Year of Energy 2009

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Norman D. Meadow, Ph.D., Doctor of the University, Department of Biology, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. and First Vice President, Maryland Conservation Council
meadownd@jhu.edu

William H. Biggley, Senior Researcher, retired, Department of Biology, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. and Vice President, Maryland Conservation Council

Ajax Eastman
Vice President, Maryland Conservation Council

posted October 9, 2009

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Abstract: We attempt to show that global ecology is unnecessarily threatened by the construction of large-scale installations of wind and solar energy sources as well as the use of biomass grown specifically to fire boilers. We believe that this situation has developed because many scientists, most germanely biologists, are unaware of the size of the renewable installations that will be necessary and which are being planned, and are also unaware of the quantitative health data from historic radiological events, whose harm has been badly exaggerated. We conclude that commercial nuclear reactors will adversely affect far less habitat than the renewable energy sources and are also highly unlikely to cause measurable harm to health. Nuclear power is a very acceptable compromise that has been criticized and overlooked with little scientific justification.

Introduction

From the biologist’s perspective the “environment” is an object of wonder and a source of learning through science quite aside from its being a resource base for human development. It possesses value independent of economic and material considerations. The undisturbed natural world, containing rich biological diversity, varied landscapes, and important gene pools, is an object of beauty and mystery that challenges the scientist’s ability to explain an extraordinarily complex and delicate phenomenon.

The natural biological world is being degraded by an ever growing human population and its multitude of artifacts, including fossil fuel utilization that is causing climate change. A serious new threat to biological diversity is the strong push for enormous amounts of renewable energy (1). Biologists, especially conservation biologists, are faced with a dilemma caused by a socio-political milieu in which debate is constrained by the false dichotomy: stay with fossil fuels or embrace renewable energy sources. But, are these the only choices?

This paper attempts to show how vast the installations of renewable energy sources will have to be in order to provide electricity on the scale which our society demands it. The extraordinary area that will be impacted has not been publicized and has not attracted wide attention among biologists. The plans being made are from people who seem to view the “environment” solely as a resource base for human economic development.

Nuclear power is an alternative source of CO₂-free energy that is not getting the consideration from the scientific community that it warrants. Perhaps this is because, outside of the radiological health community, most scientists are unaware of how little harm to health has been caused by past radiological events—events which have elicited much negative hyperbole from the news media. We hope to show that nuclear power is a more acceptable compromise whose critics have little scientific justification. We ask all concerned scientists to increase their understanding of the technical and biological aspects of the alternatives for electricity generation and to participate in the public debate.

The Environmental Impacts of Renewable Energy

To provide for the amount of energy needed to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, the impacts on untrammeled biological communities would be enormous. To the biologist, the lands being investigated for siting renewable energy sources contain a spectrum of habitats, ranging from shallow seas to deserts to mountain top ridges, and understanding their structure, dynamics, and the forces that shaped them is an extraordinary scientific challenge. None is either “barren” or “marginal,” words often used to characterize the land on which renewable energy installations will be built.

A proposal for a massive solar power installation (2) involves constructing a combination of photovoltaic cells and concentrating solar collectors covering 46,000 square miles of desert in the Southwest; the authors claim that such an installation would provide 70% of the United States’ electricity demand in the year 2050, but they stated: “Most of the land is barren; there is no competing use value.” None of the authors is a biologist.

Scientific progress often begins with the study of the simpler examples of complex phenomena. Habitats like desert are perhaps the best places to begin to gain insight into the subtle and diverse forces that drive evolution. Conserving the ecology of 46,000 square miles of desert is, in fact, a “competing use value,” in this instance, an aesthetic and scientific value.

Another massive project, this one marine, proposes the construction of about 170,000 5MW turbines off the Northeastern Coast from North Carolina to New England (3). This enormous installation will presumably provide all the energy (not just the electricity) used by these coastal states. To compensate for the intermittency of wind, however, the turbines will require costly supplementation by the storage batteries of 20 million plug in hybrid vehicles—numbers which are very unlikely to be available in less than a decade (4), as well as supplementation by “today’s fossil fuel plants, to be maintained in standby mode and tapped several times per year.”

