First, my calculations are attached in pdf form.  I
don't know why the link was lost, but I will correct
that on my web page.

You will see where I base my calculations on weapons
grade Pu and estimate the dose to the entire
population as a function of age at the time of
exposure.  I had to make some assumptions as to the
percentage of the population in certain age groups,
but I think that the assumptions are suitable for the
purpose of my calculation.

You have to remember the basis of my argument and that
is that the claim was made that one pound of Pu has
enough radiation to give each person on Earth cancer,
if evenly divided.  That claim was made my Dr.
Caldicott and by many other anti-nuclear activists.

You have to take it in context...heck one pound of
just about anything properly distributed can kill
everyone on Earth.  If you distribute one pound of
brocoli in 6.2 billion well-placed bullets, I am sure
that you would wipe out everyone - but is it the
brocoli or the bullet itself that killed that person?
I think you would agree that the brocoli had nothing
to do with the death.  Now, take a pound of brocoli
and shove it down someone's throat and I'm sure
they'll probably die of asphyxiation.

The absolute worse-case scenario of equally
distributing the Pu would be to line each person up
and feed them their share of the Pu.  In calculating
the dose to each person, that would be the ultimate
worse case (if you assume an even distribution).  Why?
 Simple...if your neighbor dies he/she will PROBABLY
be buried, placed in a casket, and then a vault (yes,
he might be cremated sending his Pu towards the sky,
further diluting his Pu into the vast area of land and
water we call Earth).

While that arrangement will not isolate Mr. Neighbor's
remains from the surrounding dirt for eternity, it is
fairly safe to assume that his remains (and the Pu in
them) will not enter the environment while you are
alive.  If they reamin the concrete vault then you
will not absorb his or anyone else's Pu while you are
alive.

Remember, we are talking about one population of the
entire World.  Even after everyone dies, less than
that one pound of Pu would be available to enter the
food chain or air supply because not all of the Pu in
your body will be able to migrate into places on Earth
where we get our food and/or water.

When radiation interacts with matter, the vast
majority of the radiation itself interacts with the
water molecules in your body and forms free radicals.
These free radicals can interact with your DNA strands
and disrupt them.  The body can and does repair this
damage all the time.  This process is (as you said)
not 100% accurate because the body is not perfect.  (I
never implied that it was 100% successful - that was
something that you assumed.)

Now, assume a VERY slow rate of destruction of the
DNA.  It has been shown that the body can repair
damage done to ONE strand of DNA much easier than it
can repair damage to BOTH strands.  As such, the
probability of 100% repair is much higher for
single-strand damage than it is for dual-strand
damage.  Since it is more probable that dual-strand
damage will occur when the concentration of free
radicals increases it is therefore safe to assume that
as the free radical concentration increases, the
probability of 100% repair decreases.

Thus, if radiation is absorbed by the body slow
enough, the body has a better chance of correctly
repairing the damage.  As the rate of damage
increases, the body's ability to "keep up" will
diminish.  It is because of this that I believe that
if you receive a dose that is low enough, your body
has essentially a 100% chance of repairing the damage.
 What is that dose rate?  It depends on as many
factors as we have people studying the problem.

Therefore, my body's ability to correct the damage is
NOT affected by the dose rate you receive - it is only
a factor of MY dose rate.

Now, let's look at the scenario where you gave in that
1 person dies from a certain dose to 1,000 people.  If
you take that same dose and spread it out among 10,000
people I disagree that 1 person (in a perfect,
statistical world) will also die.  Let's look at a
more concrete case.  It is widely accepted that the LD
50/60 for humans is between 480-540 REMs and the
LD100/60 is 800 REMs.

So, lets assume that ten people are equally exposed to
a source (by eating it) of 8000 REMs.  Each person
receives 800 REMs and they all die - ten deaths.  Now,
assume that the SAME material (with the same activity)
is equally distributed among 16 people.  By your
argument, ten people should still die - but this is
not the case.  Each person received only 500 REMs now,
which is the LD50/60 for humans.  As such, we would
expect HALF of the population to die - or now only 8
people.  For a population to experience ten deaths,
you would need 20 people - but that dose (400 REMs) is
below the LD50/60 rate for humans by 80 REMs.

My point is that as the dose received per person
drops, the chances of death decreases not linearly but
by some higher-order equation.

There is STILL a chance that someone driving a car at
a very low rate of speed can be killed in a car
accident.  What if another car falls off an overpass
and crushes the poor person below?  It COULD happen
and we would therefore have some probability of a
person being fatally injured in a car accident EVEN if
we keep speeds to a minimum.  That probability is in
no way is linear with speed (since kinetic energy is
related to the square of the speed).

