Radioactive Manufacturing Facility Coming to Millburn?
JDidot said: Children are not my argument, but my motivation for seeking more information about the safety of the process. I am passing along the petition because it is all I can do to underline the need and desire for more information to the planning board.
Ummm... no. sorry, but that is total B.S. Your post is not "seeking more information" and that is why people are calling you our on it. You can't claim that you just want more info when the original post is still at the top of this thread and this is the "information" it is seeking:
JDidot said: Does anyone here know what might be done to stop this facility
You admit that you don't have enough information about this plant, but say things like:
JDidot said:
The Millburn Planning Board has approved the location of a radioactive drug factory in the center of town, in a flood-prone area very near the Rahway River...
...located within .4 miles of a children's daycare facility, 1 mile of the High School, and within a stone's throw of several personal residences...
...this France-based company is allowed to operate in this wildly inappropriate location under NJ State environmental law....
...I am looking to do everything I can to prevent radioactive materials from being located very near my child's daycare and his future elementary school...
Does anyone here know what might be done to stop this facility from locating very near to schools and residences?
...There is no reason that I can see why this industry should be located so very near children's facilities and homes...
That is just pure fear-mongering, and you clearly don't care about actual information because you admit there is "no reason" why you can see that this industry should be located there.
So you might get more support if you are just honest about it. Something like: "This sounds scary to me and no matter what information anyone provides as to the actual risk of harm to the community, I am willing to rile people up and scare them in order to try and block this project."
Are you a member of Ohno60 by any chance?
Bikefixed, thank you for that information. It is so much more specific and helpful than what I was able to find in my research online. You are a good person and I appreciate your help.
To people who are upset with my original post, if this was coming to your neighborhood and no one at the county level would or could answer your questions related to what and how it operated, I doubt that you would be calm and cool and not at all try to stop the development.
I sincerely hope that you never have to do technical research on nuclear manufacturing and safety while caring for a raging three-year-old on your own. Arguing with people online is not my idea of fun so I will leave you to it.
Formerly Jersey,
Thinking about your claim that the stream flows away from Millburn, so a flood is not a problem. When a flood occurs the natural stream is overwhelmed and water flows everywhere, isn't that the concept of a flood? Things would not be "normal" at all.
Another NIMBY thread. => I am instantly opposed to the position of the poster.
I have lived in the area since 1947. With past floods, Millburn Avenue has been underwater. In the last major flood a small amount of water spilled onto Main Street by Rector. The area by E. Willow remained dry. Flooding has also occurred in Springfield and Cranford.
I have never seen Spring, Meeker, Willow, Ocean or Mechanic streets flood.
Granted, there is always a first....
Even though they were forewarned, many people refused to evacuate the Lower Ninth. Stuff happens.
mrmaplewood said:
Even though they were forewarned, many people refused to evacuate the Lower Ninth. Stuff happens.
This is so inflammatory. We don't live in a basin...
RobB said:
I see that your avatar is a dog.
You know who else liked dogs?
Um, just about everyone??? I'm not for or against this facility, even though my husband died of cancer,* but to post something like mrmaplewood did without evidentiary proof is not helpful to the cause. The believers will always believe, the skeptics will call foul. Reasonable, rational discussion and scientific information to back it up is what will sway people.
*this was unnecessary to include in my post but I did so to show how emotions reign sometimes..
Formerlyjerseyjack said:
I have lived in the area since 1947. With past floods, Millburn Avenue has been underwater. In the last major flood a small amount of water spilled onto Main Street by Rector. The area by E. Willow remained dry. Flooding has also occurred in Springfield and Cranford.
I have never seen Spring, Meeker, Willow, Ocean or Mechanic streets flood.
Granted, there is always a first....
Like I mentioned up thread, the area is protected against up to a 500yr flood.
Marylago,
Sorry to hear about the loss of your husband.
But who is able to give evidentiary proof that a flood is going to happen? You don't need to search for an answer. In the course of time it IS going to happen. You do know Fukushima was well protected before the tsunami that wasn't going to happen. It's just a matter of time. The similarity is close. No head in the sand here.
I hope this does not inflame your sensibilities further. Just stating facts.
Um, no, the similarity is NOT close between a nuclear reactor and a facility preparing small amounts of short-lived medical isotope. The situations are orders of magnitude different.
What I am referring to is that people are not anticipating unexpected acts of nature. "If it hasn't happened before, it won't ever happen." Not the amount of radiation involved.
But you're wrong... Fukushima could have, and should have, been prevented. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/opinion/fukushima-could-have-been-prevented.html?_r=
I would imagine that in the case of the Rahway River flowing through Millburn, you actually could calculate the worst case flood scenario. It would be something like 24 inches of rain in 24 hours starting with wet ground.
