Absurd Radiation Limits Are A Trillion Dollar Waste

[Marlin]

Absurd Radiation Limits Are A Trillion Dollar Waste


http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/07/13/absurd-radiation-limits-are-a-trillion-dollar-waste/

[wiesner1]

This is a great article. I love the guy James Conca. He is a huge asset to nuclear power.

[milo124]

As mentioned - great article.

[Wlrun3]

These limits are in place, purposely restrictive, to provide and ensure a significant buffer zone between the escalation of a simple industrial mistake and a truly catastrophic event.

[Marlin]

These limits are in place, purposely restrictive, to provide and ensure a significant buffer zone between the escalation of a simple industrial mistake and a truly catastrophic event.

Even so the limits are too restrictive even the overly conservative (and ideological in my opinion EPA) now thinks so. Reference excerpt from article.

"For a nuclear waste repository like Yucca Mt, it’s even more absurd. We have to make sure the dose to a distant drinking water well won’t exceed 4 mrem in the year 4000 A.D.

Keep in mind that we radworkers can get 5,000 mrem/year and think nothing of it. We’ve never had problems with these levels. Emergency responders can get up to 25,000 mrem to save human lives and property. I would take 50,000 mrem just to save my cat.

Therefore, using 25 mrem to force-evacuate New York City seems overly cautious.

This wouldn’t be bad if it didn’t have really serious social and economic side-effects, like pathological fear, significant deaths during any forced evacuation, not getting medical procedures you should have, shutting down nuclear power plants to fire up fossil fuel plants, and a trillion-dollar price tag trying to clean-up to levels even Mother Nature doesn’t care about (WSJ; Heartland).

Keeping to these present ultralow levels, and similar levels promulgated throughout our regulatory arena (Atomic Insights), has cost the United States about $500 billion since 1970, and will cost us a lot more in the years to come (Low-Level rad Summit).

Take a national nuclear waste repository like Yucca Mt. To make sure that dose to a distant drinking water well won’t exceed 4 mrem in the next 100,000 years, will cost about $180 billion over 60 years, and that’s if it goes without a hitch.  Lots of other costs are not covered in that $180 billion, like the cost to prepare the waste to go there, one task being to turn 57 million gallons of waste up at Hanford, Washington into glass. The vitrification plant being built to do this, and the 40 years to operate it, will cost another $90 billion, and has had nothing but hitches. If more science-driven decisions were made, these costs would drop by seventy to eighty percent (Reason).

Fortunately, the EPA is now considering 5 rem (5000 mrem) as a more reasonable radiation threat level for evacuation, based on historical events, previous regulations and knowledge from nuclear experts (NYTimes). This particular change will be for only one of the regulations governing radiation, the one-time dose from an attack or an explosion, but will have a huge effect on all the other regulatory guidelines as well (Washington Energy Report)."

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Further reinforcing the opinion of overly conservative limits.

Fukushima Evacuation More Dangerous than Radiation, Doctors Say

http://ndreport.com/fukushima-evacuation-more-dangerous-than-radiation-doctors-say/

[hamsamich]

These limits aren't too low.....Trust me, I'm a professional!   

[SloGlo]

Sew, watts the limits proposed? 5r/year? dose the public the same as professionals? rays the effluent limits by e6?

[Marlin]

Sew, watts the limits proposed? 5r/year? dose the public the same as professionals? rays the effluent limits by e6?

Articles lately seem to depend too much on inserted links, this is from a link in the article. Probably easier to read than the article I cited.

Raising the EPA Radiation Limit Will Save Thousands of Lives and Billions of Dollars

The EPA is raising the radiation threat level by a factor of 350. That may sound unbelievable but it is assuredly a good thing: The previous limits were far lower than science justified and caused hundreds of billions of dollars of economic loss to America and the world.

http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/06/raising-the-epa-radiation-limit-will-sav

[Wlrun3]

Over the years, radiation protection standards have exhibited a downward trend to more rigorous limits that require increased commitments of personnel and resources for their enforcement. There are several reasons for this trend, including increased recognition of the long-term health effects of radiation, improved protection measures that permit radiation use at lower levels of exposure, growing numbers of persons exposed occupationally to radiation, and a greater intolerance to involuntary risks in society, with radiation targeted as a highly visible source of involuntary risks in the form of nuclear power plants and radioactive waste sites.

