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Uranium-burning stove

A nuclear reactor is like a wood-burning stove.  Some people fill their stoves with wood pellets.  Nuclear utilities, on the other hand, fill their 'stoves' with pellets of uranium.  These pellets are stacked up (sort of like 'Smarties' candies) in 'fuel rods', which are cylindrical tubes and manufactured with, and cladded in, an alloy of zirconium.  

Just like wood pellets in wood-burning stoves produce solid and gaseous waste (ash and smoke), so does the fuel in nuclear 'stoves.'  Nuclear power plants produce a number of solid and gaseous radioactive isotopes.  Although the solid wastes - in the form of 'spent fuel rods' - are kept away from the public (except during accidents), gaseous wastes are not kept from public exposure: they escape into the environment via design flaws and routine emissions. 

Fuel rod failure 

A common design flaw that results in gaseous 'effluent' is a type of rust corrosion which occurs in the zirconium outer coating of fuel rods.  Within this cladding, tiny pinholes are created, rendering the outer fuel rod shell penetrable.   

Fuel rods generate a terrific amount of heat - as do nuclear explosions - and so are surrounded with water to cool them down to prevent an accident.  Through these pinholes, radioactive substances from the fuel rods leak into this water, which is called the 'primary coolant.'  Gaseous radioactive isotopes most readily migrate through these pinholes and they are the problem that this analysis is focused on.¹

The most common type of nuclear reactor (pressurized water reactor) works in the following manner: heat generated in the fuel rods raises the temperature of the primary water coolant 'reservoir' that is used to boil water in a secondary 'reservoir.'  It is from the secondary reservoir that steam is used to spin turbines to create electricity.  

The two reservoirs, however, are meant to be isolated for the simple reason that the primary reservoir has radioactivity in it and the second one shouldn't because it is linked to exhaust stacks.  Yet radioactive gases bubbling up through the primary cooling liquid make it through the exhaust stacks connected to the secondary reservoir.  According to the book by Helen Caldicott, 'Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else,' "The primary coolant is not supposed to mix with the secondary coolant but of course it does, allowing radiation to be released to the environment from this secondary system. "     The culprit for these leaks are defects in the steam generators and corrosion within the thousands of circulation tubes found in them.²  

Depending on 'hold up' systems and protocols at the plant (that attempt to store radioactive gases to allow shorter-lived radionuclides to decay), radioactive gases will escape at varying quantities through the exhaust stacks into the environment.   These 'routine' gaseous releases pollute the environment as do plant 'ventings' from planned or accidental purges.³   

'Non-condensable' radioactive gases

You might think that the radioactive gases escaping into the environment from these nuclear power plants are not going to land on your food, on you, or your farms, and then do harm.  

But they do.  The problem is that some radioactive gases transform into radioactive solids that can travel the food chain and settle in your organs.   One example is the radioactive gas Krypton-90.  That gas is created during the controlled atomic fission reaction in fuel rods.  When Krypton-90 decays, it converts from a gas into a solid, Rubidium-90, which then after a short period of time becomes another solid, Strontium-90.   

Krypton-90 is a very fast decaying isotope.  Within a period of just 5 minutes after it is created (in fuel rods, or nuclear explosions), most of it transforms into solid Rubidium-90, which visibly appears and precipitates out of the air.  It seems difficult to imagine, but enough Krypton-90 gas escapes via pinholes in zirconium 'cladding' and then through corroded steam pipes and then through the exhaust stacks in five-minute periods that it precipitates out into the environment from nuclear plants in detectable quantities.

The precipitate initially appears in the environment as Rubidium-90, and after about 30 minutes Rubidium-90 fully transforms into Strontium-90, which has a half-life of about 29 years.  (It takes over 300 years for Strontium-90 to decay to 1/1000 of its original radioactivity.)  

Failed monitoring 

Astonishingly, these airborne releases of krypton-90 and other precursors of 'organ-seeking radionuclides' are mostly unmonitored.  What that means is that manmade radiation is pouring out of nuclear reactors and there is no rigorous attempt by any private or governmental body to determine the quantity of releases.  In his book, The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors (1996), Jay M. Gould writes that releases of radioactive gases through leaking generator tubes "are not regularly monitored and are not required to be reported on a regular basis since under ideal conditions no radioactivity reaches the steam in this type of reactor."   

Activist and investigative journalist Michael Steinberg, whose childhood was shaped by baseball and - he discovered later in life - the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in southeast Connecticut, tells in his book 'Millstone and Me' the account of his evolving knowledge of nuclear radiation (and lies).  Synthesizing information he learned from John Gofman's writings and a 1990's Millstone report, Steinberg, who grew up in Niantic (nearby Millstone), realizes that nuclear power plant effluent releases are calculated by taking a few samples to reconstruct (through multiplication models) a guess of total volume of release.  Steinberg notes 'that these results are not what could properly be called measurements, but are really estimates.'  

In other words, nuclear utilities are constantly making educated guesses, and they can be pretty wrong at times, by accident or by fraud.  

