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Phyr.Educ.P 1993).Ptintedln he UK

Public risks from the nuclear industryGeorgeMarxThis Is the third a nd llnal pari of a pape r presentedby Professor George Man of Eatviis University,Budapest, at the 1991 Pan-American XlenceConference In Venezueta. The first part ap peare dIn January and the second InMarch.

Almost 50% of the electricity produced in Hungarycomes from nuclear power. In the vicinity of thenuclear power station the extra load due to theoperation of the power plant has never exceeded0.0001 mSv/year. (The physical meaning andmedical risk of this unit has been discussed in thetwo preceding parts of this paper entitled 'Every-day risks' an d 'Risks of radioactivity'). Let usquote Edward Teller's formulation: by sharing abed with someone else one receives 100 times mo reradiation than by sitting at the gate of this powerplant for the same period. The nuclear industryreleases activity mostly in the form of gaseousfission products-the nob legases"Ar, "Kr. '"Xe.'"Xe-which on e inhales and then exhales. Th eradioactive aerosol emission of the HungarianNuclear Power Station is 100 times less per k W h felectrical energy than the activity released in thesmoke of some Hungarian coal power plants.(Dissolved uranium salts precipitate on humusand peat in an insoluble form, which is why somebrown coals are rich in uranium.)The nuclear plants of the world supply about200 GW of electrical power. The related industry(radon release from uranium mining, active Krand Xe emission from fuel reprocessing) brings anextra load upon the population of the Northernhemisphere:world's nuclear industry

0.000 15 mSv/year per person.In 1988 the estimated global collective dose onmankind was 2000 Sv from watches with luminousdials. Th e collective population load was 1000 Svfrom nuclear power; it was 5000 Sv fo r workers inthe nuclear industry. Thus the risk of nuclearelectricity may be I casualtylGWyear as a worldaverage. The corresponding collective risks values

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are 100,50 an d 250 per year. (There are thousandsof victims every day in traffic accidents.) InHungary, the coalpower stations led to more thanIO fatal casualties per GW year in the case of deepmining, and more than 3 per GWyear in the caseof surface mining. Carcinogenic ai r pollution con -tributes further casualties due io coal power plantsin the population. The case of oil power is nobetter. For economic reasons, the heaviest oil isbumed to produce electricity. In Hungary, theheavy metal content of the imported oil causesserious chemical air pollution in the vicinity of OUTlargest oil power plant, resulting in a high numberof respiratory problems am ong schoolchildren.

ChernobylThe anxiety over nuclear radiation stems fromthe consequences of the tragic am'dent that hap-pened at the nuclear power station in Chernobyl(Ukraine). The author of the preset paper paid apersonal visit to Chemobyl in late 1991, with adoseratemeter in hand. The number of directcasualties w as 30, and might have approached 100within the first year. The amou nt of ejected radio-activ itycould be measured; it is known worldwide,and so is the activity of the fallout reachingdifferent countries. (The present main healthhazard is th e fission fallou t "'Cs, which can beincorporated in the hum an body, as a consequenceof it s chemical similarity to K, but the radiationload does not reach the maximum tolerated loadeven at Reactor 3, located in the same building a sthe destroyed Reactor 4.) The radiation dosereceived in the first year (April 1986-April 1987)was measured to be:Pripjat, town near,Chemobyl 50mSvEuropean ex-USSR (estimated) 1 mSvEuropean average outside ex-USSR 0.25 mSvHungarian average 0.2 mSvN Africa, SW Asia 0.02 mSvOther continents

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average dose of 3 mSv. The associated riskamounts R = 10 microrisks (still in accordancewith Californian law). But the dose was twice ashigh in Budapest, because the radioactive isotopesbrought by the wind precipitated to the chemicalaerosol floating above the city. In general, half ofthe active fallout was concentrated in the first year,the other half spread over later years. One may getmore alarming numbers, however, by calculatingthecollective risks (the number ofexpected indirectcasualties worldwide) due to the time-extrapolatedtotal dose of the Chernobyl accident:HungaryEurop e excluding ex-USSRN R < ( lO X 1 0 6 ) x 0 . 4 x ( 5 0 x 10-6)=200NR< 700 X IO6) X 0.5 X (50X

NR

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figures. (Youmay repeat his calculations using theda ta given in this paper.) We know the final out-come of the s tory. Khrushchov rejected SdkhdrOVSprotest. Tw o big bombs were exploded. The physi-cists made their measurements and performed theircalculations worldwide. A global wave of pro-test-led by scientists-forced the superpowers toagree a ban on atmospheric tests. Smaller powerswanted to develop their bombs as well: they con-tinued low-scale testing for a while. but the protestsforced them also to sto p atmospheric explosions.In Hungarian high schools (12th grade) physicsteachers perform some simple radioactive demon-strations with Geiger-Mijller tubes. In theseexperiments they have to measure the backgroundactivity first. After this regular lesson, in earlyMay 1986 the television news annou nced that theradioactive cloud has reached Hungary. In on eschool pupils queued at the door of the physicslaboratory, early in the morning, waiting for theteacher: Let us measure the backgrou nd again! Itturned out that it was three times higher than amonth before, causing great excitement. Theydemanded that the windows be opened: Let theChernobyl radioactivity come in! i t was done , andthe activity fell to the old value. The morningincrease was due to the accumulation of radon inthe unventilated classroom during the night-a lesson these students will never forget. Radio-activity aroun d us s a fact of life.Nuclear fallout can be measured exactly, aswe did in Hungarian secondary schools after

Chernobyl, and a s we have monitored radon since.High technology can be controlled. Humans, too,have to learn to control themselves, to preventwars and technological catastrophes. (The num-ber of casualties in traffic accidents in Europeapproaches a million per year.) Europeans sharethe hope that in this decade thece ntral issue will becleaning up the environmental mess: acid rain,ozone depletion, global warming. These ar e muchmore complex chemical issues, but we have tolearn to measure, understand an d control them a swell as we have done with the risks of ionizingradiation.

Further readin gSources. Efec ts and Risks oJNuclear RadiationUnitedNations, Ne w York (1988)Radiation:A Fact oJ Lf e International Atomic EnergyAgency, Vienna (1979)Energy and Risk in Education UNESCO-IUPAP physicseducation conference proceedings, National Institutefor EducationalTechnology,Hungary (1989)Ian Blair Taming ike Atom Adam Hilger, Bristol (1983)Bernard L Cohen Before I t s Too Late Plenum Press,New York (1983)J H Fremlin Power Production- Wha t are the Risks?Adam Hilger, Bristol (1985)Proposalfor New Radiation Protection Standardslntemational Radiation Protection Agency, Pans(1990)

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