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0.25 mSv, 000 mrem, 10, 100 mSv, 25 mrem, acute radiation syndrome, cancer, Chernobyl, EPA, evacuation, Fukushima, Lockheed Martin, Mark Miller, NRC, nuclear accident, nuclear energy, nuclear power, nuclear waste, QA, quality assurance, radiation accident, radiation exposure, radiological accident, Sandia Corporation, Sandia lab, Sandia Nuclear Lab
“Work involving nuclear materials often requires high-grade QA” says Sandia Labs, operated by Lockheed Martin!
The difference between often and always, in this context, can be a nuclear-radiological accident. Is this why a Sandia-Lockheed Martin worker, Mark Miller, supported the recent proposal to raise radiation exposure to the general public by the nuclear industry to be 400 times greater than the maximum currently allowed by the US EPA – i.e. to raise it from 0.25 mSv (25 mrem) per year up to 100 mSv per year, i.e. 10,000 mrem? See: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=NRC-2015-0057-0010
“Sandia grades the quality assurance rigor based on customer needs.” It needs to be based on worker and public safety not “customer needs” which may be to cut corners and costs to make more money-increase stock value.
Is this nit-picking? Maybe, but with nuclear-radiation safety, lack of linguistic rigor and lack of mental rigor can lead and has led to accidents. (No one should be surprised that it was a WIPP nuclear waste Quality Assurance employee found dead on Sunday according to news reports though dead on Monday according to his obituary.)
This presentation from April 2011 by Miller has the Sandia Lab logo. If they do not support this policy, then they need to issue a disclaimer. Clearly if any level of radiation is ok, then it is ok to OFTEN have high-grade quality assurance instead of ALWAYS!
p. 8 He actually means decrease standards and increase limits, as seen below with the Fukushima – Chernobyl example, reference to expense reduction, and his recent support of massive increases in public exposure to radiation from the nuclear industry:
p. 11 : Example: Fukushima
Note: 1 mSv per year up to 1 Sv per year (i.e. 1000 mSv per year!) 20 mSv/y up to 20 Sv/yr (i.e. 20,000 mSv per year) With this 20 Sv, 20 Gy if external, he may be setting some people up for Acute Radiation Syndrome and death (before they can even get cancer): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome
In October of 2015 Richardson et. al. published a summary of research about US, UK, and French nuclear workers. Based on the limited data which they make available, the risk due to radiation exposure per 100 mSv can be estimated as 15 additional cancers per 100 people and perhaps as high as 26 additional cancers per 100 people. This is 15 to 26 times higher than the BEIR report. Richardson et. al. have chosen to low-ball the numbers in various ways, such as choosing the arithmetic average (mean) rather than the more appropriate median average. Even using the arithmetic average, which gives too much weight to outliers, their data still appears to estimate an additional 3 cancers per 100 people due to 100 mSv exposure. BEIR VII (2006) estimated 1 extra cancer per 100 people due to 100 mSv exposure. How are any of these acceptable? For the US NRC proposal, we are not even talking about nuclear workers or medical exposures. This is the general public who gets no benefits outside of electricity which could be gotten from solar panels.
Our most recent analysis of the Richardson et. al.,(BMJ),2015,
study: https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/another-look-at-the-recent-low-dose-radiation-exposure-study-inworks/
More about Mark Miller’s presentation: https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/sandia-us-nuclear-lab-found-quick-easy-solution-for-radiation-at-fukushima-chernobyl-other-contaminated-zones/
Here’s the whole page so that you can see their logo:
Mining Awareness + 
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