Fraud?  Steinberg realizes the (inconvenient) 'fact that impressive estimates are applied to theoretical models to make up figures that are bandied about as gospel truth and umimpeachable science in...public relations efforts' and this 'information can be easily manipulated to make the results come out exactly as the utility wants it to appear.'  

In NRC-speak, this can be said like this: "There is a wide diversity of methods among licensees to monitor primary-to-secondary leakage.  Primary and secondary system mass balancing, isotopic sampling of the steam generator blowdown, and isotopic sampling of the air ejector effluent are among the methods typically in use.  However, these methods are employed at discrete time intervals (e.g., three times weekly, daily) and these methods may not provide a timely indication of sudden and/or rapidly increasing leakage."  [source: 1988 information notice]

What's the difference between vent and purge?  

According to 'ROUTINE RELEASES: tritium and noble gases' 
(Jan. 2009) from the group Beyond Nuclear: 

I've seen the enemy, and the enemy is...

Jay Gould cites strontium-90 fallout stemming from corrosion-caused leakage in PWRs and BWRs as one of the possible key culprits behind increases in infant mortality and other health problems near nuclear plants, aka 'nuclear counties.'   If Gould's theory is correct, and his fallout-health correlations are valid, then he would also be correct when he wrote in The Enemy Within that "Corrosion may be an unanticipated problem in curtailing the operational lifetimes of all nuclear reactors and may some day be seen as one of the great technological blunders of the twentieth century."   

Is the problem really that big?   The findings of the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), which Gould founded, demonstrate present-day levels of strontium-90 in children's teeth in 'nuclear counties' nationwide that are comparable to levels discovered during global nuclear testing in the 1950s.   

If you don't remember or don't know, 'strontium-90' was a household word in the 1950s and 1960s.  Strontium-90 levels were zero worldwide in our air and soil before 1945 but levels began rising after the first nuclear blasts in 1945 and peaked in the stratosphere in the 1960s and then in soil levels in the early 1970s.   Radiostrontium accumulates in food chains and ends up in bones and teeth, and in the 1950s and early 1960s levels of strontium-90 in baby and children teeth increased exponentially to levels never seen before.  These levels troubled most scientists and doctors, who literally had no idea of what it was doing or could be doing to human health.  Now, it is believed that the strontium-90 present in our bones affects our immune system.  Like a 'trojan horse,' it can destroy our biological defenses (and lead to a host of immunological, neurological and other problems).    This 'strontium worry' was the main reason why scientists convinced the U.S. government and the Soviet Union to suspend nuclear testing over 50 years ago.     

Since the NRC and the EPA have chosen to pull the plug on studying strontium-90 in our diet and bone (EPA stopped measuring Sr90 in bones/teeth in 1974), especially in downwind areas of nuclear reactors, then we must rely on the only entity that is doing the sampling: the RPHP.   

The RPHP is showing through their recent research that in 'nuclear counties' radiostronium in children's teeth is at levels comparable to 1950s levels, and 30-60% higher than in non-nuclear counties⁴.

Because, as Steinberg notes, 'information can be easily manipulated [by nuclear utilities ]to make the results come out exactly' as they want, these nuclear reactors may be dispersing into the air millions of times more Strontium-90 than the public knows.   This would be the only valid explanation behind why strontium-90 in infant teeth around nuclear facilities have risen to levels detected by RPHP.  Reports in the 1980s and 1990s of nuclear reactor airborne effluents show that typical annual releases of strontium-90 are in the single digit microCuries (millionths of a Curie).⁵  

Somehow the utilities' effluent data and RPHP's data don't match.  For example, if we assume that nuclear reactors are responsible for rising infant teeth concentrations of strontium-90 by 1 picoCurie (per gram of calcium), and we assume an infant seeks out about 150 grams of calcium for bone growth in her first 24 months, then in order for her to have bone/teeth concentrations of strontium-90 (per gram of calcium) 1 picoCurie higher than normal (i.e., from 2.0 to 3.0 picocuries/g ca), then she would have had to consume an extra 150 picocuries of strontium-90 absorbed into her bones through her diet.  But if the local reactor is leaking out 2 million picoCuries (2 years x 1 microcurie/year) of airborne strontium-90 in two years , then the child is getting 0.0075% of the radiostrontium emissions.  If there are 13,400 toddlers in the 'nuclear county' in question, and each would get 0.0075% of the emissions, then the toddlers would have absorbed cumulatively 100% of the strontium-90 emissions into their bones.  None would be left for older children, teens, adults, animals, cow's bones, wastewater, millions of square meters of soil and vegetation and water, vegetable crops, etc...  The numbers put forth by the nuclear utilities are simply nonsense.  Even if there were nonstop rainouts over dairy farms surrounding reactors and toddlers were severely overdosing on milk, the amount of strontium-90 released *according to the nuclear utilities* wouldn't be enough to account for bone quantities of strontium-90 in the toddlers per RPHP!   (Milk provides the largest source of strontium-90 in American children's diet).