There is little mentioned in this proposal about its impacts on marine biology:

“the oceanic wind resource is unlike…terrestrial winds…. [Marine] resource location and assessment become an inverse problem, of understanding exclusions and limitations on turbine placement, e.g., wind tower technology limits on water depth, competing human uses of ocean space, and wildlife or ecological vulnerabilities.” [emphasis added]

The only stated accommodation of wildlife and ecological vulnerabilities is to “exclud[e] major bird flyways…” Again, none of the authors is a biologist.

Little is known about the biology of the ocean. Pre-construction ecological studies for marine turbine installations off Denmark were conducted for one to three years (5). Even three years seems inadequate because it takes many organisms much longer than that to reach reproductive maturity. The Danish studies included chiefly birds and a few species of mammals, fish, algae and invertebrates. They used a surrogate measure for bird mortality: radar signals from flocks. It has been suggested that the turbines might have interfered with the radar (6, p.108), and birds that were killed would not have been found. Several bird species were observed to avoid the turbine fields, which is an imposed exclusion from habitat with potentially serious cumulative ecological effects. The Danish installation consists of only 80 turbines, not the 170,000 of the proposal from Kempton,et al (5).

The Danish reports seem to approve of the fact that the Horns Rev plant (currently the world’s largest offshore wind plant) changed an exclusively sandy bottom into one that is now mixed with hard surfaces (5), and state that it supports “increased biomass.” But this is, in fact, an artificial alteration of an ecosystem, a parallel to clear cutting forest, which is also claimed to be beneficial because it “increases species diversity.” Not mentioned are the specialized species whose behavior requires large areas of uninterrupted habitat; there may have been species at Horns Rev which required an extensive sandy bottom. It is not possible to predict the cumulative biological impact of expansion of these wind installations to the size of that proposed off the Atlantic coast, because relevant data do not exist.

A businessman has proposed supplying 20% of US electricity demand by 2018 with wind power (7). Calculating from US consumption in 2007 (8) and assuming that 3 MW turbines will be used and that they will operate with a capacity factor (9) of 100%, this plan will require 100,000 turbines. But the capacity factors for existing turbines on land are less than 30% (6, p. 72), so the number required increases to about 330,000, and the plan will also need a method for the storage of electrical energy in order to compensate for the intermittency of wind.

A recent article from a national conservation organization (10) paints a disturbing picture of the ecological harm possible, even likely, from extensive implementation of renewable energy sources. The article mentions that 7,900 acres of rare tall grass prairie were used for a 100 turbine installation and that even more of this rare habitat is being targeted. It is home to the sensitive Lesser Prairie Chicken and several other ground nesting birds. The existing turbines work with an ineffective, 30% capacity factor (9). Furthermore, the article goes on to say that many tens of thousands of square miles will be needed just for “new energy development.”

A recent report from a Maryland commission on climate change (11) suggested the collection and use of “slash” from the clear cutting of forests as a fuel for power plant boilers. This will result in having the forest floor stripped bare to obtain burnable material, material which is important for soil enrichment. It is likely to increase pressure for even shorter rotation times, to obtain even more material to produce “green energy.” Clear cutting is bad enough, but this proposal will be exacerbate the harm, despite the assurance in the report that it will be done in “a sustainable manner.” The next section of this paper gives an estimate of the area of land required to produce enough plant material to fire a large boiler for a year.

Most pertinent of all is a book-length report from the Committee on Environmental Imapcts of Wind Energy Projects of the National Research Council (6) which describes possible cumulative impacts of large-scale wind installations, stating clearly that the research data needed to predict their biological effects are not available, and that the current concern about direct mortality of birds and bats by turbines is perhaps a lesser threat although it is receiving much attention in the news media:

“The construction and maintenance of wind-energy facilities alter ecosystem structure, through vegetation clearing, soil disruption, and potential for erosion, and this is particularly problematic in areas that are difficult to reclaim such as desert, shrub-steppe, and forested areas.” (6, p68).

The chapter on “Ecological Effects,” focused on the ridge lines of the mountains in the Mid-Atlantic Highlands, mentions impacts on other mammals and several species of amphibians and reptiles, in addition to those on birds and bats. The discussion of each of these organisms ends with a statement similar to that given for one of the reptile species:

“Alteration of habitat related to wind-energy development could influence habitat suitability for this species, but we are unaware of any studies at wind-energy developments that have examined these effects.” (6, p121).

