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John Q Public has immediate access to a lot of information. Just for France, you have:
You will always find issues with any structure, including in France. For instance, the spat regarding Vincent Lhomme and the "secret" EPR security report is grotesque. Just armor EPR correctly. It's not like concrete and rebars are expensive compared to the rest of an EPR plant. But the notion that nuclear power requires secrecy is absurd. It does not and it actually does much better in transparency then in secrecy.
Even someone rabidly anti-nuclear like Stéphane Lhomme of Sortir du Nucléaire admits that the industry and the the ANS are doing that job correctly and honestly. His thesis in L'insécurité nucléaire is that, in his view, the actions prescribed by the ANS to the operators upon those reports are way too "lax".
Elsewhere, depends. It looks like things are getting better in Japan. The Tepco scandal in 2002 was certainly a wake-up call. In the US, it's definitively going in the wrong direction, as everything governmental in the US since Bush took office.
I don't buy your third bullet.
"Institut de Radioprotection et de Sureté Nucléaire" according to wikipedia is the organisation (under a different name - it was renamed since) that said that the radioactive could from Tchernobyl incident did stop at the french frontier (no paper? no you don't go in).
At this point, either IRSN does a full public exposé of all the available data and how it went wrong managent-wise and you end up putting some of these guyes in jail, or no reasonable citizen can rely on them (that currently includes me).
If you think otherwise on this point, I'm interested in your arguments.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_nucl%C3%A9aire_de_Tchernobyl
[...] En France, dans les jours qui suivirent la catastrophe, le Service central de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants (SCPRI) minimisa les conséquences de la catastrophe de Tchernobyl en France. Pour obtenir des informations sur le nucléaire indépendantes des exploitants du nucléaire, de l'État et de tous partis politiques, plusieurs personnalités antinucléaires françaises fondèrent la Commission de recherche et d'information indépendantes sur la radioactivité (CRIIRAD). Le SCPRI fut rebaptisé Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants (OPRI) en 1994 puis intégré à l'Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) en 2002.
Again, the Chernobyl cloud and its passport...
The SCPRI never said that or anything that could be construed in this way.
Noel Mamère reported that the SCPRI said it that while he was still a journalist for Antenne2. Mamère and the network were soundly condemned for defamation on the facts in 2001 and 2002 in criminal and appeal courts (with the INA tapes, it wasn't even a close call), then on the principles in 2003 before the European Court of Human Rights decided to adopt an American view of free speech (essentially, "anything goes") and overturned the verdict on principles.
Again according to wikipedia because I could not find information on what was said at the time on the IRSN site (if you find the official communiqués I'm interested after all it would be a good proof of transparency):
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cons%C3%A9quences_de_la_catastrophe_de_Tchernobyl_en_France
[...] Le nuage radioactif atteint la France le 29 avril 1986, détecté par les systèmes de la centrale nucléaire de Cattenom, près de la frontière luxembourgeoise. Le gouvernement français estime alors qu'aucune mesure particulière de sécurité n'est nécessaire. Le Service Central de Protection contre les Rayonnements Ionisants (SCPRI), placé sous la direction du Professeur Pierre Pellerin et sous la tutelle du ministère de la Santé, annonce le 29 avril 1986 par un premier communiqué qu'« aucune élévation significative de la radioactivité n'a été constatée ». Le 2 mai 1986, le Professeur Pellerin diffuse un communiqué selon lequel « les prises préventives d'iode ne sont ni justifiées, ni opportunes » et « il faudrait imaginer des élévations dix mille ou cent mille fois plus importantes pour que commencent à se poser des problèmes significatifs d'hygiène publique »[1]. Le 6 mai, un communiqué de presse du Ministère de l'Agriculture annonce que « le territoire français, en raison de son éloignement, a été totalement épargné par les retombées de radionucléides consécutives à l'accident de Tchernobyl » et qu' « à aucun moment les hausses observées de radioactivité n'ont posé le moindre problème d'hygiène publique. » [...]
Le Service Central de Protection contre les Rayonnements Ionisants (SCPRI), placé sous la direction du Professeur Pierre Pellerin et sous la tutelle du ministère de la Santé, annonce le 29 avril 1986 par un premier communiqué qu'« aucune élévation significative de la radioactivité n'a été constatée ». Le 2 mai 1986, le Professeur Pellerin diffuse un communiqué selon lequel « les prises préventives d'iode ne sont ni justifiées, ni opportunes » et « il faudrait imaginer des élévations dix mille ou cent mille fois plus importantes pour que commencent à se poser des problèmes significatifs d'hygiène publique »[1].
