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Studying Cancer Near Nuke Plants

  • The NRC tells people that living near nuclear power plants does not pose extra risk for cancer, and it points to a particular study, finished twenty years ago.(Photo courtesy of the Rancho Seco Reactor)

For decades, the federal government has said it’s safe to live near nuclear power reactors and it points to a particular cancer study to back that up. Shawn Allee reports, lately, the government worries that study’s out of date and it wants scientists to take another look.

Transcript

For decades, the federal government has said it’s safe to live near nuclear power reactors and it points to a particular cancer study to back that up. Shawn Allee reports, lately, the government worries that study’s out of date and it wants scientists to take another look.

The federal agency that’s looking for an up-to-date cancer study is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC.

It’s asked the National Academy of Sciences to do that study, but the Academy hasn’t made up its mind. The academy asked the NRC, the nuclear power industry, and the public to explain why a new study’s even needed.

It broadcast the hearing over the Internet.

“Our first speaker is Sarah Sauer, private citizen.”

Sarah Sauer is 16, but looks much younger.

“I am one of the statistics you’ll be studying. When I was seven years old, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. I hope in this study you will remember who you’re doing this for.”

“Thank you Sarah, let me invite your parents to say something if they’d like to.”

“I am Cynthia Sauer, Sarah’s mom. For my family and i this study is long overdue. nine years ago today, Sarah was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. The pain has been so shattering that we still cannot give it words.”

Cynthia Sauer tells the National Academy how her family once lived near the Dresden nuclear power station, about 50 miles Southwest of Chicago.

She’d learned that power plant leaked radioactive water years ago.

Cynthia Sauer can’t say for sure the plant caused Sarah’s cancer, but she wonders … because other kids were diagnosed with cancer, too.

“I began searching for answers to my questions regarding the leaks and the numbers of children diagnosed with cancer in our small town.”

Cynthia Sauer turned to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The NRC tells people that living near nuclear power plants does not pose extra risk for cancer, and it points to a particular study, finished twenty years ago.

“The scientists in the ad hoc committee statement clearly stated the study was flawed and that further monitoring and investigation was needed.”

What are the flaws? For one, the old study concluded people living near nuclear power plants do not face extra risk of dying from cancer … but it didn’t answer whether they’re at risk of getting cancer.

It ignored cancer survivors or people who moved before dying of the disease.

Sauer tells the academy that … this is why we need a new cancer study – we just can’t be confident in the old one.

And that’s a problem because at least three million people live within ten miles of a nuclear power plant.

Some US Congressmen want the safety issue settled, and in fact, so does the nuclear power industry.

Ralph Anderson is with The Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group.

He says other studies suggest power plants are safe … so the industry has nothing to worry about from a new study – unless the Academy misinterprets results:

“There have been studies where people simply collect the data and let the computer go to work to bend the data in a wide variety of ways. We have been the victim of a number studies that have done precisely that. So, you end up with weird age groups and things like that because the data’s carefully selected to prove the point. That’s what we’d like to see avoided.”

So the public, the government and industry want some kind of follow-up study on cancer rates near nuclear power plants.

But that might not be enough for The National Academy of Sciences to move forward.
Many scientists say we can’t begin good studies, because it’s hard to collect the necessary data.
In fact, one group that says that … is the same group that conducted the original cancer study twenty years ago.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Plug Pulled on Nuke Plant

  • Vermont Yankee Corp. is one of the oldest nuclear power plants in the country. (Photo courtesy of Vermont Yankee Corp.)

One of the country’s oldest nuclear power plants is setting its operating life shorter than expected. Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

One of the country’s oldest nuclear power plants might have its operating life cut shorter than expected.

Shawn Allee reports:

The federal government has been leaning toward letting the Vermont Yankee reactor renew its license in 2012 for another 20 years.

But Vermont’s state legislature says has voted to shut it down – no matter what the federal government says.

One reason is the plant’s been leaking radioactive water.

State senator Peter Shumlin says plant owners said that couldn’t happen.

SHUMLIN: What’s worse? A company that won’t tell you the truth or a company that’s operating their aging nuclear power plant next to the Connecticut River and doesn’t know they have pipes with radioactive water running through them that are leaking and they don’t know because they didn’t know the pipes existed … neither is very comforting.

The federal government says the leaks have not been a health threat.

