By Ramaswami Ashok Kumar, B.E.,M.E(Power), Negentropist, Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal,299, Tardeo Road, Nana Chowk, Mumbai-400007.
Copyright © 2013 Ramaswami Ashok Kumar
http://deathdealersnukes.blogspot.com/2008/01/unacceptable-dangers-of-nuclear-energy.html
Summary
The nuclear disasters of Windscale/Sellafield as reported by Greenpeace are correlated with Indian Infant Mortality during those fateful years-1971to 1978 and 1983 to 1984 and it is found that like the atmospheric weapons tests and Chernobyl, they have taken away the lives of millions of Indian infants. Does dose as a concept of internal radioactivity have any meaning left for human rights violations by the meanest?
Evidence from narratives of historical discharges
The peak of radioactivity releases from atmospheric nuclear weapons tests coincides with the peak of Annual Infant Mortality of India during the test years (See Table 137 & Figures 137 & IMIANT below) and the correlation with UNSCEAR dose is logarithmic and extremely significant (r=0.696,p=3.5E-9). This quality of correlation is also true of the Chernobyl accident (Figure IIMNA4589). The peak annual radioactive discharges from Sellafield and the peak annual infant mortalities in India occur synchronously as brought out here in my analysis of extracts from two reports: May J. The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age (1989) and Martiniussen E. 2003. Report No. 8. The Bellona Foundation. Not only this but the dose response(ICRP-UNSCEAR 2000) of India infant mortality is logarithmic and extremely significant(r= 0.883,p=2.48E-7) (Figure IIMNA4589). Of particular significance in the context of cell damages, also at the DNA level, is the finding below that in percent terms, annual mean total source point radiation discharges (using Becquerels) and the risk of annual India excess infant mortalities and stillbirths are the same (Chi-square Sum 8.2, p (Chi-square Sum) 0.9755 for 1971-89( Figure RTRD7189). Here a new dose concept called The Meanest or Annual Total Source Point Radiation -is developed and used. The nuclear age figures for the annual infant mortalities are confirmed by the values for the annual under 5 mortalities (Both over the pre-nuclear controls). See http://plutoniumaradiumabillionpeoplehitdna.blogspot.com/ .
The concerned URL is repeated more fully below to rescue the article from a fraud perpetrated by unknown miscreants on the above address:
http://plutoniumaradiumabillionpeoplehitdna.blogspot.com/2007/12/health-effects-of-worldwide-nuclear.html
There is abundant extremely significant evidence of the repair process in action as well. With 1971-89 total radioactivity strength of sources at Sellafield and Chernobyl simulated during 1911-1945, no correlation is found between infant mortality and radioactivity(ICRP-UNSCEAR 2000) during the pre-nuclear era. It is significant that the percent annual worldwide infant mortality as well as the percent annual India infant mortality both correlate highly to extremely significantly with the percent total radioactive discharge due to Sellafield and Chernobyl(r=0.64,p=0.003 and r= 0.807, p=2.93E-5 respectively). Further, % World Infant Mortality, % India Infant Mortality and Mean % Total Radiation Discharge due to Sellafield and Chernobyl all come from the same population as determined by the F- Test (See Table F-Test). In both cases the meanest dose is the cause, applying the precautionary principle, in view of a number of workers having found a correlation connecting cause and effect regarding infant mortality and radiation exposure in several countries. Including the strength of strontium 90(Sr90) in the liquid effluent of Sellafield brings out the resonance effect of strontium 90 on the peaks of the worldwide infant mortalities and of India’s(Figure IRIM7189). Biphasic cell response is shown here to be a cell property rather than being unique to internal radioactive element contamination. Transgenerational echoes (evidence provided here for India infant mortality rate, World infant mortality rate, India Still birth Rate and Karnataka State infant mortality rate ) lend further eloquent support to revise the pre DNA Radiation Protection Standards in the direction of ensuring safety to all life without delay, as the ECRR 2003 Recommendations do. Even the fish have not been spared and they seem to have suffered mortality due to radioactive contamination and then when people ate the contaminated fish they too suffered!
In the table 137 below, the world IMR is given erroneously in reverse time sequence. The error is regretted-Author.
See the deterministic correlations(!) with Sr-90 deposits due to Atmospheric Tests of Nuclear Weapons of India Excess Infant Mortality Rate and World Infant Mortality Rate at
http://glaringlacuna.blogspot.in/2013/10/the-worlds-dams-are-causing-extinction.html
These correlations may be used to corroborate/improve the ECRR 2010 Recommendations.
