Nonplussed in Nevada*

Dear Nonplussed:

Before the atomic age, the Test Site was a risqué place. But when the nuclear boys took over, it transmuted into a risky place. How so and how risky? Well it was very risky during the days of atmospheric testing, which stopped in the early sixties and it's not very risky now and it may be more risky again in the future. But I run ahead of myself. Let me consider the scientific issues first and then the ethical-social-political issues.

Scientific Issues

Natural background radiation amounts to about 80 or 90 millirem (mrem) per year at sea level and more at higher altitudes. This includes external radiation from cosmic rays, natural radionuclides on the earth, and internal radiation from, for instance, naturally-occurring potassium-40.¹ Potassium-40 gets into the body mixed up naturally with the non-radioactive potassium which we consume with our food. This is the source of the often-cited comment by pro-nuclear industry people that one can get more radiation from sleeping next to someone (on the order of a few millirem per year, depending on how close one gets) than from living next to a nuclear power plant or radioactive dump (also depending on how close one gets).

A major source of radiation exposure is indoor radon - averaging 100 to 300 millirem - which is a decay product of uranium-238. The nuclear establishment counts this as "natural background" but it is mainly an artifact of house construction, and so IEER does not consider it as natural.

Other sources of exposure are medical X-rays and tobacco smoking (active or passive). These are highly variable also, as you can readily imagine. A chest X-ray with modern devices might expose a person to an equivalent of 5 or 10 millirem of whole body radiation.

Nuclear Weapons Testing

Historical doses during the time of atmospheric testing were large for many people.² Atmospheric testing continues to be by far the largest contribution to current radiation doses from nuclear testing even though the last atmospheric weapons test, a surface burst, at the Nevada Test Site was in 1962 and the last atmospheric test by any country was in 1980 (China). The current annual dose commitment in the northern hemisphere from global fallout is on the order of a few millirem per year. This decreases as time goes on due to the decay of some of the principal sources of the dose, notably cesium-137 and strontium-90, which have ha1f-lives of about 30 years and 28 years, respectively.

The releases of radioactivity to the atmosphere from underground testing have been far lower than from atmospheric testing, which amounted to 12 billion curies. Even so, there were, in the United States, many large releases from underground testing, totaling 25.3 million curies.³ The last very large release was during the Baneberry underground test in 1970 (6.7 million curies). Since that time, the largest single release has been a "controlled" purging from the Mighty Oak test in 1986 amounting to 36,000 curies. The two next largest releases since the Baneberry test have been accidental ventings of 6,800 curies (1971) and 3,100 curies (1980), according to a study by the now-defunct Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).

These release estimates do not include the residues of radioactivity which have been left underground. According to that same study, the total (lifetime) dose from all U.S. tests since the Baneberry test for a "person...standing at the boundary of the Nevada Test Site in the area of maximum concentration of radioactivity [for the duration of the specified period of testing]...would be equivalent to 32 minutes of normal background exposure (or the equivalent of 1/1000 of a single chest X-ray)."⁴ No one at IEER has verified the OTA calculations, but there does not appear to be anything wrong or suspicious about these figures and I presume them to be okay.

The dose for a typical single test would be far lower. The dose from the test with the largest accidental venting since Baneberry would be lower than 6 microrem (m rem). Of course, past accident magnitudes are no guarantee that future accidents will not be larger should underground nuclear testing resume. They are only a guide.

As you know, radiation is not the only environmental agent producing cancer, mutations, depression of immunity or other health problems. These same problems are also produced by other things, both natural and human-made. A large part of the problem of dealing with estimates of cancer and other health problems caused by radiation at the kinds of levels we have been discussing is that it is very difficult to sort out the effects of incremental amounts of radiation doses to people from the large of number of other factors which affect health outcomes, including cancer.

In sum, the doses per test from underground tests of the type done at Nevada after the Baneberry test in 1970 have been on the order of a few microrem or smaller. These doses are small compared to other commonly encountered doses, including the current doses from the residues of past atmospheric tests. There has been a test moratorium since 1992, though the United States maintains readiness to resume testing at the Nevada Test Site and has rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Onsite Doses

Various portions of the test site are contaminated from past testing. Radiation levels at the Sedan crater range up to 30 to 40 microrem per hour, so that about ten or twelve minutes in this area on a test site tour may give as much radiation dose as that which would have been received at the site boundary from all underground tests since Baneberry in 1970 (about six microrem total).

There are probably areas where there are unmapped "hot particles." This would include the general areas where "safety tests" were conducted, scattering plutonium on the site. I understand that the test site tour excludes these areas which may be a greater danger in the dry, desertic environment of the Nevada Test Site. Activities on the test site near contaminated locations are likely to be more risky than activities on the site boundary.