The closure of Vermont Yankee would be a setback for the nuclear power industry.

It’s trying to extend the operating life of reactors across the country, since its far cheaper to run old reactors than to build new ones.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Keeping It Close to Home

  • Baylor Radtke bags up anemometers for the climbers to carry up the tower. The student crew placed three anemometers at different heights, along with two wind direction indicators. The data is recorded and analyzed to estimate average wind speed. Researcher Mike Mageau is getting detailed information on several towers up and down the North Shore of Lake Superior. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

People concerned about energy are
getting more and more interested
in producing their own. Stephanie
Hemphill reports on an effort to
harvest the wind, and other natural
resources, to power a community:

Transcript

People concerned about energy are
getting more and more interested
in producing their own. Stephanie
Hemphill reports on an effort to
harvest the wind, and other natural
resources, to power a community:

(sound of climbing)

Three students are getting ready to climb a TV tower on Moose
Mountain on the north shore of Lake Superior. They’ll put up three
anemometers – little cups that spin in the wind and measure how fast
it’s blowing.

As they deploy their climbing equipment, their professor, Mike
Mageau, keeps asking if they have enough safety gear. He seems a
little anxious.

“Two of them are mountain climbers. So they seem to think this will
be no big deal.” (laughs)

Mageau teaches at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He’s been
measuring the wind on the high ridge that runs along the Lake
Superior shoreline.

“If you look at the statewide wind maps, they don’t give us credit for
having any wind along the North Shore of Lake Superior. But Grand
Portage was interested in wind, and they did some monitoring and we
helped them. This was years ago.”

That’s the Grand Portage Band of Ojibway Indians. Mageau got a
grant to install monitoring equipment up and down Lake Superior
shoreline.

“And we found 15 to 20 mile-an-hour average wind speeds at the
sites.”

That’s about the same as the best wind sites in Iowa, where huge
wind farms spread across the landscape.

Mageau doesn’t advocate a big wind farm here. Instead, the idea is
to put up one windmill for each community along the shore. One big
turbine could supply roughly half the electricity each town uses.

He knows some people are nervous about this. The North Shore of
Lake Superior is beautiful, and no one wants to ruin the scenery. It’s
also an important route for migrating birds. There’s concern that
birds could fly into the spinning blades. A separate group of
researchers is studying the migration routes.

“Are they flying close to the lake, along the peaks, just inland or
lakeside of the peak, where are they flying? So hopefully when we
pick a wind site we’ll stay away from the birds.”

If a wind tower is ever built here, the power would go to the town of
Grand Marais Minnesota, 20 miles north. And it would fit in with other
projects local folks are working on, to become more energy self-
sufficient.

Buck Benson owns the local hardware store. He says he and his
friends, George and Lonnie, hatched the idea while they were fishing.

“We were grumbling about all this stuff, ‘what can we really do.’ And,
when we came back home, George kept prodding us, ‘you know what
we talked about,’ so we formed a little group. And I think we’ve done
good work since we started this organization.”

The group has been researching various ideas about how to produce
energy locally. One team is pursuing that windmill idea we heard
about. Another project is a little closer to being built: they want to
burn the wood chips from a local sawmill in a central heating system
for the town.

(sound of buzzing)

The chips would come from Hedstrom Lumber mill. Howard
Hedstrom says the mill sells bark chipped off the trees. But he has to
haul it miles away to sell it.

“By the time you pay the freight, there’s not much left. And if it could
be used locally, why not use it locally and save all that transportation
cost.”

The city of Grand Marais has applied for a federal grant to pay for half
the cost of the boiler.

Communities across the country are looking to use what they’ve got
around them, instead of importing energy from a big coal or nuclear
plant miles away.

It helps keep money close to home, and it could be better for the
earth.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Company Trash, Classroom Treasures

  • Anita Gardner (right) and Shirley Ellington of the Discovery Center of Cleveland rummage through boxes at ZeroLandfill. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

Transcript

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

(sound of Anita looking thru boxes)

Anita Gardner is rummaging through boxes of old tile samples. They’re still attached to those three-fold sample books you’d see at a design store. But she’s imagining what else the kids at her community center might make with them.

“You have to see it first, sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t come. It comes later and then you go, ‘we can do this and we can do that.’”

Gardner is at a special event called ZeroLandfill. Furniture stores, architects and design centers can drop off unwanted materials, and people like Gardner can take whatever they want – for free.

