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Environmental Impact Statement - radioactive monticello

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Appendix A<br />

Comment: The EIS needs to quantify air releases, show how adequate air monitoring would<br />

be performed, by whom and who would pay for it. The generic EIS only admits that small<br />

amounts of ozone and smaller amounts of oxides of nitrogen are produced by transmission<br />

lines (how much should be concisely presented in table format for the past 2 decades of<br />

operation). (MS-Y-37)<br />

Comment: The power created is clean, with virtually no harmful air emissions. (MS-Z-3)<br />

Response: Air quality issues were evaluated in the GElS and determined to be Category 1<br />

issues. The comments provide no new and significant information on air quality and will,<br />

therefore, not be evaluated further.<br />

8. Comments Concerning Land Use Issues<br />

Comment: The EIS must consider the impact of the growth of the Metropolitan area, which is<br />

now encroaching on the plant, putting more people in harms way, downwind and downriver.<br />

(MS-V-11i)<br />

Response:. Land use issues were evaluated in the GElS and determined to be Category 1<br />

issues. The comment provides no new and significant information on land use and will,<br />

therefore, not be evaluated further.<br />

9. Comments Concerning Human Health Issues<br />

Comment: The second issue I would like to address has to do with, well, this new information<br />

out. As we spoke yesterday or the day before, the National Academy of Scientists, it's not the<br />

BEIR [Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiationj reports anymore. They don't call them the BEIR,<br />

but the panel of the National Academy of Science that looks at biological consequences of<br />

long-term, low-level exposure released the next round. And they confirm that there is no safe<br />

threshold. In other words, if you are exposed to the degree that you are exposed, particularly<br />

we will find if the exposure is not background, but rather internal because then it's ongoing, it<br />

doesn't stop. It never stops if it's internal. And you can't escape it if it's internal, if you've<br />

ingested or inhaled beta in particular. There is no safe threshold for that; and the degree of<br />

exposure, the symptoms that will be exhibited increase proportional to the amount of exposure<br />

that has happened all the way down to zero.<br />

So based on that knowledge, why, we have a problem, in my opinion, with the monitoring that<br />

goes on because we don't know -- we do know that these reactors as they explode uranium<br />

atoms and provide the entire periodic chart of other elements, including all of their <strong>radioactive</strong><br />

sons and daughters. And then we release many of them because they're gases in particular.<br />

And we store them for a while. And then we wait for a while. And then at some point we decide<br />

it's time to let them go. And they report them to the NRC, and we've got a boxful of reports as<br />

to how many curies of this and that went out. And the monitoring looks very convincing if you<br />

August 2006 A-1 7 NUREG-1437, Supplement 26 1

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