I rather liked that the original post made careful note that this wasn't a god fearing always careful American company, but rather a bunch of cheese eating radiation spewing surrender monkey Frenchies. So that was 'think of the children' + 'dirty foreigners' + 'radiation bad'
SO_Dad said:
I rather liked that the original post made careful note that this wasn't a god fearing always careful American company, but rather a bunch of cheese eating radiation spewing surrender monkey Frenchies. So that was 'think of the children' + 'dirty foreigners' + 'radiation bad'
Post of the day!
marylago said:
SO_Dad said:
I rather liked that the original post made careful note that this wasn't a god fearing always careful American company, but rather a bunch of cheese eating radiation spewing surrender monkey Frenchies. So that was 'think of the children' + 'dirty foreigners' + 'radiation bad'
Post of the day!
Yes
I think I have the perfect solution to this that can make many people happy. Let's convince the company to relocate it's headquarters to the old post office building in Maplewood village!
-It is not next to any preschools
-The anti NIMBY posters above cannot complain
-No big housing development on the site, ending the main issue dividing the town. They could even add a hippie / drug theme restaurant on the street level, while the company makes radioactive drugs above. Perfect for the Maplewood aging hippie contingent.
"Fukushima could have, and should have, been prevented." Exactly. But for incompetency, complacency, hoping for the best outcome, etc, it was not prevented. It really DID happen when most people (but not all) said it couldn't. That is fact.
I remember hurricane Floyd. I watched that little creek overflow to where it threatened my house. I saw all the debris pile up against the bridge near me to where I thought the structure was ready to give way to the wild water pressure on it. I was frightened. Hurricane Irene was almost as bad.
Oh yes, and thank you Tjohn for making up some impressive numbers that make you a weather scientist worthy of an award. You have postulated, or maybe even proved, that a destructive flood can not occur. Whew! We don't ever have to worry about that river flooding in a catastrophic manner. We can now be complacent and never think about it again.
Since we're talking about hedging against things that are theoretically possible, I'm more worried about a meteor strike.
mrmaplewood said:
Oh yes, and thank you Tjohn for making up some impressive numbers that make you a weather scientist worthy of an award. You have postulated, or maybe even proved, that a destructive flood can not occur. Whew! We don't ever have to worry about that river flooding in a catastrophic manner. We can now be complacent and never think about it again.
Try not to be too thick. 24 inches in 24 hours starting with saturated soil in the Rahway River drainage would be very damaging and would exceed anything seen to date. What I was saying is that the absolute worst case flood in Millburn could be estimated with a lot of confidence.
Worst case scenario: Canary Island Landslide. Which I've already claimed as my WWF stage name so back off.
tjohn said:
mrmaplewood said:Try not to be too thick. 24 inches in 24 hours starting with saturated soil in the Rahway River drainage would be very damaging and would exceed anything seen to date. What I was saying is that the absolute worst case flood in Millburn could be estimated with a lot of confidence.
Oh yes, and thank you Tjohn for making up some impressive numbers that make you a weather scientist worthy of an award. You have postulated, or maybe even proved, that a destructive flood can not occur. Whew! We don't ever have to worry about that river flooding in a catastrophic manner. We can now be complacent and never think about it again.
24 inches in 24 hours is way way at the tail end of any probability distribution for rainfall in the area, way beyond Floyd or Irene. The 3 hour 100 year return period rainfall is less than 2 inches per hour according to this document: http://nepis.epa.gov/Adobe/PDF/P100GLN2.pdf. You can extrapolate from that graph that 1 inch per hour for 24 hours is still way beyond the 100 year, and probably beyond even the 500 year return period.
@tjohn is right that we can predict the return periods of floods for the Rahway with pretty high certainty. Even more importantly though, that means the government was able to design flood protection for a 500 year event in places like where this new company is coming in.
mrmaplewood said:
"Fukushima could have, and should have, been prevented." Exactly. But for incompetency, complacency, hoping for the best outcome, etc, it was not prevented. It really DID happen when most people (but not all) said it couldn't. That is fact.
I remember hurricane Floyd. I watched that little creek overflow to where it threatened my house. I saw all the debris pile up against the bridge near me to where I thought the structure was ready to give way to the wild water pressure on it. I was frightened. Hurricane Irene was almost as bad.
Oh yes, and thank you Tjohn for making up some impressive numbers that make you a weather scientist worthy of an award. You have postulated, or maybe even proved, that a destructive flood can not occur. Whew! We don't ever have to worry about that river flooding in a catastrophic manner. We can now be complacent and never think about it again.
You do know that flooding during Floyd could have been prevented as well, right? The Army Corps of Engineers offered flood abatement for towns along the Raritan in the 70s. Only South Orange along our branch of the river agreed. A couple of towns along the Union County branch did so. The ACE did not propose an elegant solution, just a practical one. There was a strategy... Just rejected by the governing bodies.
