SPERA News


Newsletter 2005/1



October 2005

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The new Newsletter


This is the first mail-out of the new SPERA Newsletter. We hope to be able to send members a newsletter every two months but this will, of course, depend on whether or not members provide sufficient material for it. As you think of items which could be included in the next newsletter, please email them immediately to the Newsletter editor so that they can be added to the file for distribution.


In order to save costs, the Newsletter will be distributed only in electronic form from now on. The document will be in MS Word format, and if this causes problems for you, please advise the Editor of the format you would prefer.


The current editor is Murray Matthews, email address: murray@radioactivity.co.nz



From the President


Most of you will have noticed an increasing public debate on the potential for greater global reliance on nuclear energy in face of the growing opinion that climate change is real and adversely affected by the use of fossil fuels for energy production. Within our region the debate is particularly pertinent for S.E. Asian countries given their rapid socio-economic development and for Australia as a potential major source of uranium fuel. The possibility of Australia providing safe storage of international nuclear waste was also raised in the local press following comments made by Mr Bob Hawke, a previous Prime Minister of Australia. The nuclear debate is compounded by the current international concern about acts of terrorism and the potential for dirty bombs.


Further to those issues, there is an increasing awareness of the need to better understand natural processes in the wake of recent disasters (tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes etc) and other environmental concerns (human impacts in coastal zones, extended droughts, loss of biodiversity, introduced species etc). All of these processes are using radioactive tracers to, at least in part, better describe and comprehend the patterns being observed.


What this means to SPERA’s membership is that our work is becoming more pertinent and relevant internationally. Many of the international nuclear issues affect us locally. We need to ensure that environmental nuclear science is recognised for its utility and accepted for the quality and specificity of the output it can provide. We also need to encourage technology and information transfer within our region in line with SPERA’s stated objectives. I urge you to contribute to the international debate within your own countries and to use SPERA, through its channels of communication including the Newsletter and the biennial conference, to ensure that a consistent message in support of good nuclear science is more widely promulgated.


On a more prosaic level, I want to thank you all for your patience in the matter of the elections we have just held. The delays were due to the need to ensure independent scrutiny of the results and that, I believe, was achieved. It also raised the issue of our constitution, which obviously needs some revision to reflect changes in the global telecommunications environment in which we live.


I will be proposing a couple of amendments at the next general meeting in Melbourne 2006. These will cover election procedures, to ensure that the process we have just gone through is accepted as reasonable, and the on-going issue of membership fees and renewals. As you are probably aware there is a problem with having an international membership in that the cost of transferring the membership renewal to the Australian account is often greater than the membership fee itself. There is also the issue of the paperwork our Treasurer, Sue Brown, has to undertake to make it all happen. If the organisation is to be viable we need to ensure that there are sufficient funds to cover the regular and perceived needs. In that case, the annual subscriptions process needs to be regularised to promote that outcome.


I look forward to seeing you all in Melbourne next year and, in the meanwhile, to reading your contributions to the Newsletter.


John Twining

Institute of Nuclear Geophysiology

ANSTO

jrt@ansto.gov.au



SPERA Election results


At the 2004 biennial SPERA meeting a quorum could not be achieved for the purposes of electing a new committee, so the current officers remained at their posts, pending formalisation of their positions. In August 2005, members were requested to provide nominations for a new committee, with the expectation that an electronic ballot would be required. The result of that was that the existing committee was re-nominated: President, John Twining; Secretary, Riitta Pilvio; Treasurer, Susan Brown. In addition, Murray Matthews was nominated for the position of Secretary. Riitta has only recently returned to New Zealand after some time away in Europe and Australia, and declined to accept renomination at this time. This left Murray as the sole nominee for Secretary. As these were the only nominations received, no election was necessary, and the following committee is therefore confirmed:


President: John Twining

Secretary: Murray Matthews

Treasurer: Susan Brown


As per usual practice, the position of Vice President goes to the organiser of the next SPERA meeting. Rick Tinker is therefore confirmed in that position, as SPERA2006 will be held in Melbourne.


This committee will remain in office until the next election, to be held during SPERA2006.




News items



John Twining has been contracted by Elsevier to write/edit a book on Tropical Radioecology as part of a series on Environmental Radioactivity. The series editor is Professor Murdock Baxter. If anyone has anything interesting they would like to suggest for inclusion in the text please contact John directly.



We have recently been contacted by Dr. Kamal K. Shrestha, President, NUSON (The Nuclear Society of Nepal). Dr. Shrestha said that NUSON would like to establish contact with SPERA and find areas of mutual interest. John Twining has responded positively, within our constraints as a South Pacific – based association, with a request for more information about NUSON. John will pass on any extra information as it becomes available. Again, if anyone has any comments to make on this issue please make them known.



Paul Martin regularly sends out information on upcoming conferences related to environmental radioactivity. Anyone attending such meetings is encouraged to provide feedback, via the newsletter, so we can all gain from these types of events. The latest event notification Paul sent out (10th Oct) was for IMEKO 2006 to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The website is http://www.metrologia2006.org.br/



The IAEA is carrying out a revision of Technical Report 364 - “Handbook of parameter values for the prediction of radionuclide transfer in temperate environment” - as part of their EMRAS (Environmental Modelling for Radiation Safety) project. SPERA members have been specifically contacted through the committee to contribute to the EMRAS Working Group 1 activities in relation to this revision. Anyone wanting more information on the revision process, or copies of the request to SPERA by the IAEA, should contact John Twining for details. To ensure a coordinated response, John is happy to act as the contact person between SPERA and the IAEA on this issue.




ANSTO radioecologists have been working with colleagues within the EU to bring together the FASSET radiation effects database and environmental dose estimation software with the AQUARISK probabilistic environmental risk assessment code to provide a means of assessing the potential impacts of radioactive releases into aquatic environments. The results show that, in principle, the linkage of the codes and data provides a reasonable means of assessing routine and accidental releases. This work was presented at a number of recent conferences (including SPERA 2004) and will be published in the near future (more details in the next Newsletter). It is hoped that future work will enable direct comparisons between radioactive impacts and those of other contaminants, such as metals, to evaluate relative risks and to put the perceived environmental risks of radioactivity into a broader context.



In 1998 Murray Matthews, a former President (and now Secretary) of SPERA, left his position of 23 years at the National Radiation Laboratory (NRL) in New Zealand for a post in the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) in Vienna, Austria. At the CTBTO Murray headed the Radionuclide Section of the International Data Centre, with responsibility for analysis of global environmental monitoring data, and development of associated software systems. Murray’s 7-year stint there was completed early in 2005 and he is now back in New Zealand. He has set up a consulting company – Radioactivity Specialists Ltd – and you are invited to visit the website: http://www.radioactivity.co.nz Murray is keen to exercise his experience in radioactivity issues and is interested in projects anywhere.


Also returning to New Zealand is Riitta Pilvio who, after living in New Zealand and working at NRL for a while, returning home to Finland, then working in Australia for a period, decided that New Zealand really is the best place after all and is now back at NRL.



First announcement


SPERA2006


The 2006 Biennial SPERA Workshop will be held in Melbourne, Australia, at a date yet to be announced (probably October/November).


Watch this space for more details, and start planning to attend.