Researchers are denied access to wind installations (6, p72, p121) and even members of the National Research Council’s committee were denied access to one wind installation (6, p121). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which can provide only guidelines for the siting of wind installations, should have regulatory authority.

Global warming unquestionably poses an enormous threat to biological diversity, and the prudent decision is to implement measures to stop it. But as the examples above show, biological diversity will also be threatened by the cumulative impact of gigantic installations of renewable energy sources. This biological damage would have to be accepted if the renewable energy sources were the only alternative to the continued use of fossil fuels. As the next two sections show, however, nuclear power can provide greater amounts of electricity without damaging nearly as much land. Most importantly of all, the best data, both scientific and from reactor performance, show that commercial nuclear reactors are not a significant threat to health, and the radiophobia that affects all aspects of the technology is unfounded.

A Better Alternative: Nuclear Power Reactors

Nuclear power will have a much smaller impact than renewable energy on biological diversity, because it will require far less land area to generate the same amount of electric energy. Land area calculations are strongly affected by the capacity factor (9) appropriate for each technology and time period, as described in detail in (12). For example, a 1600 MW reactor, recently proposed for Maryland, will have a capacity factor of 90% annualized, resulting in 1440 MW per year of actual electrical power generation. It will have a 300-acre footprint. For renewable sources to generate the same amount of electric energy, the area of land impacted would be roughly 25 to 5,500 times larger than that impacted by the reactor (Table 1); similar results are found in (13). The largest area would be impacted by the use of biomass to fire boilers; a boiler with the generation capacity of the proposed reactor, but which uses either woody or herbaceous material, would require thousands of square miles to grow a single year’s requirement for fuel.

Similarly, a comparison of the generation capacity of Maryland’s proposed reactor with that of the 100 turbines placed on 7,900 acres of the tall grass prairie (see above), shows that about 2400 similarly placed turbines, occupying 180,000 acres of land, would be needed to equal the output of the reactor occupying only 300 acres.

Impacts on Human Health from Commercial Nuclear Power Reactors

Fear of harm to health, primarily increased incidence of cancer, from the reactors themselves and from the transportation and storage of used fuel, has inflamed opposition to nuclear energy. What are the scientifically valid facts about this risk?

Much of the opposition arose before health data were available from the two most reliable sources. The first, one of recent history’s most tragic events—the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—is the source of the best data on the effects of radioactivity on health. About 150,000 people survived the blasts and about 100,000 of them were enrolled in the Life Span Study (LSS). The importance of the data from the LSS is widely acknowledged. The Committee to Assess Health Risks of the National Research Council (the BEIR Committee) has said (14):

“The Life Span Study (LSS) cohort of the survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to serve as a major source of information for evaluating health risks from exposure to ionizing radiation and particularly for developing quantitative estimates of risk.”

Dr. John Gofman commented in a similar vein (15):

“One of the enormous scientific merits of this study is the plan to follow-up these individuals for their complete lifespans…. The study includes a large unexposed group and a very great range of doses…. Thus, the study can address the problem of radiation induced cancer in general….”

The most recent data (16) from the LSS on the incidence of solid tumors are summarized in Table 2. The most dramatic—and little known—finding is that 53 years after the bombings, of the 7,900 cases of solid tumors diagnosed in the exposed population of 45,000, some of whom received doses of 4 Sv (1,600 times annual background exposure, which is 2.4 mSv globally), only 850 cases (10.8%) were attributable to the exposure. Equally important is the fact that 81% of the 850 excess cancers occurred in people who received doses greater than 190 mSv (80 times annual background exposure), doses which are larger than most of those received from other major radiological events (Figure 1) (16). A dose of 4 Sv approaches lethality.

The reactor accident at Chernobyl is another event that utilizes information about individual exposure (albeit not as thorough as that from the LSS, for which individual dose is known for all members), in this case to the hundreds of thousands of men who were assigned the task of cleaning up the contamination. The Chernobyl reactor was graphite, not water, moderated, there was no pressure vessel, and the roof of the building was of ordinary industrial construction—not built to contain an explosion. The accident, on April 26, 1986, killed two reactor operators instantly, and in subsequent months about 75 of the immediate responders died from acute radiation sickness (17). The core continued to burn, in the open, for ten days, releasing radioactivity.

