The Removal of Some Radionuclides from the Nuclear Weapon Waste Tanks at Hanford w/Titanate IE.

[NNadir]

6. Early on in my advocacy for nuclear energy, in the years when I realized that the Chernobyl event...

Last edited Sat Sep 3, 2022, 10:27 AM - Edit history (1)

...was not going to kill millions of people, as I had credulously believed since I didn't know very much I was still influenced by the LNT nonsense. LNT, linear no threshold assumption is often stated by anti-nukes that "there is no 'safe' level of radioactivity." This exceedingly stupid of course, because it should be clear - although it isn't at the regulatory level - that people must be radioactive at all times because it is impossible to live without potassium, which always contains radioactive K-40.

I would say that for about ten years after 1986 when I thought about systems, I did so with the mentality that no radioactive atoms ever escape into the environment.

I'm not sure when I realized I was being stupid, but it was certainly well before 2007 when I discussed on another website that the release of iodine-129 from French nuclear plants was justified because the cost of removing it wouldn't save very many lives, and that the money would be spent better on things that would save lives, which is not to say that La Hague was going to fund sanitary improvements in say, Lagos:

Radioactive Isotopes from French Commercial Nuclear Fuel Found In Mississippi River.

Now, as it happens, I-129 is a very valuable material and there may be strong economic reasons for recovering it, although my claim in this regard is arcane. This said, it's release into the environment, as it has been carried out historically at La Hague, is trivial when compared to the release of carbon dioxide, and for that matter, the mercury, lead and other toxic substances the Germans are now dumping into the planetary atmosphere because they shut their nuclear plants to burn coal.

To the extent that valuable materials can or might be recovered from the Hanford tanks, the costs may be justified. Much of the industrial and research supply of Cs-137 was so recovered.

This said, if the money being spent there to satisfy the very stupid and dangerous quasi-religious belief in the LNT were diverted to things that mattered, the chief one being climate change, the Oklo example suggests that doing nothing is not going to be tragedy even remotely comparable to climate change and the death toll from people like the Germans (and everyone else) burning coal.

If nothing were done about the tanks, and they continued to leak, from a radioactivity perspective - but perhaps not from a chemical perspective - the time to reach the Columbia River - would cause the majority of the Cs-137 and Sr-90 to decay to incredibly subacute levels. Perhaps some pertechnetate and neptunetate ions, which are fairly mobile and long lived and not given much to chromatographic adsorption, might ultimately find their way to the river, but the probability that they will actually harm a human being is vanishingly small, especially when compared to the probability that a PAH from combustion in a powerplant will harm people, something PAHs routinely and consistently do without a whimper of concern from anti-nukes. This is almost understandable, in the sense that they just buy rote bullshit published by illiterate journalists or the illiterate owners of websites hyping wind and solar. One recently informed me that he or she places no credibility in people who read scientific "screeds." However, on an ethical level, these people are on a par with anti-vaxxers, in the sense that they hype and spread ignorance that kills people. In fact, air pollution kills more people every damned day - and has been doing so for decades - than Covid killed on its worst day, a point I often repeat.

I favor the monitoring of the tanks at Hanford, and I definitely approve of what we have learned about the chemistry and geology of radionuclides in the many scientific studies conducted by the PNNL and associated outside researchers. To a limited extent where real risks are identified by monitoring, I think some action may be justified, so long as it isn't as stupid as having 4000 cement trucks dump cement on the Purex tunnels. as I described in the OP here, with reference to my long "828 nuclear tests" post. In this case the "cure" was worse than the "disease."

There is a serious movement to reevaluate the LNT using the tools of molecular biology, and I'm sure the conclusions will save lives ultimately, that a future and far better educated generation will not consider the presence of a few pertechnetate ions in a cubic meter of Columbia River water is nothing, particularly when compared to 1/3 of Pakistan being under water.

If future generations are not aware of issues of relative risk - if they engage in extreme selective attention as my awful Baby Boomer generation did - the membership in it will not live very long. Life expectancy - which is very high by the way in Portland Oregon at the mouth of the Columbia River, much higher than the overall US - is decreasing. Covid is only part of it I think.

I advised my son to watch Ed Calabrese's lecture series on the LNT put out by the Health Physics Society to prep for his Nuclear Engineering curriculum. I haven't found time to watch more than the first one or two episodes, but apparently my son did watch the whole series during his summer break. I often find Dr. Calabrese's rhetoric in his papers to be a bit on the CT side about the motivations for the establishment of the LNT, but his point that the rote acceptance of the LNT has been a vast tragedy is well taken. My son watched all 22 episodes and told me that he found it very worthwhile, and very balanced. I will try to find time to watch it myself.