I note a recent article in Opinion Online by Dr Helen Caldicott was linked to in the Is Our Future Nuclear? comments thread, and this subsequently generated a fair amount of heated discussion. The focal claim from Caldicott in this piece is that it is dangerous to live near to nuclear power plants (NPP), because they supposedly increase rates of leukemia.
My basic response to such a claim is quite simple, and I think useful, because it cuts through the somewhat arcane and context-laden epidemiological arguments. It’s this: The additional radiation exposure of those living in the vicinity of NPP is ~0.0002 millisieverts (mSv), versus a background level of 2 to 4 mSv (depending on where you live) — the latter due to everything from cosmic rays, to ground-derived radon emissions, to eating bananas (this last one gives you more radiation than the NPP). So that’s 1/15,000 of your total yearly dosage coming from the ambient levels produced by nuclear power (in the US). Living near a coal-fired power station would give you 100 to 300 times more radiation exposure, and even that is trivial and not the reason coal burning is damaging to your health.
So, here is an apparently straightforward intellectual challenge. Can proponents of such an argument as Caldicott’s explain how something which adds 0.007% to an existing effect (background radiation) is somehow critically important, when adding 100 to 300% (or more) to an effect by simply moving from a house built on sedimentary rocks to one built atop granite, or moving from the state of New York to Colorado, is irrelevant? More here. Remember, radiation is radiation (principally alpha particles [helium nuclei], beta particles [high-speed electrons], x-rays, gamma rays [high-energy electromagnetic radiation] and neutrons), whether it comes from exploding stars, naturally decaying heavy metal atoms, CAT scanners, fission reactors, bananas, granite boulders, whatever. There is no unique ‘signature’ to the radiation from NPP.
Indeed, the Caldicott argument reminds me of the one used by proponents of the theory that it’s the sun causing recent global warming. As I’ve pointed out here, for a solar explanation to work, you not only have to explain why a climate forcing agent would be exerting a directional effect on the climate system when it itself is NOT changing — you also have to explain how that stationary agent is also able to negate another climate forcing agent that IS changing. It’s basically the same deal with the claimed link between NPP and radiation — what’s ‘special’ about its radiation from the background, and how is its effect amplified when that of other sources is not? I’ve never yet seen an answer (even an unsatisfactory one!) — to either of the above critiques, grounded in Socratic logic as they are.
But getting back to some of the statistical detail, if you want to understand more about the epidemiology of radiation exposure, I find it hard to go past recommending the huge body of work on this subject compiled by Prof Bernard Cohen, who summarised it extremely well here: “How dangerous is radiation?”, “Risks of nuclear energy in perspective” and “Plutonium toxicity“. The other recent review you should definitely read is “Radiation: Facts, fallacies and phobias” by Prof David Wigg, a clinical radiobiologist at the University of Adelaide. This is a 5-page review article published in 2007 in the peer-reviewed journal Australasian Radiology, but it is available free online (see link) and was written quite deliberately for a general audience. Here is the abstract:
There is frequent debate in the media and the scientific published reports about the use of radiation for diagnosis and treatment, the benefits and risks of the nuclear industry, uranium mining and the storage of radioactive wastes. Driving this debate is increasing concern about reliance on fossil fuels for power generation for which alternatives are required. Unfortunately, there is generally a poor understanding of the relevant basic sciences compounded by widespread irrational fear of irradiation (radiation phobia). Radioactivity, with special reference to uranium and plutonium is simply described. How radiation affects tissues and the potential hazards to individuals and populations are explained. The origins of radiation phobia and its harmful consequences are examined. Whether we like it or not, Australia is heavily involved in the uranium industry by virtue of having one-third of the world’s known reserves, exports of which are worth approximately $470m annually. As this paper has been written as simply as possible, it may also be of interest to readers who may have had little scientific training. It may be downloaded from the web using references provided in this article. It is concluded that ignorance and fear are major impediments to rational debate on radiation issues.
And his conclusion:
Over the last 100 years or so, the growth in understanding of radiobiology, radiation physics and many scientific disciplines associated with the nature and effects of radiation have been profound and continues to proceed rapidly. One example is the demonstration of the relatively harmless effects at low doses, doses that are most likely to be of interest to the general population and radiation workers. Failure to adapt to this knowledge by institutions, including the media, has led to many unfortunate consequences, one of which is widespread radiation phobia and its effects.