It has been difficult to estimate cancer induction
risks, because most of the radiation exposures that
humans receive are very close to background levels. At
low dose levels of millirems to tens of rems, the risk
of radiation-induced cancers is so low, that if the
risk exists, it is not readily distinguishable from
normal levels of cancer occurrence. In addition,
leukemia or solid tumors induced by radiation are
indistinguishable from those that result from other
causes.

Did you ever see the Matrix?  If so, do you remember
the part where the Oracle tells Neo not to worry about
breaking the vase - he turns around and breaks it?
She then tells him that what will really eat him up is
if he would have broken it had she not said anything.

People get cancer every day - and from what?  Who
knows - maybe that is why we have not yet been able to
find a cure.  If you are exposed to even 200 REMs and
you develop, who is to say that THAT dose is what
caused it?  Would you have developed cancer even if
you had not received that dose?  That is the great
mystery.  Suffice it to say that if you received a
large dose to the eyes and then developed cataracts,
it would be safe to assume that the cancer caused it.

As far as Dr. Caldicott having more experience in
radiation studies, I would say that her experience is
obviously lacking.  Her statement was that if 1 pound
of Pu was equally distributed, every person would
develop cancer.  In my hypothetical worse-case
scenario, I distributed 1 pound of weapons grade Pu to
the entire world and my results showed that based on
ICRP data and risk factors, you would need about 4500
pounds of Pu.  That is far from the 1 pound that she
claimed.

In other words, even assuming the absolute worse way
of distributing that Pu to every person alive, you
would STILL not be able to say (statistically or
otherwise) that one pound would be enough to cause
cancer to the entire world.

But such an experiment is absurd, as you rightfully
agree.  If the Pu was dispersed equally all over the
Earth, most would go in the ocean and uninhabited
lands.  The rest would fall to Earth and, as it is
falling, we would inhale some of it based upon our
breathing rate.  Still more would fall to Earth.  Some
would be stomped into the ground and would never enter
the food chain.  Some would.  Some would be absorbed
in our body, some would pass through our body and into
the toilet.

Of that passed out of our body, some would be absorbed
by the Earth and some would find its way to the ocean
where the fish would eat it and so on.  No matter how
you cut it, each iteration of the Pu particle going
through a plant or animal, some would be lost never to
enter the food chain again.

Since we live in a real world, it makes more sense to
use real-world scenarios.  Based on an analysis of
population density, average breathing rates of people,
and (using the wedge model) 5,000 would die in all of
S. Asia as a result of 1 kg of Pu being dispersed
(that is from the Pu itself, not from the nuclear
blast).

I do not have a clear calculation of how many people
would die should you disperse one pound of Pu across
the entire world because such a calc would involve
quite a bit of data - which I don't have the time to
do.  My point is that if 5,000 people would die from 1
kg of Pu dispersed at near-ground level in such a
densely-populated area, then there is no way that 6.2
billion would ever die from less than half the amount
of Pu in a MUCH LESS densely-populated area (the
entire world).  IF you assumed the same population
density over the entire world (even the oceans), then
only 2272 would die from 1 pound of Pu using the ICRP
data.

You argue that real life exposure would lead to a
higher dose than my diabolical experiment.  I don't
see how you could believe that since, as stated
earlier, people will die but their Pu would more than
likely not enter anyone else's body while they are
still alive.  Couple this with the fact that the
statement was with "one pound of Pu EQUALLY DISPERSED"
and it makes no sense to even talk about it.  However,
I'd really like to know a scenario of how you could
equally disperse 1 lb. of Pu over the entire Earth in
such a way that I would receive a higher dose than if
I ingest, inhaled, whatever my exact share of 1/6.2
billion pounds.

Does it make much sense to fight like mad to reduce
one's exposure of radiation to absolutely the bare
minimum necessary to go on living?  Most of us would
say no because we like to watch TV, we like to travel
in airplanes, we like smoke detectors, and we like to
be able to turn our lights on at night.  Most people
realize that anything in life is a risk and what is
the point to fight to eliminate a 1:1,000,000 chance
of injury when our everyday lives expose us to dangers
far in excess of that.  What are other activities that
have a 1:1,000,000 chance of injury?  Well:

1. Smoking 1.4 cigarettes in a lifetime (lung cancer)
2. Eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter (aflatoxin)
3. Spending two days in New York City (air pollution)
4. Driving 40 miles in a car (accident)
5. Flying 2500 miles in a jet (accident)
6. Canoeing for 6 minutes (drowning)
7. Receiving a dose of 10 mrem of radiation (cancer)

It doesn't make much sense to spend all of your time
and effort trying to balance your savings account
because it is off by 1 penny when your checking
account is off by a couple thousand dollars.