Le 6 mai, un communiqué de presse du Ministère de l'Agriculture annonce que « le territoire français, en raison de son éloignement, a été totalement épargné par les retombées de radionucléides consécutives à l'accident de Tchernobyl » et qu' « à aucun moment les hausses observées de radioactivité n'ont posé le moindre problème d'hygiène publique. » [...]
The reports on IRSN site all conclude we don't have data good enough to judge what really happened.
But then, could you tell me who was responsible for the data collecting system design to alert the authorities and population? In case of doubt and limitations on the model, did he err on the safe side? Was he competent? Was he held responsible?
I'm interested.
SCPRI/Pellerin said that the cloud was detected but was no cause for concern for public health, in which respect he was probably right, may be not. And about iodine, he was definitively right. Iodine overdoses are rarely deadly if treated on time but quite dangerous nonetheless. I'm pretty certain 1000s of people would have taken 100 or 1000 times the recommended dose.
In case of doubt and limitations on the model, did he err on the safe side?
I don't think he erred on any side. If I recall correctly what I read about his assessment, the measures were below levels of concerns by 1000x or 10000x factors. So there is a distance between erring on the safe side and blundering in panic.
My gut feeling is that he didn't account enough for precipitation, lessivage and bio-concentration but even then, pfff ...
Was he competent?
Undoubtedly yes. He started working on radio-biology in 1959 and is pretty much one of the founders of the discipline. What's also indubitable is that the guy is a pretty geeky wonk, not exactly the communicative kind.
Was he held responsible?
There is a case instructed by Mme Bertella-Geffroy, opened since 2001 that's been brandished by CRIIRAD against Pellerin. Pellerin was indicted last year. Since then, no news of the instruction. It will probably end in a non-lieu. I just don't see how they can make a case.
My gut feeling is that he didn't account enough for precipitation, lessivage and bio-concentration but even then, pfff
Yes that's what the report say, the first in 1997 just one sentence IIRC, the latest one try a bit more on this line.
I noticed you didn't address my first question about the lack of adequacy of the measurement network. BTW I noted no direct advice in the reports on this topic, but may be now the measurement network is more appropriate? (I hope so...).
And to address your gut feeling, did anyone try to think about possible concentration scenario in this agency? After all who was in charge of protecting people?
(Lots of work has been done on pesticide concentration in the food chain and effects on water, this superficially look similar to me)
<rant>Laurent, can't you do some digging by yourself?</rant>
Réseau national de mesures de la radioactivité de l'environnement.
You have also a lot of continuous detectors at nuclear facilities and things like measure wells for water table monitoring , etc. On top of that, you have the military network but those detectors are not meant for long term public health monitoring but for sustaining military operations under nuclear warfare. The goals, the measures and the thresholds are very different.
One important note: for public health, the monitored levels are extremely low and continuous detectors are not doing a very good job. The measures must done off-line in laboratories. So the network is more a matter of trained personnel, capable of performing samplings - properly controlled and recorded - and sending them to analysis.
Lots of work has been done on pesticide concentration in the food chain and effects on water, this superficially look similar to me.
For radioactive elements, the mechanisms are actually quite different and depend on the specific elements. See the ANL fact sheets. One important nuance is that contrary to pesticides, dioxins and heavy metals, most radioactive contaminants from nuclear accidents like Chernobyl have short to medium life and actually disappear by decay. So there is a big difference between one-time exposure and constant exposure. The numbers for cancer risk in the ANL data are for constant life-time exposure. Assessing the risk for one-time releases is much more complex and for most scenario yield much more lower risks unless the doses are acute. But some elements, like Sr-90, have wildly different effects depending on the age and health of the subjects.
I did not do more than read the two reports, and none of them IIRC mentionned any progress on the network but did not advise either on doing something on it so I was curious.
I see a lot of "first" in the "first" report on national network management (2004-2006), so that let me wonder what was there/done before 2004...
I've not seen anything yet on the "concentration par ruissellement" mentionned in the reports.
