New Concerns about Tritium

I must be feeling homesick because my attention keeps going back to nuclear issues in Canada that are currently getting coverage in mainstream and social media. Or I might just be sick of thinking about the Gordian knot closer to my home that is the ruins of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP.

Canada’s CANDU (heavy water) reactors have a good record of safety and don’t face the seismic and flooding risks of some reactors south of the border. They have never had a meltdown, and if they do face a serious loss of power incident, they are said to have more passive safety and be easier to cool off and contain than light water reactors.

The major concerns that have persisted over the years have to do with tritium (a radioactive hydrogen isotope) releases and long-term storage solutions for nuclear waste.

CANDU reactors release 20 times as much tritium as American light water reactors, and so it is no random coincidence that the allowable limit for drinking water is higher in Canada – 7,000 Bq/L. CANDU reactors couldn’t operate if they had to adhere to the American limit of 740 Bq/L. The actual level of tritium in the Great Lakes is close to the natural level of the pre-nuclear age (about 10 Bq/L), but what the limit means is that when a release occurs and the local water is contaminated, the government of Canada thinks that it is alright for people to consume water with 7,000 Bq/L. It seems this level was set upon the assumption that such an intake level would not last for long.

Same lake, different standards of safety on the American and Canadian sides of it.

This high level is considered to be safe because tritiated water is assumed to have a short biological half-life of about ten days. It’s water, after all. You drink it in and it is quickly sweated out or passed in urine, then replaced by the next gulp of water. But it’s not that simple. There have always been lingering questions about how much tritium becomes organically bound (OBT-organically bound tritium) and what impact OBT could have on ecosystems.

If you remember anything at all about high school chemistry and biology lessons, you might remember that H figures prominently in organic compounds, and H gets into them ultimately through the breakdown of H2O, carbohydrates, fats and proteins. This is more of a factor in plant biology because the well-known simplified equation for photosynthesis is:

So while it is true that a lot of tritium will quickly be diluted and evaporated to insignificant levels, some of it will bio-concentrate and bio-accumulate. Animals eat the sugars and carbohydrates made by the plants, and tritium can end up staying inside human tissue much longer than the presumed ten-day biological half-life. It’s important to note also that the hydrogen atoms in DNA also get there from food and water taken in by organisms. There is evidence of tritium being bound in DNA molecules.

The effects remain debatable, but the recent findings on this matter, as reported by Tap Canada, have prompted calls for a review of standards for tritium. One study of marine life near British nuclear plants found tritium concentrated at 1,000 – 10,000 times the level of the surrounding sea water. This finding, and others, prompted the French Autorite de Surete Nucleaire (ASN) to call for an investigation on new approaches in relation to "possible hereditary effects." After the publication of the ASN’s White Paper on tritium, the ASN called for a monitoring committee and for nuclear operators to control their tritium emissions. There is little comfort given by this report when it states,

“Discharges of this element are forecast to increase due to expected changes in the fuel management methods used by the NPP [nuclear power plants], and also due to new tritium-emitting facilities, including new power plants that are to be built, and the ITER [fusion energy experimental reactor]project.”

Did Ontario Power Generation get the message? It’s not like they haven’t heard it before. The concern raised by the ASN has existed ever since nuclear scientists had to start handling tritium. The International Institute for Concern for Public Health reported in 2006:

“Convinced of the dangers to health from tritium, the Toronto Board of Health and Toronto City Council have asked the Province to reduce the level of tritium allowed in the city’s drinking water. The Council then passed a resolution endorsing the 1994 ACES scientific advisory body to the Government of Ontario recommendation that the standard be reduced to 100 Bq/L immediately and then go to 20 Bq/L after five years.”

Another pressing concern in Canada is the imminent decision about long-term nuclear waste disposal. A newly formed group called Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump has launched a petition drive to oppose Ontario Power Generation’s plan to build a Deep Geological Repository one kilometer from the shore of Lake Huron. The plan raises obvious questions about the safety of the water supply, the lack of public awareness of the proposal, and the suspiciously convenient location near the source of so much nuclear waste in Ontario, the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, the largest NPP in the world measured by net power rating.

Further reading: Ace Hoffman's in-depth report on tritium.