Clean-up workers for whom at least some individual dosimetry was available, were enrolled in ongoing studies to monitor their health. One cohort of 55,718 men who received an average dose of 130 mSv (54 times annual background exposure—placing them within the range of the moderately exposed A-bomb survivors, see Figure 1), was monitored for the incidence of solid tumors. As of 15 years after the accident, they show no trend upward in tumor incidence (18), a finding consistent with that obtained from the A-bomb survivors after a comparable post-exposure period (19). Another cohort of 71,870 workers who received an average dose of 107 mSv (45 times annual background exposure) was monitored for leukemia. As of 2003, of 71 cases that developed, 6 were attributed to the exposure (20), again consistent with the findings from the A-bomb survivors (21).

The general population of 5.5 million living in the contaminated areas surrounding Chernobyl have received an average total whole body dose of only 10 mSv (4 times annual background exposure) in the years following the accident. The average dose received by the 116,000 people who were evacuated from the immediate vicinity of the reactor area was 33 mSv (14 times annual background exposure) (22, 23). The explosion and fire released large amounts of iodine-131 which caused a significant excess of thyroid cancer in the general population, especially among the young. The design of the reactor and construction of the building housing it account for the release of the radio-iodine. The thyroid cancer is discussed in some detail in (12).

The accident at Three Mile Island (TMI) in 1979 has caused great concern about the safety of water moderated commercial nuclear power reactors. An analysis (12) of five relevant papers (24 - 28) reaches the conclusion that the accident caused no harm to health. Even though the core did partially melt, the metal pressure vessel retained the material, which never encountered the even more robust, concrete floor of the containment building (29).

Table 3 summarizes the evidence from these three major radiological events. The data on the incidence of acute radiation sickness are used as an indicator of the relative severity of the events. It is clear that the atomic bombings were by far the most severe event—20,000 deaths from acute radiation sickness, followed distantly by Chernobyl—75 deaths. Three Mile Island (no deaths) was, by comparison, a minor accident (Fig. 2), not expected to have resulted in measurable cancer because of the very low doses received by the surrounding population (from 0.04 to 0.16 annual background exposure). In fact, one authoritative estimate was that perhaps a single case resulted among those living within 50 miles of the plant (29, p. 206).

The popular press frequently gives an impression of the health damage done by these radiological events that conflicts with the one suggested by the data presented above, and which has produced widespread radiophobia. Chernobyl is often implied to have caused millions of cancers, and TMI thousands. The most reliable data, which are from the Japanese, are almost never mentioned (for reasons which include concern about reinforcing an erroneous relationship between nuclear power reactors and atomic bombs in the mind of the public). This widespread, but inaccurate, picture seems to have influenced the opinions of scientists who are not familiar with the epidemiological literature, and to have resulted in their reluctance to consider nuclear power as a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

The reactors being designed today are more advanced than those of the vintage of the reactor at TMI, and therefore are less likely to experience an accident. The reactor planned for Calvert Cliffs in Maryland will have a double containment building. In addition both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry learned from TMI to inculcate a stronger culture of safety among reactor operators, and to rely less on the mechanical controls, as was the practice in the era of the TMI accident. Since TMI, there have been about 12,000 reactor-years of operation globally, by about 450 reactors, without a serious incident.

Fear of injury from ionizing radiation is not confined to nuclear reactors themselves, but extends to the transportation and storage of spent reactor fuel. The Committee on Transportation of Radioactive Waste, of the National Research Council, published a book-length report on the transportation of high-level waste (30), which stated:

“The committee judges that packages designed, fabricated, used, and maintained under current regulatory standards are very unlikely to encounter loading conditions under real-world conditions … that would lead to releases in excess of regulatory limits.”

The NRC report also treats the question of radiological injury from railroad accidents and fires in railroad tunnels, which it concludes is not significant. An account of these issues is found also in (12).

The storage of spent reactor fuel is a prominent issue, with the problems associated with the Yucca Mountain repository a major factor. Long term—perhaps for thousands of millennia—storage of a large mass of highly radioactive material is necessary only if reprocessing is prohibited, as it presently is in the US. Both the Health Physics Society (31) and the MIT report on nuclear technology (32) have endorsed dry cask storage to permit the radio-isotopes of cesium and strontium to decay (their half-lives are about 30 years), followed by reprocessing of a material that then presents a significantly reduced hazard, and is also a valuable source of future recoverable fuel.

