San Onofre's radiation blends into background

By: Richard Warnock - Commentary | Sunday, December 19, 2004 8:31 PM PST ∞

I hardly know where to start addressing Mr. Russell Hoffman's fanatical rant about San Onofre (Nuclear Generating Station) and radiation ("Time to pull plug on risky reactors," Nov. 12). He uses some jargon and buzz-words to give the flavor of knowledge, but he relies on innuendo, myths and half-truths for his conclusions rather than on facts, science and engineering.

It is surprising that you featured an article with so many foolish statements and technical blunders in your Sunday "Perspective" section. Did you check any of Mr. Hoffman's claims against facts before publishing the material?

Mr. Hoffman is correct that San Onofre makes and releases some tritium. The tritium is bound up as one of two hydrogen atoms on a water molecule. Water naturally contains a little tritium and San Onofre contributes a small amount to the local ecosystem. The amount of tritium released is too small to measure once it enters the local environment. The radiation dose to humans from these tritium releases is also too small to measure, but it can be calculated as less than 0.001 millirem per year. For perspective, each person living in the U.S. receives about 360 millirem of radiation every year. Most of this is from natural sources. For additional perspective, the regulatory limit for exposure to a member of the general public is 100 millirem per year.

These limits are safe and are in accord with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, and international guidance.

Tritium is commonly used in self-luminous watches, in self-luminous exit signs, and in self-luminous aircraft safety devices.

San Onofre releases an amount of tritium during a year that is equal to the amount of tritium contained in the number of self-luminous signs that you might find in one large building or shopping mall.

That's not very threatening!

Mr. Hoffman opined that "no energy source is as damaging to our biological structure as ionizing radiation."

This is patent nonsense. Radiation is a rather weak carcinogen when compared with smoking and many chemicals. Does Mr. Hoffman avoid dental and other medical x-rays and all nuclear medicine procedures? They produce ionizing radiation and they deposit some dose. All the energy we receive from the sun is radiant energy and that includes considerable ionizing radiation. As humans, we developed in a "sea" of radiation and we continue to live very successfully in that "sea."

Our bodies, our food, our water, our air, the earth, and the universe all contain naturally present radioactive materials.

These are the sources of the approximately one millirem per day radiation dose that nature delivers to each of us.

Possibly Mr. Hoffman can reconsider some of his nonsense. Then he can better enjoy the life he was given, and he can worry less about trivial radiation exposures.

---- Richard Warnock works at San Onofre as a project manager in the Health Physics/Radiation Protection department. His opinion is his own and does not necessarily represent the opinion of his employer.