmongering on behalf of the coal industry, can tell you pretty exactly how much radiation was released, and also the fact that there is no evidence for any deaths being attributable to it.

[PCIntern]

3. ...yeah...and they LIED.

cancer rates WERE thru the roof and I should know...my ex-gf's mother who lived just downwind near Harrisburg was diagnosed with bilateral breast CA 9 years after TMI, no family history, no indications ever prior to massive tumor growth, no lumps or bumps, EVER, and when she went for treatment, the surgeon AND the radiation oncologist said that they had never seen so many patients showing up at the same time...the numbers were staggering. Everyone who lived there knew, as the people who lived near Love Canal KNEW, that they'd been harmed en masse.

they can deny it...but those there knew better. BTW...she was a RWer of the first order. The government knows what's best and all that. She died, knowing that she'd been lied to.

[madokie]

4. I seen a bigger graph of this here the last day or so

Don't take if for a minute that many of us believe the bullshit no harm was done



http://www.tmia.com/node/222
(snip)
Evidence of harm

The evidence that people, animals and plants near TMI were exposed to high levels of radiation in the 1979 disaster is not merely anecdotal. While government studies of the disaster as well as a number of independent researchers assert the incident caused no harm, other surveys and studies have also documented health effects that point to a high likelihood of significant radiation exposures.

In 1984, for example, psychologist Marjorie Aamodt and her engineer husband, Norman -- owners of an organic dairy farm east of Three Mile Island who got involved in a lawsuit seeking to stop TMI from restarting its Unit 1 reactor -- surveyed residents in three hilltop neighborhoods near the plant. Dozens of neighbors reported a metallic taste, nausea, vomiting and hair loss as well as illnesses including cancers, skin and reproductive problems, and collapsed organs -- all associated with radiation exposure. Among the 450 people surveyed, there were 19 cancer deaths reported between 1980 and 1984 -- more than seven times what would be expected statistically.

(much more)

[TheMadMonk]

8. Everybody knows someone who knows someone who....

Was the release greater than the PTBs claimed? Quite possibly.

Was is as bad as you are attempting to paint it? Not a fucking chance in the world. The symptoms you are decribing are the effect of very high (close to lethal) exposure levels and point to a radiation release that would have seen tens or hundreds dead in weeks, and tens of thousands seriously (and very visibly) ill.

At <150% over the baseline (from the graph/map) the figures are hardly compelling. Indeed they are only just barely nosing into the realm of statistically interesting (note that's interesting, not significant). With several more incidents to work with, it might be possible to draw a valid conclusion, but with only the one small sample, no statistitian worth his salt would admit to anything, except a need for more data.

With a threshold of less than 150% over the baseline, it would be a simple exercise to sift through a national cancer database and find dozens of cancer clusters right across the US which are a statistical match for the TMI data you presented, but which do not have a nearby, recently melted down nuclear reactor to blame. This doesn't prove that TMI didn't cause its cancer cluster, but it does demonstrate, that it is impossible (on the basis of that data) to prove that it was a causative agent.

[madokie]

17. Have you taken your concerns up with the authors of the piece I linked to

or are you just attempting to show me you're the smartest man here? :eyes:

[Odin2005]

2. Hysterical BS. 16 milirem. Completely harmless.

[John N Morgan]

5. Did I miss that in the article? Otherwise, got a link?

Corporations have not earned the right to own anymore nuclear plants. No plant to my knowledge has ever come close to being completed within budget (if you know of one please post a link). Finally, the true cost of storing nuclear waste is never on the books; the methods are close to coal plants and the dust, just dig a ditch and pitch it in. And that is just not good enough.

It's not that it cannot be done safely, it's a matter of trust and integrity and right now the corporations don't have it.

John Morgan Democratic Candidate For Florida House of Representatives, District 82

[madokie]

6. You're right, they can't be trusted to be truthful

We fought hard keeping a nuke plant from being built here because they couldn't/wouldn't give us any viable answers on what to do with the more dangerous of the waste. No answers for us so no plant for them.

[Odin2005]

7. It was in another thread on this a couple days ago.

It's not my job to find it for you.

[TheMadMonk]

9. Want to know why plants don't come in on budget/time?

Because, half way through construction someone has a bright idea about a safety improvement. So the whole project is stalled whilst this improvment is evaluated and approved, then several million dollars worth of work is junked in order to implement the improvement. Rinse and repeat four or five times over the course of a project and bamm there goes a couple of hundred million dollars.


As for storage, you are right the true cost of storage is not factored into the cost equation. Because, no one anticipated that anti-nuke fundamentalists would demand (and get) site rehabilitation requirements that are absolutely impossible to achieve (on site radiation levels must be reduced to an arbitrary level, that is often below background levels) and that any repository must be demonstrated to be absolutely perfect over geological timeframes.

Impossible goals, require impossible solutions. And that's perfectly all right with you lot, since that make achievement of your goal (the abolition of nuclear power) the only permissible response. You people are a disingenuous lot. The only interim storage you permit is on site, for which I note that you DO NOT insist on draconian regulation, for which you DO NOT jump up screaming when the opperators do adopt a chuck it in the corner over there attitude. One could almost swear that the anti-nuke brigade's intent is for these sites to become so radiologically poisoned that EVERYONE will have their noses rubbed in the TRUTH and come down on your side of the argument.