The cost of building nuclear power plants is being used as an argument against their employment for commercial electricity generation. The more relevant factor, however, is not the cost of building reactors, but the comparative price at which their electricity can be sold to consumers; and using this criterion, nuclear power is less expensive than power from renewable energy sources. The most meaningful way to compare costs of electricity generation technologies is to use what is termed “levelized cost of electricity” production (LCOE) which takes into account the cost of construction, but also includes financing, operation and maintenance, fuel production, decommissioning, etc. The American Physical Society recently published a report (4) on energy efficiency which shows the cost of preventing the emission of a ton of carbon dioxide, calculated by an LCOE analysis which also excluded governmental subsidies. According to this report, new nuclear plants will abate a ton of CO₂ emission for $8, it will cost $29 for distributed solar photovoltaics, $37 for high penetration wind, and $46 for concentrating solar power. The higher cost of the renewables is largely accounted for by the redundancy and energy storage technologies needed to compensate for the intermittency and poor dispatchability of wind and solar power.

Thus, today’s reactors present a vanishingly small threat to health, both because accidents are unlikely, and because an accident comparable even to that at TMI will not cause measurable harm to health. The threat is greatly overstated by those who are unfamiliar with the details of the epidemiological data.

A Matter of Urgency

Emission of carbon dioxide must be reduced as quickly as possible to minimize disruption of the biological world by global climate change. Nuclear reactor technology has been effective and safe for the past thirty years, and it is ready now to provide our future power needs. The reactor designs of thirty years ago could supply current energy demand, the newer designs will simply be even more effective. On the other hand, in order to provide significant power needs, all of the renewable technologies are dependent on components that are not yet available, e.g., sophisticated storage batteries or other means of storing large quantities of electrical energy, great lengths of transmission lines, a “smart grid,” etc. Nuclear power can unquestionably do the job faster, and our ability to build nuclear power facilities will be limited chiefly by our commitment to do so.

Summary

The examples presented above show that the area of habitat that will be adversely impacted to provide electricity by using renewable energy technologies will be vast, and that our understanding of ecology does not allow prediction of the biological effects, as stated with clarity by the authors of reference (6). Because the renewable energy proposals are being published by people who are not life scientists, there seems to be little reaction from the community of biologists to the approaching ecological threat. The current socio-political milieu is also affected by exaggerated speculations of harm to health from exposure to ionizing radiation posed by commercial nuclear reactors and by the transportation and storage of spent reactor fuel. The data from three major radiological events—the atomic bombing of Japan, and the reactor accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, which are not well understood outside of the radiological health community—show clearly that modern nuclear power reactors do not pose a measurable threat to human health, and must not be written off as part of the solution.

A clear example of the distorting effect that fear of ionizing radiation has on thinking about how to generate clean electricity while minimizing harm to the biological world is the article, discussed above, in a major conservation magazine about a 100 turbine installation built on rare habitat, which did not mention nuclear power as a desirable technology for electricity production.

The choice between nuclear and renewable power should be evaluated by biologists on the basis of which one will have the least adverse effect on the biological world, because human health is not a factor. We urge them to engage in the debate now.

Notes

(1) The term, renewable energy, in the context of this paper, is limited to industrial scale wind installations, either on- or off-shore, solar photovoltaic or concentrating solar collectors on open land, and biomass grown explicitly for the purpose of energy production, most especially to fire boilers for the production of electricity.

(2) Zweibel, K., Mason, J., and Fthenakis, V. A Solar Grand Plan. Scientific American, Jan. 2008, 64-73.

(3) Kempton, W., et al. Large CO₂ reductions via offshore wind power matched to inherent storage in energy end-uses. Geophysical Research Letters. 2007. L02817, doi:10.1029/2006GL028016.

(4) American Physical Society. Energy Future: Think Efficiency. 2008 (Oct 6, 2009)

(5) Environmental Group of the Danish Offshore Wind Farm Demonstration Projects. Review Report 2005, The Danish Offshore Wind Farm Demonstration Project: Horns Rev and Nysted Offshore Wind Farm Environmental Impact Assessment and Monitoring. 2006 (Oct 6, 2009).

(6) National Research Council. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. 2007. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC. (Oct 6, 2009)

(7) http://www.pickensplan.com/about/ (Oct 6, 2009)

(8) Energy Information Administration. Electric Power Annual 2007. (Oct 7, 2009)

(9) The capacity factor is the energy being produced during a specified time period expressed as the percentage of the amount of energy that the facility would produce if were able to operate at its maximal, “nameplate,” capacity.