If we insert the values for the World IMR in the correct time sequence, we obtain the corrected Table 137 as follows:
- Then the correlations of the world IMR and the India IMR shapes become similar and in synchronism with each other as would be expected if the cause is common, namely nuclear contamination of the bodies. The corrected Figure 137 follows(To view the full image right click on the figure and view it in a separate tab):
A New Dose ConceptA New Dose Concept for the Black Box whose Input is Radioactive Strength of Source and Output is for example Percent Infant Mortality is proposed.The Meanest:The radioactive source strengths of Sellafield and Chernobyl are used to construct a new radiation dose measure called the Meanest. The objective is to be able to describe the detriment at the molecular level for internal radiation. It is the Annual % Total Radioactive Discharge Strength or simply %Total Radioactive Discharge. See Table SACREDM below:Using the Meanest(Table SACREDM) as a measure of dose, a detailed nuclear discharge plot for Sellafield and Chernobyl is set against the excess annual infant mortality and annual still births for India in Figure NDSC: Note the coincidence of the peaks of India infant mortality with the discharge peaks. Also note how the still births reach their peak one to two years after the peaks for the discharges. First the children are born defective to die within a year; thereafter they are born still. This shows a quick deterioration in the condition of the mother and the child in the womb brought about by internal radioactivity exposure(infant mortality going down is made up by increased still births). And see the impact on fertility: It has reduced from 100 percent in 1971 to 63.5% by 1997! Is this phenomenon also exhibited by the individual States of which India is composed?A typical State in India, chosen at random, Karnataka, shows striking similarities to the ALL-INDIA picture(Figure 120 & Figure BR7189WIK) : The resonances of the Karnataka Infant Mortality and its Rate with the %Total Radioactive Discharge from Sellafield and Chernobyl and with the % Sr 90 Liquid Discharge Sellafield’s are too glaring! The phenomenon of simultaneous infant mortalities in Karnataka, India and the World is extremely significant in their correlations to the percent Total Radioactive source discharge strength from Sellafield and Chernobyl.In some Figures below the Total Radioactive Discharge is shown as 535.72 instead of the 614.6 of Table SACREDM. Such figures have not taken 14C discharges and 3H aerial discharges from Sellafield. The resonance of the peaks of Total Radioactivity Strength with Infant Mortality remains unaffected by the omission.
Biphasic Response of the cell is a typical characteristic property of the cell in response to any internal contamination as illustrated by the evidence above (Figure CCR):
The toxicity of lead in plants depicts similar behaviour to internal contamination of living beings (ex: humans).
Thus see Figure CCR: Two opposing effects are seen in both the uptake of lead into mosses and of pregnancy outcomes in India in response to internal radionuclide contamination:
One effect is the toxicity due to lead accumulation in nucleii of the cells of plants and the other is the response of the cell to combat it. This is a series of biphasic responses as the lead dose from the substratum increases. Similarly in humans, the deposition of energy in the cell as the Sr90 radionucleii( and others) decay causes induction of cell repair/mutation effects and the battle between these two opposing effects causes a biphasic response. In such a chaotic setting, it is wise to apply the precautionary principle. And note that as the dose increases, of highly toxic lead due to coal fired plants or the release of radionuclides by both coal fired plants and nuclear power plants, the health of all life adversely degenerates with time. This is illustrated by lead poisoning, where above a certain limit (about 46% in lead in mosses) the living being exerts no more resistance to the toxicity. The precautionary principle means that when we are unsure about the risks of a certain industrial process we should not allow it to proceed until we can be sure that it is safe.
For a discussion of the biphasic response with data from studies conducted with mosses on lead uptake see the URL:
http://chamalpuragoisothermala.blogspot.com
For new recommendations on Radiation Risk due to internal contaminants see 2003 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk: Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes. Regulators’ Edition: Brussels,2003. Eds. Chris Busby et al.Website: www.euradcom.org
Transgenerational echo of the 1970s in the 1990s is clearly seen dramatically in the following figure (Figure 125):
Significant correlations exist between all the pregnancy outcomes with Sr90 Liquid Discharges from Sellafield ( Figure 135):
There is no significant difference in the annual means for %Risk and % Total Radioactive Discharge (%TRD). The Chi-square distribution: X^2=8.2 and p= 0.9755. For the Sum of Infant Mortality Rate and Stillbirth Rate in percent of its Maximum, less than 8% of the variations in the regression of its Mean with Mean % Total Radioactive Discharge Strength remain to be explained: Extremely significant correlations between Mean % Rate Risk and Mean %TRD as well as between % Risk and Mean % TRD exist. For correlation coefficients, their probabilities and definitions of the % Risk terms used here see the legend in Figure RTRD7189 below.
The Total Toll 1971-89 and during the Chernobyl Years 1986-89.
The total toll of infant mortality and still births in India during 1971-89 due to Sellafield operations, Chernobyl accident, nuclear weapons tests and normal operations of nuclear fuel cycle is given in Table MIMSB7189A. The total toll as given in Table Deaths is 8785245. The toll of infant mortality and still births due to Chernobyl is included in the toll for 1986-89, titled Chernobyl. The 1986-89 toll equals 664234 deaths.
The Mortalities could have been more than 25% higher but for the body’s Repair Process.
In Figure MDIMSBR7189(and Table MIMSB7189) below, notice that the congruence even though almost 100 percent between % Risk (See definition in the figure referred to here) of fatal pregnancy outcomes and the Mean of the Meanest Dose: Mean % Total Radioactive Discharge Strength, established by the Chi-squared test, there is a steady state difference between the annual mean % Infant Mortality plus Stillbirths (India) and the Annual Mean of the Meanest Dose. This I hypothesize is because of the cell repair that takes place in nature. The difference for 1971-89 between the Annual Mean of Percent Total Radioactive Discharge and Annual Mean Percent Excess Infant Mortality + Stillbirths (calculated with the Infant Mortality plus Stillbirth Rate over the pre-nuclear Mean Rate for 1911-45 and both over the compound interest rate 1999/1911) is 3.67 standard errors of the mean with 36 degrees of freedom and is extremely significant (p=0 .00079). There is no difference in the statistical significance as determined by the chi-square distribution and the T distribution. The chi-square distribution shows that the steady state difference is significant: Chi-square sum= 38, p = 0.00383. The estimated excess infant deaths including stillbirths during 1971-89 is 8 million seven hundred eighty five thousand two hundred forty five due to radioactive discharges during this period(Table MIMSB7189A). The Repair Mechanisms seem to have prevented during 1971-89 a total of three million infant mortalities and stillbirths during the period or 25 % of the total twelve million fatalities of infants including still births expected during the period on the basis of the assumption that the mortalities would follow the radioactive discharge in percent terms without a difference between them in the steady state. The basis for this contention is that the electron tracks through cell nuclei created by internal radioactivity are described by a poisson distribution. Similarly, the difference in the means attributed to cell repair is a poisson distribution with mean of 12.997 and variance 10.2 for the mean cell repair. The mean % Total Radioactive Discharge(Strength) is also a poisson distribution: mean 76.6 and variance 71.99. And this matches the poisson frequency for zero cell repairs(Figure TRDZCR and Table TRDZCR).