Ian Fairlie. Radiation Risks of Tritium: Additional Notes for the Ontario Drinking Water Advisory Council (ODWAC)

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

The members of U2 never answered the question posed in the title of their 2004 CD, but it turns out the answer to this seemingly intractable problem is pretty simple: do nothing. The plutonium pits and tritium initiators in hydrogen bombs go through natural deterioration that would render them useless if they were not constantly given very expensive upgrades. We could walk away from them and leave them in their silos and soon they wouldn't be bombs anymore. They would still be nuclear waste, and potential bomb material, but doing nothing would lead to effective disarmament within a short time.

We hear a lot of news about the need to continue with the reduction of nuclear stockpiles, and we imagine this means the danger of their detonation can be removed only by actively dismantling them and verifying that other nuclear powers are doing likewise. However, the public is largely unaware that atomic weapons need constant maintenance and refreshment in order to be usable. This has led to an impression that the remaining stockpile (admirably reduced since 1990 down to just a few thousand) is just an unfortunate legacy of the Cold War that we might as well keep as long as some countries want to keep theirs and others want to become nuclear powers. Yet it’s not so simple. The maintenance of a nuclear deterrent requires the high cost and risks involved in maintaining plutonium and tritium production lines.

This point becomes obvious if we think about the name of the most fearsome weapon: the hydrogen bomb (this discussion doesn't apply so much to the less coveted bombs made with enriched uranium). If the fissionable dreaded core of the weapon is made of plutonium, what has simple hydrogen got to do with it? Hydrogen became the moniker of the bomb because the radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium, is the initiator and booster of the fusion-fission explosion that allows a greater yield to be had from a given quantity of plutonium. But tritium has a relatively short half-life of twelve years, so it requires constant replenishment. The plutonium pits have a much longer half-life, but they quickly lose their effectiveness as well.

For American weapons, tritium was produced during the Cold War at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, but in the 1990s it was deemed that existing supplies of tritium would be enough to maintain the reduced stockpile of weapons negotiated under the START treaty. But then in 2003 supplies were running low and the Watts Bar Nuclear Generating station, in Tennessee - a commercial nuclear power plant - supplied tritium for nuclear weapons. A new tritium extraction facility came on line in 2006 at Savannah River.

For 19 years, after the environmental catastrophe caused by the Rocky Flats plutonium production facility, the US had no capacity to produce new plutonium pits for its reduced but aging stockpile. It seems that in the early days, none of the nuclear powers, as they were building tens of thousands of weapons, stopped to wonder how they could afford to keep these arsenals fresh in the coming decades and centuries. A cynic (not I, of course) might say that the real reason both the US and the USSR wanted a reduction in stockpiles was that they were waking up to the astounding cost of maintenance. Even with the reduced numbers, all nuclear powers are faced with the same dilemma: how to finance being a nuclear power in perpetuity. How to maintain all the required civilian and military reactors supplying the tritium and the plutonium. How to maintain the technical skills and the art of crafting the perfect plutonium pit.

In 1993 the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was tasked with re-establishing the nation’s ability to produce plutonium pits, and it wasn't until 2007 that the first pit was completed. The laboratory’s website reported the process this way:

"Practice makes perfect pits," says Putnam [former director of the Plutonium Sustainment Program]. Significant interruptions to the production cycle increase the risks of introducing deviations into the manufacturing process, which can lead to production errors, resulting in a considerable increase in the scrap rate, that is, a higher number of unusable pits. In addition, efficiency is lost. Pit manufacturing is a “use it or lose it” endeavor precisely because it requires constant production to maintain quality and increase efficiency. “Making pits is a process and an exercise in capability. If that capability is not used, it atrophies - becomes ‘rusty.’” says Tim George, deputy associate director for Plutonium Science and Manufacturing. Over the next few years, the program plans to build or assemble four to six pits a year for various scaled experiments and later disassemble them to practice production and to maintain a capability for the future. “Pit manufacturing is an art,” Putnam asserts.

To hear it described this way, one has to wonder why developed nations worry so much about smaller, impoverished states becoming a nuclear threat. The Los Alamos staff makes it clear that even for a nation the size of the USA, it is not certain the resources will always be available for maintaining a nuclear deterrent.