Yet Helen Caldicott continues to perpetuate long-discredited myths, despite knowing full well that her extreme views are contrary to all relevant evidence. A good summary of her recalcitrance on the matters of science and evidence is provided here, in a series of exchanges — again, this is well worth reading. The conclusion from Dr Michael Baker was particularly apt:
Her book, Nuclear Madness, is so full of half truths and blatant lies that it is hard for a scientist to read. You will note that her references include very few peer reviewed scientific papers and when they do they frequently do not support her conclusions. I believe that she hopes the reader will not take the time or have the resources to look up the scientific papers. I would conclude by encouraging the people that read her book and papers to do just that.
Gee, now, what does that remind me of?
Brave New Climate 
388 replies on “Radiation – facts, fallacies and phobias”
The meltdown at the reactor in Chernobyl in 1986 reminded the world of the dangers of the atom. The incident was referred to as “nuclear genocide,” and the press wrote of “forests stained red” and of deformed insects. The public was bombarded with images of Soviet cleanup crews wearing protective suits, bald-headed children with cancer and the members of cement crews who lost their lives in an attempt to seal off the cracked reactor with a concrete plug. Fifteen years after the reactor accident, it has been roundly stated in the press that Chernobyl was responsible for “500,000” deaths.
All this is just doomsday folklore. The six-figure death counts that opponents of nuclear power once cited are simply nonsense. In most cases, they were derived from vague “extrapolations” based on the hearsay reported by Russian dissidents. But such horror stories have remained part of the nuclear narrative to this day.
In fact, contemporaries who reported on the Chernobyl incident should have known better. Even in the 1980s, radio-biologists and radiation physicists considered the media’s doomsday reports to be exaggerated.
And their suspicions have become a virtual certainty today. Groups of researchers have set up shop at all of the sites of nuclear accidents or major nuclear contamination. They work at Hanford (where the United States began producing plutonium in 1944), they conduct studies in the English town of Sellafield (where a contaminated cloud escaped from the chimney in 1957), and they study the fates of former East German uranium mineworkers in the states of Saxony and Thuringia. New mortality rates have now been compiled for all of these groups of individuals at risk. Surprisingly, the mortality rates were found to be a fraction of what was predicted by the linear model.
In Hiroshima, radioactivity claimed surprisingly few human lives. Experts now know exactly what happened in the first hours, days and weeks after the devastating atomic explosion. Almost all of Hiroshima’s 140,000 victims died quickly. Either they were crushed immediately by the shock wave, or they died within the next few days of acute burns.
But the notorious radiation sickness, the gradual ailment that leads to certain death for anyone exposed to radiation levels of 6 Gray or higher was rare. The reason is that Little Boy simply did not produce enough radioactivity. But what about the long-term consequences? Didn’t the radiation work like a time bomb in the body?
To answer these questions, the Japanese and the Americans launched a giant epidemiological study after the war. The study included all residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had survived the atomic explosion within a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius. Investigators questioned the residents to obtain their precise locations when the bomb exploded, and used this information to calculate a personal radiation dose for each resident. Data was collected for 86,572 people.
Today, 60 years later, the study’s results are clear. Only 700 people eventually died as a result of radiation received from the atomic attack:
-87 died of leukemia;
-440 died of tumors;
-250 died of radiation-induced heart attacks.
Such statistics have attracted little notice so far. The numbers cited in schoolbooks are much higher. According to Wikipedia, 105,000 people died of the “long-term consequences of radiation.”
I find it disingenuous to continue to invoke latency every time actual results fail to meet the dire predictions made previously. We were told shortly after the Chernobyl event, when the immediate death toll was found to be minimal, that the full impact would not be felt for twenty years. Twenty years later, the Cassandras are now saying it could be as much as sixty years before the damage appears, or maybe several generations in the future. At what point do we accept the fact that the impact of this accident has not been anywhere as serious as it was assumed it would be, and radiation not as dangerous?
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Yet another inconsistency (on top of transplutonium elements in smoke alarms) is that fact that dry rock geothermal gets the green tick of approval. However the steam/froth from the drill holes contains radon from uranium decay, albeit minor.
