Radiation Found at Fire Scene

Firefighters are trained to deal with fire, smoke, and all kinds of hazards. But it’s not everyday they run across radioactive material. That’s what happened around 9:00 this morning at La Farge Cement in the 2600 block of North 145th East Avenue. There was little damage, as Catoosa and Tulsa firefighters quickly put the fire out.

But as FOX 23′s Douglas Clark found out, concerns among neighbors are still smouldering.

The chemical is called Cesium 137, a radioactive element. Experts say the good news is that it is not overly dangerous if properly contained. But people who live near this plant want reassurance that they’re not living next to a potential danger.

A preliminary investigation revealed that the fire likely started as a result of the mechanical failure of a conveyor belt. That conveyor belt we’re told is just one foot away from where radioactive chemical Cesium 137 is stored.

“It concerns me if something leaked or if there was some danger, I’d want to know about it,” says neighbor Jeanne West.

So how dangerous is Cesium to people who live close by?

“The dangers with Cesium are probably not that dramatic,” says TU Chemistry Professor Bob Howard. He says it’s usually stored in solid-form as salt. That keeps it fairly tame. But if firefighters had gotten it wet while putting out the fire, it could have seeped through cracks in the floor and then into the soil.

“Water goes where it wants to go and a solid you can sweep up and contain pretty well,” says Howard.

Professor Howard also says Cesium 137 can also give off X-rays, a form of radiation. Plant officials say in this case, the Cesium is stored in lead casing, which protects plant workers from radiation and keeps it fire-proof.

Researchers Discover Atomic Bomb Effect Results in Adult-onset Thyroid Cancer

Radiation from the atomic bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, likely rearranged chromosomes in some survivors who later developed papillary thyroid cancer as adults, according to Japanese researchers.

In the September 1, 2008, issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, the scientists report that subjects who lived close to the blast sites, were comparably young at the time, and developed the cancer quickly once they reached adulthood, were likely to have a chromosomal rearrangement known as RET/PTC that is not very frequent in adults who develop the disease.

“Recent in vitro and in vivo studies suggest that a single genetic event in the MAP kinase-signaling pathway may be sufficient for thyroid cell transformation and tumor development,” said the study’s lead author, Kiyohiro Hamatani, Ph.D., laboratory chief, Department of Radiobiology and Molecular Epidemiology at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) in Hiroshima.

Yankee workers evacuated

About a dozen workers in the reactor building at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant were evacuated Tuesday around noon because of a doubling of radiation levels in a portion of the plant, Entergy officials said late Tuesday.

The higher radiation levels were the result of human error, they said, in changing a filter in the reactor’s cooling system.

There were no radioactive releases to the environment and the problem did not affect the operation of the plant nor its power production, according to Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear

Radiation warning system urged

BAHRAIN and other GCC countries are being urged to instal special nuclear radiation detectors and early-warning systems.

They should also prepare themselves for any unexpected incident by establishing their own research centres and training their national forces in the field of nuclear radiation emergencies, said Marine Emergency Mutual Aid Centre (Memac) director Captain Abdul Monem Al Janahi.

He said countries must join international conventions and protocols besides conducting research and exchanging information, technology and expertise, to be ready for emergencies.

A set of regional co-operation and co-ordination agreements should also be established.

Memac’s call follows an announcement that Bahrain and other countries in the region are planning to pursue nuclear energy.

In May, Oil and Gas Affairs Minister and National Oil and Gas Authority (Noga) chairman Dr Abdulhussain Mirza announced that Bahrain was planning to build a nuclear power plant to meet future energy needs, but it would take at least a decade to complete.

Radiation leak is unacceptable

Fast forward (again) to today. According to the front-page article in Wednesday’s paper, trace amounts of strontium 90 have been found in monitoring wells outside Indian Point’s property for the second time in less than a year. Now it is being blamed (possibly) on testing during the Cold War. As always, we are told there is no threat to public safety. But it does involve off-site water. Any radiation leak is unacceptable, and any radiation leak (no matter how small) is a threat to our safety.

Anti-nuclear quote of the week.

“Every year Areva, the French conglomerate that handles reprocessing, dumps so much radioactive liquid into the Channel that, says Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “there are certain beaches where the effluent pipe is where you can get a suntan at night.”” [source] What absolutely laughable, ridiculous nonsense. Hell, even Caldicott probably wouldn’t be [...]