[Marlin]

Over the years, radiation protection standards have exhibited a downward trend to more rigorous limits that require increased commitments of personnel and resources for their enforcement. There are several reasons for this trend, including increased recognition of the long-term health effects of radiation, improved protection measures that permit radiation use at lower levels of exposure, growing numbers of persons exposed occupationally to radiation, and a greater intolerance to involuntary risks in society, with radiation targeted as a highly visible source of involuntary risks in the form of nuclear power plants and radioactive waste sites.

I agree that is the conventional wisdom but I don't think it reflects reality. We can look at a long period of exposure records with no attributable effects due to occupational dose or even effects detectable in greatly varied background radiation around the world . Part of the reason for raising the limits is an imbalance of other risks such as evacuating personell where stress kills and no effect is calculated for exposure to the public (Fukishima). 4 mr/yr in drinking water in in the next 100,000 years for Yucca mountain is another example of overkill. Further is the recognition that the linear model of dose effect is not valid based on years of occupational exposure. Much of the calculated effects of exposure depends on the old model that seems irrelevant now.

[SloGlo]

no buddy has bin evacuated domestically four a very long time, sew the article must have Ben written to encourage the lowering of the effluent rates and using the e.p.a. changes as cover. easement of effluence would have a moor immediate positive impact for the business.

[Wlrun3]

The fundamental principles of radiological protection, justification, optimisation and the application of dose limits, underlie the constantly evolving nature of our endeavor. Radiation and its effects is the most studied all physical phenomenon. Objectively, the limits currently in place represent the sum of that collective wisdom and substantial resource investment.

[Chimera]

The fundamental principles of radiological protection, justification, optimisation and the application of dose limits, underlie the constantly evolving nature of our endeavor. Radiation and its effects is the most studied all physical phenomenon. Objectively, the limits currently in place represent the sum of that collective wisdom and substantial resource investment.

While that's a true statement as far as it goes, it doesn't utilize that collective wisdom.  The basic underlying assumption of the linear, no threshold risk assessment for chronic exposure is not born out by observed data.  I think that is the fundamental argument presented in this thread.  Another example would be that many of the EPAs limits for radioactive materials occurring in nature are below what mother nature provides in our environment.

[Marlin]

The fundamental principles of radiological protection, justification, optimisation and the application of dose limits, underlie the constantly evolving nature of our endeavor. Radiation and its effects is the most studied all physical phenomenon. Objectively, the limits currently in place represent the sum of that collective wisdom and substantial resource investment.

   Again I agree with you from the standpoint of conventional wisdom but the very studies that you mention drive a new perspective. Linear dose response is losing it's influence as a driver of regulation as there is evidence to the contrary in the data collected over the years. Much of our dose effect prediction is based on on a non-threshhold linear dose response. As it loses ground in the application of dose limits and the calculation of dose effect prediction, limits and predicted dose will fall. This has been coming for a long time. The sum of the wisdom gained as you put it validates this approach. At one time internal dose was to be avoided unless the licensee provided the NRC justification so respirators were the name of the game for all airborne contamination work, now "dose is dose" and respirators are viewed in the terms of ALARA and relative risk as heat stress and other physical risk can be considered. This is just part of a natural evolution of radiation protection for the very reasons you state. we have done many studies and have a better understanding than the days when reddening of the skin was a dose limit. What happens if we find a cure to all cancers what happens to dose limits then when we bend another dose risk downward.

   Once again I agree that there has been a lot of study and data collection that has shaped our current state of regulation but it will also shape the future of the regulatory landscape. There does not seem to be a lot of opposition to these new dose limits even in the EPA which I do not see as a pro-nuclear agency so I am inclined to think it will continue to influence dose limits and dose calculations further in other agencies as well.

[hamsamich]

We figured out the consequences of low doses of radiation a long time ago.  Today the limits are based on public perceptions and political cya.  We have plenty of old data giving mounds of evidence based on millions of cases that low levels of radiation have small effects if any.  You can find plenty of questionable data out there to provide evidence in the other direction too.  Reminds me of how in the 70s people thought a stick of butter was going to kill them.  And today's new demon is cholesterol.  It takes alot of oomph to tread through all the data and find the most realistic "truth".

[Wlrun3]

Historical precedents suggests erring on the side of caution. Examples abound. Michaelson-Morely 1887, Einstein 1905, Hubbell 1929, Penzias-Wilson 1964. We are waist deep in a topic widely knowledged as unresolved. The potential for irrevocable outcomes of extraordinarily negative consequence are obvious.

