Radiation threats and credibility

A couple of days ago, the government and the parliament agreed to set up an independent committee to look into whether iron imported from Ukraine contained high levels of radiation, as some reports have suggested.

The interesting thing about this is that testing for radiation is as simple as passing a Geiger counter over the suspected material. Why is an independent committee needed for such a simple task? Clearly, the agency with the Geiger counters (the Jordan Nuclear Energy Commission) has a credibility problem, not just with the public, but with the deputies and possibly with the government.

This is not the first such case where the credibility of the JNEC has been questioned. A couple of years ago, statements by the Israeli whistle blower, Mordachai Vanunu, led to a similar call for an IAEA inquiry into whether the Dimona facility is causing increased radiation levels in the south of the country. At the time, the assurances of the JNEC were not heeded, and an international team eventually reported that there was no increased radiation that could be attributed to Dimona.

It is hard to say specifically why nobody trusts the JNEC. One answer might relate to how it responded to the Dimona question. In effect, Vanunu made two important statements relating to Jordan. The JNEC focused on the speculation that radiation might have been released from the reactor, and thus might have affected the Jordanian population. This speculation was untrue. The second statement was that Jordan should take measures to distribute iodine tablets to regions adjacent to the reactor, because the aging facility is susceptible to leaking, and contingencies are always good to have. Until now, as far as I know, the government has done nothing to mitigate the effects of a radiation leak in case it happens. Israel has distributed the iodine pills to residents who might be affected in the area, so it is not clear why Jordan is so timid about the issue.

Now, I realize that the JNEC is a technical agency which provides data to the politicians. It was (and is) the government that doesn't want to make too much of a fuss about the issue for political considerations. However, the JNEC lent itself to the political agenda of the government by overstating Vanunu's first suggestion and ignoring the second. Once a technical agency shows willingness to subjugate its statements to political expediency, it loses its credibility. This is one problem.

The second problem relates to releasing information. Any technical agency that wishes to inspire confidence should be generous with data. The JNEC doesn't even have a web site. To inspire some level of trust, information about the type of equipment, and their distribution as well as sampling protocols followed should be made available to the public, as well as at least a sample of data collected. In this report, written prior to the establishment of the latest committee, the following sentence is prominent "For his part, the JNEC director, Dr. Ziad Al Qudah refused to give any information about the examination procedures that the commission will take (to test the iron)". Of course, this is not something that inspires confidence.