For years I’ve owned a vial of yellowcake from the old Pt Pirie plant. Without weighing it I’d guess it contains a milligram or two of U235. In World War II aviators wore wristwatches with luminescent dials painted with radium based enamel. A lot of that was mined near one of the current geothermal trial sites in the Flinders Ranges.
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Of course we now that radium causes cancer…the women who painted the radiation on their watch faces wold like their brushes to straighten them out…many dies of various forms of lip, mouth and throat cancers. The conclusion is that one shouldn’t eat radium
David
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Radium-222 is a lot worse, tens of times worse, than plutonium-239, in terms of alpha emissions per gram per second, plus some of its emissions actually come from radon, plus it emits gamma rays too.
However, David, your assertion about the incompatibility of thorium-derived uranium-233 with direct handling in the other thread was not true. The salt it is in is unapproachable because of fission fragments such as 106-Ru, but if it is fluorinated and lifted out, it’s a pussycat — 232-U or no 232-U.
You say one cannot go near it for years; but really it takes years, after it has been separated from thorium, for the supposed gamma-ray hazard to appear, because it depends on the ingrowth of 228-Th.
See figure 5a, Kang and von Hippel.
Some nuclear power stations appear to reduce nearby cancer rates:
(How fire can be domesticated)
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I said,
I wouldn’t be surprised if all that turned out to be true, but I meant radium-226.
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Barry: “Can proponents of such an argument as Caldicott’s explain how something which adds 0.007% to an existing effect (background radiation) is somehow critically important,”
Where have I read something like that before? Sounds like people saying the
extra anthropogenic CO2 can’t hurt.
Caldicot needs a few things to argue a causal relation between cancer and living
near nuke plants. First is epidemiology … do people living near nuke plants get
more cancer than people who don’t. Second is good epidemiology. Does the first
effect still exist after other KNOWN causally relevant factors have been
accounted for (the usual statistical method is called
survival analysis with Cox proportional hazards model being a common
method). The “KNOWN” qualification is pretty important and frequently neglected. People correct for all kinds of factors in such studies, often for no good
reason other than that they have the data. Often they try a bunch of corrections and
just keep what makes a difference … I judge this to be sloppy but pragmatic.
Thirdly, she needs a biologically plausible causal mechanism.
If she has the epidemiology (I tried to check, but the meta-analysis she
mentions
isn’t available on-line and the abstract gives little detail except to
say that they found consistent effects >1 … which is about
as vague as it gets) (ie., more people
get cancer after correcting for known confounders), then it may be that the
plants are causing cancer by some as yet unknown mechanism, or there may
be some unknown confounder at work.
My favourite “example” here is chicken. Abundant mechanisms exist by which chicken
could cause cancer, given the number of known carcinogens in cooked chicken
meat, it absolutely should cause cancer. But the epidemiology just isn’t there. Where
as with red meat, all the boxes are ticked. Known mechanisms, abundant epidemiology, good corrections for confounders.
Penultimately, because of the confounding issue. One or 2 studies won’t cut it. You need
quite a few. There are studies which show that passive smokers get LESS lung cancer
than non-passive-smokers … but they are rather outnumbered by the ones which
find that they get more lung cancer.
Lastly, its always good to compare any causal impacts that you do find
with impacts of alternatives, like living near a coal fired power station.
P.S. People seeking to white wash Chernobyl impacts should read
Laurie Garrett’s “Betrayal of Trust”.
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Geoff Russell wrote: “Where have I read something like that before? Sounds like people saying the extra anthropogenic CO2 can’t hurt.”
Finrod is right, this is nonsense Geoff — it’s nothing of the sort and I’m disappointed that you implicitly accuse me of such deception.
Humans have caused CO2 to increase by 38% from pre-industrial times. Nuclear power plants cause background radiation to increase by 0.007%. So our effect on CO2, in rough terms, is 5,400 times greater than is the effect on background radiation of NPP.
————
Geoff Sherrington, no I’ve never worked in the nuclear industry. My comments are the result of lots of reading, lots of talking to people who do work in the nuclear industry (both in power generation and research), and an application of the scientific method to evaluate data and claims.
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Barry: “Can proponents of such an argument as Caldicott’s explain how something which adds 0.007% to an existing effect (background radiation) is somehow critically important,”
Where have I read something like that before? Sounds like people saying the
extra anthropogenic CO2 can’t hurt.