How much to spend is not an easy question in these days of global financial crisis, and neither party wanted to talk about it during the recent presidential election, even though the House of Representatives passed a defense authorization bill that devoted $160 million to a new plutonium plant in New Mexico that will make 450 or more plutonium pits per year.

Barack Obama began his presidency with a lofty goal of eliminating nuclear weapons, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize just for talking about this and saying some other fine words about the aspirations of the developing world. The new president’s stated intent contradicted the direction that the US was moving in with the resumption of production of plutonium pits at LANL. Thus, utter confusion reigns. No one knows if the future holds hope of disarmament or a resumption of Cold War weapons production. How much should a super power spend now to maintain a fleet of weapons created in the madness of the early Cold War years?

Molly at nucleardiner.com sums up the conundrum:

All federal tax revenue in 2011 was $2.2 trillion — less than one sixth of the total national debt. The $15 trillion debt amounts to $133,000 per taxpayer. A decision not to build the CMRR-Nuclear Facility could save around $6 billion over the next 10 years. Not expanding plutonium pit production could save tens of billions of dollars over the next half-century.

The choices are no different for other nuclear states that have to question the stupendous environmental and social costs of maintaining both nuclear weapons and the required fleet of civilian nuclear reactors that make weapons production economically feasible.

UPDATE:
About a week after I posted, this article appeared in The Washington Post:
Walter Pincus. "How many nukes does it take to be safe?" The Washington Post. December 18, 2012.

Further Reading:

Pavel Podvig. "The Fallacy of the Megatons to Megawatts Program." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. July 23, 2008.

Back to 1982's Electric Avenue

Electricity consumption in Japan in 1982 was 1/2 of 2010 levels.

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

-quote of Albert Einstein published in the New York Times, April 25, 1929

Eddy Grant - Electric Avenue - released in 1982

We hear a lot about how both developed and developing countries need ever-increasing supplies of electricity to meet their future “needs.” In Japan, this argument is used to justify the restart of nuclear reactors and the continuation of the nation’s pre-Fukushima energy policy. Nuclear is also justified in this argument because it is “green” and doesn’t require dependence on expensive fuel imports. Nuclear fuel makes nuclear energy cheap, if you can ignore the tremendous costs of capital investment, decommissioning and waste handling that are all pushed on to future generations who may be too ignorant, de-skilled and poor to deal with them.

The argument in favor of the nuclear restart takes economic growth and growth of energy consumption themselves as a laws of nature, like the law of nuclear energy itself: E=mc². It also places man at the center of nature, as if some supreme being somewhere has promised us a solution to the energy crisis because we are the chosen species.

Physics professor emeritus Bernard L. Cohen wrote in 1990,

“The very existence of plutonium is often viewed as the work of the devil. As the most important ingredient in nuclear bombs, it may someday be responsible for killing untold millions of people... If it gets into the human body, it is highly toxic. On the other hand, its existence is the only guarantee we have that this world can obtain all the energy it will ever need forever at a reasonable price. In fact, I am personally convinced that citizens of the distant future will look upon it as one of God's greatest gifts to humanity.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) is considered to be the inspiration for rationalism and the Enlightenment thinkers who gave birth to the scientific age, and he was the first to speak of a cool and indifferent god rather than a fatherly God who cares about humanity. Ironically, here we see in Cohen’s words a 20th century descendant of rationalism using this latter concept of God to justify the use of plutonium.

People who warn about the dangers of both carbon fuels and nuclear energy are often told that the only alternative is to go back to a pre-industrial, pastoral lifestyle, as if somehow this wins the argument. However, the answer is of course, yes, that, or something worse, might be the result. But I’ll leave aside these dark thoughts about being blasted back to feudalism or the Stone Age, and use the graph below to make readers consider the simple step of going back to a 1970s or 80s lifestyle. Relax, the music (aside from disco) was better then, anyway.

The graph shows the Japanese government’s record of electricity generation from 1952 to 2011, and the curious thing to note is that output doubled from 1982 to 2010, even though the population had stopped growing, and output continued to increase after the collapse of the bubble economy in 1991. If you subtract the electricity generated by nuclear in 2010, the amount generated that year by other methods is still greater than the total output for 1982. What changed in those years from 1982 to 2010?

green-nuclear, orange-coal, light blue-hydro, purple-liquefied natural gas, brown-oil, dark blue-water pumping, red-renewables (solar, wind)
units of y-axis: 10E+8 kilowatt hours.