This body response to radioactive contamination is similar to plant response to lead toxicity(Fig. 130).
Defining for our purpose, %Cell repair as (Mean% Total Radioactive Discharge- Mean % Infant Mortality)/Mean% Total Radioactive Discharge*100, % Infant Mortality and its connection to Nuclear Pollution is studied. The percent values in the above definition are with respect to the maxima of the quantities concerned.
Cell repair in the radioactive pollution context is displayed in the nuclear age but not in the pre-nuclear(1911-45). See Figure PNIM.
The radioactive holocaust
The radioactive discharge is the cause of the perfect holocaust of India Excess Infant Mortalities, Excess Stillbirths and Excess Under Five Mortalities over pre-nuclear age values as shown by inferences from the discussions of the data exhibited here. I consider now excesses of infant mortality over the compound interest rate 1999/1911. This enables us to compare like with like in the nuclear and pre-nuclear eras. The plausibility of cell repairs in the nuclear age is confirmed by the following observations:
1. There is extremely significant correlation of percent excess infant mortality computed by taking the IMR over the pre-nuclear mean rate 1911-45 (values over the compound interest rate (cir) for infant mortality rate between 1999 and 1911) with percent total nuclear discharge from Sellafield and Chernobyl(r = 0.812, p = 2.44E-5) during 1971-89 but none for percent excess infant mortality (over the above cir) during 1911-29 when in a simulation, the percent total nuclear discharge for 1971-89 is impressed between 1911-29( r = 0.3379, p = 0.161). See Figure IMNAPNA.
2. Figures IMSBMD7189 and IMRMD illustrate the extremely significant exponential regressions between Mean percent Total Radioactive Discharge Strength and %(IM+SB) and % IM respectively:
Virtuous or Virtual Behaviour
What is true of purity is true of all other virtues
We are the makers of our own destiny
Truth penetrates even the deaf
Haikus on Internal Contaminants
Poison distributes
As poisson frequency
For zero cell repairs
This distribution
Matches percent frequency
Of source becquerels
A becquerel is
Radioactive decay
Once every second
We ingest inhale
Involuntary poisons
They lodge in our cells
Infant mass murders
World and India’s resonate
With Sr90 peaks
Cause? Clearly nuclear!Strontium is calcium
Poor living Trojan!
Nuke activities
Sellafield or Chernobyl
Perfect murderers!
Policy at fault-
Inviolability:
Body’s right transgressed
Nuke activities
Contaminate body cells
Causing foetal deaths
Thus ICRP’s
Safety standards are deadly
Pre-DNA stuff.
Concentration on
Cancer as the main outcome
Disregards nature
Governments must change
They must protect the public
Implement the truth!
Till you follow truth
Stop nuke contamination
Life’s not from your grace.
You foolish rulers!
Transgenerational crimes
Await due justice.
If you will have laws
Obeyed without mutiny
God Almighty’s they!
Else all atom bombs
Will not keep down mutiny
Be just virtuous!
Coal or nuke power
Are perfect mass murderers
To the far future!
Use living power
It’s isothermal power
It’s natural nuke!
Living energy!
Uses soil, rain, sun, wind
On the land it stands!
Can you make this claim
Of coal or nuke energy?
They destroy all life.
Living power’s worth:
Preserves power wastelessly
Produce, use return!
Yogins renouncing
All attachment perform work
By spirit, body
This is always PURE!
This is truly virtuous.
Reverdure your call.
Reforest the earth
Cooperate all of you
To live, reforest!
Perform actions right!
Using least power, urja
Reproduce in health!
Do not disregard
This wheel of life eternal
Else you all perish!
End of Haiku set
By Sarvodaya Mandal’s
Member Ashoka.
No, no Not even the fish were spared(Figure 3 and Table 1): Estimated total fish catch in the Eastern Pacific Ocean correlates significantly with the Northern Hemisphere Adult Ingest+Inhale radioactive dose due to atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons:
Table 1(Concluded).
See the section “The connection to the thermohaline gradient and the Gulf Stream” below for the hypothesis for which Table 1 and Figure 3 form additional scientific evidence. The cause –effect relation is considerably strengthened by recent studies of the effects of radioactive contamination at the level of the DNA. See
2003 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk: Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes. Regulators’ Ed.Brussels 2003.page 182(9).
An application of the precautionary principle has to be made and an intensive democratic discussion over an extended time period is called for and in India this must be conducted in megacities down to grama sabhas- a referendum. People have to be involved and their consent obtained after all the facts have been brought to their notice.
Narratives of historical radioactive discharges from Sellafield: An Extract
1973-1979
() Windscale, Sellafield, UK, Part 2 Source: Greenpeace Books The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age
1973-1979
() Windscale, Sellafield, UK, Part 2 Source: Greenpeace Books The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age
During the 1970s, the Windscale reprocessing plant at Sellafield continued to be plagued by a series of incidents and accidents, starting in 1973 with a major setback to plans to increase the facility's capacity to handle spent fuel from overseas.