This is utter nonsense. There’s no comparison at all between those cases. Variations in natural background levels of radiation completely swamp any effects from nuclear plants.
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Finrod: It may well be that variations in natural background radiation swamp effects
from nuclear plants, but that doesn’t imply that the plants can’t cause cancer.
I’ve sent requests to the authors of 2 of the papers Caldicott cites and
will look more closely. The German study is particularly interesting because
the abstract finds a dose response effect with distance from the plant … I should
have mentioned this in my previous post. If you don’t find a dose response, it
doesn’t rule out causality, but finding one definitely strengthens the
case.
I haven’t read enough to make a decision, but if this cancer effect is
real, then it’s no big deal but it should inform the placement of the
plants. Just like we shouldn’t have lead smelters and children in close
proximity, or have lead in petrol … etc. etc.
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For Barry Brook
Have you ever had hands-on experience in the nuclear industry or are your comments your distillation of what you consider to be the best of other commentary?
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Geofff Russel #8,
I believe what should inform the placement of the NPPs is the cost of electricity (more on that below). Regarding the locating of NPPs and cancer risk, I believe the citing on health grounds and all other externalities should be handled in exactly the same way for all industrial plants. I also believe that if that was done, citing of NPP’s would be a relatively insignificant issue, from a health perspective, compared with the siting of many of our other, orders of magnitude more hazardous, chemical factories that we quite happily accept – ‘because we’re used to them’. Chemical releases are far worse than radiation or radioactive contamination. Unlike releases of radioactive materials, chemical releases kill instantly (who remembers Bopal? 6000 people killed immediately when a chemical factory released its toxic chemicals. Compare 6000 instantaneous deaths with Chernobyl – 2 people killed in the initial steam explosion and 29 died from radiation effects over the next 30 days). What chemicals are contained in the many factories and process plants all around Sydney and Melbourne? No one cares overly about this much greater level of risk. Let’s get some balance.
Citing is important for the cost of electricity. Why electrcity cost important? Because it will greatly affect how quickly the low emissions technologies will be adopted. Therfore, it will greatly affect the rate at which we can cut GHG emissions.
The cost of electricity is not just an issue for Australia. It is world issue. If we are going to impose rediculous levels of safety on NPP’s the cost of electrcity will be far higher than it needs to be. So the rate of cutting emissions will be slower.
If the west continues to require that NPPs are at least twice the cost they need to be, China, India, Indonesia and the African nations are going to build NPPs more slowly than they could if they were lower cost. And what we do in the west, does have an effect on them too.
Furthermore, if we (the world) has low-cost, clean electricity, then electricity will substitute more quicly for oil in land transport. Electricity may be used in batteries or make synthetic fuels for land transport. Either way, the lower the cost of electricity the more rapidly will CO2 emissions be reduced in land transport.
So its all a matter of balance. Please, let’s get the balance right. If we build our first NPPs in the desert or Ceduna, we begin a terrible precedent that will take decades to undo. The general state of Australian’s ignorance about nuclear power will be perpetuated for a very long time. We need the first plants as close as possible to a major city. Like this: http://www.world-nuclear.org//assets/0/16/660/676/8d0ef05a-4f8d-40ee-ab10-0250b3e53183.jpg
Pickering, Toronto, Canada
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For Barry Brook
Then perhaps you can explain which expert you consulted to publish the probably erroneous graph at the start of this thread. Ihere is no immediatetly obvious reason why Australia should be highest in the world for gamma outdoors and by far the lowest in radon (apart from some deep soil weathering). Never before have I seen a reference to Australia being radon bliss. And yes, I have done thousands of measurements of radon and millions of measurements of airborne gamma in more than one country.
What aspect of the Scientific Method was most helpful to you in passing this graph as acceptable?
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Geoff Sherrington, that would be these experts: http://sybil.world-nuclear.org/members/membercompanies.asp#0 — the figure in questions comes from the World Nuclear Association “Representing the people and organizations of the global nuclear profession”.
The figure refers to annual doses — which, as Peter Lang has pointed out, will be related to the design of the dwellings, the location of population centres (whether they are close to natural radiation sources) etc.
As to your concluding sentence, it is snide and not worthy of a response.