The nuclear utilities have suggested the strontium-90 in the teeth is 100% from legacy nuclear fallout, but that is as far-fetched and ludicrous a theory as the theory that constant rain clouds are situated over dairy farms near nuke plants.   'Old fallout' indeed does contribute a fraction - most of the times the largest fraction - of the contamination (and it may be increasing because we have changed our diet in the past several decades to include less 'Wonder bread' and more whole grains, etc..), but it couldn't alone raise radiostrontium in infant bones to these levels .   Also, strontium-90 couldn't be entirely from global fallout because RPHP scientists have found that strontium-90 levels decrease the further away they get from a nuclear plant whereas strontium-90 from nuclear testing (and Chernobyl) was uniformly distributed across the globe.  Weapons testing fallout did not create huge variances locally (view this Public Health Service map of *cumulative* strontium-90 fallout in 1963 - here).    

Although our food, water (aquifer) and soil supplies are still contaminated from legacy fallout, the best explanation is that the nuclear utilities are lying and releasing thousands or millions times more strontium-90 than they are telling us.  Nuclear utilities are falsifying - and extremely lowballing - their effluent release reports.  

Vicious circle

The NRC, NIH, CDC, and EPA and other public health agencies are complicit in this fraud.  By their failing to monitor strontium-90 in our diet, our soils and our bodies, they have been willing participants in a scheme to deny Americans the right to know how much reactor fallout is reaching us.  In this collective failure to safeguard public health, they are committing the Second Great Fraud against downwinders.  The First Great Fraud was committed by their predecessors and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in the 1950s, when deadly radiation from Nevada and Pacific nuclear tests floated over cities and farm-fields and government monitoring for radioactivity in our soil, diet and the air was nonexistent, or sketchily done at best.  The AEC didn't want the public to know and they certainly didn't want to be held accountable for the fallout that descended all over the place.  Why?  They didn't want public pressure to halt their testing programs and also they were afraid of litigation.  So, they lied.   

Roughly 60 years later, the same public health agencies are continuing the First Great Fraud by refusing to adequately assess what nuclear testing did to us.   In the 1990s, U.S. public health agencies rejected 1950s estimates by Linus Pauling and Andrei Sakharov that nuclear testing caused millions of fatalities and instead used sketchy data and mega-modeling to come up with an assessment that just about 15,000 Americans died from fallout from all global nuclear tests.  

The crime, whereby the AEC was spewing radiation and public health agencies were refusing to quantify it, is the same crime committed today.  In the late 1970s, the AEC created two spinoffs, the DOE and the NRC, and since their 'incorporation' both have been spewing radiation while public health agencies have been looking the other way.  The NRC doesn't regulate true reactor emissions and not a single public health agency is coming to the publics' aid in figuring out those emissions and the health impacts.  As for the DOE, they tested nukes in Nevada until 1992, half of them leaked fallout offsite, and the whole time the EPA was 'out of the office.'   More recently, the DOE was the 'host' to an experiment dubbed 'Divine Strake' that would have sent radio-contaminants from the floor of the Nevada Test Site downwind into Utah thanks to a DTRA-conceived 0.7 kiloton non-nuclear fertilizer bomb.  The DOE only presented data on 26 soil samples from an area spanning 3 million square feet that would have been disturbed by the blast and they didn't take even one sample of the dirt beneath the bomb's ground-zero.  Not a single public health agency came to the public's aid - it was the people who, unaided, did their homework, presented their findings and swayed media outlets and public opinion to take a stand against the test.  Idealist helped successfully stop this 'dirty bomb' experiment, which DTRA canceled in early 2007.

It is this systemic Great Fraud against downwinders that should be the focus of our citizen movements.  We can no longer be concerned with just shutting down the reactor or the nuclear laboratory in our backyards.   

We don't have time to expend fighting the symptoms.   We must attack the problem.  And the problem is this: John Gofman summed it up in his 1990 book Radiation-Induced Cancer: An Independent Analysis in which he wrote "Inadequate government record-keeping, plus the AEC philosophy, produces a vicious circle in which the victim is unable to 'prove' damage by the AEC rules."  

Replace AEC with DOE and NRC and you see that things haven't changed.  Starting with the 1945 Trinity test, through the Three Mile Island accident and present-day reactor emissions, the vicious circle is the same: 

1. 'they' irradiate us

2. they don't keep any rigorous records or measurements

3. they announce 'there is no danger' from fallout

4. we see cancers

5. we cry foul

6. we get inundated with baseless models and calculations 

7. the public health agencies, which don't do any monitoring, downplay the danger

8. we can't prove a damn thing according to 'their' rules

9. [return to #1]⁶

We have been systemically abused.  We have been abused for 60 years by this vicious circle.

We must get smart and see the problem instead of its multitudinous symptoms.  

It is this circle of fraud that we must stop.

