Let’s imagine that you’ve learned Portuguese and have pursued a year-long career opportunity in the tropical Brazilian State of Espiritu Santo. The work is rewarding, the locals friendly, and you spend every weekend relaxing on beautiful Guarapari Beach.
Too soon, the year is over, and you move on to further opportunities with broadened experience, professional development, and an elevated annual radiation dose of at least 29 millisieverts (mSv).
That’s 35.4 μSv/hr = 0.0354 mSv/hr, 2/7 x 8760 (weekends hours in a year) ÷ 3 (8 hours out of 24) = 29.5 mSv
This would be substantially more than the total dose reported for the Tepco worker who was recently diagnosed with leukemia (nearly 20 mSv). It would be from a combination of “shine” from the sand (naturally rich in uranium and thorium), windblown particles entering your mouth and radon decay products in the air you breathed.
But there will be no international agency recommending you limit your beach time, or environmental groups capitalising on your illness if you yourself later develop leukemia. Don’t expect outrage if your partner and children are with you the whole time, either. The unfortunate Japanese worker will receive compensation simply because his dose was higher than 5 mSv. The vast majority of his 16 000 coworkers received smaller, minimised doses. Both these things are appropriate.
It is completely inappropriate to desperately rekindle Fukushima hysteria on the back of a suffering man, without any context for the causal connection being implied – but not demonstrated! – here between radiation and cancer.
Is his condition directly linked to nuclear plant exposure? There’s no way to definitively know. It could well just be statistical. Could you get leukemia from a rewarding year of beachside work and relaxation? If it’s no concern whatsoever on the beach, why is treated differently at a plant? Such context for natural versus nuclear radiation dosage, and the ongoing control of occupational doses as part of industrial safety culture are surprisingly complimentary concepts, when you think about it. Just like we can all enjoy a barbecue in our back yard, but stringent workplace health and safety regulations apply at a gas-fired power plant. The monitoring of radiation, despite its typically low hazard, is and should be normal, good practice.
But we don’t see Greenpeace celebrating this return of nature (source).
Similarly, the undeniable lack of chronic environmental impact from serious nuclear accidents will never extenuate the public’s justified expectation of exemplary safety culture at nuclear facilities. Just because the land around Chernobyl is a verdant wilderness reserve and bike track doesn’t mean such an accident should ever again be allowed.
Indeed, looking at Ontario, community support for continued nuclear operation is at its highest ever surveyed. Last month, an industry study was released detailing the expected, limited impacts of a hypothetical accident involving radiation release. Are these related? The lack of this kind of honest engagement contributed greatly to Japan’s ongoing nuclear energy dilemma. The walk-away safety of modern reactor designs combined with visible safety culture and lessons learned has everything going for it. And perhaps the most effective message isn’t “it’s safe“, but rather “this is everything we do to make it safer than the beach”.
Thevenard next to Ceduna handles about 25% of the world’s zircon sand concentrate containing minor thorium and uranium. Iluka reckon a close contact worker with dust mask could get an additional 1 mSv a year
The same wharf is used to load wheat. The usual suspects haven’t chucked a wobbly about this as yet.
The grain handling site at Inner Harbour has one shed which gets used for holding zircon sand. It can’t be used for grain any more – not because of radiation but rather the abrasive sand has destroyed the lining which is too expensive to replace.
Re: “And perhaps the most effective message isn’t “it’s safe“, but rather “this is everything we do to make it safer than the beach”.
Why NOT call it safe? Planes crash far more frequently than nuclear accidents but you’ll never catch the airlines or the FAA saying “this is everything we do to make it safer than walking across the street”. They plainly say that flying is SAFE. I just don’t get it! You can pack all the fatalities incurred by normal nuclear plant operations AND “worst” accidents WORLDWIDE back since the first reactor on a single Greyhound bus, but you can’t build enough ocean liners to accommodate the injuries and deaths incurred by fossil fuels since day one. What industry can top this?? Why can’t THIS be the message to give the public a perspective handle on the “hazards and dangers” of nuclear power??? Why can’t the nuclear community learn to hawk and defend itself??
James Greenidge
Queens New York USA
I think that community is rapidly and successfully doing just that, in spite of the shameful lack of actual official promotion (and I mean commercials and such, like what we see for gas). This firefighter and long-time neighbour of the Indian Point reactors certainly agrees with you http://www.dailyfreeman.com/opinion/20151012/letter-i-live-next-to-indian-point-nuke-plant-and-it-is-safe while also being part of the safety culture I insist is vitally important.