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Geoff Sherrington (#12),
Does life style and home design have something to do wiht the amount of radiation we receive. In Canada we had relatively high radiation level in the houses I lived in. The reason was because we had a basement that was mostly below ground level and the heating system drew air from the basement and pumped it all round the house. The windows were tripple glazed and closed for the winter. The side door was opend for about 5 seconds about 10 times a day. That was the extent of the fresh air that eneterd the house to dilute the radon entering the basement from the soil. I understand that the radiation from radon in well insulated houses in Scandinavia and UK (if UK has any :)) is about 6 to 10 times higher than recieved in the most contaminated areas around Chernobyl.
I commend Barry Brook for posting all these posts to help to educate the Australian public.
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“What aspect of the Scientific Method was most helpful to you in passing this graph as acceptable?’
Do you have data contradicting the graph in question, which originated from the World Nuclear Association? Can you link to that data?
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Geoff@#8:
“Finrod: It may well be that variations in natural background radiation swamp effects
from nuclear plants, but that doesn’t imply that the plants can’t cause cancer.’
This is true, but trivial. The clear implication is that radiation from nuclear power plants cannot be the cause of the cancer custers in question.
Apparently there is a new federal study underway in the US which will be somewhat more tightly controlled than the previous ones:
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=cd5fafd9-18c5-40f8-bf35-50c62a0ef2a3
We shall see.
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Apparently the background radiation in the Maralinga SA area is around 5 mSv/a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nuclear_tests_at_Maralinga
with the worse spot being the site of a balloon launched plutonium dirty bomb. I believe when the ‘human guinea pigs’ launched their compensation claims 40 years later it was near impossible to distinguish the effects of radiation exposure from lifestyle factors such as smoking.
In a perverse way the Maralinga episode may enhance public acceptance of a NPP in the area at Ceduna. The region has already lost its nuclear virginity. In contrast the public may feel that near-city location for a NPP will in some sense be compromised.
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Barry(#10), of course I’m not accusing you of deception, implicitly or otherwise. I’m merely
saying, perhaps clumsily, that the tiny amount that nuclear plants have raised
background radiation levels by does nothing to negate the epidemiological findings. The
abstract for the first of Caldicott’s studies “Leukemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants” is clear … they found a dose response, i.e., the
closer you lived to the plant, the more the risk increased and said: “Considering that there is no evidence of relevant accidents and that possible confounders could not be identified, the observed positive distance trend remains unexplained.” It’s unexplained because they know,
just like you and Finrod, that the radiation levels are tiny and can’t
explain the cancers. But something is causing them and when you find a radially distributed risk, betting on the thing at the centre isn’t silly … and
no Finrod#15, I don’t quite think the tiny radiation levels lets
radiation off the hook as a cancer cause for the following reason. Cancer is
a stochastic beast which starts with damage to a single cell and mostly the damage is
repaired. But it isn’t just the damage that matters, its precisely which type of
damage … E.g., soy, beef, casein (milk protein) and
chicken all damage the colon DNA in everybody who eats them every single time they swallow a
mouth full … you can measure it in cells sloughed off into the feces. But the kinds
of damage are subtly different and the soy and chicken damage appears harmless,
but not the beef. People who study this stuff have a pretty good handle on why
this is the case, but that doesn’t matter here. The point is that there may be
subtleties that distinguish that radiation mix from a nuclear plant and that
of background radiation. Simple gross levels may not tell the full story.
Peter Lang #11 is absolutely right to compare the tiny risks of radiation with
the huge risks from other things … which I also said in my response to Caldicott
on OLO.
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Geoff, the issue is, if the radiation from NPP was causing a precise sort of damage that background radiation, which is 15,000 times stronger, was not, then it would have to be DIFFERENT. But it’s not. That’s based on fundamental physics, as I tried (obviously unsuccessfully) to explain in my post — you simply cannot distinguish background radiation from radiation produced by NPP. Why? Because there is no difference – radiation is radiation is radiation (alpha, beta, gamma, x-rays, neutrons).
You’re right, you didn’t accuse me of deception. But you did imply that my statements could be construed as being equivalent to the disingenuous claims made by the AGW skeptics that human-caused CO2 cannot possibly be relevant because CO2 is a trace gas. As I pointed out in my response comment, the radiation and NPP statement is nothing of the sort. That’s what I was disappointed in.