[madokie]

10. And you know all of this

How?
And you know where you can put your 'anti-nuke fundamentalists' bullshit or do I need to show you.

You guys are all alike, you try to feed us bullshit then when that doesn't work you go for the personal attacks. WE stopped blackfox here in my back yard and partly for the reasons I've stated. Been there and done that and I can tell you straight up you ain't shit but fingers on a keyboard.

[TheMadMonk]

13. My bullshit is called as I sees it.

I note with interest that you chose not to respond to my earlier post in which I demonstrated that your "proof" of harm in the TMI incident to be so much disingenuous bullshit and instead chose to respond to a post, not addressed to you, which you could claim as a personal attack.

Now, how else should I interpret your people's setting of impossible goals with respect to long term storage, whilst simultaneously ignoring truly woeful (as any proponent of nclear power will agree) onsite immediate storage practices? Practices that can't and won't be changed without a long term strategy that your people will not permit, since it runs counter to the no nukes whatsoever goal.

That's setting someone/thing up for failure and it's one of the oldest and dirtiest tricks in the book. It does not require you to be right, you simply have to create the appearance that your opponent is wrong.

Show me where I am wrong with respect to impossible site rehabilitation requirements? WRT such virulent opposition to storage facilities, that a patently unsuitable site was chosen on the basis of minimising political fallout, rather than science?

[madokie]

16. Now, how else should I interpret 'your people's setting'

I couldn't get past the stupid of that statement, sorry

It'll take a lot smarter man that you to blow smoke up my ass, mk :hi:

[TheMadMonk]

18. You "set", the same way other groups have managed to get ridiculous laws passed.

Drum up a whole batch of false hysteria over something the public feels strongly about and get the polititans/lawmakers falling over themselves and each other proving how tough/hard on X they are.

Exactly the same crap that has filled America's jails with pot smokers. That sees kids branded as sex offenders for life. And other kids expelled from school over a packet of paracetamol, or a nailfile.


None dare call BS, because it would be political suicide to do so. And thus the ridiculous laws remain and there's a fair chance they become more and more ridiculous each time they are touched.

[madokie]

19. Best I remember we didn't drum up any false hysteria about nuclear power

At first we were only listening but then when we started asking questions and came up to the one about what to do with the waste and the response we got to that is what fueled the anti nuke, not us drumming up any false bullshit but only us pointing out false bullshit. We realized early on of two things, one was that they, the nuke industry, had no idea as to a viable way to deal with the waste and that they, the nuke industry, will lie like a rug to you. That was all it took from that point going forward. My eyes glass over when I read some of the shit that is 'passed as fact' concerning the dangers of the nuclear industry, by the nuclear industry.

You believe what you want to believe but don't be telling me why I am opposed to nuclear energy, I'll do that myself.

[WhiteTara]

12. sounds like you want to live near either

a plant or a storage facility. I don't. I love all the "bright ideas" for safety. I hope your stock comes tumbling down so we can achieve our goal of the abolition of nuclear power.

[TheMadMonk]

14. Given a choice between a nuke plant and any other (potentially) polluting industry...

...I'll take the nuke (or a decent storage facility) any day of the week.

"Bright ideas" which fiddle with the 3rd, 4th, 5th... nine after the decimal point in an industry which by it's own track record is already demonstrably safer than any other major industry on the planet. "Bright ideas" which require twenty-'leven other safety systems to simultaneously fail before they are needed.

"Bright ideas" that are to all intents and purposes utterly pointless, since the only foreseeable ways to get to the point where such would actually be needed, is a serious coordinated campaign of sabotage that would simply neutralise said "bright idea" en-passant. Or such massive and complete physical disruption of plant, that the odds of it still being present to "kick in" are negligible.

[HopeHoops]

11. I live 12 miles from the plant, so the news coverage is pretty heavy.

There's an independent group (although I suspect they aren't so much 'independent' as they are 'anti-nuke') that monitors radiation levels just outside the plant. They did not detect any increased levels at any location.

The radiation level actually was so small that it barely counted as an event, but the detectors have an extremely low threshold.

The REAL PROBLEM is that they waited five hours to let ANYONE know about it - including the mayor of Harrisburg! They excused it away because it was so minor (true) and they were dealing with their employees who were exposed (true), but HOLY SHIT! What if it was just the early sign of something that was about to balloon into a major event? THEY DID NOT know the source of the radiation until late the next day when they determined that a ventilation fan blew particles released when a worker cut a pipe.

The lack of notification is what makes this a major event, not the actual radiation. You would THINK that 30 years would be enough time to figure out that letting the authorities know about even the most MINOR event is, at the minimum, a courtesy.

[JerseygirlCT]

15. I was 25 or so miles away when that happened.

Weird time. Especially with China Syndrome just out.

Panicky news reports got more panicked the farther away they were. It was all a very strange time.