The B205 reprocessing plant for Magnox fuel had gone into operation in the mid-1960s, and was soon found to have excess capacity. The plant's operators foresaw a prosperous future in the reprocessing of spent uranium oxide fuel from the new generation of AGRs and light-water reactors, but B205 was not designed to cope with this material in the form in which it arrived. A disused neighbouring building, B204, was therefore proposed as a treatment plant in which the spent uranium oxide fuel would be dissolved in Butex, an organic solvent, in preparation for reprocessing in B205. After extensive decontamination and rebuilding, this 'Head End Plant' went into operation in August 1969 and ran until mid-1972, when building B205 was shut down for one year for repairs.When the Head End Plant started up again, on 26 September 1973, an unpleasant surprise was in store. Unknown to the operators, previous batches of dissolved fuel had been depositing granules of insoluble radioactive fission products in the process vessel. The heat produced by these granules had boiled away the last of the liquid and had heated up the floor of the vessel.
When the new batch of solvent was poured in, it reacted violently on the hot surface and produced a steam explosion that sent a burst of radioactive gas out into the air of the plant.Alarms sounded, but a report on the incident by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII)later revealed that these alarms frequently went off for no reason and staff initially ignored them. (The NII was set up in 1960 as a result of the 1957 Windscale fire.)
When senior staff finally realised that there was radioactivity in the 10-storey building, the general order to evacuate was given by personnel running from floor to floor shouting at everyone to get out. During this time, the air was potentially lethal, but since no record was kept of who was working where, it took half an hour to find and evacuate the last of the workers. In all, 35 members of staff were found to have skin and lung contamination, mostly from ruthenium-106. Inside the building, levels of contamination were found up to 100 times the maximum permitted level.
For two years British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) continued to claim that all was well and that the plant would soon be back in action, but after four years they had to concede that it could not be used again. The plant that had been designed to handle 300 tonnes of fuel a year only ever processed a total of 100 tonnes.
During excavation work in 1975, high levels of radiation were detected in the soil - so high that the driver of the mechanical digger had to work in a lead-lined cab. It was finally realised,on 10 October 1976, that radioactive water was leaking from the nearby silo B38, in which Magnox fuel cladding was stored. An NII inquiry, published in 1980, found that the leak may have started as far back as 1972 and had resulted in 50,000 curies of radioactivity escaping.One of those involved in the excavation work was 21-year-old David Berry, an engineering student on industrial training. 15 months later he died from a type of lymphatic cancer. At the inquest, no one mentioned the excavation work, and an open verdict was returned. BNFL did not even inform the government of the silo leak until a month after his death.
The B38 leak had come at a sensitive time for BNFL. Public outcry at proposals for the expansion of reprocessing facilities and the building of a new Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) had led to pressure for a public inquiry into the plans, and now Windscale was on the front pages again. In March 1977, the UK Environment Secretary announced the setting up of the public Windscale Inquiry which, under the chairmanship of Mr Justice Parker,sat from 14 June for 100 days.
In the course of the inquiry, during which evidence was given under oath, 194 significant events were revealed to have occurred at the Windscale plant up until 1977. It is known that this list is not exhaustive, but it is more realistic than the 27 incidents that had previously been made public.
The inquiry, which was later accused of ignoring all arguments put forward by objectors,found in favour of the proposed reprocessing expansion, although the government bowed to pressure for a parliamentary debate before a decision was taken. The debate ended with a vote in favour of THORP, but the vote against was the largest ever recorded in opposition to a nuclear decision in Britain.
In 1979, in the course of sinking bore holes to determine how far the radioactivity from B38 had spread, even higher levels of radiation were detected, so high that they could not have come from that silo. Workers digging the bore hole were undoubtedly contaminated. The radiation was initially ascribed to a spillage some 20 years earlier, but further tests revealed that the leak was recent and continuing. It took almost a year to discover the new source.
Despite a 'comprehensive' survey of safety at the Windscale plant in 1976, a tank in the disused building B701 had filled up with high-level radioactive waste accidentally diverted to it in the complex system of pipes. Unnoticed over the years, the liquid had overflowed the tank and filled the sump below. The needle of the sump gauge - which appeared to give a normal reading - was in fact on its second circuit round the dial.
By February 1979, the highly radioactive liquid had been leaking from the sump, through the side walls of the building and into the ground, for at least three years. This major leak was the subject of a damning report by the Health and Safety Executive, who considered that poor management and maintenance were to blame. An NII report in August 1980, which put the leak at 'rather more than 100,000 curies', led to several recommendations, as well as the observation that BNFL had violated several conditions set out in the Sellafield site license. However, no action was taken against them.
14 November 1983
() Sellafield, UK, Part 3 Source: Greenpeace Books The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear
Age
() Sellafield, UK, Part 3 Source: Greenpeace Books The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear
Age
Windscale's worst known accident of the 1980s happened to have witnesses present. On 14 November 1983, four Greenpeace divers from the ship Cedarlea, who were taking samples of silt near the end of the pipe through which radioactive waste is routinely discharged from the plant, suddenly saw the readings on their Geiger counters leap from the normal four to 10 counts per second to more than 500, and then go over maximum on the dial. They had been contaminated by an oily radioactive slick that had apparently come from the pipe. The divers left the area, but more than 24 hours later their clothes and inflatable dinghy were still giving high readings. The NRPB asked them to have a check-up and found traces of radioactive ruthenium on the dinghy. Their clothing had to be destroyed, but the dinghy was decontaminated and returned to them.
Five days later, heavily contaminated items were found on the beach. In the meantime an inspector from the Department of the Environment (DoE) had visited the plant and been told of an oil slick, but not that it was radioactive, and the beach had been declared free of pollution.
