The Roy Process For Neutralizing Nuclear Waste

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Mythbusters to Test Cockroach Radiation Myth

(photo: Summer Rayne Oakes and her pet giant Madagascar hissing cockroach Hercules.)

Posted by Zonk on Fri Oct 19, 2007
redwoodtree writes

"An article on the site for the Tri-City Herald sums it up perfectly:

'Contrary to popular belief, not a significant amount of research goes into cockroach radiation.'

To test the old saw about 'the cockroaches being the only survivors of a nuclear war' Discovery Channel's Mythbusters are going out to Hanford Site, where plutonium was manufactured for the first nuclear bomb. It's the single most polluted nuclear waste site in the U.S.

The Mythbusters are going to take cockroaches and other insects and apply successively higher doses of radiation in a controlled setting."

The show is expected to air in about 4 months.

Discovery Channel testing cockroach resistance to radioactivity

Published Friday, October 19th, 2007
The Associated Press

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - Can you save yourself by jumping in a falling elevator? Is a penny dropped from the top of the Empire State Building lethal? Would cockroaches survive a nuclear holocaust that killed everything else?

The final question is being tested this week at the nearby Hanford nuclear reservation by a team from the "Mythbusters" show on the Discovery Channel, which expects to air the episode in about four months.

"It's been on the original list of myths since day one," said Kari Byron, who appears on the cable television series and was in town with Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci for the tests.

The crew is using an irradiator in the basement of Hanford's 318 Building just north of Richland.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory usually uses the device to calibrate dosimeters, which measure radiation exposure to humans and animals, and to check for radiation damage of video cameras, fiber optic cables and other equipment.

Lab operators agreed to the research for purposes of science education and workers donated their time, in some cases using part of their vacation allotments.

On Thursday afternoon, Byron and Imahara were cramming their uncooperative critters into a specially built roach condo to be exposed in the irradiator.

"I had to put myself in quite the mind-set to do it," Byron said.

A scientific supply company sent 200 cockroaches for the tests, "all laboratory-grade, farm fresh," Imahara said.

A control group of 50 will get no radiation, 50 others will be exposed to 1,000 rad, a lethal load of radiation for humans, 50 will be exposed to 10,000 rad and the last 50 to 100,000 rad.

The bugs will be watched over the next couple of weeks to see how soon they die.

"Contrary to popular belief, not a significant amount of research goes into cockroach radiation," Imahara said.

Flour beetles and fruit flies, also being irradiated for comparison, were a snap compared with the cockroaches, which did not take well to being corralled within a tiny block arrangement designed to make sure each bug gets the same dosage.

"They are very fast. They are very aggressive. They want to get away," Byron said. "They are opportunists."

The surviving bugs get a chauffeured ride back to San Francisco. A "Mythbusters" employee has been detailed to drive them because airlines won't let them in the passenger cabin and they can't be placed in the baggage hold without wrecking the experiment.

"We have to maintain reasonable temperature and humidity so they don't go into shock," Imahara said.

The show, while perhaps best known for exploding outhouses and cement trucks, presents good examples of scientific method and encourages developing a questioning attitude, said Michelle Johnson, a technical group manager for the national lab.

"(Viewers) should learn that things don't glow if exposed to radiation," she said. "And they won't be radioactive after being exposed to radiation."

But will the roaches grow really, really large?

"Some of our staff do believe in comic book logic," Byron said.

And if that happens, it will be a really good show, she said.

Cancer & Nuclear Workers

Workers at nuclear weapons plants were federal employees, and their health records (minus personal identifiers) are publicly available. But after Dr. Tom Mancuso and Dr. Alice Stewart published a paper in 1976 stating that Hanford workers had higher-than-average cancer rates, the government withheld the records.

Lawsuits followed, and the government only relented in 1990 (after the Cold War ended).

In 2000, DOE issued a report on a series of studies of worker health, concluding that cancer rates were higher. Congress passed a law later that year allowing workers with a variety of cancers to be compensated - although the progress has been very slow since then.

Workers at nuclear power plants are different, as they work for private companies, who are under no obligation to share health records or records of exposure (all employees wear badges measuring radiation exposure each day). As a result, there has been virtually no studies on this topic.

There was one for the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland years ago, but it was small and inconclusive. I know of one for Canadian workers that was in a journal a few years ago, but again, that found nothing.

Truly, I don't know of anything we can do to force the release of these records.

