Article: 377 of sgi.talk.ratical
From: (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Subject: fallout from nuclear tests PERMEATES our world
Keywords: cancer, cancer, everywhere
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1991 15:31:58 GMT

from sci.energy

>From: henkel@nepjt.ncsu.edu (Chuck Henkel)
>Newsgroups: sci.energy
>Subject: Radwaste from wood ash
>Date: 12 Dec 91 17:46:05 GMT
>Organization: North Carolina State University, Raleigh

      Consider the following, from the "Notes and Quotes" section
      of this month's "ANS (American Nuclear Society) News:"
      
      "While cleaning ashes from his fireplace two years ago,
      Stewart A.  Farber mused that if trees filter and store
      airborne pollutants, they might also harbor fallout from the
      nuclear weapons tests of the 1950s and 1960s.  On a whim, he
      brought some of his fireplace ash to Yankee Atomic Electric
      Company's environmental lab . . . where he manages
      environmental monitoring.  Farber says he was amazed to
      discover that his sample showed the distinctive cesium and
      strontium 'signatures' of nuclear fallout. . . .
      
      "[Further testing of wood ash across the U.S. suggests] that
      fallout in wood ash `is a major source of radioactivity
      released into the environment,' Farber says. ... [Almost]
      all measurements of ash with fallout-cesium exceeded--some
      by 100 times or more--the levels of radioactive cesium
      that may be released from nuclear plants. . . .
      
      "Industrial wood burning in the United States generates an
      estimated 900,000 tons of ash each year;  residential and
      utility wood burning generates another 543,000 tons.
      Already, many companies are recycling this unregulated ash
      in fertilizers.  The irony, Farber says, is that federal
      regulations require releases from nuclear plants to be
      disposed of as radioactive wastes if they contain even one
      percent of the cesium and strontium levels detected in the
      ash samples from New England.  If ash were subject to the
      same regulations, he says, its disposal would cost U.S. wood
      burners more than $30 billion annually."  (From "Wood Ash:
      The Unregulated Radwaste," "Science News," August 10, 1991)
      
      --
  | Chuck Henkel                      | There are currently 111 operating   |
  | Department of Nuclear Engineering | nuclear power plants in the US,     |
  | N.C. State University             | generating nearly 100,000 Megawatts |
  | henkel@nepjt.ncsu.edu             | of electricity.                     |
      
--
                                             daveus rattus   

                                   yer friendly neighborhood ratman

                               KOYAANISQATSI

   ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language)  n.  1. crazy life.  2. life
       in turmoil.  3. life out of balance.  4. life disintegrating.  
         5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.