It has been almost two weeks since a continuous air monitor alarmed at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Though no one was hurt and no one is likely to be harmed in the future, an irregular drip of information interrupted by periods of silence has gradually painted a picture of a serious event worthy…
On Monday, February 24, representatives of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center (CEMRC), and local officials will meet with the public. The planned purpose of the meeting is to provide a status report and answer questions about the airborne contamination detected in the facility and the trace contaminants…
Recent events at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) provide an opportunity to reinforce the need to practice good communication skills in order to improve the future response to a contamination event. Though there is no public hazard associated with airborne contamination levels of 0.64 Bq of Am-241 and 0.046 Bq of Pu-239/240, the New…
Update: A reader pointed out that the headline is inaccurate. The issue at WIPP is airborne contamination (by radioactive material), not airborne radiation. In order to be gentle with search engines and existing links, the headline will remain as is. End Update. On Friday, February 14 at 11:30 pm, a continuous air monitoring alarm went…
The health effects of low level radiation are a continuing topic of conversation here and in many other places around the web. The Establishment view is known as the Linear No Threshold (LNT) assumption. Using that model, which was first applied to radiation standards development in 1956, every dose is assumed to impart risk to…
World Nuclear News published an article titled Consistency required for Fukushima return that mentions several topics worth increased discussion. It mentions the report recently completed by the IAEA that complimented Japan on its efforts to decontaminate areas that were affected by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station radioactive material releases. Then it went on to…
Ionizing radiation is a known, studied and understood phenomenon to which the Precautionary Principle no longer applies. It is time to shift the paradigm that governs radiation exposure limits to a sensible standard of “As High As Relatively Safe” (AHARS). Aside: I’m crediting Dr. Wade Allison with the etymology of the term – AHARS. I…
There is a small, shrinking community of stubborn, independently minded women who returned to their ancestral homes inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone. They have been there for more than 25 years, but though their numbers are naturally shrinking due to old age, most researchers agree that they are outliving their counterparts of who accepted the…
The below first appeared in the comment thread of an article by Dr. Kelvin Kemm titled Physicist: There was no Fukushima nuclear disaster. I highly recommend going and reading the full article. However, I believe that this comment thread extract deserves more attention that it would normally receive by being buried within a lengthy thread…
The media frenzy about the detection of water leaks from the vast tank farm that Tokyo Electric Power Company has been forced to build to store water used to cool the three damaged cores at their Fukushima Daiichi power station continues to sizzle, even in the face of the potential for US attack on Syria….
After posting Fear mongering over WATER leaks at Fukushima Dai-ichi a number of people challenged the concentration numbers I used in the supporting calculations. This August 23, 2013 Tepco press release contains numbers that roughly correspond to those I used, so I pressed the challengers for a source. They pointed me to a Tepco handout…
Update: (Posted August 30, 2013 0646) There is a companion post in response to comments and additional information developed in the period since the original publication. End Update. I’ll start with the bottom line first: despite all word to the contrary, there is no reason for anyone to be concerned that “contaminated” water from the…