Joe Mangano
Executive Director
Radiation and Public Health Project

Advisory Board
FUSE USA

While TEPCO Tries To Bury Their Reactor Scandal, America Had Its Own Nuclear Disaster Cover Up

The NEI, IAEA, and the nuclear industry have done a great deal of damage control, worked hard to get the TEPCO reactor accident out of the news to save the Nuclear Renaissance. While that was going on, there was another MAJOR nuclear spill right here in America at the Hanford site that required evacuation of employees two miles from the supposed minor spill. Much like TEPCO's refusal to be completely TRUTHFUL, we now have DOE claiming the malfunction of a pump which caused and unknown amount HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE materials to be spread over a large area as presenting no serious risk to health and or the environment...SURE DOE, we always evacuate people two miles away for absolutely NO REASON.

Hours after the cat was out of the bag, long after the wind carried unknown mounts of cancer causing radioactive carcinogens off the site and into peoples homes and lives, DOE took the time to close the barn door after the cows were already gone of spraying a concrete fixative over the top of the spill site. After all, what's a few more DEAD BABIES or BIRTH DEFECTS when we are talking about the Hanford site...they should rename the place the Hanford Death Camp with their horrid history of environmental and worker abuse.

Pump leaks 'hot' water at Hanford

A clogged pump caused an undetermined amount of highly radioactive waste to spill on the ground Thursday night and Friday morning during a transfer operation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/118561839279910.xml

PATRICK O'NEILL - The Oregonian

A clogged pump caused an undetermined amount of highly radioactive waste to spill on the ground Thursday night and Friday morning during a transfer operation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Kim Ballinger, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy at Hanford, said several workers were involved in the transfer but none was contaminated.

As a precaution, about 50 office workers - most of them between one to two miles from the spill site - were evacuated Friday afternoon. Environmental monitoring found the traces of radioactivity Friday morning, and about 11 a.m. the workers were told to stay inside their buildings. They were moved out of the area about 3:30 p.m.

Ballinger said a team of workers sprayed a cementlike fixative over the 8- to 15-foot-diameter spill area to keep radioactive material from being carried by the wind.

Steve Wiegman, a senior technical adviser with the Department of Energy at Hanford, said no one knows how much of the radioactive liquid spilled because it rapidly sank into the ground.

"The area is very permeable, so there's no pool of liquid," he said.

The liquid was being pumped from an old single-shell storage tank to a newer double-shelled tank as part of a tank farm cleanup by contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group Inc.

Wiegman said the situation did not meet the criteria for an emergency declaration. But the U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees Hanford, has established an event coordination team and will develop a plan to clean up the spill, he said.

©2007 The Oregonian

The NRC, DOE, Nuclear Industry Shell Game

Who Needs War To Kill People, We HAVE NUCLEAR REACTORS

Let's be clear here, the NRC is not worried about human health and the environment, but cares only about protecting it's licensees and BIG BUSINESS. The entire round of supposed relicensing applications has already been decided...we are stuck with aging, decaying and delapidated reactors no matter what the risk to our health, to our environment, to our streams and rivers...we are expendable, and our government is playing a game of smoke and mirrors, lies presented as truth, facts twisted to suit their vile agenda.

First, if you trot over to sites like Entergy's bull dog lobbyist group the NEI, you can find positive spin on how the disposal of nuclear waste is being dealt with, they will tell you that the USA, Finland and Sweden all have well developed plans to build storage facilities in the next ten years...odd, same promise they made ten years ago, and ten years before that as well. Reality is, that all three of these proposed long term storage facilities are facing stiff if not over whelming opposition from environmental groups. US Senator Harry Reid has gone so far as to say that Yucca Valley is dead, that it will not be the site of a long term storage facility for high level waste.

If you listen to the undustry propaganda, Nuclear is clean, green and vital, yet a cursory glance at any facet of the military/commercial sites forced to play hosts to these monstrosities tells a different story, and shows not only the real risks to human health and the environment, but also the hidden financial costs of this dirty form of non-renewable energy that folks like the NEI and Entergy do not want you to know about, such as the Hanford Site that is not even close to being cleaned up and safe, despite $5.4 BILLION dollars so far in clean up costs, which pales when compared to the estimated clean up costs at the Portsmouth Ohio and Piketon, Kentucky Gaseous Diffusion plants that have now been closed because of the dangers they posed, and continue to pose.

Congress should halt ALL RELICENSING while the NRC, NEI, CASEnergy and the entire nuclear industry are investigated by and independent commission...a two-four year delay in the process is nothing compared to SAVING LIVES, and EXPOSING THE LIES.