1. R. Wilson, S. D. Colome, J. D. Spengler, and D. G. Wilson, Health Effects of Fossil Fuel Burning (Ballinger, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980 ).
2. A. G. Croff and C. W. Alexander, “Decay Characteristics of Once-Through LWR and LMFBR Spent Fuels, High Level Wastes, and Fuel Assembly Structural Materials Wastes,” Oak Ridge National Laboratory Report ORNL/ TM-7431 (1980).
3. Reference 1 gives the risk from sulfur dioxide (S02) as 3.5 x 10-5/year for 1 microgram S02 per meter3 of air. An average person inhales 7,000 meters3 of air per year, so this corresponds to inhaling 7,000 micrograms, or 0.007g, of S02. The deaths per gram of S02 are then (3.5 x 10–5/0.007 =) 0.005. An average coal-burning plant produces 3 x 108g of S02 per day; this could then cause (3 x 108 x 0.005 =) 1.5 million deaths if it were all inhaled by people.
4. See Figure 1 (Chapter 11), which gives the effects from eating all the waste produced in one year. This number must be divided by the number of days per year to obtain the effects from one day.
5. B. L. Cohen, “Ocean Dumping of Radioactive Waste,” Nuclear Technology, 47, 163 (1980). Some of the numbers quoted in that paper have been changed due to later data, but these are incorporated into the results quoted here.