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“no Finrod#15, I don’t quite think the tiny radiation levels lets
radiation off the hook as a cancer cause for the following reason. Cancer is
a stochastic beast which starts with damage to a single cell and mostly the damage is
repaired. But it isn’t just the damage that matters, its precisely which type of
damage … E.g., soy, beef, casein (milk protein) and
chicken all damage the colon DNA in everybody who eats them every single time they swallow a
mouth full … you can measure it in cells sloughed off into the feces. But the kinds
of damage are subtly different and the soy and chicken damage appears harmless,
but not the beef. People who study this stuff have a pretty good handle on why
this is the case, but that doesn’t matter here. The point is that there may be
subtleties that distinguish that radiation mix from a nuclear plant and that
of background radiation. Simple gross levels may not tell the full story.”
The LNT model of radiation exposure risk is on rather shaky ground, and the suggestion that the radiation from a nuclear power plant is somehow weirdly different and more dangerous than standard background radiation is veering off into lala land. The comparison with the difference between the effects of chicken and beef on the colon are misleading (there are obvious chemical differences between the two meats, but no obvious significant difference in the radiation mix of someone who hangs around the perimeter of a nuclear plant compered with someone who never goes within a thousand miles of one).
Which of the German studies are you referring to?
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Having read the comments above, I think there is a need for a reality check in this subject. Firstly, the surface radiation across 80% of Australia has been mapped by aerial gamma-ray survey and a ternary K-U-Th map is available from Geoscience Aust at their website (http://www.ga.gov.au/resources/maps/mapsofaustralia.jsp look for Radiometric Map of Australia). This display is not quantitative so one needs the digital data (~30Gb) and appropriate software but then one can determine the dose rate at any point (well 100×100 pixel) over the 80% of Aus so mapped from the K-U-Th surface concentrations. Note that surface radiation varies enormously. Interestingly, at Maraliga there are only a few hot spots which are probably the disposal pits of the last “clean-up”. And since coal is mentioned, the tailings behind the Port Augusta power station show a very nice enrichment in U&Th relative to the local area but compared to other rocks in the area, they’re quite unusual. (SA of course has some very radioactive rocks, not surprising in a state with so much Uranium.)
Secondly, I’m with Geoff Sherrington in that the figure shown in your article Barry appears to be pretty wacky. No way is Aus the “high outdoor / low radon background” country and other countries have near zero outdoor / high radon background. I don’t know where the author compiled that data from or what assumptions were made but it is weird. Countries in Europe such as Sweden and Switzerland have their share of “hotter” granites or shales so how they get near-zero outdoor background puzzles me.
In Aus, as elsewhere, radon is the curse of the aerial gamma-ray surveyor. Aus in fact leads the world in methods to remove radon effects from the surveys. (It helps Aus has low 137Cs in its soils.) Radon varies enormously in the air, depending on weather, moisture, sol type, etc, etc but one thing in our favour is our climate which leads to open windows and above ground construction. So our houses don’t get the build-up of radon that is found in many northern countries and our personal Rn doeses are lower. That may be what the graph is showing.
But what really gets to me is you trying to match the wacky claims of Helen Caldicott with equally wacky claims that coal emits more radiation than a nuclear power station. The claim that “living near a coal-fired power station would give you 100 to 300 times more radiation exposure ” is pure BS. I never seen a coal-burning power station show in an aerial survey but nukes sure show up. To be technical what is seen is radiation is caused by activation in the primary circuit (reaction 16O(n,p)16N) and is typical for operating boiling water reactors (BWR). The scattered radiation of the high energy quanta (6.13 MeV and 7.11 MeV) emitted by the activation product 16N can be observed in the whole gamma spectrum. A typical Aus coal has around 1 ppm U (and yes there are dirtier ones around the world and we haven’t burnt the NSW coal that goes 400 ppm). But no way can one say that “Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste” as claimed in that Sci American article.
The best article I can find to give some reality is an English publication (http://www.ioppublishing.com/activity/education/News/Newsletter/file_31284.pdf)
which shows how to calculate your dose for England. Note for a nuke power station they add 0.005 mSv/yr and for a coal station add 0.0004 mSv, both if you are with in 1 mile. Hardly 300 times! But note, anyone who consumes an excessive amount of shellfsh or Brazil nuts will increase their radiation dose by approximately 0.1 mSv/year. Now that’s living dangerously. And don’t mention the 40K in bananas.