On 24 November, after a review of BNFL's monitoring techniques, the DoE asked for further checks, and these led to the discovery of radioactivity near the surface of the sea and of radioactive debris on the beach. The public were warned against using a 200- m section of the beach.
On 9 December, the DoE extended the closed area to 40 km, having found that radioactive debris was being washed up north and south of the pipeline and that contamination levels were higher than they had been the previous month, between 100 and 1,000 times the normal level. It was also revealed that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) had withheld information it had received concerning the contamination of fish and solid waste in the area. In Parliament, the Secretary of State for the Environment announced that, as the leak involved a possible breach of the law on discharges, the matter was being referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Scientists were finding that the rate at which contaminated material was coming ashore, instead of falling, remained at the same level.
On 14 February 1984, reports by the Radiochemicals Inspectorate of the DoE and the Health and Safety Executive detailed the events that had led to the radioactive discharge. There had in fact been three separate discharges - on 11, 13 and 16 November - during washing-out operations. Tanks which have held highly radioactive waste are washed out with solvents, and the mixture of water, solvent and radioactive 'crud' is normally returned to the original tank for separation. The less radioactive watery liquid is then discharged to the sea. However, on this occasion the mixture was passed directly to the sea tanks and the valves were opened for discharge. Alarms alerted BNFL to what was happening, but they assumed that the crud was floating on the surface of the water and discharged some of the water from the tanks to the sea to isolate the crud. The rest of the mixture was then pumped back through the system, but radioactive material stuck to the sides of the pipes, and when BNFL resorted to flushing the pipes out, as they did on the dates above, radioactive crud was discharged into the sea.
The Radiochemicals Inspectorate condemned the Sellafield management outright, maintaining that existing controls were inadequate and accusing BNFL of not considering the consequences of discharging highly active particles of waste into the sea and of failing to notify the appropriate government departments as soon as possible, even when there was a potential danger to the public.
The beaches remained closed for almost nine months after the incident; until the end of July 1984, when the DoE finally gave the all clear, though monitoring would continue and further contaminated material would be removed. In August, the Director of Public Prosecutions announced that BNFL were to be prosecuted under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960 on two counts and under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 on four counts, the first time that criminal proceedings had been brought against the British nuclear industry.
In June 1985, a jury found BNFL guilty on a number of these charges - failing to keep discharges as low as possible, failing to keep records of discharges, failing to take all reasonable steps to minimise exposure of persons to radiation, and failing to keep adequate operational records (the company had pleaded guilty to this last charge). BNFL were fined L10,000 plus costs.In the meantime, Greenpeace members had been taken to court for defying a High Court injunction and attempting to stop the discharge of radioactive waste by plugging the BNFL pipeline. Greenpeace was fined L50,000 plus costs.
The decade had started badly for the Windscale plant. In February 1981 the Health and Safety Executive had published a report entitled 'Windscale: the management of safety', the findings of an inquiry instigated by the government in the aftermath of the serious leaks in 1976 and 1978. The report pointed out that almost half of all incidents at British nuclear installations during the preceding two years had occurred at Windscale, and went on to say, 'By the early 1970s the standard of the plants at Windscale had deteriorated to an unsatisfactory level.' Nonetheless, the report expressed confidence that BNFL would succeed in improving safety at the plant.
The first action that BNFL took was, in May 1981, to change the name of the plant from Windscale back to the original name of the site - Sellafield. Critics claimed that this was only done to rid the installation of the negative associations of the name 'Windscale'. If so, the ploy was largely unsuccessful. Within months the newly-named Sellafield site began to build its own unenviable reputation.
On 4 October 1981, radiation monitors at Sellafield detected higher than normal levels of iodine-131 in the air, and the plant was shut down for 24 hours when it became clear that a leak of more than 300 times the normal daily release of iodine-131 had contaminated milk on two farms within two miles of the plant. The release was caused by the reprocessing of fuel which had not been left to decay for long enough. Unwisely, BNFL waited several days before reporting the matter, by which time rumours were rife.
The contaminated milk was not destroyed but was distributed and sold as usual. BNFL's Director of Information said that members of the public would receive less than 10 per cent of the permitted maximum annual exposure laid down by the ICRP. On 30 October 1983 Sellafield was again in the spotlight. A Yorkshire Television documentary, entitled 'Windscale - The Nuclear Laundry', alleged that the incidence of leukaemia among children in the nearby village of Seascale was 10 times the national average, and that plutonium dust had been found in houses in Cumbria.
Public concern was so great that the then Social Services Secretary, Norman Fowler, set up an independent inquiry under the chairmanship of the former President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Sir Douglas Black, to examine the incidence of cancers around the Sellafield plant. (It was during this period of public anxiety that Greenpeace divers discovered the radioactive slick for which BNFL were taken to court and fined.) The Black Report was inconclusive. Whilst recognising that a link between a confirmed high incidence of cancer,particularly leukaemia, and the presence of the Sellafield plant could not be ruled out, the report did not feel that the connection had been proved.
Sellafield suffered a further series of incidents in 1986. On 23 January, as the result of a faulty evaporator, almost half a tonne of uranium accumulated in one of the two tanks that discharge diluted waste into the sea. (This accidental accumulation bore a strong similarity to the conditions that led to the 1983 discharge, though BNFL had said that such a thing could not happen again.) BNFL informed the DoE, and it was agreed that, since the plant is allowed to pump three tonnes of uranium into the Irish Sea every year, even this large quantity was still within permitted discharge safety limits. The tank was then emptied directly into the sea. BNFL admitted that it would have been possible to recover the uranium from the tank, but said that both the NII and MAFF had also agreed that the discharge was acceptable.
