ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (07/30/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, July 30, 1986 8:02AM
Volume 6, Issue 128
Today's Topics:
administrivia
radiation and danger to people
[crummer: seriousness and how to tell]
Soviet Strategic View (SDI)
Re: Civil Disobedience
Re: seriousness and how to tell
Reagan's "Arms Control" Proposal
the 20% question
Radiation and Health (long)
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1986 08:08 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: administrivia
The following user has suddenly vanished. Pls help...
<<< 550 <velu@sphinx.umd.edu>... User unknown
------------------------------
Date: Monday, 28 July 1986 16:58-EDT
From: Jan Steinman <nike!uw-beaver!tektronix!tekecs.GWD.TEK.COM!jans at ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
To: cornell!XX.LCS.MIT.EDU!ARMS-D at ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Re: radiation and danger to people
Newsgroups: mod.politics.arms-d
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville, OR
>... isn't it possible that the 260 excess infant deaths during the TMI
accident were the result of increased stress levels on the mothers-to-be?
Good point. However...
>... to be attributed to radiation damage, one would expect the pattern of
deaths to continue for 9 months after the accident (fetal damage would not
be restricted to those at the end of gestation).
The increase was in *infant death*, not necessarily spontaneous abortion or
fetal death (although I believe those figures increased also), and was
highest in infants less than 1 month old. This tends to rule out stress,
as one-month-olds don't read the papers or watch TV news. :-) I suppose the
mother's stress could change the nutritional value of her milk, but it is
much more likely that high levels of radionuclides in the milk and water
were responsible. Apparently the fetal environment is more protective than
the post-partum environment.
>... where is it documented that it is the *rate* of change in radiation
>level that is the dangerous quantity?
Perhaps I was not clear -- I was writing about the correlation between
radiation changes and infant death rate changes, not about the rate of
change in radiation. I would assume the rate of radiation change is not
significant, and that slowly rising radiation levels would result in slowly
rising infant death rates, just as the quick rise in radiation during TMI
apparently caused a sharp increase in the infant death rate.
--
:::::: Artificial Intelligence Machines --- Smalltalk Project ::::::
:::::: Jan Steinman Box 1000, MS 60-405 (w)503/685-2956 ::::::
:::::: tektronix!tekecs!jans Wilsonville, OR 97070 (h)503/657-7703 ::::::
------------------------------
Date: Friday, 25 July 1986 12:11-EDT
From: crummer at aerospace.ARPA
To: LIN, arms-d@xx.lcs.mit.edu
Re: seriousness and how to tell
Posted-Date: 25 Jul 86 09:11:29 PDT (Fri)
Hans Bethe told me once that he thought that the Reagan administration was
"serious" about arms control because of the structure of the Geneva team.
Paul Nitze, said Bethe, is a serious individual. He believes in agreements
and will work to achieve them. Nitze is in business to produce results, not
to provide a sop to the left. Later I talked to Paul Warnke and mentioned
Bethe's remarks. Warnke said that indeed Nitze is a serious negotiator but
that his position as head of the team was titular only. In fact, said Warnke,
Nitze was not being allowed to do his job. As evidence for this position
Warnke noted the "walk in the woods" after which Richard Perle was able to
derail the process begun there.
--Charlie
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jul 86 (Tue) 11:34:08 EDT
From: Robert Goldman <rpg%brown.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Soviet Strategic View (SDI)
Mr. Benson, before citing Academician Ye. P. Velikhov, writes:
It is noteworthy that the Department of Defense 1985 report,
"Soviet Strategic Defense Program", identifies Velikhov as having
played an important role in the delevopment of the Soviet
anti-ballisitc missle defense program.
I'm afraid that I don't understand in what way this is noteworthy --
are we to discount Velikhov's anti-SDI comments as insincere (he was
involved in a BMD program and wants to maintain a hypothesized Soviet
edge in this field), or accept them as mature reflections of one who
has helped build an inadequate BMD? It seems to me that knowing this
one fact assures us that Velikhov is an expert, but that without any
idea of his motives, his opinion is of no use to us. Will someone
please enlighten me if I'm missing the point somewhere along here?
Best wishes,
Robert G.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 06:21 MST
From: Jong@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: Re: Civil Disobedience
> I believe the phrase is "courage of convection."
Oops! I meant to say conviction...
