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Newsletter
Fall 2009
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Radiation Health Effects Controversy
Equivalent, effective Maybe it’s defective Let’s call the whole thing off. A controversy is brewing between the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and Professor David Brenner of Columbia University on the usefulness of the effective dose concept. Effective dose is essentially what used to be called the whole body radiation dose. It is the radiation dose that is summed over the dose to individual body organs with factors that weigh the radiation sensitivity of each organ. It is a single number supposedly proportional to the biological detriment or harm to the body. Importantly, it is not a function of age or gender. Brenner would replace the effective dose concept with effective risk. The ICRP disagrees. Is this important? Should you care? |
Yucca Mountain Repository Kaput? A multiple choice question. Who is opposed to the Yucca Mountain repository?
If you guessed (d), you would be right. So why is the Department of Energy application for the Yucca Mountain repository still being considered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)? While we don’t know the answer to that question, we can give you an update on proceedings before the NRC.
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Irradiated Papayas at the Honolulu Airport The last we left you Paina Hawaii proposed irradiating papayas with one million curie of cobalt-60 between two runways of the Honolulu International Airport. The likelihood of an air crash into the irradiator was on the order of one in a thousand per year. While airplanes could bring down the World Trade Center, the NRC staff remained confident the irradiator could withstand an air crash. Well, hold your papayas! The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Hearing Board has decided that the NRC Staff environmental assessment was inadequate. |
Isn’t it true? The problem with deserts is there is not enough water. Santa Fe is a lovely town, but water supply is a problem. The town presently gets its water from wells dipping into an underground aquifer. But with an increasing population, the aquifer is being drawn down. The Buckman Diversion Project is the town’s answer. Santa Fe intends to divert water from the Rio Grande River to supplement the town’s wells. But feeding the aquifer are recharge areas near Los Alamos laboratory and the Rio Grande river receives storm water runoff from the laboratory. The issue is – how much radioactive and hazardous substances enter the aquifer or are washed down the canyons. RWMA is joining with Sundance Environmental to craft a proposal to the City of Santa Fe to study the matter. |
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Radioactivity in Gulf Coast Water
Customer: Waiter! Waiter! There’s some radium in my oysters. Waiter: There’ll be no charge for that. Contaminated water from oil production wells is released into the Gulf of Mexico. Now, in the interests of “streamlining” the licensing process, LDEQ would allow oil companies to drill many additional wells without applying for additional licenses. To make matters worse, the companies want no concentration limit on radium in water. In New York City parlance, this is Chutzpah. |
Imagine building a home without bathrooms. Who would buy it? Apparently this is not a problem for Progress Energy Florida (PEF) who wants to build two reactors on the Levy site north of Crystal River on the Gulf Coast, but has no method to dispose of its low-level radioactive waste. In the construction permit/license hearings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Green Party and the Ecology Party of Florida, along with Nuclear Information and Resource Service have intervened and questioned the lack of a nuclear bathroom approach. |
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RWMA is a New York City-based consulting firm established in 1989. Our expert team of scientists and engineers evaluate the impact of proposed and existent radioactive waste facilities to assist organizations that are faced with nuclear waste management issues. |
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Radioactive Waste Management Associates 526 West 26th Street, Room 517 New York, NY 10001 Ph. 212-620-0526 Fax 212-620-0518 email: radwaste@rwma.com |
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