On 1 February a small fire broke out at Sellafield's low-level waste dump site at Drigg. BNFL said that early tests on the smoke showed 'no significant increase in radioactivity'. Then, four days later, for the first time since the Head End Plant accident in 1973, Sellafield was put on 'amber alert', indicating an emergency in one building and a threat to the rest of the plant. The building concerned was B205, next door to the abandoned Head End Plant. Workers had been repairing a valve through which plutonium nitrate was passed for testing, but before the valve could be isolated in a plastic container, a mist of the plutonium compound leaked into the air, and 71 workers had to be evacuated when monitors registered the contamination. The plant was shut down and staff took more than two hours to locate the source of the radioactivity.
BNFL were quick to state that the mist had been contained within the building, that there were no implications for the public, and that no one had been contaminated, but the following day it was announced that two workers had been contaminated and that an estimated 50 microcuries may have escaped into the atmosphere. The facts were further revised the following week when BNFL admitted that 11 workers had been contaminated and a further four may have been affected. One worker had received the maximum permitted dosage for a whole year. The changing story did little to enhance public confidence.
On 13 February there was a 40-minute fire at Sellafield's Drigg waste dump when low-level waste was tipped into a disposal trench, and on 18 February three workers were contaminated while repairing a 'sludge removal' pipe which had broken and allowed radioactive water to escape. On 1 March a weld on a glove-box failed and seven workers were contaminated with plutonium.
Later the same month, the House of Commons Environment Select Committee, in its report entitled 'Radioactive Waste', stated: 'The UK discharges more radioactivity into the sea than any other nation. As the Ministry of Agriculture confirmed to us, Sellafield is the largest recorded source of radioactive discharge in the world. The anxiety and controversy which this arouses in the UK is well known. It also creates anxiety in other nations. We found, for example, that the Swedes could identify radioactive traces in fish off their coast being largely attributable to Sellafield, greater even than the contamination from adjacent Swedish nuclear power stations. Similar experiences were reported to us by the Isle of Man government. That the UK, with a comparatively small nuclear industry, should be so dramatically out of step is a cause for concern.'
The succession of accidents in the first months of 1986 prompted the Health and Safety Executive to launch yet another investigation into Sellafield's safety record, and its report 'Safety Audit of BNFL Sellafield 1986' appeared in October of that year. Building B205, in which the plutonium mist had been released, came under particular scrutiny for never having had a written 'safety case', the basis upon which maintenance, operation and emergency procedures should be founded. In so many words, BNFL were given 12 months to put their house in order, or shut the plant.
The year ended with a statement by the Secretary of State for the Environment, in response to a question in the House of Commons, to the effect that the Dail of the Irish Parliament had, on 3 December, passed a resolution calling for the closure of Sellafield.
In January 1987, 12 men were contaminated by a leak of plutonium during the removal of a pressure valve in an area in which fuel rods are made for the Dounreay fast breeder reactor, and in February the reprocessing plant was closed temporarily after a leak of high-level radioactive waste.
Ironically, Sellafield has now become a major tourist attraction. In 1987, 104,000 people took up the BNFL invitation to look around the site, and the English Tourist Board made an award in recognition of this achievement. In early 1989 Sellafield won the coveted Best Loo in the Country Award and then, in May 1989, BNFL received the Institute of Public Relations' top prize, the Sword of Excellence, for the company's acclaimed public relations programme 'Restoring Confidence in Sellafield'.
In the same week, an article in Time Out (24.5.89) revealed the contents of a draft letter written in 1987 by the chairman of the CEGB, Lord Marshall of Goring, to the then UK Energy Secretary, Peter Walker. The letter had suggested that Britain's 14 Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors (AGRs) would be forced to a standstill unless the rate of reprocessing at Sellafield was improved and the problems of spent fuel rod storage were solved.
At present, all spent British-produced Magnox fuel rods and most of the more modern uranium oxide fuel rods from the AGRs go to Sellafield, where they are put in storage awaiting reprocessing and the extraction of plutonium. The long-term plan has been that the plutonium would fuel the projected fast breeder reactors, but the virtual abandoning of the fast breeder programme casts doubt on the need for Sellafield's civil reprocessing capacity.
No spent uranium oxide fuel has been reprocessed since the 1973 accident at the Head End Plant, and Sellafield has a huge backlog of spent fuel in its underwater storage pools. These may soon be filled to capacity, forcing the AGRs to stop production. Moreover, the spent rods are steadily corroding and contaminating the water with radioactivity. The CEGB regards the situation as serious enough to warrant building its own dry storage facility, and doubts the viability of underwater storage for long periods of time.
In his draft letter, Lord Marshall says 'We are under attack from environmentalists and our critics for storing Magnox fuel in water. The attack is difficult to answer because it is basically correct...'
End of Quote from the Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age.
End of Quote from the Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age.
Radioactive Contamination of the Environment by Sellafield.
The Bellona Foundation Report No. 8 Sellafield by Erik Martiniussen (Dec 2003) available as a pdf report describes Sellafield as follows:
“This report describes the historical activity at Sellafield, from the beginning of production of weapons-grade plutonium
The Windscale Fire(10th October 1957)
"...The fire led to two major releases of radioactivity to the air. The first large release occurred when the naturaluranium inside the
"Efforts have been made to estimate the extent of the radioactive releases. It is believed that the accident led to a release of between
“The British Prime Minister at the time, Harold MacMillan, suppressed all technical information concerning the accident. He feared
“The Bellona Foundation calls for an immediate halt of the radioactive discharges from Sellafield. Bellona sees no rational reason to produce further amounts of the extremely radiotoxic substance plutonium. As Russia United States
On the historical discharges of Sellafield, see their Figure 4: Beta discharges from Sellafield in the
Period 1971 to 1978:
Period 1971 to 1978:
The Bellona Report states further:From 1974 to 1978, Sellafield released more than 40,000
Compared to the French reprocessing plant at La Hague, Sellafield in this period exceeded the French facility's releases of beta emitters by a factor of eight and the highly radiotoxic alpha emitters by as much as 200 times more.
