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Education and Training in Radiation Protection
Published in Kenneth L. Miller, of Radiation Protection Programs, 2020
Allen Brodsky, Phyllis L. Brodsky, Kenneth L. Mossman
One effective solution to this imbalance in protection is the training of integrated health and safety technicians.38 An integrated technician provides for greater efficiencies in the utilization of staff. One technician can visit an area and deal with, or monitor for, all of the safety issues there; this is preferable to sending several technicians to address individual problems in a specific area. It not only reduces staffing requirements, but also reduces the potential for errors and omissions through joint and multiple safety reviews. One very serious accident occurred in the nuclear industry as a result of one safety professional installing a heat-sensitive device, and the another radiation safety technician placing neutron shielding in the way of the heat sensor; a serious fire ensued that resulted in major releases of plutonium to the environment.
The Nuclear State – From Consensus to Conflict
Published in Andrew Blowers, David Pepper, Nuclear Power in Crisis, 2019
The Report failed to quell public alarm. Leukaemia clusters were being noted in several locations, including Winfrith in Dorset, Aldermaston in Berkshire, and Leiston in Suffolk, which were each close to different types of nuclear installations. The Report’s methodology was attacked on the grounds that it had failed to include recently diagnosed cancers; it had failed to note the persistence of the Seascale cluster over the period since Sellafield opened; and it had employed inappropriate statistical tests on the evidence. This latter point, made by several critics (and the main theme of Chapter 11 in this volume), employs the premise that if a probability statistic was used (rather than one based on incidence per 1000 people as used in the Black Report) the leukaemia rate at Seascale would have a one in a million probability of occurring by chance if the latest cases were included. The critics stressed the fact that the Ravenglass estuary near Sellafield has 27,000 times the average amount of plutonium in the environment, and that permitted exposures from Sellafield were twenty times those of the United States, Federal Germany and Japan. They argued that the assertion that a link was ‘not proven’ was a ‘scientifically meaningless statement, since a causal relationship of this nature can never be proved’ (Guardian, 27 December, 1984). Later on it was revealed that the Black investigation had been misinformed about the level of uranium discharges into the atmosphere, and it was claimed that the right information about this might have altered the statistical conclusions.
Case Studies
Published in Patrick V. Brady, Michael V. Brady, David J. Borns, Natural Attenuation, 2018
Patrick V. Brady, Michael V. Brady, David J. Borns
Approximately 100,000 curies of plutonium were released into the atmosphere by about 400 nuclear explosive tests conducted by the U.S., Great Britain, the U.S.S.R., China, India, and France since 1945. This amounts to roughly 6,000 kilograms of plutonium, spread out over soils and natural waters (Facer, 1980). A number of accidents and intentional releases have also added plutonium to the environment. Plutonium came down from the skies as plutonium oxide, which is quite insoluble. It has moved through soils at somewhere between 0.1 and 1.0 cm per year (this number may be high as a number of evidences (see e.g., Nuclear Energy Agency, 1981) point to even slower transport). The plutonium dispersed from the Trinity explosion, the first nuclear detonation, done east of San Antonio, New Mexico on July 16, 1945, moved between 2.5 and 7.5 cm down into the soil column in the subsequent 27 years. A lot of this may be due to surface reworking.
Estimated Radiation Doses and Projected Cancer Risks for New Mexico Residents from Exposure to Radioactive Fallout from the Trinity Nuclear Test
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
Steven L. Simon, André Bouville, Harold L. Beck
The presence of unfissioned plutonium in the environment from Trinity is a reality that has been confirmed by numerous publications over several decades. Based on published soil measurement data and our model calculations, about 80% of the plutonium from the Trinity detonation was deposited in New Mexico, primarily in a region from 50 to 150 km from the detonation site in a northeast direction, i.e., within the same five counties as the high exposures were estimated to have been received. Overall, the health risks from this unfisisoned plutonium are believed to be much smaller than those from exposures to deposited fission products.