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 06:25 MST
From: Jong@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: Re: seriousness and how to tell
I think that if two sides are negotiating, and have differing positions,
I would watch the process and look for movement by the two sides. If
one side made more concessions than the other, I would think that one
was more serious -- especially if one side offered concessions and the
other didn't. In the case of the arms-control debate, I wonder
sometimes if one side or the other hasn't moved AWAY from the other's
position.
Given this definition, it would appear the Soviets are more serious
about arms control than the US.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 20:47:48 EDT
From: wolit%mhuxd.UUCP@harvard.HARVARD.EDU
Subject: Reagan's "Arms Control" Proposal
I'm a bit surprised that no one has commented so far on the
Administration's latest "arms control" proposal, the one contained
in the letter from Reagan to Gorbachev.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this proposal simply amount to
an offer to scrap the 1972 ABM Treaty, period, in exchange for
nothing at all? That treaty prohibits (it's still in effect, after
all) development and testing of all anti-ballistic missile weapons
(except for two -- later changed to one -- installations for each
party). Reagan's letter proposes to to sanction development and
testing of ABM systems. In exchange, he offers to delay deployment of
such a system for up to seven years. This is a particularly specious
offer, since Gen. Abrahamson, the head of the SDI Office, has stated
himself that deployment of any ABM system is at least *TEN* years off.
Thus Reagan is offering not to do what he can't do anyway, in return
for dismantling yet another of the few remaining arms control treaties
left.
The news media have meekly parrotted the Administration's line on the
proposal, claiming that the new proposal amounts to a *STRENGTHENING*
of the ABM Treaty, since (they say), the old treaty allowed either
party to withdraw with six month's notice, while Reagan's plan
effectively lengthens that period to seven years. What they fail to
explain is that the 1972 treaty only permits a party to withdraw
"... if it decide that extraordinary events related to the subject
matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests." The
administration proposal attempts an end run around this provision,
since they know they could never certify such a jeopardy of our
supreme interests to the Congress.
Have we become so numbed by Reagan's "War is Peace, Arms Racing is
Arms Control" logic that no one notices anymore?
----------
Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ; 201 582-2998; mhuxd!wolit
(Affiliation given for identification purposes only)
------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, 29 July 1986 13:36-EDT
From: Jan Steinman <hplabs!tektronix!tekecs.GWD.TEK.COM!jans at ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
To: hplabs!XX.LCS.MIT.EDU!ARMS-D at ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Re: the 20% question
Newsgroups: mod.politics.arms-d
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville, OR
Bob writes:
>In ARMS-D vol. 6, No. 126, the question was asked, "Does anyone think that
>a system that stops 20% of the warheads is worth having?"... Another
>ANALOGY: A football defense good enough to sack the quarterback 20% of the
>time is fantastic; but IF that means the other team is completing 80% of
>its pass attempts, then it's not so good...
To complete the analogy, let's keep in mind that this game is slightly
different: if the quarterback gets through even once, both teams might
suffer a horrible, lingering death.
:::::: Artificial Intelligence Machines --- Smalltalk Project ::::::
:::::: Jan Steinman Box 1000, MS 60-405 (w)503/685-2956 ::::::
:::::: tektronix!tekecs!jans Wilsonville, OR 97070 (h)503/657-7703 ::::::
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 22:57:54 pdt
From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu>
Subject: Radiation and Health (long)
I do seem to get some people mad; my expression of skepticism about
conspiracy theories with the US Government as villian has led Clifford
Johnson to state that the government is hiding information which shows
that KAL 007 was on a spy mission, and Jan Steinman maintains that the
government hid information which proved that 260 babies died as a result
of the accident at Three Mile Island.
My reply to Jan Steinman: The following information is from the article
entitled "Radiation, Biological Effects of" in the Macropaedia of the
15th edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, pp. 379-392. First, some
definitions: A Roentgen is an old unit of radiation which is related to
the amount of ionization of the air. The newer, biological unit is the
Rad (R), which measures the dose absorbed in living tissue. It is equal
to 100 ergs of energy absorbed per gram of tissue. Since not all types
of radiation are equally penetrating, the Rem (Roentgen Equivalent Man)
is defined as the dose from any radiation that produces biological effects
in man equal to one Rad of X-rays.