Other routine releases

An important point to consider is that environmental contamination stemming from cooling system leaks isn't limited to gaseous waste emissions.  Secondary coolant water containing radioactive contaminants can also pollute rivers, lakes and oceans, which are the source and also final destination for the water that is heated up during the steam generation process.   So, waters downstream of nuclear power plants can, and do, become contaminated with liquid radioactive discharges as a result of the leaks in primary-secondary coolant systems.  Liquid wastes can include tritiated water⁷, Iodine-131, Strontium-90, Cesium-137 and dozens of other radiotoxins that can pose the same serious health problems as they do in nuclear fallout.  Since rivers and lakes are tapped for farm irrigation, the radioactive wastes enter our food supply.  Our food supply also gets contaminated via the aquatic food chain.  

Case study: Millstone  

Located in southeastern Connecticut is the Millstone Power Station, home of three reactors; only two of which are now operating.  Unit 1, which was shut down in 1998, has the distinction of having released the highest ever recorded amounts of airborne radioactivity in the history of nuclear energy until the Three Mile Island disaster.  In 1974, the total airborne radioactive releases from all U.S. reactors was about 6.5 million Curies, yet in 1975 Millstone's Unit 1 released about 3 million airborne Curies, half of the national nuclear power total and about one-quarter of the gaseous release of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident (TMI released at least 13 million Curies of radioactive noble gases similar in nature to those gases released at Millstone).   

In her book Nuclear Madness, Helen Caldicott notes that radioactive noble gases may pose an acute danger to downwinders if they are exposed to the clouds of gaseous radiation.  She writes that 'Although noble gases do not combine chemically in the body, they are absorbed by the lungs after inhalation' and emit gamma rays that, like X-rays, can damage reproductive organs.  Both TMI and Millstone released similar levels of harmful Iodine-131, which accumulates in local food chains and eventually pools into a person's thyroid where cancer may be induced.   

In January 2010, an investigation into Yankee's leaking underground pipes - which Entergy, the plant operator, originally told state legislators didn't exist! - began when radioactive tritium was detected in an onsite monitoring well near the Connecticut River.  Extremely high levels of tritium were later detected through soil testing.   What also was found in the soil near a pipe tunnel (leading to the 'Advanced Off-Gas' building) at depths of about 15 feet below the surface were other non-naturally occurring radionuclides.  (Basically, in a reactor water is heated up into steam via nuclear fission to spin a turbine generator.  Nuclear fission results in several types of 'energies': heat and radioactive decay are two of them.  Okay, so since the steam needs to be converted back to water, we need something called a condenser: it mixes cool water with steam to convert it to liquid water.  Now there are things called 'noncondensable gases' (gases other than water vapor) that end up in the condenser and would cause problems in the reactor if they weren't removed.  So these are sent to an 'off-gas system' to be 'processed' or 'held up' and then released into our environment.  According to the Bennington Banner - (Health Dept.: Tritium entering Conn. River, 3.18.2010): "The drain lines are part of the plant’s hydrogen recombiner system, which oxidizes hydrogen produced in the reactor when water is turned into steam. Recombining the hydrogen with oxygen produces steam [and] reduces the concentration of hydrogen to minimize the possibility of a hydrogen explosion.'  The PVC drain line is surrounded by a concrete tunnel that, because it collects moisture, drains into a pit and a sump-pump pushes the water into a Rad Waste Building for reprocessing.  However, what happened at the plant was a four-part leaked system.  Leak Number 1: Leaks from past or current fuel rod failures led to radioactive gases and solids entering the primary water cooling system.  Leak Number 2: a leaky nuclear steam pipe leaked radioactive materials into the drain pipe.  Leak Number 3: the PVC pipe had a leak that drained into the concrete tunnel.  Leak Number 4: the water in tunnel pooled because of a clog and leaked out of a crack in the concrete duct (tunnel) into the soil.)

On February 24, 2010, the public learned that above-normal levels of Cesium-137 were detected near the underground pipes at the 15-foot depth, however officials at Entergy initially claimed the radiocesium was "consistent with what would be found in soil" from weapons testing or Chernobyl fallout.  The Vermont Health Department even perpetuated the loony theory in a March 30th update-analysis on their 'Tritium Investigation Archive' page titled 'Soil Analysis Confirms Leakage Pathway, Finds Cesium-137.'  The Health Department noted that Entergy officials had told them that 'water from the systems that leaked into the AOG pipe tunnel are not contaminated with Cs-137' and the 'reactor process water and condensate have not indicated Cs-137 content for many years.'  Their website states: 'Given these [abovementioned] points, it may be that the Cs-137 found in the soil samples came from surface contamination within the AOG pipe tunnel. This surface contamination may have been washed from the AOG pipe tunnel walls, floor and piping surfaces by the leaking steam and water from the damaged AOG hydrogen recombiner steam trap drain lines.'  