Japan Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. 2012 White Paper on Energy. p. 132. http://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/topics/hakusho/2012/index.htm

In the 1980s Japan began the transition from being a frugal, productive nation to a nation of consumers. The oil shock of the early 70s was a distant memory. The yen doubled in value in a short period, and suddenly the pressure was on from America to buy stuff and reduce Japan's trade surplus.

In the 1980s you could still meet people who refrained from using indoor heat until January, even though they were living in tiny houses that were suddenly worth a million dollars. But in the years that followed everything changed. Industry was beginning to move offshore, but the slack was picked up by consumer demand. The companies that built nuclear power plants also built the consumer goods that would use the electricity they produced. Electronics chain stores kept their front doors open in winter and summer, blasting out heat or air conditioning according to the season, blaring loud jingles and keeping (it seemed) every TV on at high volume – something they continued to do even during the crisis periods of energy shortages in 2011 and 2012.

Some of the increase in electricity output can be attributed to a shift from carbon fuels to electricity used for transportation, cooking and heating. This might have done something to make the local air cleaner, but a lot of electricity is lost in the wires on its way from distant nuclear power plants.

Most of the increase can be attributed, I believe, to active promotion of wasteful lifestyles and non-essential goods – the creation of desire for air-conditioning, massage chairs and 24-hour convenience stores, more automated manufacturing, less human muscle power. People were encouraged to be totally complacent about the waste, where it was coming from and how much it might cost to the future.

The point here is that Japan of 1982 was not the dark ages. Before we scare ourselves about needing to devolve back to the lifestyle of the Amish, let’s consider a simple first step. It wouldn't be so unbearable to return to the conditions of a few decades ago. At that time, Japan’s post-war rebuilding was complete. It had excellent statistics in education, health care and longevity, and employment. It had some serious environmental problems, but it had managed to lift itself out of poverty and join the ranks of developed nations. This is something to keep in mind as our leaders act as if it would be impossible to stop growth, reverse energy consumption trends and make “drastic” cuts of 10 to 20%. If a cut of 50% would throw us back to living like Japan of 1982, how is that a problem?

Sources cited:

Japan Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. 2012 White Paper on Energy, p. 132. http://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/topics/hakusho/2012/index.htm

Cohen, Bernard Leonard. The Nuclear Energy Option: An Alternative for the 90’s. 1st ed. Plenum Press, 1990. http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter13.html

Crisis? What crisis?

This album cover from 1975 seemed to fit with this blog entry.

The following pages are from a guidebook to living safely with radiation. It appeared within six months of the Fukushima disaster and was intended for mothers who were concerned about protecting their families. There are several interesting questions to contemplate while looking over these pages.

Kunikazu Noguchi. Protecting Mothers and Children from Radiation

1. Is the book opportunistic or a valuable resource of urgently needed information? 
2. Is it wise to advise people to adapt their lifestyle to radioactive food and a radioactive environment? The people responsible for the contamination owe the victims new homes in a safe environment, so it is somewhat sinister to promote the idea that victims should adapt to their circumstances rather than demand compensation, and homes and jobs in a safe place. 
3. Yet for practical purposes, everyone knows the victims have nowhere to go, and that they will be cheated of the compensation due to them, so why not be pragmatic and promote ways to protect oneself? 
4. Why is the book aimed only at mothers and children? 
5. Would a book marketed to fathers and children have had the same childish graphics? To comprehend the message, one need not even know how to read Japanese. The density of information is very low. The tips communicated by the illustrations on these pages could be condensed to text that would fit on the back of a baseball card.

Let’s play this game of condescension and infantilization…

Can you match the advice to the picture? Hint: Not all of these are depicted in the book.

