Last week Greenpeace issued a "study" that made the alarming claim that "Pregnant women and children under the age of four should avoid living within 10 kilometres of nuclear power plants". A pretty strong statement. They also state that federal standards allow up to 7,000 Becquerels per litre of tritium in drinking water. This is true. A Becquerel is equivalent to one nuclear decay per second. Tritium is an unstable isotope of hydrogen. It has a half-life of 12.3 years, and decays by emitting a very weak beta particle (electron). It is only a hazard if taken into the body, usually in the form of water.
However their claim of the danger is alarmist and misleading. Here are a few facts that GP didn't make a lot of noise about:
1. Radioactive emissions of all types are closely monitored by the CNSC (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission). Failure to meet CNSC requirements can result in loss of a licence to operate. With revenues on the order of $1 million per day per reactor, does it seem likely that an operator with take chances on losing a licence? Not to mention the public relations disaster.
2. Industry standards (self imposed) are 70 Bq/l, not 7000. The place I work at maintains less than 20 Bq/l.
3. Drinking 250ml (1 cup) of water with 100 Bq/l would give you a dose of about 0.0004 mrem (milliRem). The same volume of milk: 0.0006 mrem from natural sources. By comparison, you receive 27 mrem per year from cosmic background radiation, 28 from the earth's crust, 50 from naturally occurring elements in your body, and if you smoke 1-2 packs a day you're getting a whopping 1300 mrem per year. In order to get an extra dose equivalent to what the average non-smoker receives in a year (about 250 mrem), you would have to drink about 39000 litres of tritiated water (at 100 Bq/l).
But, of course, they omit little details like this. Like the fact that eating bananas (chock full of that yummy potassium-40) is more dangerous than living around a nuclear plant. To put things in proper perspective would not be spectacular enough. And flashy scare-mongering is what brings in the donations, isn't it?
Don't get me wrong, I think Greenpeace is a good and useful group. They've done some good work in the past, but as far as their attitude to nuclear power goes, I simply believe they're wrong. So does GP founder Patrick Moore.
To be continued.
**In the interest of full disclosure, the facts quoted about are taken from AECL, UNSCEAR, and CNSC.
2 comments:
I sometimes wonder about Greenpeace. (I sometimes wonder about a lot of things...)
It seems as if they couldn't get people worked up about nuclear waste--which is, last I looked, a nontrivial problem--so instead they're trying to tell people that radiation just naturally leaks out of reactors in HUGE AMOUNTS and will KILL YOU.
One wonders just where these people think we should be getting power from. I've never seen a factory that runs on solar/wind power, let alone a whole industrial park. I did some research back in the aftermath of Chernobyl and found out that, as long as proper precautions are taken, nuclear is really the only viable method of procuring enough power to run our energy-mad society.
Ken, the stuff that is allowed out is so diluted that it has no effect (like tritium), and in some cases has such a short half-life that it's gone in hours.
Folks keep spouting about how things like solar and wind power can save us. Well, I just drove back here past several wind-farms and guess what? They were not turning. No wind! And the sun is going down soon. Imagine telling the population of Toronto that they have to go to bed early because there's no electricity. There would be riots.
Chernobyl was a convergence of a lot of mistakes: poor design, poor safety culture, poor procedures, poor training, and the wonderful Soviet practice of denying anything is wrong.
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