“This has been a godsend to us, because we really don’t have a lot of money to spend on arts and crafts.”

Last year, she found a lot of unused fabric – so she taught the kids at her center to sew quilts.

“And a lot of children in our community have never even threaded a needle. Now they’re learning to use sewing machines. They’re learning to piece all types of fabric together. They’re learning patterns and designs. They have no idea, they’re actually learning math.”

And in inner city neighborhoods, where kids can go to bed cold in the winter, Gardner is especially pleased that she’s started a quilt-making trend. It also warms the hearts of the folks who organize ZeroLandfill.

David Fox helps to run these events in Cleveland.

“A lot of samples end up just being discontinued and then, where does this all go? And it ends up being thrown out a lot of time. Or – they just have so much stuff they just keep hoarding and hoarding and hoarding.”

About five years ago, some folks at architecture and design firms around Cleveland, as well as a carpet company, all started talking about what to do with their unwanted material. They were spending a lot of money to send it to the landfill. So they held a one-day drop-off for companies to recycle it.

Fox says they soon realized their trash might be treasure to artists and art teachers.

“It was a program that started as a one-day thing. Firms were able to come and drop stuff off. But it has turned into a yearly process and now it’s even gone to other cities.”

Fox says they’ve already saved more than 100 tons of material from going to the landfill.

Arts and crafts teacher Anita Gardner says it’s also provided innumerable lessons for kids and teenagers at her community center.

“They see now that anything can be art. Anything can be a craft. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot to be beautiful.”

ZeroLandfill has been training architecture and design firms how to organize these events regularly. They’re now held annually in cities around Ohio – and new ZeroLandfills are being held in Minneapolis, Louisville and Boston this year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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New Heights for Water Recycling

  • Koichi Wakata (left), space station commander Gennady Padalka (center), and Michael Barratt (right) take ceremonial sips of recycled urine in a key milestone for the lab complex. (Photo courtesy of NASA TV)

NASA has technology light years ahead of what’s available to the rest of us. Advanced water recycling is
one of them. For years, astronauts have collected and recycled sweat and even water vapor. Shawn Allee
looks at NASA’s latest water recycling technology and whether anything like it is already on Planet Earth:

Transcript

NASA has technology light years ahead of what’s available to the rest of us. Advanced water recycling is
one of them. For years, astronauts have collected and recycled sweat and even water vapor. Shawn Allee
looks at NASA’s latest water recycling technology and whether anything like it is already on Planet Earth:

A press conference between NASA headquarters and the International Space Station got some attention
recently.

It was about making drinkable water from astronauts’ urine.

Headquarters: “The Expedition 19 crew inaugurating the use of the water recovery system to
produce recycled, purified water.”

NASA figures sending water into space wastes rocket fuel.

Why pay good money, if you can just reuse water that comes out of astronauts’ bodies?

Astronauts have recycled other fluid, but urine was kinda the final frontier.

Astronaut: “Everybody’s talked about recycling water in a closed-loop system, but nobody’s ever
done it before. So, we’re going to be drinking yesterday’s coffee frequently up here, and happy to do
it.”

Three astronauts hold up their drink pouches.

Astronaut: “And, here we go. Here’s to everybody who made this happen.”

Group: “Cheers.” (laughter)

Headquarters: “That’s looks really, really good from down here. Um…”

For all the jokes cracked in space, water’s a serious problem down here on Earth.

Is anyone recycling urine like they are on the space station? Depends on how you cut it.

NASA’s system is a closed loop: water out, urine in, water out.

Similar technology’s used during some natural disasters, and the country of Singapore gets close.
Singapore recycles sewage water but it’s sent to reservoirs where it’s diluted.

How far does America get with recycled water? Public service announcements hint at who’s furthest
along.

“Southern California is getting drier. Go to bewaterwise.com. Find out how your community is
dealing with mandatory conservation.”

For decades, California utilities have used recycled waste water to spruce up landscaping and golf courses –
but you’re not allowed to drink it.

Orange County goes a tad further. It replenishes an underground aquifer with recycled water. The utility
draws water out of that aquifer.

So, it’s a kind of water recycling – more like Singapore’s diluted variety than NASA’s fully-closed loop.

According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency – no city in America has astronaut-style water
recycling.

But, some water utility managers predict some city will.