1. shake off your clothes before coming inside
2. don't slide or play in the dirt
3. check the radiation level of water before you swim in it
4. don't let your pet drink from standing pools of water
5. work together with fellow citizens to launch a class action lawsuit
6. stay away from gullies and places where water drains and soil collects
7. wash your food before cooking
8. dry your laundry indoors
9. wear a mask over your nose and mouth
10. keep the windows closed on rainy days
11. get a passport and emigrate
12. clean gutters and ditches where dirt has accumulated
13. check the surfaces of playground equipment for radiation before using it
14. clean wounds thoroughly
15. flip the top layer and bottom layer of soil in the garden before planting
16. wash your bicycle seat and handle bars before riding
17. stock up on mineral water
18. buy foods from sources that have screened food for contamination

When people are asked to make these adaptations, we have to wonder how far it can go. Will gradual changes be accepted no matter how much people are asked to adapt, or is there a limit at which people decide to chuck it all and live with the risks, to flee to somewhere safer regardless of the costs, or even to no longer live at all?

The book:

放射能からママと子どもを守る本

houshano kara mama to kodomo wo mamoru hon

野口 邦和  株式会社 法研

Kunikazu Noguchi. Protecting Mothers and Children from Radiation. Pages 3-11. Houken Corporation. 2011. 　

*This source has been cited and excerpted here with the intent of following the conventions of fair use for purposes of non-commercial, scholarly research.

勘弁してください。

Nuclear Power Plants and Proliferation

Graphic by Christina MacPherson, July 2010

“In terms of weapons, the best disarmament tool so far is nuclear energy. We have been taking down the Russian warheads, turning it into electricity. Ten percent of American electricity comes from decommissioned warheads. We haven't even started the American stockpile.”

Stewart Brand

February 2010

TED Conference Debate: Does the World Need Nuclear Energy?

“The ability to construct a weapon from reactor-grade plutonium was demonstrated decades ago. It is dangerous even to consider it an open question. Hans Blix, director-general of the IAEA, informed our Institute that there is 'no debate' on this point in the Safeguards Department of the IAEA, and that the agency considers virtually all isotopes of plutonium, including high burn-up reactor-grade plutonium, to be usable in nuclear weapons. In June 1994, U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary declassified further details of a 1962 test of a nuclear device using reactor-grade plutonium, which successfully produced a nuclear yield.”

Steven Dolley, Research Director

Nuclear Control Institute, Washington, DC. Using warhead plutonium as reactor fuel does not make it unusable in nuclear bombs. March 28, 1997. http://www.nci.org/i/ib32897c.htm

It is one thing to lie in error or ignorance. One may be young, or new to a field of knowledge. If one is not taking speaking and consulting fees as an expert on the topic, and makes no claims to expertise, no one will think twice about the occasional utterance of pure bullshit. But this is not the case with Stewart Brand. He describes himself as a former member of Greenpeace, a veteran of the environmental movement who now speaks about the heresies of the movement he helped found. He gets to speak at TED conferences and earn a living being one of the select few who lead the conversation on how to save the world. He is a man of science, and as such he should apply the scientific method to his own assumptions. So if he wants to believe that nuclear energy is a fantastic disarmament tool, the first thing he should do is test this idea for negative evidence. Perhaps he has. It is not difficult to do. Reliable sources on the topic are found easily, and when he finds that the UN agency charged with promoting nuclear power disagrees with his assumption, he ought to desist from spreading this wrong information. Only he can answer why he hasn't done his homework, or if he has, why he deliberately lies about this question of nuclear power plants as disarmament tools.

This is not a trivial matter because this lie about nuclear power plants' capacity to “burn up” reactor grade plutonium is repeated often and taught to novices in the nuclear priesthood. They take it in as gospel truth and, like their teachers, are not inclined to question their beliefs as they solidify.

Many others have written about the nuclear proliferation implications of nuclear power plants. To speak of nuclear reactors as a solution to proliferation issues is a bad joke. If nuclear power plants were such a good solution to disposing of bomb-grade plutonium, Israel and the US would give their surplus plutonium to Iran and help them build a reactor to "burn it" up. 

There is a shred of truth in the argument because the bomb-grade fuel that is "burned" in reactors is turned into something more difficult to make a bomb with, but that’s all. The use of bomb-grade plutonium as fuel is not a solution to the ever increasing amounts of nuclear waste, nor will it ever lead to a final disarmament. Decommissioned warheads could just as well be sabotaged with impurities and put in permanent disposal. And we should not overlook the fact that, while some people talk of neutralizing Russian warheads, the US is still producing replacement plutonium pits in Los Alamos in order to refresh the aging inventory of plutonium in its arsenal. Have your weapons if you must, but don’t con us with some fairy tale that proliferation is slowing and disarmament is really happening.

