Question of the Day - 28 May 2018

According to the state of Nevada, “Because the Nuclear Test Site was used for both atmospheric and underground nuclear testing, the Department of Energy has stated that it is not possible to fully define the level of residual contamination that remains from the atmospheric testing program … Obviously, most of the fission products and other short-lived nuclides released from aboveground testing were dispersed into the atmosphere and have since decayed away. DOE does acknowledge, however, that longer-lived radionuclides remain in the soil and physical structures at the site. The primary radioactive isotopes that remain from aboveground testing include americium, plutonium, cobalt, cesium, strontium, and europium.”

In other words, unless you're traipsing around aboveground zero at the NTS (which you can't, since it's strictly off-limits to civilians), your biggest worry in Las Vegas is the same as in other American cities with no history of atomic testing: background radiation, such as gases like radon and to minerals in the soil.

“Radon gas is the one most people are familiar with,” says Ted Hartwell, the Desert Research Institute’s manager of its Community Environmental Monitoring Program. “Radon is a product in the uranium chain. Uranium is ubiquitous throughout our biosphere. I was once told that if you took a tablespoon of dirt from anywhere in the planet, it would have some radium. We’re talking about naturally occurring radium within the sample, but of course in areas where it’s concentrated in the soil, radon gas is produced at levels that can present a problem, especially the basement of houses that are built over these areas, which is why in some geographic locales they suggest folks have their basements tested for radon.” 

He adds, “All living organisms are naturally radioactive and this is because we are all carbon-based living lifeforms. A small fraction of all carbon is Carbon 14, which is used to date plants or charcoals. Basically, any living life form throughout its lifespan is ingesting mostly stable carbon, but also Carbon 13 and Carbon 14 … There are other natural forms. Potassium 40 is the most common form in our bodies and in the bodies of animals with significant muscle mass. In order to function properly, animals need a certain amount of potassium. 

“If we sleep with someone, we’re giving giving them a millarem dose a year. What we get from an X-ray at the dentist is around four millarems. That’s also what we might experience from a coast-to-coast round-trip airline flight: something in the the two- to four-millarem dose from that airplane flight.” That’s not because you’re on a plane per se, but because you’re up in the stratosphere, with less ozone to protect you from cosmic radiation.

Bottom line: You’re safer from radiation once you get to Vegas than you are flying here (or if you live in a house with radon issues).

Hartwell continues, “If you remember the controversy that raged about those airport scanners, probably  10 or 12 years ago, that's revealing. Some of the controversy had to do with people’s fears of the radiation dose. You get about the same dose standing in line for 12 minutes as you actually do going through the machine, and hundreds and hundreds of times less than you receive on the flight itself. That’s a comparison I like to give people.”

If you think the chalky mineral-laden water in Las Vegas is bad, don’t take a drink at the Test Site: Its groundwater table is estimated to contain 120 million curies of radioactivity. Furthermore, the NTS is home to a vast number of radioactive landfills, too many to detail here. The Los Angeles Times called it a “Hidden ocean of radiation … creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake beds and pinyon pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada.”

There was belated recognition of the effects of atomic testing in 1990, when President George Bush signed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which reads in part, “The United States should recognize and assume responsibility for the harm done to these individuals. And Congress recognizes that the lives and health of uranium miners and of innocent individuals who lived downwind from the Nevada tests were involuntarily subjected to increased risk of injury and disease to serve the national security interests of the United States. The Congress apologizes on behalf of the nation to the individuals and their families for the hardship they have endured.”