Compared to the French reprocessing plant at La Hague, Sellafield in this period exceeded the French facility's releases of beta emitters by a factor of eight and the highly radiotoxic alpha emitters by as much as 200 times more.
In 1984, 90 percent of the British population’s annual radiation dose from nuclear activities was attributable to Sellafield. This figure fell to 60 percent in 1987.
The Report quotes IAEA’s recognition of the need for ecosystem protection:
"There is a growing need to examine methods to explicitly address the protection of the marine
(IAEA 1999).
(IAEA 1999).
There is this chilling anectodal values from the report on soil, plants and animals reconcentrating
"Concentrations of plutonium and americium with higher values than those in the forbidden zone around Chernobyl
"Greenpeace International has made similar measurements. Soil samples that the organisation took in 1998 seven
This is relevant to any discussion of India infant mortalities as I show below.
The connection to the thermohaline gradient and the Gulf Stream
The Gulf Stream encounters the cold winds coming off the Arctic and across Greenland.See the map below. As the two collide, hot moisture evaporates out of the Gulf Stream and is carried by the prevailing winds( including the jet streams) and the Earth’s rotation eastward to Western Europe.The currents of the ocean are all linked like a big Moebius strip in a loop called “The Global Ocean Conveyor Belt.”The double-lined parts of the loop represent the warm surfaces, the best known of which is the Gulf Stream, which flows along the east coast of America into the Indian Ocean touching the Arabian Sea and so on making a loop in the Pacific Ocean as shown. The single-lined curve is the cold water current.The Conveyor is slow-moving - at most, 10cm per second - but its vast extent includes a flow equivalent to 100 Amazon rivers. On average, 30 million cubic metres of water enter the Conveyor every second. Can you tell me the area over which this entrance happens?The water left behind in the North Atlantic when the warm water evaporates is not only colder but saltier, because all the salt stays right where it is, but in a higher concentration. So the water is much heavier and therefore sinks at the astonishing rate of 20 million cubic metres a second. Over what length of the coasts? As it drops straight down toward the bottom of the ocean, it forms the beginning of the cold-water current flowing southward(See Al Gore.2006.An Inconvenient Truth. Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It. Rodale. PA. p 151).
The Gulf Stream encounters the cold winds coming off the Arctic and across Greenland.See the map below. As the two collide, hot moisture evaporates out of the Gulf Stream and is carried by the prevailing winds( including the jet streams) and the Earth’s rotation eastward to Western Europe.The currents of the ocean are all linked like a big Moebius strip in a loop called “The Global Ocean Conveyor Belt.”The double-lined parts of the loop represent the warm surfaces, the best known of which is the Gulf Stream, which flows along the east coast of America into the Indian Ocean touching the Arabian Sea and so on making a loop in the Pacific Ocean as shown. The single-lined curve is the cold water current.The Conveyor is slow-moving - at most, 10cm per second - but its vast extent includes a flow equivalent to 100 Amazon rivers. On average, 30 million cubic metres of water enter the Conveyor every second. Can you tell me the area over which this entrance happens?The water left behind in the North Atlantic when the warm water evaporates is not only colder but saltier, because all the salt stays right where it is, but in a higher concentration. So the water is much heavier and therefore sinks at the astonishing rate of 20 million cubic metres a second. Over what length of the coasts? As it drops straight down toward the bottom of the ocean, it forms the beginning of the cold-water current flowing southward(See Al Gore.2006.An Inconvenient Truth. Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It. Rodale. PA. p 151).
The Hypothesis on Radioactive Pollution by Nuclear Activities.
From Terror Becquerels to Holocaust: The Hypothesis
The hypothesis I am now making is that this “Global Ocean Conveyor Belt” effectively spreads the nuke contamination all over the world. The net result is together with the prevailing winds these pollutants in the moist air contaminate the whole globe. Thus the Sellafield radioactivity spread all over the oceans and the seas and onto the beaches and land surface with the help of the Gulf stream, the Global Conveyor Belt's cold currents and the Indian Monsoons.Moreover, the ecological worldwide web assures that the efficient recycling of everything that nature is so adept at goes on along with internal radioactivity. Internal radioactivity is concentrated by orders of magnitude per trophic level. DNA is damaged! The damaged multiply! At the top of the web’s trophic levels is man! This interlinkage will then help interpret the infant mortalities observed in synchronism with the nuclear contamination of the oceans as can be gleaned from the Sellafield report above by Greenpeace and from Bellona's Report No. 8. We thus notice that whenever the Sellafield/Windscale accident occurrences were taking place(1957,1971-1978,1983-1984), the Indian Infant Mortality registered increases, just like for the atmospheric tests and Chernobyl accident(See Figure IMIANT, below).
The hypothesis I am now making is that this “Global Ocean Conveyor Belt” effectively spreads the nuke contamination all over the world. The net result is together with the prevailing winds these pollutants in the moist air contaminate the whole globe. Thus the Sellafield radioactivity spread all over the oceans and the seas and onto the beaches and land surface with the help of the Gulf stream, the Global Conveyor Belt's cold currents and the Indian Monsoons.Moreover, the ecological worldwide web assures that the efficient recycling of everything that nature is so adept at goes on along with internal radioactivity. Internal radioactivity is concentrated by orders of magnitude per trophic level. DNA is damaged! The damaged multiply! At the top of the web’s trophic levels is man! This interlinkage will then help interpret the infant mortalities observed in synchronism with the nuclear contamination of the oceans as can be gleaned from the Sellafield report above by Greenpeace and from Bellona's Report No. 8. We thus notice that whenever the Sellafield/Windscale accident occurrences were taking place(1957,1971-1978,1983-1984), the Indian Infant Mortality registered increases, just like for the atmospheric tests and Chernobyl accident(See Figure IMIANT, below).