Everything in life carries risk and unless you are
willing to curtail your life such that the real risks
in life are greatly reduced, why do you worry so much
about nuclear power when your risks of injury from
nuclear power are so pathetically small?  Now, if you
live in a wood house at sea level (not brick or stone)
with central HEPA filters to remove all pollution, do
not watch TV, do not drive a car, do not smoke or
drink alcohol, grow all your vegetables, do not eat
meats or animal by-products then I would say that you
have a right to fight the risks of nuclear power
because you have obviously demonstrated that you want
to increase your lifespan by a couple of years.  But
since you are using a computer monitor (radiation
source) I would say that you don't have that mind set.

Everyone will agree that radiation is damaging.  I do
not, nor have I ever claimed that it is anything but
damaging.  What I disagree with is the mind set that
radiation, in all forms and levels, is DEADLY.  With
technology and advancement comes increased risk to
everyone.  What you have to do is balance the risk
with the benefit.  The risk of nuclear power has been
PROVEN to be extremely small - so small that it does
not even come CLOSE to approaching the risks that we
take every day.

The amount of radiation that you will receive from
nuclear plants is less than .1% of your total
radiation exposure.  I am terribly sorry, but I do not
see how an intelligent person can claim that their
life will be affected at all by reducing their
exposure to radiation by less than 0.1%.

You go further to state that many people will die from
Pu from NASA and weapons testing.  Your radiation dose
from fallout amounts to less than 0.3% of your yearly
radiation dose.  What you are saying is that someone
who develops lung cancer did so strictly from that
0.3% and the other 99.7% had NOTHING to do with it. 

Again, dose is dose is dose - it doesn't matter how
you receive it or where it comes from, dose received
is dose received.  1 mREM absorbed by the lungs from
inhalation of Pu is no different than 1 mREM absorbed
from a chest X-ray (except of course, the Pu stays
with you, but so does background radiation).  There is
a statistical flucuation in the radiation received
from nature based upon where you live.  Had you not
received 1 mREM from Pu exposure, who is to say that
you did not make that up and more when you flew in a
plane or when you took a cross-country trip, or from
that x-ray when you broke your arm, etc. ("you" is the
collective sense, not you personally.)

In short, if you subject yourself to radiation levels
250 times what you get from nuclear plants AND weapons
fallout as a normal function of your life and you
contract cancer, then there is no way that you can
claim with a stright face that you would not have
contracted cancer had there been no nuclear plants or
weapons fallout in existence today.  ("Yeah, I got
cancer from that radiation, but not from that.")  I am
sure your answer is that every little bit is a chance
for cancer.  My answer to that is simply a question:
If you beleive that then why are you staring at a
monitor right now?  (And I hope to GOD that you do not
smoke because then you'd be a REAL hypocrite!)

Regards,
Tim Steadham

P.S.
You don't need lead to shield Pu, all you need is just
a thin sheet of paper - or then dead layer of skin on
your body - or the mucosal lining of your G.I. tract.
Yes, it might be absorbed in which case your dose
would go up, but again, the q-factor for ingestion of
Pu is on the order of 10^-5 whereas inhalation is 0.2.

P.P.S.
I agree with you that we do not need NASA - but for
different reasons.  I really don't see the point in
spending billions and billions of dollars in trying to
figure out the secret of the universe when we could
spend that money on things better served - like
education, healthcare, and making the USA a little
better place to live.

P.P.P.S.
As far as I am concerned, it is Mr. Sternglass.  I
don't give anyone any credibility who is repeatedly
"discredited by reputable scientists and physicians
across the country."  For example, Mr. Sternglass
stated that there is a rise in breast cancer in women
living next to nuclear plants.  However, this study
was never published nor peer-reviewed.  Even though
the National Cancer Institute stated that there was
"no general increased risk of death from cancer for
people living in 107 U.S. counties containing or
closely adjacent to 62 nuclear power facilities."

Women who live in 268 counties within 50 miles of
nuclear facilities experienced a 10 percent increase
in breast cancer deaths between 1950 and 1989 because
of "nuclear emissions," according to Ernest Sternglass
and Jay Gould of the Chicago based Cancer Prevention
Coalition. The national increase in breast cancer
deaths during that time was only 4 percent, they said.

Mr. Sternglass and Mr. Gould allege that the 107
"nuclear" counties designated by the National Cancer
Institute had a 6 percent increase in breast cancer
mortality rates between 1950-54 base period and the
1980-84 base period, and a 5 percent increase between
the base period and 1985-89. Even using Sternglass'
and Gould's own numbers, however, these figures are
far below the mortality increases in NON-nuclear
states for the same time periods (15.4 percent and
10.6 percent, respectively.)

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