How much radiation are we exposed to in everyday life? The following tables
are from the referenced article:
Table 3
Cosmic Ray Exposure
Sea Level 0.02 to 0.04 rads/yr
5,000 ft. (Denver) 0.04 to 0.06 rads/yr
10,000 ft. (Andes) 0.08 to 0.12 rads/yr
Table 4
Internal Doses due to Natural Radioactivity
Isotope Radioactivity Radiation Dose
(curies) Type (rads/yr)
Carbon 14 9e-8/g beta 0.0016
Potassium 40 10.4e-8/g beta 0.0165
Potassium 40 1.15e-8/g gamma 0.0023
Radium and
daughters 1e-10/g alpha, beta, gamma 0.0380
External doses: 0.025 to 0.160 rads/yr on average, but much higher for
persons living near large granite deposits or in stone houses. Total
background for an average human being at sea level is about 90 to 200
millirems per year. It is estimated that 240 millirads of radiation
exposure to the bone surfaces of people living in the Northern Hemi-
sphere has resulted from above-ground nuclear testing up to that time.
Most of it was in the form of short-halflife isotopes which have decayed
away; we get another 16 millirads per year from the Carbon-14 still
left from the bomb tests, which has a halflife of 5,300 years.
What are the health effects? "Man is generally able to survive a single
dose of less than 150 Rem...In doses under 100 Rem, the discernible
radiation effects may be so slight that the exposed person is able to
continue his normal occupation. Some persons suffer subjective discomfort
from doses as low as 30 Rems. Sublethal doses may have chronic effects
many years later.
"From [Hiroshima and Nagasaki], it appears that one rad induces 1.5 cases
of leukemia [the primary radiation-induced cause of death] per 1,000,000
individuals per year, or a total of 20 cases per rad per 1,000,000. The
incidence in children exposed under 10 years of age is about twice as high."
How much radiation is released from nuclear power? "Most of the radioactivity
produced in power reactors is safely contained. A small percentage escapes
as stack gas or liquid effluent and eventually mah contaminate the atmosphere
and water supplies. Similar problems exits in nuclear-fuel reprocessing
plangs...While atomic plants promise to be abundand and clean sources of
energy, they may eventually contribute considerably to worldwide radiation
background. [Table 8 shows that worldwide operation of nuclear power may
double the radiation in the atmosphere by the year 2000; Table 4 above
shows that this would increase your average yearly radiation dose by 50
to 100 millirems.] The use of coal instead of atomic energy in future
power plants will not solve the problem of radioactive contamination,
since many sources of coal contain natural radioactivity (e.g., radium),
which appears in stack gases, in addition to chemical pollutants."
The article goes on to note that while the cellular and chromosome
damage from radiation continues to very low levels of radiation, there
is considerable debate within the scientific community about how low
is safe. The body does have the capability to heal itself, so a
continual exposure to very low-level radiation should not be as harmful
as the same amount of radiation administered in one short burst. This
is an area of active research, and no conclusions have yet been reached.
The US government health standard is for less than 5 Rems of exposure
per year to the gonads, and somewhat more for skin and extremities.
Some researchers maintain that this should be cut by a factor of 10,
to 500 millirems, but this is difficult to understand in light of the
background figures quoted above. [Britannica's opinion, not mine.]
Now, for the $64,000 question: how much radiation was produced by the
Three Mile Island accident? The following paragraph is a quote from
Science magazine's report of the accident, Vol. 204, p. 152, April 1979.
"Radiation levels in the immediate area around the plant and in a wider
area downwind increased by roughly 1 millirem per hour over the background
level. Occasional 'puffs' of radioactive gas escaped during the first 5
days, causing sudden jumps or 'spikes' in the level of radation amounting
to 14 or 15 millirems. One large uncontrolled puff escaped at 3 PM on
Friday 30 March, causing a brief spike which sent the needle from 2 to 90
millirems and back down again. The puff appeared while two workers, trying
to reroute plumbing at the plant, opened a pipe full of radioactive gas.
The gas escaped, giving the workers 1500 millirems of radiation each.
Similar but smaller releases continued throughout the weekend."
Based on the above, Battist et. al. in "Population Dose and Health Impact
of the Accident at Three Mile Island" (Government Printing Office, 1982)
reach a lifetime estimate of 2 fatal cancers and 2 non-fatal cancers in
the entire population within 50 miles [2,164,000], compared to an expected
number of 325,000 in the same time period.
Now, for my point-by-point response to Jan's last posting.
>Steve Walton writes, quotes:
>>Jan Steinman writes in Arms-D V6 #124:
>>
>>>Sources, please, or are you speaking from personal opinion? I listed mine...