Indian monsoons and
The Global Conveyer Belt
Interconnected!Together with nukes
What a deadly concoction:
Indian infants killed
Atmospheric tests
And Sellafield Chernobyl
Perfect murderers!
Andrei Sakharov!
Does radioactivity kill?
Internally yes
Does dose internal
Have any dear meaning left?
Count deaths in millions.
Still man’s greed wants more
Nuclear necromancy
Global warming fraud!
Greed’s toll: have a peep:
Millions of Indian infants
IMINA:
I have considered only infant mortality rates and not still births. See the figure IMIANT below and gasp at the resonance at 1963 of dose and deaths. Does dose have a meaning: Internal Radioactivity! Nuclear necromancy never again!
See http://nuclearnecromany.blogspot.com/ See also discussions on the meaning of dose for internal radioactivity in the website of the Low-Level Radiation Campaign: www.llrc.org.
The various nuclear disaster years together with the annual excess infant mortalities during the nuclear age over the mean infant mortality during the pre-nuclear years 1911-45 are indicated in the following figure(NAAEIMPN) by an explosion sign:
The various nuclear disaster years together with the annual excess infant mortalities during the nuclear age over the mean infant mortality during the pre-nuclear years 1911-45 are indicated in the following figure(NAAEIMPN) by an explosion sign:
The global conveyor belt is working ! Stop nuclear pollution now!
The media blitz in India
It is biased, totally towards going nuclear. I detect a vested interest. How else can you explain the media ignoring overwhelmingly the anti-artificial nuclear view which is based on sound science? Let me go from Jon Palfreman’s work: A Tale of Two Fears: Exploring Media Depictions of Nuclear Power and Global Warming. 2006. Palfreman Film Group Inc., Lexington, MA . He assumes that the public views that nuclear power’s benefits and risks are separate from those of Nuclear Waste Disposal which the public feels has no utility value. He then cites the French Nuclear case and the US case. He argues that the French need nukes because they don’t have fossil fuel resources within their borders and hence the citizens have no opposition to it. Obviously he has not done his homework. See below. According to him, in the USA, people in Nevada separate the military use of sites in Nevada as a waste dump site as what they cannot do anything about, whereas Yucca Mountain is something they may be able to prevent being used for civilian nuke waste disposal. Being of the specialist opinion that nuke generation has utility value and today waste does not, he tries to put forward to the citizens a policy for acceptance or rejection of nuclear programmes where later on by some means, a use for the wastes is found, say by transmutation. He finds that there is a shift in favour of nuclear when this alternative is discussed, with the wastes being kept on watch (by costly guard of course for an uncertain period of time). This is another way of subtle opinion building by media! Is nuclear a mature technology? Where a lot of nuclear capacity has been built as in the US or in Japan or France they have no option but to find ways of keeping the nuke waste isolated from the biosphere (in normal operations they do pollute the biosphere), even if they have to supply power for hundreds of thousands of years for their cooling! And this makes nukes a net consumer of energy! See my work on energy audit of the USA’s nuclear programme and of India’s (in the cited URL below). The energy audits of the Japanese and the French nuclear programmes are also similar and I have done the homework!: Net consumers of energy. Amory B Lovins and John H Price had warned about this in Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy.1975. Ballinger.1980. Harper-Colophon. In India, where nukes form a small part of electricity capacity today (Two percent), it makes absolutely no sense to go ahead with a nuclear power programme: We must not separate the waste from the nuke generation, perceiving benefits for the latter (have them!) and none for the former (wish the wastes away by say coming generation’s ingenuity!). When we do not externalize a portion of the nuke fuel cycle process, we will find that there is absolutely no utilitarian value for nukes. Herein lies a fatal flaw of modern civilization: Specialization: When it suits the vested interests they externalize portions of their process so that a net benefit shows! Nuclear power programmes or any programme for that matter in modern cultures do (does) not value the land at all! Thus the nuke fuel cycle ignores the sunlight that falls on the land, the wind that blows over the it, the rain that falls on it, the soil on which it stands except as a support. When the land is forested to an extent of about 20 kg dry biomass density per square kilometer, it corresponds to a power flow of 1200 MW/km^2; it is a multi-input multi-output infinite efficiency system in a normal civilization of recycling all that is taken from the land. In contrast the nuclear fuel cycle’s power flow in the production and consumption of goods and services is a measly 4 MW/km^2! A net consumer of energy of infinite proportions, because the fuel is a capital and not income. We are talking of the time constant of the sun, not of uranium. You must live out of your income and not eat into your capital! Our life style must change from the modern culture of production, consumption and waste to production, consumption and return as in nature. Using the fusion nuclear energy of the sun via living energy. The sun is safely situated, readymade some 150 million kms away from the earth. This normal way of life has been our tradition for thousands of years when we respected nature and lived in harmony with her. Our sages had discarded the modern option! That’s history with the ignorant imperialist onslaught continuing. But we are at a crisis now and it is easy for us in India with our vast human population to modify our life style to include RETURN: Living Energy enjoyed in kindly use. Read my URL: http://nuclearnecromany.blogspot.com/