Other sources:

In United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium, Joseph Trento described how the US government at first worried about Japan accumulating plutonium from reactors if the US agreed to share nuclear technology.  Later, the US was a willing accomplice in letting Japan’s plutonium stockpile increase.

Herman Scheer (1944-2010) in The Energy Imperative wrote:

"Clearly, the existing nuclear weaponry or its aspired possession cannot be seen separately from the question of nuclear power. No state which owns and wishes to retain nuclear weapons (and none who is secretly striving for nuclear weapons or, without the knowledge of its own population, want to keep this option open) will be willing to give up its own nuclear power plants. If you have, or want, atomic bombs, not only do you need nuclear power plants, you also need the basis for the an atomic technology industry. For every nuclear power, nuclear technology is a 'double-use technology': having nuclear weaponry without one's own atomic technological potential is unthinkable, and maintaining such a potential solely to build nuclear weapons is almost unaffordable. Thus for as long as we have nuclear weapons, attempts will be made to stimulate a 'renaissance in nuclear power'. But no government will admit to holding on to its nuclear power plants simply to maintain this status. Instead, together with the atomic energy organizations, nuclear powers desperately seek justification for arguing that renewable energy alone is insufficient to meet energy demands. And this is how excellent nuclear scientific knowledge comes to be paired with ignorant arguments against renewable energy. Putting a stop to nuclear energy means nuclear disarmament, otherwise there will be ever greater and more influential attempts to limit renewable energy. Governments that recognize and work towards the target of using renewable energy to meet all their energy needs must also accept the goal of nuclear disarmament. Any other path would be inconsistent or blind to the true circumstances."

-Hermann Scheer, Social Democrat member of the German Bundestag Parliament, President of Eurosolar (The European Association for Renewable Energy) and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy. The Energy Imperative. p. 160-161. Routledge, 2012.

The Real Problem with Renewables

While this is a blog calling for the end of nuclear energy, I've tried to keep an open mind about the pros and cons of all forms of energy, and I haven't been duped by the greens who like to gloss over the problems with renewable energy, but finally I think I have found an argument that really gets to the most serious deficiency of green energy:

BORING!

from Lee Camp's Moment of Clarity

November 19, 2012:

"We like that there's a risk of chaos and death in tapping oil, coal and nuclear energy, oil spills and explosions, radioactive meltdowns, mine collapses, fracking earthquakes, inflammable tap water... Every two years a solar panel should explode with the force of a neutron star... you know, horrible, horrible stuff because... we want risk, we want death and destruction, screaming and explosions, we want to feel like we captured a dragon that could escape at any moment wreaking havoc on our way of life.. So all I'm saying is: wind and solar and other renewable energies, if you want to save this planet, start killing more people. Then, and only then, will we consider you a player."

Watch the whole four-minute explanation on Lee Camp's brilliant Moment of Clarity channel on Youtube.

No Exit

On February 1, 2010, a luminous sign manufacturer in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada accidentally released tritium gas to the atmosphere. The radiation release was 147 x 10E+12 Becquerels (Bq)! (147,000,000,000,000 – the E+ symbol is a way of showing positive exponents without using superscript). That's 3,973 Curies, if I did my calculations right (1 Curie = 3.7 x 10E+10 Bq).

This event went unreported and unnoticed by the world, probably because not even critics of nuclear power could know what the implications for public health were. The number is large and shocking, but this illustrates once again how confusing these mega-numbers are to anyone who is trying to understand the risks of nuclear energy. The more the number of zeroes goes up, the more numbing and senseless the figures seem to become, and the numbers themselves don’t tell anything about how the particular radionuclide interacts with living things, or how fast it disperses, decays, or leaves the human body. Tritium (a hydrogen atom with two extra neutrons) is an extremely dangerous substance to handle in even small amounts of less than a milligram, and catastrophic accidents are possible, but it has been difficult to prove any harm from the way that it has been handled in the nuclear industry.

The accident in Canada illustrates a point often made by antinuclear activists: there is no place to run, and no way to know for sure what you might be running from or toward. The message is there for you in the tritium-illuminated signs found in most public buildings, reminding you that man-made radioactivity is now everywhere.

