Nuclear Pollution and the Arms Race

...If testing caused fetal and infant deaths at the rate of something like one per 100 births, as Dr...

...It gets there by settling on grass eaten by cows and is concentrated in milk...

...The guideline figure for the permitted level of radiation exposure for the general public as a result of reactor operation is set at such a level that if the whole population of the United States were to receive this additional exposure continuously, data now available on cancer incidence show that it would result in more than ten thousand deaths annually...

...But a combination of a temperature inversion to keep the gases close to the ground, wind direction, and an accidental release can give some people a dose far above the "maximum permissible...

...Instead, after all our early worries about the Russians, it is we who are callously breaking it...

...The most dramatic effect of the arms race on the environment came from the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere in the era before the partial test ban of 1963...

...Radioactive fission products in unprecedented quantities were carried high in the atmosphere by the mushroom clouds of the big H-bomb explosions, and gradually settled over much of the earth...

...The Federal Government pays for most of what limited insurance coverage there is, and beyond that lets the public take the risk of the possible consequences of a serious reactor-runaway accident...

...During the routine operation of reactors and fuel-processing plants there are also both planned and inadvertent releases of low-level wastes that contaminate air and water...

...Further pressure to abandon the test ban is apt to come with the growth of the ABM system...

...Already failure of one tank has spilled 60,000 gallons of that lethal brew to find its uncertain way through the soil...

...It is our country that has principally fired the nuclear arms race by insisting on being way ahead in most categories...

...Depending on their chemical nature, some of them locate preferentially in certain sensitive parts to do their radioactive damage in a concentrated' fashion...

...Yet even without nuclear war and without nuclear testing, the arms race still has its effect on the environment through the preparation of nuclear materials...

...Such a reduction, if enforced, would drastically modify the operation of commercial reactors...

...Since it is impossible to pinpoint all radioactive damage at low levels, the standards necessarily depend on somewhat arbitrary judgments...

...Thus the "maximum permissible dose" for the public is far below the level of identifiably radioactive damage to the individual and may seem to be a conservative standard...

...It is this waste disposal . . . that is the most serious problem nuclear powor presents to the eiivii"Ottiwoiit» They expose ores that were once locked underground to leaching by rain and consequent radioactive pollution of our rivers...

...During the course of nuclear bomb testing, the danger of one particular element of fallout, strontium 90, was initially denied by Federal Government spokesmen...

...The annual amount of the release of hazardous elements from any nuclear plant is limited by standards set up by the Atomic Energy Commission...

...Radiation does its damage to individual cells within the body, and there is good reason to believe that genes and the rapidly multiplying cells in unborn and young children are more sensitive to such damage than are the cells in adults...

...In terms of this natural background, the increase of overall radiation was not large and some authorities scoffed at misgivings...

...Of more than two hundred U.S...

...The only current use for plutonium is for bombs...

...The normal background causes some cancer and genetic change, and a slight increase could not be easily isolated and recognized...

...These supply the enriched uranium used as fuel in the industrial reactors at a favorable price to industry...

...It enters into bodily processes as part of water molecules...

...Radioactive tritium, the stuff of the H-bomb, is also produced in reactors and finds its way both into the atmosphere and into water supplies...

...From the way heavier doses affect adults, it could be surmised that considerably less than 100 times the test-era fallout might eliminate the next generation...

...If it does exceed the permitted level for a short time in an accidental release, as sometimes happens, the power level must be reduced the rest of the year to compensate...

...As nuclear power plants become more numerous, the release from many plants may compound the exposure to radiation for persons in a wider area...

...Permissible doses for workers in atomic plants are set well below that level, about one per cent of the lethal standard per year...

...As a radioactive part* of the bone, within which blood is made, strontium 90 can cause leukemia and other forms of cancer...

...As another form of subsidy, the Government runs the huge, expensive, energy-consuming, thermal-diffusion plants...

...Such considerations have led to clamor for an effective independent agency to set and enforce the safety standards, since AEC is now both promoter of nuclear power and its own policeman...

...It produces kinds of radioactive substances that are different and which settle in and attack the human body in specific ways, unlike the natural background radiation...

...It also attacks the genes, and can cause birth defects and infant death...

...We have used as much fossil fuel in the last quarter century as in all previous history, and we are beginning to feel the pinch...

...At high levels, it is known how much radiation will probably kill a man, and how much will probably give him serious radiation sickness...

...Furthermore, the uranium separation consumes a lot of power generated by burning coal...

...Yet this oft-quoted comparison with natural background is unfair because the fission process, that which takes place in bomb explosions and in electric power generating reactors, does not merely increase the background radiation...

...A third form of subsidy is the guaranteed price at which the Government will buy all the plutonium industry produces...

...But the fission process creates new types of radioactive atoms that do not exist in nature, and that are dissipated through the air (and water and food supplies) until they settle in the body...