Social, Political and Ethical Issues

Whether to protest at the test site or to take a tour of it to learn more is a personal political and ethical choice that should be made in the context of the kind of scientific information I have given you. So, let me describe my own framework for making a choice. This discussion is about some social and ethical principles as I see them, with some illustrations of how they might be applied. It is not meant to address detailed technical issues arising from various kinds of site visits or protests, past, present, or future, or to tell anyone what they should or should not do.

First the issue of natural and human-made radiation. I accept natural radiation in the same way I accept other facts about being born. Dying of something or other is part of the order of nature and of one generation replacing the next. However, the fact that the natural order inexorably links life to death does not give any human being the right to accelerate my end without my consent. For someone to say that natural background radiation is 100 millirem, so it is okay for that person or institution to impose another few millirem is like saying "you're going to die anyway so why don't you let me punch you in the nose? It won't hurt much."

It is completely unacceptable for any human being to appeal to naturally-imposed risks (or risks imposed by God, if you're religiously inclined) in order to assume for themselves the right to impose risks upon another human being.

Now, as to the various human-created risks. It is true that we do make a choice of increased radiation exposure when we sleep next to someone. However, it is the cost-benefit ratio that is important. I can't think of any benefits of sleeping next to a dump, and certainly the benefits don't get any bigger the closer you get to the dump!

Moreover, there is the matter of choice. If one does not want a dump in one's neighborhood to accommodate wastes generated by a process in which one did not have a say, then it is the fact of the imposition of any risk at all which is in question, and not only the magnitude of risk. Further, if it is an imposition of risk from a process whose goals people do not share, then the institution or person imposing the risk has no right to impose it. This is where issues such as democracy, secrecy and informed consent come into play. Who benefits? Who bears the risk?

In that same perspective I am willing to take some risks in order to protect people, including myself and my children, but also future generations, from the menace of nuclear weapons and nuclear warfare. I recognize that there are risks associated with my profession. I try to keep these to a minimum but I don't let it prevent me from doing my job, a large part of which is to keep track of what the nuclear establishment is doing to the environment.

In this larger perspective of peace and of the protection of the Earth, a dose of a few millirem is a small risk that I am willing to take. In the same perspective, I am not willing to consent to the nuclear weapons testers to impose even a microrem of radiation on me, much less on my children, though today we are all unwilling victims of their past activities.

As for the question of whether to alert people to dangers of onsite activities. Generally speaking, dangers of activities near contaminated areas onsite are far greater than those for activities off the site or at the site boundary, but are still comparable to or smaller than many other routine exposures.

How does one think about exposures to children or pregnant women in protest activity? It is here that we can make comparisons of the risk from protest with voluntary exposures of other kinds. Many of us have taken trips that involve airplane trips. Many of us have taken children on such trips. Pregnant women decide to go on such trips, and if they refrain, it is usually not from fear of the added radiation dose.

A round trip in an airplane from New York to Las Vegas would result in a dose of a few millirem due to added cosmic rays and neutrons. The cumulative total average dose to an individual from routine releases from underground tests since Baneberry in 1970 has been on the order of a thousand of times smaller than this, when measured at the test site boundary. (But there is of course a small chance that a future venting might result in a far higher dose, should testing resume.) Hence, routine releases from underground tests after 1970 resulted in doses far smaller than those from airplane trips. Onsite doses near the Sedan test crater would be higher than doses at the test site boundary (depending on the length of time spent near the crater).

Considering whether to protest therefore involves a personal judgment about the effectiveness of the protest in stopping tests versus the risk one is willing to take to contribute to that goal. By contrast, the same dose would be unacceptable if nuclear tests involuntarily expose people who believe that nuclear testing is immoral. That increases risk to people while harming their goals and violating their principles.

A huge amount of plutonium has been left underground by past testing. More is being put there by "sub-critical" testing. So if one does not support nuclear testing then one should reject even minute doses involuntarily imposed by testing and also should work to stop more testing and plutonium contamination underground because that may exposure future generations. But I would add a caveat. I believe that if there is protest, it should be peaceful, for as Mahatma Gandhi said: "We must become the change we want to see in the world."

The risk that one is willing to take in the form of radiation doses to accomplish that is a personal choice that I hope can be better made in light of the discussion and information I have given you here.

Yrs. etc.

Arjun, a.k.a. Dr. Egghead

⁴ Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, entitled "the Containment of Underground Nuclear Explosions", OTA-ITC-414, October 1989. The quote is from pp. 4-5.