The Fukushima accident is said to have released 511 x 10+E18 Bq (six more zeroes than the release of tritium in Canada, but hey, after the first twelve zeroes, who’s counting?) of Iodine 131 to the air, most of which blew out to sea and decayed away within a month. Iodine 131 poses a larger health risk because of its absorption in the thyroid, but there is a lot of guesswork in figuring out how much of the amount released was absorbed by people. One could run from this danger only to be caught downwind from the next accident, whether it comes from a meltdown or a luminous sign factory.

Another interesting dimension of the Canadian accident is that it highlighted an absurdity in the way the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) sets its safety limits. Gordon Edwards reported on this in a recent article for Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. (“Nuclear Regulator Allows ‘Tritium Unlimited.’” Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. September 15, 2012.)

Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, April 2012

He described how on Feb. 1, 2010,  Shield Source Incorporated (SSI), the maker of luminous signs in Peterborough, released 147 x 10E+12 Bq of radiation from tritium gas to the atmosphere, tritium which it buys from Ontario’s nuclear power stations. This was 29% of the company’s permitted annual limit of 500 x 10E+12 Bq. Yet the CNSC also had a derived release limit for the company: 34 x 10E+18 Bq!

Gordon Edwards cites another report done in 2009 by Dr. Ole Hendrickson, writing for Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County (where Peterborough is located):

“CNSC has currently set the derived release limit for HT at 3.4 X 10E+19 Bq/year. This is over 200 times higher than the total global natural tritium production rate, and more than the ten times the total world steady state natural inventory of tritium. Each year during the past five years, in theory, SSI could have emitted more than ten times the world’s current natural tritium inventory. Had they done so, tritium levels in rainfall, and in every water body in the world, would have risen several hundred-fold, reaching levels exceeding those measured at the peak of nuclear weapons testing in 1963. This would have triggered a global health crisis. There would have been a tremendous outcry from scientists, health professionals and civil society around the world. This scenario, of course, is impossible. All the reactors in Canada could not produce enough tritium for SSI to do this. The derived release limit is literally absurd.”

The CNSC says the derived limits “represent an estimate of a release that could result in a dose of 1 mSv to an exposed member of the public” and this forces them, in the case of tritium, to imagine an extremely large release.

Dr. Hendricksen goes on to say, “SSI’s derived release limit is absurd, and has no legal effect. So why have two so-called “limits” for radioactive emissions from a Canadian nuclear facility? The answer is simple… [this practice]… assures the public that radiation releases – whether “routine” or “accidental” – are of no concern. For years, Canada’s nuclear regulatory agency has used derived release limits in this fashion.”

Regardless of the continuation of the derived limits, Gordon Edwards concludes by noting that in May 2012 it was learned that SSI had been violating its license for at least two years, and since then it has not been allowed to engage in tritium handling operations.

About Tritium:

From the Canadian government:

Tritium produced from nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and 1960s was dispersed into the global atmosphere and reached 120 Bq/L in precipitation in Ottawa in the mid-1960s. Concentrations since then have steadily declined and are now about 2 to 3 Bq/L across Canada.

Tritium exposure can pose a health risk if it is ingested through drinking water or food, or inhaled or absorbed through the skin in large quantities. The Canadian public is not at risk from tritium intakes at current levels. There is no evidence of adverse health effects, based on biological experiments, observations of humans following accidental intakes of tritium, or routine surveillance of radiation workers at these levels.

Tritium taken in as tritiated water has a biological half-life of 10 days, which means half of the tritium is excreted in this time. However, a small amount does become organically bound (bound to proteins, fat and carbohydrates) with an average 40-day half-life.

From Wikipedia on CANDU reactors:

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen (H-3), with a half-life of 12.3 years. It is found in small amounts in nature (about 4 kg globally), created by cosmic ray interactions in the upper atmosphere. Tritium is considered a weak radionuclide because of its low-energy radioactive emissions (beta particle energy 0 -19 keV). The beta particles do not travel very far in air and do not penetrate skin, so the main hazard is intake into the body (inhalation, ingestion, or absorption).

Tritium is generated in the fuel of all reactors; however, CANDU reactors generate tritium also in their coolant and moderator, due to neutron capture in heavy hydrogen.