[Marlin]

Historical precedents suggests erring on the side of caution. Examples abound. Michaelson-Morely 1887, Einstein 1905, Hubbell 1929, Penzias-Wilson 1964. We are waist deep in a topic widely knowledged as unresolved. The potential for irrevocable outcomes of extraordinarily negative consequence are obvious.

Again we are in agreement on the historical approach just not the future approach. In most debates of this type I end my opinion with a Dennis Miller quote he ended many of his rants with, and say we will have to agree to disagree.

"That's just my opinion I could be wrong." Dennis Miller

 

But in this case I prefer to quote Phil Williams a local radio show host.

"That's my opinion, feel free to make it yours" P.W.

 

[Wlrun3]

Clinging tenaciously to what is stable and concrete in the chaos of contemporary technological advance is not an opinion. It is a survival tactic. We have no idea what the future century offers us. Faraday's fields, Maxwell's equations, Einstein's relativity... Certainly we are not so devolved as to not take account of these historical lessons. We don't know. But we will.

[Marlin]

Clinging tenaciously to what is stable and concrete in the chaos of contemporary technological advance is not an opinion. It is a survival tactic. We have no idea what the future century offers us. Faraday's fields, Maxwell's equations, Einstein's relativity... Certainly we are not so devolved as to not take account of these historical lessons. We don't know. But we will.

That's just it, the historical studies and data point to relaxed exposures. This is not contempory studies and data that justify the reduction in limits.

[RDTroja]

The preponderance of evidence is that radiation in small doses does no harm and may actually do some good. Spending (lots of) extra money on an irrational fear of one of the most studied phenomena in history is in itself irrational. The lower standards do not reflect logic, they are the result of improved technology that allows us to measure smaller and smaller doses coupled with the evidently incorrect assumption that less is always better. Even if less was better, spending exorbitant amounts of money to achieve lower doses is not a good investment. It is like making cars cost a million dollars just to make them a little bit safer. It is not socially responsible, even if it sounds like a humanitarian thing to do. Sort of like forcing the expenditure of billions of dollars to lower the levels of a non-polluting gas in the atmosphere.

The evaluation of risk must always include benefit and cost. Otherwise it is just trivia.

[Wlrun3]

If these limits were of no relative consequence and decisions were made for their modification to accommodate contemporary opinion the consequences would open a window of opportunity driven by economic concerns which would erode the accomplishments, over many decades, in the advancement of radiological safety.

[Marlin]

If these limits were of no relative consequence and decisions were made for their modification to accommodate contemporary opinion the consequences would open a window of opportunity driven by economic concerns which would erode the accomplishments, over many decades, in the advancement of radiological safety.

OK, we are not getting anywhere.  All limits are based on risk and reward. Risk is not being modified it is being reevaluated based on the data and studies that you cite. The historical risk is now being looked at from a position supported by all of those studies and historical data. The level of risk is not being reduced, the risk incident to the level exposure is being more realistically assessed. This is advancement of radiological safety.

 

[RDTroja]

OK, we are not getting anywhere.  All limits are based on risk and reward. Risk is not being modified it is being reevaluated based on the data and studies that you cite. The historical risk is now being looked at from a position supported by all of those studies and historical data. The level of risk is not being reduced, the risk incident to the level exposure is being more realistically assessed. This is advancement of radiological safety.

 

Damn... I thought that was what I said.

[Marlin]

Damn... I thought that was what I said.

Just responding to his most recent post. I have said pretty much the same thing in several posts hoping rephrasing it or the use of a little nuance in the angle would move the discussion forward. Regulations are not the summit of our knowledge they are stew of politics. This is a change whose time has come, radiation hormesis and the decline of the linear non-threshhold dose effect relationship have been ascending in the radiation protection community for some time the regulations just have not kept up (there I go again from a new angle).

 

[RDTroja]

Just responding to his most recent post. I have said pretty much the same thing in several posts hoping rephrasing it or the use of a little nuance in the angle would move the discussion forward. Regulations are not the summit of our knowledge they are stew of politics. This is a change whose time has come, radiation hormesis and the decline of the linear non-threshhold dose effect relationship have been ascending in the radiation protection community for some time the regulations just have not kept up (there I go again from a new angle).

 

Yeah, I got it... forgot the wink emoticon.