[A-List] Clean Safe Energy (NOT!) - NRC to distribute 9 million potassium iodide tablets around U.S. nuclear plants

[Leighm]

Because I get too many newsletters... Government Security News.com:

NRC to distribute 9 million potassium iodide tablets around U.S. nuclear 
plants

By Jacob Goodwin, Editor-in-Chief

Published March 30th, 2009

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is planning to distribute 
approximately nine million potassium iodide tablets to state and local 
governments and Native-American tribes. The tablets will be stockpiled 
for populations living within a “10-mile emergency planning zone” 
surrounding commercial nuclear power plants across the country.

Revised rules issued by the NRC in 2001 require that state, local and 
tribal governments “consider including potassium iodide (KI) as a 
protective measure for the general public to supplement sheltering and 
evacuation in the unlikely event of a severe nuclear power plant 
accident,” according to a solicitation released by the NRC earlier this 
month.

“Potassium iodide is a salt, similar to table salt,” explains the NRC’s 
Web site. “It is routinely added to table salt to make it ‘iodized.’ 
Potassium iodide, if taken within the appropriate time and at the 
appropriate dosage, blocks the thyroid gland's uptake of radioactive 
iodine and thus reduces the risk of thyroid cancers and other diseases 
that might otherwise be caused by thyroid uptake of radioactive iodine 
that could be dispersed in a severe reactor accident.”

When the NRC originally considered this policy, it had planned to 
distribute adult-sized tablets with a dosage of 130 mg, but since the 
Food and Drug Administration has approved a pediatric dose of 65 mg, the 
NRC has decided to distribute that smaller tablet. “Each tablet shall be 
scored-in to enable the user to break the tablet into at least two 
pieces,” says the solicitation, and each tablet will be individually 
wrapped in blister packaging.

The NRC solicitation listed more than 30 possible locations across the 
country that might receive distributions of the KI tablets. Delivery 
will be required within three months of contract award, and the tablets 
must have a shelf life of at least five years and nine months 
thereafter, says the solicitation.

Additional information is available from Sheila Bumpass, of the NRC’s 
contracts division, at 301-492-3484.

http://www.gsnmagazine.com/cms/features/news-analysis/1757.html