Blaming cesium-137 on weapons testing or Chernobyl fallout on the surface that washed down their piping system is a ridiculous theory. Note that Entergy doesn't do enough monitoring for cesium-137 or xenon-137 gas to make any such statement about 'indicated Cs-137 content.'  They play with their modeling calculations in order to make sure they 'find' no cesium-137 content.  They deliberately also don't mention xenon-137 gas releases that - we all should know by now - condenses into cesium-137.  On February 12, Entergy said it found a steam leak and standing water in the AOG pipe tunnel which forced them to initiate their soil excavation project.  The Health Department explained the how and why of the leak: "A pair of steam pipes inside the Advanced Off-Gas (AOG) pipe tunnel were found to be badly corroded and leaking nuclear steam.  The floor drain of this concrete tunnel was clogged with debris and mud. As a result, the condensate from the steam pipes pooled inside the tunnel and leaked out at a failed joint in the tunnel."  See very confusing diagram.

The steam leak was isolated on February 14, 2010, but Vermont Yankee could have been leaking radioactive steam for decades.  These leaked radioactive gaseous substances consist of radio-xenons, radio-argons, radio-carbons and radio-kryptons that can condense into solid radiocesiums and radiostrontiums.  These materials likely leaked through the corroded pipes onto the concrete tunnel floor, got stuck in the muck of 'debris and mud,' and then leaked into the subsurface soil through a concrete crack.  Note that some of the abovementioned gases don't condense immediately and stay as a gas for weeks or months or years and could - and very likely did - 'bubble' up through water and soil.  The Vermont Health department noted on February 28 that the crack "represents a significant pathway for radioactive water from the AOG pipe tunnel into the environment in the recent past.'   (The plant actually is always leaking radionuclides into the environment through a slew of venting places because of pinhole leaks in fuel rods.  It is a fact of life about zirconium cladding.).

Entergy maintained, thus, that the cesium-137 was in the soil for decades and 'descended' to a 15 foot depth after the ground was disturbed.  Then, at the beginning of April 2010, cesium concentrations were found up to 10,260 picoCuries per gram; shortly thereafter, on April 3, Entergy reversed their position, admitting the cesium-137 resulted from an unidentified fuel rod failure within the reactor.  

The actual timeframe of the when the leaked cesium-137 showed up in the underground soil is also unknown.  Some speculated that the cesium-137 leaked during the 1970s or 1980s when Yankee had persistent fuel rod failures. Others speculated it leaked during a nuclear fuel failure episode in 2001-2002 and even others believed the cause was a new leak.

Jeff Hardy, chemistry manager for Entergy Nuclear, told the Rutland Herald that the 'background level of cesium-137 at the Vermont Yankee site was 150 picocuries per kilogram,' which is equivalent to 0.15 picoCuries per gram.  William Irwin, radiological health chief for the Department of Health, told the paper that background levels in Vermont for Cesium-137 'from Chernobyl and weapons testing ranged from 100 to 150 picocuries [pci/kg].'  So, the highest concentration of cesium-137 found (so far) in the soil underneath the AOG building - of 10,260 pCi/gram - is over 100,000 times background levels of cesium-137 in Vermont soils!  Although Entergy officials note that this 'AOG underground nuclear waste dump' (these are our words) is limited to a small confined area, there may be other contaminated areas!  How?  Because precursor gases of cesium-137 and strontium-90 must have leaked out over the *decades* from the concrete tunnel,  bubbled up through the porous soil and precipitated down *as cesium-137 and strontium-90* on Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire homes, schools, farms and parks.  

Finally, the VT Department of Health noted in March 2010 that the leaked tritium has migrated several hundred feet east to the Connecticut River but said that was not the case with other radionuclides.  It must be assumed that if tritium from the pipe leak is making its way into the Connecticut River then so is the case with cesium-137, which is also water-soluble. Cesium-137 shoots out gamma rays - its ionizing radiation can affect humans up to 30 feet away without barriers and can penetrate barriers such as the hull of recreational boats. 

Read more about the dangers of cesium-137 here

---

Links 

Coalition against nukes in CT - Mothball Millstone

Groups against Indian Point:  Rock the Reactors, IPSEC

 

Footnotes

¹ Even though zirconium is used for its 'neutron resistant' properties - it absorbs few stray neutrons - neutron rays emanating from the fuel rods make it through to the water coolant and convert the water into tritium. The tritium, when heated up, produces radioactive water vapor, or tritium gas.

² Who is to blame?  Court documents have revealed, from decades of litigation against nuclear plant developer Westinghouse, that many of its reactors built across the U.S. and world have had chronic problems that were linked to Westinghouse's faulty designs, defective parts and improper reactor installation.

³ Note that this steam generator leakage problem plagues PWRs (Pressurized Water Reactors) just as much as it does in Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) - both are types of 'light water reactors.'  (Of the roughly 104 operating reactors in the U.S., 69 are PWRs and 35 are BWRs.)  BWRs, the lesser evolved version of light water reactors, have the same exact fuel cladding corrosion issue that leads to radioactive gaseous 'leakage' as PWRs.  But because they have just one circuit (one coolant system), BWRs have a guaranteed and continuous stream radioactive products from neutron-irradiation (tritium) and leakage (noble gases and solid radionuclides) that are a constant nuisance.  A portion of the leaked radioactive gases in BWRs are aired out - after 'hold ups' - via holes and vents and into the outside air continuously.  So, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, radioactive gases are pumped from BWRs into the outside air.  PWRs release these gases during more 'controlled' events, such as purges, vents, etc.... or accidents.   Both types of light water reactors routinely and regularly release precursor gases of Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 into the air that causes fallout onto neighboring areas.  

