Jagged little pill

The feds want to give locals a pill to stave off thyroid cancer in case of a nuclear emergency, but some local folks are saying it’s not enough

BY DANIEL BLACKBURN

Not since the introduction of oral contraceptives has one little pill caused so much community consternation.

The modern pill in question, rather than preventing unwanted pregnancies, instead thwarts thyroid cancer from settling on people like a plague, the result of some kind of nuclear catastrophe.

It’s a simple enough drug that has captured national attention. It’s called "KI," for potassium iodide, and it would be available without a doctor’s prescription–if it could be found in San Luis Obispo County. The federal government, after years of hesitation and study, has decided to make it available for use in the event any of the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants should be compromised by an act of terror or other event.

It is a generally safe drug when taken in recommended quantities. But it has a relatively short shelf life, about three or four years.

It’s also no cure-all, and some medical experts consider KI anything but a solution to the lethal potential of a radiation cloud from a nuclear accident or terrorist attack.

As of early this week, neither government medical facilities, hospitals, nor private pharmacies in this county had any supply of the drug. A check of Internet pharmacy sites showed potassium iodide to be readily available through that source, however.

An old argument has been pushed back into the public arena.

Dr. Greg Thomas, San Luis Obispo County’s chief medical officer, said distribution of the drug will be discussed June 28 in a Sacramento meeting with Orange, San Diego, and San Luis Obispo county officials.

Potassium iodide doesn’t shield against all types of radiation poisoning, but it can prevent the thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine if taken within the first four hours of exposure. A single pill is all that is necessary to provide insulation from thyroid cancer.

The single-pill dosage assumes that people in the immediate area of a nuclear accident will evacuate quickly, after only limited exposure. When people cannot move from an area, repeated dosages would be necessary.

The drug works by saturating the human thyroid gland with normal iodine so it cannot absorb radioactive iodine. Potassium iodide can protect the placenta, but the main protective mechanism in pregnant women is that KI prevents the mother from absorbing the dangerous airborne radioactive substance.

California government officials decided recently to distribute the tablets to a half-million people who live in the shadow of the state’s two nuclear generating stations, San Onofre in Southern California, and Diablo Canyon in southern San Luis Obispo County.

Approximately 22,000 people would be affected in San Luis Obispo under guidelines currently in force.

"These are unsafe facilities," said Rochelle Becker of the local Mothers for Peace.

"The state [when it authorized permits for Diablo Canyon] never expected that spent radioactive materials would be stored onsite," she said. "The facilities were given 18 months to ship the waste to another location, but that has not happened."

PG&E has requested permission from San Luis Obispo County officials and from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build onsite storage facilities for the plant’s spent fuel rods from prior, continuing, and future power plant operations. The rods presently are stored in pools of water, which will reach capacity by 2006.

A 1982 U.S. government study, the most recent of its kind, painted a disturbing picture of what might happen if nuclear reactors were compromised. Such an incident would result in 27,000 deaths the first year and an additional 18,000 long-term deaths from cancer and a variety of birth defects. That study did not take into account the possibility of a terrorist attack.

The KI distribution plan follows a decision six months ago by the federal NRC to provide the pills to 34 states where reactors are located.

Such a blueprint has been in the works for several years, but the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks put the plan on the fast track to implementation.

Under the current notion, people living within 10 miles of a nuclear plant would be provided with the pills. Airborne radiation has been shown to contribute to a greatly increased risk of thyroid cancer–a reality clearly demonstrated by the meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986.

Thyroid cancer as a result of nuclear radiation exposure has been a known fact since Hiroshima was destroyed in 1945 by the world’s first atomic bomb.

But in U.S. medical circles, the idea of stockpiling the drug has been a subject of medical debate only since the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island. The Chernobyl calamity, which was blamed for tens of thousands of thyroid cancer cases, mostly affected people who were youngsters at the time of the incident.

Four years ago, the NRC agreed to purchase millions of doses of the substance for distribution to people living in the shadow of a nuclear plant, but rescinded the offer the following year, despite howls from critics. But with $800,000 in hand, the commission now will proceed with its original plan.

But still, controversy rages.

A federal law, the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, would mandate the federal government to make available sufficient quantities of potassium iodide to "provide adequate protection for the population within 20 miles of a nuclear plant." The bill was signed into law recently by President Bush.

SLO County officials want enough pills to handle the needs of 140,000 residents and 80,000 tourists in a 40-mile emergency zone around Diablo Canyon, 18 miles to the north and 22 miles to the south.