(10) Bodin, M. The Green Footprint. Nature Conservancy. Autumn 2009, 59#3: 44-53.

(11) Maryland Commission on Climate Change. Comprehensive Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Footprint Reduction Strategy. 2008, pp. 31, 44, 51. (Oct 7, 2009)

(12) Maryland Conservation Council. An Energy Policy Focused on Habitat Protection. (Oct 7, 2009). (Also see the linked pages, one of which is a source of information on the health effects of radiological events that has not been disseminated outside of the radiological health community. The Maryland Conservation Council, one of Maryland’s first conservation groups, studied these factors, adopted a pro-nuclear policy in 2007, and supported the addition of a third nuclear reactor on the site of two existing reactors in Maryland.)

(13) http://www.cleanenergyinsight.org/energy-insights/what-does-renewable-energy-look-like/ (Oct 7, 2009).

(14) Committee to Assess Health Risks, National Research Council. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation. 2006. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC

(15) Gofman, J. Radiation Induced Cancer from Low-Dose Exposure: An Independent Analysis. 1990. CNR Books, San Francisco, CA.

(16) Preston, D.L., et al. Solid Cancer Incidence in Atomic Bomb Survivors: 1958-1998. Radiation Research. 2007, 168: 1-64.

(17) Mettler, F.A. Jr., Gus’kova, A.K., and Gusov, I. Health Effects in Those with Acute Radiation Sickness from the Chernobyl Accident. Health Physics. 2007, 93: 462-469.

(18) Ivanov, V.K. Late Cancer and Noncancer Risks among Chernobyl Emergency Workers of Russia. 2007. Health Physics, 93: 470-479.

(19) Jablon, S., Ishida, M., and Yamasaki, M. Studies of the Mortality of A-bomb Survivors: 3. Description of the Sample and Mortality, 1950-1960. Radiation Research, 1965, 25: 25-52.

(20) Howe, G.R. Leukemia Following the Chernobyl Accident. Health Physics. 2007, 93: 512-515.

(21) Preston, D., et al. Cancer Incidence in Atomic Bomb Survivors. Part III: Leukemia, Lymphoma and Multiple Myeloma, 1950-1987. Radiation Research, 1994, 137:S68-S97.

(22) Bouville, A., et al. Radiation Dosimetry for Highly Contaminated Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian Populations, and for Less Contaminated Populations in Europe. Health Physics, 2007, 93: 487-501.

(23) The Chernobyl Forum: 2003-2005, Second revised edition. Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental, and Socio-Economic Impacts. International Atomic Energy Agency, 2006. (Oct 7, 2009)

(24) Hatch, M.C., et al. Cancer near the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant: Radiation Emissions. American Journal of Epidemiology. 1990, 132: 397-412.

(25) Talbott, E.O., et al. Long-Term Follow-Up of the Residents of the Three Mile Accident Area: 1979-1998. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2003, 111: 341-348.

(26) Wing, S., et al. A reevaluation of Cancer Incidence Near the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant: The Collision of Evidence and Assumptions. Environmental Health Perspectives, 1997, 105: 52-57.

(27) Shevchenko, V.A. and Snigiryova. Cytogenetic Effects of the Action of Ionizing Radiations on Human Populations. In: Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe: Human Health. Burlakova, E.B., ed. Moscow Center for Russian Environmental Policy and Scientific Council on Radiobiology RAS. 1996, pp. 23-45.

(28) Shevchenko, V.A. Assessment of Genetic Risk from Exposure of Human Populations to Radiation. In: Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe: Human Health. Burlakova, E.B., ed. Moscow Center for Russian Environmental Policy and Scientific Council on Radiobiology RAS, 1996, pp. 47-61.

(29) Walker, J.S. Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. 2004. University of California Press.

(30) Committee on Transportation of Radioactive Waste, National Research Council. Going the Distance? The Safe Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-level Radioactive Waste in the United States. 2006. The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C. (Oct 7, 2009)

(31) Health Physics Society. Managing Spent Nuclear Fuel (Oct 7, 2009)

(32) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Future of Nuclear Power. and Update of the 2003 Future of Nuclear Power. (Oct 7, 2009)