...As the arms race goes on piling overkill on overkill, an all-out nuclear war could cause fallout extremely more intense than that caused by testing in the late 1950s and early 1960s...

...It would be too expensive to interrupt operation for each failure, so leaks are tolerated in something like one per cent of the fuel elements before shutdown...

...Rather than planning still more rapid consumption, madly doubling power consumption every ten years, we should be acting as careful stewards of the planet's resources for the maximum long-term benefit of mankind...

...We normally live with a weak exposure of radiation from cosmic rays and from ordinary rocks...

...The hot fuel elements in a reactor are sealed in a thin metal bonding intended to prevent the cooling fluid from coming into direct contact with the uranium and absorbing the radioactive fission products...

...These storage tanks require most elaborate perpetual care...

...The subsidies provided by the Atomic Energy Commission at the taxpayers' expense take several forms...

...The needs of both threaten the environment in a cumulative way...

...With the perpetual expansion of the military establishment, nuclear weapons production is likely to grow, increasing radioactive pollution at home and around the world, strengthening the military-industrial complex, and moving mankind closer to the full horror of nuclear war...

...They not only need power to cool them, but new high-quality tanks must be installed about every twenty years, on through the centuries, to replace old tanks damaged by radiation...

...we should be acting as careful stewards of the planet's resources for the maximum long-term benefit of mankind...

...Even though we take the view that the Sternglass thesis has not been proved, the very possibility that all-out nuclear war could end the human race is a more cogent reason than any other that such large-scale nuclear war should be avoided, and that the arms race should be terminated...

...The commercial fuel processing plant at West Valley, New York, is responsible for keeping its low-level waste within permissible limits after discharge into a creek...

...Such plants are at Hanford, Washington (the site of the original wartime plant), Paducah, Kentucky, and Savannah River, South Carolina...

...This means that after a hundred years, they would still be about one-tenth as radioactive as now and still a grave hazard in view of the huge amounts being put in perpetual-care storage...

...The mine and uranium mill tailings—the waste products—are themselves a serious local danger...

...Yet people went about their daily lives without noticing any tangible or identifiable effects on the environment...

...The way President Nixon has hopped on the environment bandwagon with enthusiastic words, if little substance, suggests he may have sensed its importance in weakening the opposition that was nearly successful last time, as he seeks to step up the ABM program...

...The recent sudden shift of liberal concern from the ABM to the environment seems to be leaving a vacuum where pressure is urgently needed to stop the arms race by diplomacy and restraint...

...More serious are the new man-made radioactive elements, by-products of the reactors that make plutonium and tritium for bombs...

...E. J. Stern-glass of the University of Pittsburgh claims, then a nuclear war causing 100 times as much fallout could presumably kill approximately all children born, and thus end the human race...

...cosmic rays passing through the atmosphere also make a special radioactive substance, carbon-14, that becomes rather generally distributed through body tissues...

...If we could stop this arms-race robbery from human needs and if we could evolve an economic system dependent on stability rather than continual growth, then we could both spread the bounty of our environment more equitably over the centuries and get rid of the awful pollution with which our Twentieth Century gluttony is poisoning us...

...The basic shortcoming of the President's budget message was that it called for no really substantial transfer of funds from Vietnam and the arms race to the anti-pollution effort, and gave no indication of an intention to taper off the arms race and make this transfer possible in the future...

...Nuclear materials are produced to fuel both the arms race and the electric utilities industry...

...While this number is small compared with the population, it is a large number of people to kill with a deliberate change in the environment...

...negotiation stance at the Vienna arms reduction talks should be one of initiative to attain substantial mutual limitations and reductions, rather than one of stalling until we get ABMs and MIRVs before talking seriously...

...The radiation specialists who arrived at this conclusion, J. W. Gofman and A. R. Tamplin of Berkeley and Livermore, California, advocate that the permitted limit be reduced tenfold...

...He is on the editorial board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and is a frequent contributor to scholarly journals...

...It is hoped that plutonium as well as enriched uranium will be used to fuel future reactors, but we do not yet know how...

...It concentrates particularly rapidly in the fast-growing bone of fetuses and young children...

...Previously he was engaged in research on the theory of nuclear structure at Argonne National Laboratory...

...Yet we already have in those buried tanks a hundred million gallons of the stuff, and apparently plan to go on producing it at an ever-increasing rate...

...It remained for University of Rochester scientists, acting on their own initiative as environment buffs, to discover that the radioactivity of the creek was far above the maximum permissible limit...

...David R. Inglis is professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts...

...Every gallon of valuable fuel, every pound of copper and uranium that goes into the arms race is robbed from the present and future quality of human life...

...When breathed in air, a little of it dissolves in body fats...

...The manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons add to the world's burden of radioactive contamination, while industrial activity, stimulated by the arms race and civilian demand, belches noxious contaminants into the atmosphere and water courses...