If this all sounds similar to the fallout that results from a nuclear attack or a nuclear test, you're right.   Nuclear power plants, after all, are essentially taking supercritical masses of nuclear bomb material and slowly detonating them over a long span of time, sort of like nuclear bomb explosions stretched out over a long period of time.  The nuclear radiation, if not fully contained (and it isn't!), will contaminate food, water and people not much differently than in nuclear blasts.  

⁴Although today's strontium-90 crisis appears localized - plaguing 'nuclear counties' - it is not.  Food grown, milk generated or water supplied from a nuclear county can easily end up in the kitchens of homes in non-nuclear counties.  

⁵ NRC data from 1993 published here

⁶ A corollary to this, perhaps as '7a,' would be that the lack of monitoring data makes it so that dose reconstruction is impossible and so there is no, and will never be, good data concerning radiological events.  Without that data, researchers can't conduct longitudinal medical studies on fallout impacts (and even if you try, the CDC will pull the funding anyway).  Without those studies, there is no basis for revising radiation standards, which were initially set in the 1950s arbitrarily - and some would say still are arbitrary because there is no safe dose, only 'allowable' numbers of fatal cancers.  So, even our radiation standards, which the nuclear industry loves at current (or higher) levels, will never change as long as this 'vicious circle' perpetuates. 

⁷ Tritium, which is also written as H³ or T, is an isotope of hydrogen and most commonly is created from the neutron bombardment of boron-10 (10B; used as a 'neutron absorber') that is found in reactor primary coolant.  Tritium can also be created by neutron irradiation of hydrogen (2H), helium (3He), and lithium (6Li).  Tritium easily attaches to oxygen to create tritiated water, which is water with the 2 hydrogen atoms replaced by the 3 hydrogen atoms in tritium.  Tritiated water is written as THO, T20 or 3H20.

Carbon-14 is created in our upper atmosphere, in nuclear explosions and in nuclear reactors - all by neutron interaction.  In reactors, carbon-14 arises when neutrons bombard carbon-13 (13C), nitrogen-14 (14N) or oxygen-17 (17O), which are impurities in coolant, fuels and/or moderators.  Carbon-14 oxides easily into radioactive carbon dioxide, or 14CO2.

⁸  (Trilinear chart of nuclides explanation)

Above is our version of a portion of the trilinear chart of nuclides.  This type of chart is very helpful at determining the nature of decay of isotopes created in nuclear fission (whether in A-bombs or nuclear reactors).  It is well-known that the predominant gaseous emissions of nuclear reactors consist of radioxenons and radiokryptons, and as you can deduce from the above chart radioactive krypton isotopes are never 'orphans' - they always have parents or children (aka 'daughters'), or both; they always precede or succeed, or both, in their life-spans other isotopes of the same mass (or even other masses).    

Actually most radioactive products of fission are or were once a krypton or a xenon gas!  As you can see in the chart, some krypton gases are not-radioactive; those are the stable isotopes of Kr-86 and Kr-84 (there are others like Kr-80, 82 and 83).  But there are many krypton gases that are radioactive and these are the most problematic toxins from routine emissions from reactors.  

As one can tell from the chart, krypton gases of greater mass are usually very short-lived gases (through beta-decay, they transform into radioactive rubidiums, either gamma or beta emitters, over a period of minutes) and onwards to other stable isotopes.   

In between the stable kryptons and the very unstable, short-lived kryptons are five krypton gases that are dealing quite a blow to public health (there are also 'meta-stable' versions of several krypton isotopes that we don't include here). They include:

• Kr-85 (beta + gamma emitter), which has a half-life of 10.7 years, decays to stable Ru-85.   

• Kr-87, which has a half-life of 1.27 hours, decays through both beta decay (a neutron splits itself apart) but also neutron decay (it spits out a neutron particle) on its journey to stable Kr-86 (that neutron can turn anything, like cells in your body, into radioactive isotopes!).  Since Kr-87 has a half-life of 1.27 hours, for almost 24 hours it is floating around our communities shooting neutrons into things converting them into radioactive versions.  For example, water can become radioactive flourine-17; oxygen changes to a different kind of oxygen: nonradioactive oxygen-17 (which is the only oxygen with a nuclear spin!), and, like we mentioned, the neutrons can turn your cells and fingernails into radioactive cells and radioactive fingernails ..that happens because 'neutron bombardment' is the same force of the universe that makes the atomic reaction in a nuclear reactor!  (Kr-87 is an example of a 'delayed neutron,' a fission product that emits neutrons after the 'fission event.'  Interestingly, Kr-87 actually can also decay by beta emission into solid rubidium-87, which is also a beta-emitter with a half life of 4.7 BILLION years.)