When I saw how much effort was put into speculating the flooding possibility for the site, I was gong to post the FEMA National Flood Hazard Map. But I now see Komarovsky did that a week ago. Do people understand these maps are based on long term historical flooding extent?
Komarovsky said:
FYI that stretch of the rahway river is protected beyond a 1%(100yr) annual chance return period flood by a combination of levees and channel modifications. Because of this FEMA classifies the area that the factory is going to be built in as a 0.2% annual chance return period(500yr) area. You can view the map here: http://fema.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=cbe088e7c8704464aa0fc34eb99e7f30&extent=-74.31068526989765,40.712099921006015,-74.29575073010234,40.720231845690634
I would suggest that the claim there is any flood protection on this section of the East Branch of the Rahway is incorrect. If that was the case, there would be floodplain. If you look at the canalized portion through SO, the difference is clear. A 500 year flood zone, as stated, means the probability of a flood in any given year is 0.2%. Unfortunately, thanks to more frequent periods of heavy rain, we've had three 500 floods on this river in 23 years starting with Tropical Storm Floyd in 1999. FEMA has updated the maps to take into account the effect of climate change on flooding as best they can. This location remains in "Zone X", or the 500 year floodplain.
http://www.region2coastal.com/view-flood-maps-data/what-is-my-bfe-address-lookup-tool/
Another minor point of information. The correct address is 57 E. Willow St. 57 Willow's on the other side of Main St., though still in Zone X. That means the address on the change.org petition is wrong.
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These new medical radioisotopes meant for killing cancer cells have become much safer than say, Phosporus-32 (a higher energy beta emitter). Lutetium-177 is a much lower energy gamma and beta emitter with a short half-life. Lu-177 is useful because it emits just enough gamma rays for imaging and the beta radiation is able to cause much more limited local damage (what else are you going to call it? cytotoxicity - and put everyone to sleep?) on small tumours.
A newer compound called terbium-161 has even more promise.
http://www.ill.eu/press-and-news/press-room/press-releases/terbium-a-new-swiss-army-knife-for-cancer-diagnosis-and-treatment-21122012/
The cancer therapy aim is different from the imaging use where you want the rays to come out of the body onto the receiving medium (used to be film but is now much more hi tech, like with 'pooters and *****) and Lu-177 actually has some use there as well because of the moderate gamma rays it emits.
Annnyway, Lu-177 is not a heavy gamma ray emitter in the class of plutonium, uranium or other truly scary gamma emitters. Beta emitters and alpha emitters are weaker and don't travel very far. I used P-32 frequently in the lab and you definitely needed to use protective shielding but not lead. It is actually shielded better by plexiglass or wood. You actually don't want to use lead or other high molecular weight because P-32 triggers bremsstrahlung x-rays when it goes through them. Those are bad. I also used tritium in all kinds of experiments and you didn't even need shielding for that. Proper hygiene, latex gloves and care to avoid contamination, yes, but that was it and you couldn't wash it down the sink.
Beta emitters have a large range of intensities and the lower the power intensity, the lower the penetrating power and thus distance traveled through tissue. The lower intensity beta emitters won't get into you from the outside. HOWEVER, that really low penetrating power means once it gets inside you it is right up close and personal with the cells you want it to wreck. Figuring out how to deliver small doses of a locally toxic radioisotope to tumor cells is what this stuff is all about. They bind Lu-177 to molecules that bind specific sites on tumors with as little non-specific binding or accumulation as possible.
Having it get inside you with free reign to go anywhere and wreck healthy cells? Yeah, that's a problem. Just ask Litvinenko about Polonium-210, that's an alpha emitter that really packs a localized punch. Just a tiny tiny amount, mere micrograms, maybe about the size of a fleck of black pepper is all that is needed to quickly have a person the equivalent of an end-stage cancer patient. All the damage occurs from the inside to the inside. There's no way it can penetrate the skin and must be ingested or put into the body somehow.
Would it be bad if something like a flood or fire were to damage the facility? It depends on the safety standards - be as cynical as you want here. I can't say what the current standards are.
One thing I would be concerned about is whether the Lu-177 is actually manufactured at the facility or whether it is merely delivered there. If that facility is just for incorporating Lu-177 into compounds for medical applications the risk is much lower since the storage protocols are easily made very protective. As for manufacturing it you wind up talking about other isotopes of lutetium and the details get way over my head. However, remember that a multi-million year half-life is not the whole story because the isotope itself could be very weak. You come in contact with Carbon-14 all the time and it is all throughout our bodies.
https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/doc/625564/625564.pdf If you want, this is an article detailing a manufacturing method for Lu-177.