The state’s current plan, however, is to make the drug available for only those within a 10-mile radius.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when PG&E sought a license to build and operate Diablo Canyon, a local group lobbied unsuccessfully for distribution of potassium iodide.

San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace testified during hearings that the plant’s highly radiated fuel pools were vulnerable to a variety of complications, including attack from terrorists. The utility disagreed, and the NRC followed suit.

"We argued that the plants would be a logical terrorist target," said Becker of Mothers for Peace. "But we were told at the time that the only real threat from this kind of source would be from individuals with unsophisticated weapons."

Fuel pools are thought to be particularly vulnerable. These are the effluent of radioactive pellets used to power nuclear generators. When the pellets are mostly used, they are sealed in water-filled, onsite pools. Water is fed constantly to the pools, because the pellets continue to radiate heat and poison for many years. America’s pile of spent fuel currently weighs in at 40,000 metric tons, enough to bury a football field under 15 feet of radioactive waste material, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C.

The pools are said to be more effective than storage in above-ground facilities. But these were not designed or constructed to handle an attack from terrorists. The biggest of these pools holds about eight times as much fuel as a reactor.

Becker said that nuclear plant operators were not required to defend against attacks by air or water until after Sept. 11.

"The plants were tested solely on their ability to stop a land assault by a few mock intruders with automatic weapons, explosives, and perhaps a sport-utility vehicle delivery system," she said.

She said that nuclear plants are always warned of an impending test by the NRC prior to its occurrence, "but even then, 47 percent of the plants showed significant weaknesses in security forces and techniques."

According to an internal memorandum written in 1999 by NEC security specialist David N. Orrick, "This is nothing less than evidence of an abject failure of the nuclear industry to be capable by themselves of protecting against radiological sabotage."

Such cavalier attitudes have changed considerably in the wake of Sept. 11. Within months of the attacks, the NRC informed operators of nuclear plants across the nation that it plans to issue orders implementing additional security measures because of an environment of high-level threat.

Plans include additional personnel at access points to nuclear plants; enhanced training requirements for guard forces; greater stand-off distances for searching vehicles approaching facilities; and heightened coordination with local, state, and federal authorities.

Just one week before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Reuters News Service reported that fuel dumps such as the one at Diablo Canyon are "far more vulnerable than reactors to attacks by anyone trying to spread radioactivity."

Reuters quoted David Lochbaum, a former nuclear plant engineer now with the Union of Concerned Scientists, as saying: "Spent fuel has never gotten the same attention as the reactors. As a result, you don’t have the same level of security and safety as exists for reactors. Because it’s a softer target and has greater consequences, terrorists may elect to go after the spent fuel."

The 10-mile boundary around nuclear plants is cause for consternation among some San Luis Obispo residents who want a 20-mile radius included in disaster planning. The current area would incorporate all 18,000 Los Osos residents, but would not include 10,000 residents of Morro Bay.

County Supervisor Shirley Bianchi, who represents the district where Diablo Canyon is located, told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month, "You can’t draw a line and say people on one side of the street get it, and people on the other side of the street do not."

County officials want to give the pills to 143,000 permanent residents, as well as peak-weekend visitors. But that will have to wait until a state and local government task force completes its work on a funding request, required by the NEC before federal dollars will be made available.

A particular area of concern involves approaches to the Diablo Canyon plant by small, private aircraft. At present, there are no fly-over restrictions for pilots whose planes enter the vicinity of Diablo Canyon, said Becker of Mothers for Peace.

"Whenever we have tried to discuss this with the appropriate people," said Becker, "we have been told that a military jet intercept of a trespassing private plane would occur within three minutes." Last week showed us differently, she added, referring to a situation where a private plane flew into restricted air space over the White House. In that instance, it took 37 minutes for military planes to arrive on the scene. By then, the private plane already had landed at a nearby airport.

According to Becker, local schools are working out plans whereby students would be evacuated in the event of a nuclear accident before the general public is informed.

"Our emergency planning assumes we will be orderly in our evacuation. That will not be the case," she predicted.

Several local groups, including Mothers for Peace, this week filed a petition to stay all proceedings regarding PG&E’s application to the NRC to expand onsite storage of high-level nuclear waste.

The groups are asking the NRC to hold PG&E’s license application in abeyance until the utility’s bankruptcy plan has been approved. County supervisors Bianchi and Peg Pinard sent letters in support of the stay.

A recent meeting of the Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club

attracted several dozen county residents, said chapter president Ross Pepper.

"Public attention to this issue is vital," said Pepper. "If we don’t pay attention, then we deserve what we get, don’t we?" Æ

‘New Times’ news editor Daniel Blackburn can be contacted at [email protected].