• Kr-88 (beta and gamma emitter) has a 2.84 hour half-life, and decays into radioactive rubidium-88 (beta and gamma) and stable strontium-88.   

  Kr-89, which has a life-life of 3.15 minutes, is a beta emitter and decays into beta- and gamma-emitting rubidium-89 (half life of 15.2 minutes), a solid.  Rubidium-89, after a few hours, converts fully into beta-emitting long-lived strontium-89.   Strontium-89 is also a bone-seeker and will irradiate the bone marrow (and other parts of our body) similar to strontium-90.  
  
  Nuclear fission creates a whole lot more Strontium-89 than Strontium-90.  Nuclear testing fallout, for example, contains about 165 times more Sr89 than Sr90.  We arrive at this number in two steps. 
  
  1. The first step is the difference in 'specific activity' (basically, how radioactive it is per gram).  To measure radioactive toxicity we will use the term 'Curie.'  The specific activity is based on radioactive radium: radium has a specific activity of 1 Curie per gram.  Sr89's specific activity is 28,200 times that, or 28,200 Curies/gram. Strontium-90 has a specific activity of 141 Curies/gram.   That's a difference of 200.  So, if one part of Sr89 was created for every part Sr90 created, the Sr89 would be 200 times more radioactive than Sr90.
  
  2. Although many people think that Sr89 and Sr90 are produced in the same yields from nuclear fission, they're not.  Nuclear explosions create radioisotopes in different quantities, some more than others. We call this 'fission yield.'  The fission yield of Sr89 (and mass 89 chain) is 2.4%, whereas it is 2.9% for Sr90 (and mass 90 chain).  
  
  Calculation: So, we know that Sr89 is 200 times more radioactive than Sr90 but Sr89 represents about 83% of the quantities produced of Sr90.  So 0.827 (2.4/2.9) times 200 = 165.4.    Interestingly, milk - contaminated with testing fallout - has just 3-4 times more Sr89 than Sr90.
  
  Sr89 and Sr90 also have differing levels of beta radiation:  Sr89 has a maximum beta of 1.463 MeV (average of 1 Mev), more than twice that of Sr90, which has max beta of 0.546 Mev.  Another difference is half-life: strontium-89 has a half life of 51 days (in 500 days, or 1 1/3 years, strontium-89 will have decayed to 1/1000 of its original radioactivity) but Sr90 has a nearly 29 year half life.  The great problem posed in the near-term by strontium-89 is its quantity introduced (by nuclear testing) into the environment compared to levels of strontium-90. 
  
  In reactor cores, the ratio of Sr90 to Sr89 ranges from 1-10 to 1-25. 

  A very conservation estimate is that 9 million Curies of Sr89 (cited in the 1997 NCI fallout study) -  several times that deposited from 'global fallout' - fell across the U.S. from atmospheric tests at the Nevada Test Site.  For Sr90, global fallout actually accounted for several times Sr90 NTS fallout.  Unfortunately, Sr89 was long viewed as a low priority isotope in fallout.  UNSCEAR 1969 noted ''Internal doses due to strontium-89 are insignificant compared with those from other sources of radiation."    

  We reproduce below a smaller version of the table (Table 4) that appeared in the scientific paper titled "The uptake and turnover of 90Sr in the human skeleton" published in 1984 in the journal Physics in Medical and Biology by D.G. Papworth and J. Vennart that shows the absorbed dose to the bone marrow from ingestion of 1 microCurie of Strontium-89 by age.   The below doses are in quantities of 'absorbed dose,' which is an unit of radiation that fits nicely with our X-ray culture - the immediate onslaught of high dose radiation over tissue.  When ingesting radionuclides, however, the picture is a bit different, since such radionuclides accumulate in organs and irradiate tissue/bone over months or years.   All the same, the absorbed dose attempts to calculate the cumulative effect of internal irradiation on a mass of tissue/bone (as if it all happened in one zap of an x-ray)

  To get the dose to the endosteal bone surfaces (cells), these values should be multiplied by 1.5 (for Sr89).

  Age	Rem/ microCurie Sr89	mRems/pCi Sr89
  0	0.316	0.000316
  0.5	0.146	0.000146
  1	0.088	0.000088
  2	0.051	0.000051
  5	0.025	0.000025
  10	0.015	0.000015
  30	0.006	0.000006
  60	0.006	0.000006

  NRC's 1977 publication NUREG 1.109 lists doses to organs from a variety of radionuclides and has no data on children's Sr89 dose to the bone, but teenagers' Sr89 bone dose is 0.00044 mrem/pCi/y ingested and 0.00038 mrem/pCi/y ingested for adults.  
  
  UNSCEAR 1964 gives 1.5 mrad/y and 0.33 mrad/y for the dose to bone marrow for every Sr89 per pCi of Sr90 per gram of calcium in the bone.   This is a fraction of the dose to bone from Sr90 (4.5 mrad/y/pCi sr90/gram of Ca; got it?). 