>>
>>I'm sorry, but I don't consider a Dell paperback "documentary evidence."
>>Please cite an epidemiological study in a peer-reviewed research journal
>>which substantiates your claim of 260 infant deaths as a result of TMI.
>
>If you insist on looking down on such "studies of studies", this discussion
>is over. If you truly intend to follow up this subject, it is only one
>extra stop in the library to get the references out of the Dell book. (It
>is quite well documented, with many pages of references and footnotes.
"References and footnotes" are not the same thing as proving one's case,
hence my insistence on peer-reviewed research. The Brittanica article
cited above is drawn from such research. Velikovsky's "Worlds in
Collision" was chock full of references and footnotes; it was also wrong.
>The
>actual TMI data comes from the State of Pennsylvania, the reasearcher who
>discovered the excess infant death statistics is a Nobel Laurate, and I
>refuse to do any more of your work for you: READ THE DAMN BOOK BEFORE YOU
>ARGUE WITH IT!)
I've quoted my data; please quote yours. A lesson in elementary Poisson
statistics: for events which occurs N times per unit time interval,
the uncertainty in your measurement of N is the square root of N; scientists
are generally unwilling to accept a measurement unless it is at least
twice the square root of N above average, and even then there is roughly
a 10% chance that the measurement would have been this high due to the
statistical fluctuations. Possession of a Nobel is no guarantee against
foolishness--look at Linus Pauling and his Vitamin C fixation. I believe
that the above is strong evidence against your book's conclusion. Babies
don't die of nothing; I have presented evidence that radiation-induced
diseases caused by TMI radiation release are entirely negligible; if I
get a chance to get to another library I may look at "the damn book";
I think I've done enough work to show that I knew whereof I spoke.
>I suspect that you don't really wish to believe such
>things, and are not ready to be convinced by any studies at all.
I am ready to be convinced by evidence of radiation-induced deaths which
coincided with TMI. I will not be convinced by a statistical coincidence;
social scientists know well that correlation is not cause and effect.
>>>Denver's infant death rate is certainly different than Harrisburg's, and
>>>would certainly rise if another Rocky Flats accident coincided with the
>>>right atmospheric conditions.
>>
>>My point was that if the TMI release was small compared to the amounts
>>present naturally in places where people are living normal lives, this
>>gives a strong presumption that said release was, in fact, harmless.
>
>If there are normally 150 infant deaths per 10,000 in Denver, and 130 per
>10,000 in Harrisburg, and suddenly the rate in Harrisburg jumps up to that
>of Denver's during a nuclear accident, are you claiming that the accident
>was "harmless"? (These numbers are for illustration only.)
See above. 150-130=20, which is less than twice the square root of 130.
>Let's take
>this one step further -- if after a limited nuclear exchange, the average
>life expectancy of human beings was reduced to what it was before the
>invention of pennicillin, would that be "harmless" simply because it
>compares with "places where people (were) living normal lives?" I think
>there's a job in Washington writing doublespeak for you, Steve.
I think you may have repented of this paragraph by now; it shows a classic
straw-man debating technique: grossly exaggerate what your opponent says,
then show that gross exaggeration to be ridiculous.
>>>Many experts agree there is NO SAFE LEVEL of radiation...
>>
>>It is correct to say that there is no level of radiation which does not
>>cause cell damage; however, I would say that a radiation level which causes
>>so little damage that it doesn't have a statistical chance of causing
>>cancer in, say 100 years of exposure is safe.
>>
>Finally, I agree with you. Now it's your turn to prove your point.
I think I have.
>>How is TMI relevant to nuclear war?
>
>TMI shows (to those with eyes to see) that the dangers of a "nuclear
>exchange" of any kind are much greater than the government will admit. If
>a "harmless" accident at a nuclear power plant can kill hundreds of
>infants, how can we even be thinking about defending against a massive
>nuclear attack, or of using "tactical" nuclear weapons in a "regional
>confrontation"? When you're dealing with radiation, what goes around, comes
>around.
Do you think that sunshine and a supernova explosion are equivalent?
It's a long way from nuclear power to nuclear war, Jan, and I think you
hurt the cause of arms control (which I strongly favor) by equating one
with the other. I don't think even Lyndon LaRouche believes a nuclear
war is good for you.
Stephen Walton, Ametek Computer Research Division
ARPA: ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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