“It’s a non-issue. From purely a perception standpoint, Oh my god you’re making
me drink toilet water. You know, get over it, because you’ve been doing it anyhow.”

That’s Frank Jaeger. He runs the water system in Parker, a Denver suburb.

He says most water systems are more like Singapore’s and Orange County’s than you might think.

“I was in New Orleans, and I had the chance to go through their treatment process. And, they
pointed out that ten years in a row they had won the drinking water award for turbidity, taste, odor –
and that water going down the Mississippi had been through 12 stomachs by the time it had gotten to
New Orleans. They mix it with a little more scotch than we do, but they drink it.”

Jaeger says, think of the advantages a full water recycling system would have.

Some cities would save energy since they’d pump water shorter distances. And you’d get a consistent
supply of water, since you can count on people bathing and flushing on a regular basis.

“It is silly, in this day and age, to be worried about these sorts of things – especially
here in the United States, where we have such good wonderful treatment
processes.”

There’s no federal regulation that specifically prohibits full toilet-to-tap water recycling.
So, Jaeger says, someday, some politically brave local government will move forward.

Just not his.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Report: Beach Closings Still High

  • Children playing on Indiana Dunes Beach (Photo by Lester Graham)

The number of days beaches were
closed due to pollution last year was
the second highest on record. Mark Brush
reports, that’s according to a new report
by an environmental group:

Transcript

The number of days beaches were
closed due to pollution last year was
the second highest on record. Mark Brush
reports, that’s according to a new report
by an environmental group:

The National Resources Defense Council says beaches across the country were closed to
swimmers for more than 22,000 days last year.

Sometimes the beaches were closed when sewer plants would overflow.

Nancy Stoner is with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

She says most of the time beaches were closed after a big rainstorm

That’s because rain washes pollution into the water.

“I’m more cautious now after swimming after a heavy rainfall. And the other thing about
it is that the ocean beaches in general tend to be cleaner than beaches that are in bays
and sounds and other protected areas, so it makes me want to go to the ocean.”

Ocean waves tend to wash away the pollution a lot faster.

Beach closings along the Great Lakes were twice as high as the national average.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Fuel Prices Hit Auto Factories

  • High gas prices are cited as one cause for SUV and RV factories closing (Photo by Ben VanWagoner)

High gas prices are changing what people
buy in car showrooms. Gas guzzlers just aren’t
selling as well anymore and it’s affecting US
manufacturers. Mark Brush reports:

Transcript

High gas prices are changing what people
buy in car showrooms. Gas guzzlers just aren’t
selling as well anymore and it’s affecting US
manufacturers. Mark Brush reports:

GM announced it’s closing four of its truck and SUV plants. And Winnebago Industries
recently announced they’re closing their biggest RV manufacturing plant. High fuel
prices are helping to drive the closings.

For the last fifteen years, sales of SUVs and light trucks have beat the competition from
smaller cars. But that’s changed in the last couple of months. Now, smaller cars are
selling better.

Charles Territo is with the Alliance for Automobile Manufactures. He says the recent
hike in gas prices have hit a nerve.

“I think for years people have been trying figure out what that pressure point is. When
consumers will actually change their driving habits and change their behavior. I think
we’re finding now that we’ve probably reached that price.”

Federal researchers say that people are driving a lot less. The Federal Highway
Administration reports that the number of miles traveled for the month of March was one
the sharpest drops on record.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Report: Epa Limiting Info Access

A government watchdog group says the Environmental
Protection Agency might be limiting the public’s access to
information. Rebecca Williams reports that could hurt future
research on health and safety:

Transcript

A government watchdog group says the Environmental
Protection Agency might be limiting the public’s access to
information. Rebecca Williams reports that could hurt future
research on health and safety:

The EPA has been closing several of its research libraries. The agency
started doing that two years ago to save money. The libraries have
information on chemical safety, Superfund sites, and all kinds of other
health and safety data.

The Government Accountability Office says the EPA cut corners… and acted
too quickly.

The GAO reports the EPA closed the libraries without consulting outside
experts.

The report says the EPA closed its Chemical Library without notifying EPA
staff or the public. EPA scientists used the library to review industry
requests before new chemicals could be put on the market.

Congress has directed the EPA to re-open the libraries. The EPA hasn’t
reopened them yet. But the agency says it’s reviewing its library plans.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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