Allowable tritium level in Canadian drinking water: 7,000 Bq/liter. The figures for the EU, Finland and Australia are, in order, 100, 30,000, and 76,000.

1.     Tritium emits 10,000 curies/gram, or 3.7 x 10E+14 decays/second

2.     US reactors emit 1/10 of a gram/year, sometimes one gram.

3.     CANDU reactors release 20 times more than US reactors.

4.     One gram of tritium in the body would bring a rapid death.

5.     Amounts released by reactors must be tremendously diluted.

6.     The American EPA standard for tritium is 740 decays/second per liter of drinking water (about 1/10^th of the Canadian limit). (1 decay/second equals one Bq).

7.     If a human body holds 40L water, this would equal 30,000 decays/second, assuming a person drank water at the limit to the point that all water in his body was replaced by contaminated water. [Regulatory limits seem to be based on the assumption that this prolonged exposure will never happen. It is assumed that emergencies will be of short duration and people will get alternative sources of water.]

8.     Natural radiation in the body (from radioactive potassium, K-40) = 4,400 decays/second.

source:  Ace Hoffman. The Code Killers. 2008. p. 10. www.acehoffman.org  

Greenpeace report on Tritium at Canadian Nuclear Facilities

Nuclear Industry Review of Greenpeace report on tritium

From Shield Source Incorporated:

“The World’s Leading Manufacturer of Self-Luminous Safety Signs…  no wiring, electricity, maintenance, lamps to replace [with] gaseous tritium light sources (GTLS)… These days it’s all about GREEN environmentally friendly products and there’s nothing GREENER than our self-luminous signs.  Our innovative technology transforms a waste product [tritium] into a commercially viable life safety device whose components, at the end of its’ effective life, can be recycled.”

Further reading:

“Tritium leaks at Peterborough airport: Four NGOs call for shutdown, protest re-licensing.” Straight Goods.ca. April 12, 2012.

Gordon Kennedy, “Activists unfurl Welcome to the Tritium Zone banner on Hwy. 7/115.” The Peterborough Examiner. April 20, 2012.

Zach Ruiter, “Nuclear Radiation in Ontario: Tritium Toxic Emissions have Increased Dramatically in Peterborough.” Center for Research on Globalization. April 26, 2012.

Jessica Murphy. "Green groups raise Peterborough radiation fears." The Toronto Sun. April 11, 2012.

Free Stuff!

A group of writers from The Japan Times and The Kyoto Journal have published a book of articles and interviews about Japan’s road to nuclear ruin and its future options for energy alternatives: Fresh Currents: Japan’s Flow from a Nuclear Past to a Renewable Future. The book was financed by donations through an Indiegogo campaign. Digital copies can be downloaded for free and a printed version can be ordered for 2,000 yen.

An excerpt:

Aileen Mioko Smith’s List of…

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Ten Strategies Taken by State, Prefectural Governments, Academic Flunkies and Companies in the Cases of Minamata and Fukushima:

1	Do not take responsibility. Use sectionalism to pin blame on others.
2	Confuse victims and public opinion, creating the impression that there are pros and cons on each side.
3	Position victims in conflict with each other.
4	Do not record data or leave evidence.
5	Stall for time.
6	Conduct tests or surveys that will produce underestimated results on damage.
7	Wear victims down until they give up.
8	Create an official certification system that narrows down the victim numbers.
9	Do not release information abroad.
10	Call on academic flunkies to hold international conferences.

What is the most important thing everyone should know?

“If you don’t have a functioning democracy, the mistakes of the past will just keep being repeated. And not just with nuclear power.”

Eric Johnston. “Aileen Mioko Smith on Post-Fukushima Realities.” Fresh Currents. Kyoto Journal Heian-Kyo Media. October 2012. p. 84-93. www.freshcurrents.com.

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Another great free resource is the book published by Ace Hoffman, a writer from California who has worked diligently on nuclear issues for many years, especially on the problems surrounding the San Onofre NPP.  His book The Code Killers... 

... is the perfect solution for the biggest problem encountered in citizen involvement in nuclear issues. The science is just too bizarre, un-intuitive and complex for most people to engage with easily. His book, presented in the design style of a graphic novel, breaks down the complexity into bite-sized chunks. Anyone who reads it can quickly gain basic literacy in nuclear science.