...Still other nuclear reactors are owned and operated by the electric utilities industry under Government subsidy for the dual purpose of producing plutonium (much of it for bombs) and electric power...

...However, in the power-generating plants, technology is pushed to its limit of high temperature and the metal seal frequently fails...

...Most of these wastes came from weapons production not associated with electric power production...

...Strontium 90 has a long-lived radioactivity...

...Some of these have lifetimes that are short enough to make the immediate radiation intense and yet long enough that they create a hazard for tens or hundreds of years, such as strontium 90 and cesium 137, which have half-value decay times of about thirty years...

...The partially spent fuel is sent to a reprocessing plant where the radioactive wastes are extracted in acid solution that is kept so hot by the radioactive decay that it boils if it is not continually cooled...

...Starting in St...

...Louis, and then more widely, records have been kept of strontium 90 in the teeth normally lost by children, as well as in fetal skeletons...

...Study of survivors of Hiroshima showed little genetic damage, but there the bomb burst high in the air and its debris was carried away in the mushroom cloud...

...The direct way to modify the arms race is by negotiation and wise example...

...This is so lethal that if only three gallons were distributed equally among the entire world's population, this would suffice to reach in everyone on earth what is considered the danger point in radiation for the human body...

...Some of the nuclear reactors are operated for the Federal Government exclusively for the production of bomb materials...

...We should be eager to preserve and extend the test ban...

...The radioactive intensity of the liquid (measured in a unit known as a "curie") may run asNhigh as a thousand curies per gallon or more...

...This extremely lethal brew must be prevented from entering the environment, but the containment is not perfect despite all the care taken...

...Rocks and cosmic rays provide a natural background of gamma rays (deeply penetrating X-rays) and less penetrating beta-rays (electrons) that pass through the whole body indiscriminately, causing weak ionization on the way...

...The production of nuclear materials—plutonium, tritium, and separated uranium—involves the production of enormous amounts of radioactive materials that must be disposed of as waste, and in the production of power which ends up by heating rivers and lakes enough to effect aquatic life...

...It thus appears that radiation-induced fetal and infant mortality may pose a more serious problem than cancer in adults...

...It is the disposal of radioactive wastes that is the most serious problem nuclear power presents to the environment...

...After a period of a year or two the reactor is shut down while the fuel is removed and replaced...

...One is risk insurance...

...Yet these maladies arise also from other causes and one cannot pinpoint which cases are caused by the arms race...

...The U.S...

...The release from the stack of a single atomic plant is limited, so that it may not exceed the permitted level for people in the neighborhood, on a yearly average...

...At present, such high-level wastes in this country are stored in about 200 large underground steel-and-concrete tanks, holding as much as a million gallons each...

...Most of the radioactivity produced by a reactor stays inside the metal fuel elements in the reactor core...

...Thus, while the overall radiation dosage may be raised only a few per cent by bomb test fallout, the biological damage is disproportionately serious...

...But for the general populace, the permissible level is set about ten times lower, partly because of the possible seriousness of genetic damage...

...This is one route by which strontium and other radioactive fission products get into rivers...

...underground tests, seventeen have vented seriously and the radioactivity from two has been officially reported as observed in Canada...

...But this is still only an accelerated recirculation of nature's radioactivity, mainly that of radium with its slow and therefore relatively weak decay...

...Yet in our ardor for preserving the environment we must not forget that there is a far more compelling reason for putting a lid on the arms race, namely, reducing the risk of nuclear war...

...More recent studies on mice have shown that strontium 90, which is spread from bomb debris and reactors, has a special affinity for causing genetic damage leading to fetal and infant mortality, in addition to its tendency to settle in bone and cause cancer and leukemia more in the young than in adults...

...The marvelous natural resources that eons of geologic history have provided for us are limited indeed...

...Concern for the environment, and even legislation protecting it, can mildly shackle some of the details of weapons production, but only a change of foreign policy can stop it...

...Our overkill is such that we could afford to set an example of moderation and watch for reciprocal restraint on the other side...

...Both because this subsidy was necessary to make the rather marginal hoped-for profits sufficiently attractive to get the industrial program started and because the plutonium is used for bombs, the nuclear electric power program may be considered a handmaiden of the armaments program and its contribution to environmental pollution may be blamed partly on the arms race...

...Some of it goes up the stack at the reactor, because of leaks, and the rest of it escapes at the fuel-processing plant...

...Krypton 85 is a radioactive gas which, like neon and argon, does not easily react with other atoms to form solids, and remains a gas that escapes into the atmosphere...

...Invisible though the fallout was, we are well rid of the insidious atmospheric testing which might have been much heavier by now if we had had no test ban...

...Its threat was first established by university scientists in independent research...

...It is chemically similar to calcium and settles in bone...