  Using the UNSCEAR numbers, if in the early-1960s or in 2010 (living near a nuke plant) an infant (with 30 grams of calcium in skeleton), 1 year old (105 g. Ca) and 2 year old (155 g. of Ca) all have 5 pCi of Sr90 per gram of Calcium in bone, then their yearly bone dose for just Sr89 is 45 mrem, 157 mrem, and 232 mrem, respectively.  (These numbers should be higher, maybe by a factor of 10, because the UNSCEAR dose rate factors are averaged across age groups).  The bone dose is about 1/3 (or less) of that of Sr90, mostly for the reason that Sr89 has a biological life of 14 days (every 14 days, one-half of it washes out of the system), whereas Sr90's biological half-life is several decades.
  

• Finally, there's krypton-90, which we all know decays into Strontium-90.  Strontium-90 actually decays further, into yttrium-90, which has a half-life of 64.2 hours and emits beta a bit stronger than its predecessor, 2.27 MeV.  Y-90 is believed to pool in the pituitary gland and there it impairs the development of lipids which in turn impairs lung development of the fetus.    

In the normal operations of reactors, all types of krypton (and xenon) gases in the chart can and do escape into the environment.  We must be insane that we are allowing nuclear utilities to emit these gases and their 'daughters' - most of them gamma emitters and all of them beta emitters - to float over our farms and communities, and irradiate animals and humans alike.  It is even worse that krypton gaseous 'daughters' include the worst bone seeker (Sr-90), a pituitary gland seeker (Yttrium-90), etc...that reach us and our children through poisoned food and water.

 

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From Risk Assessments:  Environmental Impact Statement:  NESHAPS For Radionucides:  Background Information Document: Volume 2 (EPA, 1989), section 4.5.1.2.2.:

"In PWRs, there are four primary sources of radioactive emissions:

     1.   Discharges from the gaseous waste management system;

     2.   Discharges associated with the exhaust of noncondensable 
     gases at the main condenser;
     
     3.   Discharges from the steam generator to blowdown
           exhaust; and

     4.   Radioactive gaseous discharges from the building
           ventilation exhaust,  including the reactor building,
           reactor auxiliary building,  fuel  handling building,
           and turbine building.

      The exhaust may pass through separate or combined exhaust
 points and typically passes through high efficiency particulate
 air (HEPA)  filters and charcoal  filters  prior to discharge.

      The gaseous waste management system collects fission
 products, mainly noble gases that accumulate in the primary
 coolant.   A small portion of the primary coolant flow is
 continually diverted to the primary coolant purification,  volume,
 and chemical control system to remove contaminants and adjust the
 chemistry and volume.   During this process, noncondensable gases
 are stripped and routed to the gaseous waste management system
 which typically consists of a series of  gas storage tanks where
 they are held long enough to allow short-lived radioactive gases
 to  decay, thereby leaving relatively small  quantities of longer-
 lived radionuclides to be released to the atmosphere.

      The second source of radioactive emissions is at the main
 condenser, where noncondensable gases are stripped from the
 secondary system and exhausted to enhance the efficiency  of
 energy  conversion.  The noncondensable gases may include small
 quantities of fission and activation products which can enter the
 secondary coolant system via  primary coolant to secondary coolant
 leakage at the steam generators.

     A  third  possible  source  of  radioactive  emissions  is the
 exhaust of noncondensed  vapors and gases associated with steam
 generator blowdown.  A portion of the  reservoir of secondary side
 water in the steam generators is routinely let down to the steam
 generator blowdown  treatment system to help maintain the chemical
 purity  of the secondary  side  coolant, thereby helping to reduce
 secondary side corrosion.  Some treatment processes result in the
 generation  of water vapor and noncondensable gases which, follow-
 ing filtration, are discharged to the environment.

     The last category of radioactive emissions is the exhaust of
 airborne radioactive materials via the building ventilation
 exhaust.  Leakage of primary and secondary coolant, steam leak-
 age, evaporation  from the fuel pool, and leakage from various
 liquid processing systems result in the accumulation of airborne
 radionuclides which are discharged via the building ventilation
 system exhaust."

[Emphasis (bold) ours]

 

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Idealist's public document archives: 1. 2.

U.S. NUCLEAR tests: 128 A + 899 U in NV,
1 A in NM, 10 U (in NM, CO, AK, MS, central NV),
100+ A, U in Pacific, 3 A in S. Atlantic
(A=aboveground; U=Underground)

'The greatest irony of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that 
the only victims of U.S. nuclear arms since World War II have been our own people.' 
- Forgotten Guinea Pigs Report, 1980

In 1986, the U.S. Dept. of Energy used the cover of the Chernobyl fallout cloud over the United States to release huge amounts of radiation into the air from a failed underground Nevada nuclear test. It was called Mighty Oak.

learn more on our global fallout page

 

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