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Bruced, as I said, I don’t think the WNA figure is referring to radon emissions in Australia, it’s talking about annual dose of the inhabitants of those countries. Considering where everyone lives in Australia (type of rocks underlying our capital cities) and the design of the dwellings, our dose from radon is smaller.
As I indicated in my above post, radiation from coal plants is NOT the problem — whether it be locally 10 times higher (as your figure indicates) or 300 times higher. Both are utterly trivial compared to background levels, as you point out when talking about shellfish, Brazil nuts and bananas (which I also mentioned in my post).
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In 16 to Barry Brook, my comments were not at all snide or negative.
The way in which scientists conduct and report science has long been considered to approach the best if the so-called Scientific Method is followed. Barry Brook, in his c.v., makes reference to this method.
I won’t repeat the steps that others have expressed as forming the framework of the scientific method. They are well-documented. However, I did read the posts above my first on this blog to see what the scorecard was. Answer was, it was hard to tell. So, being straightforward, I asked where the basis for following the scientific method lay, in the selection of the above graph. I did this because there is a possibility that the graph was plucked out of a convenient reference and included to underscore a preconception.
If this latter course was indeed followed, then that is the antithesis of the scientific method. I am not saying it was, I am asking if it was.
Many climate science articles & papers follow such a cherry picking course to underscore preconceptions. Indeed, such practices are now widely documented and have led to much unfavourable comment from others wiser than I am. Poor methodology is downgrading the public face of science and encouraging the public to resist informed scientific views.
If I choose to visit this blog, it will because it does not follow the lamentable path shown by blogs such as RealClimate, which by now have lost a great deal of credibility.
Now, as to figures. There are many inherent reasons why both radon (presuming Rn222) and total gamma radiation intersected by a person will vary from place to place. Unfortunately, these places need not coincide with the borders of countries and it is silly in the first place to try a country comparison. Factors such as time spent at high altitude, as in frequent flight; or in high-altitude domicile; or above geology naturally higher in emitters such as Kerala, India; or indoors versus outdoors are but a few. The amount of radon that emerges from the ground can be affected by the abundance of precursors in the radioactive decay chain, by frozen or waterlogged ground, by a variety of geomorphologies – as noted above, people have been flying aircraft over the ground detecting not only gamma radiation but also (to a degree) radon, since the 1950-60s. There is a lot known about the natural distribution of radon and gamma radiation and what is known is unlikely to agree with the graph that is shown.
Yes, there are many reports on radon accumulation in homes with basements, but in general virtually all radon comes from emission from the ground (leaving mining and nuclear power aside). Thus, the ground flux is among the first determinants of dose. Whether radon gas ends up in a habitated basement or under the carpack cement of a mutilevel tower is a complexity that is fairly pointless to model because the scope for remediation is as limited as the movement of people.
As to the graph that started this discussion, I am not about to comment further on it after saying (a) it is unlikely to be correct and (b) it is not wise to express it by country. As to whether it is indeed a correct representation, again I am not about to comment because I have not read the paper behind it, with its references, with its caveats (if any) and explanations of variance (not shown). I have mounted a minor hypothesis that is is not a helpful diagram and the scientific method would take me along an investigative path before I would be prepared to use or endorse it in any away.
That’s the way conventional science works.
That’s the way that Peter Lang works, insofar as he has more of an engineering background. I respect his work because of his deep experience with it and his heavy back-up of assertions with figures. Measured figures, not wishful figures.
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Geoff, would you agree that whether or not the WNA graph is correct, in its expression of Australian’s average radiation dose from radon, that this point is completely immaterial to the argument I’m making in this post? Indeed, even if the actual value is 5 times as much as this figure indicates, it would be immaterial — no, actually, it would make my point (with respect to Australia) even stronger, since it would then imply that that our natural radiation was even higher.
The point I am making is that background radiation is many, many orders of magnitude higher than that produced by NPP. You have suggested that Australian’s exposure to radon may be substantially higher than the WNA figure. If it is, my argument remains unaltered and unaffected.
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Finrod/Barry #19/#20: Both of you are arguing that the finding can’t be due to radiation
but the fact that a finding is inconsisent with current models of
radiation and how it damages cells doesn’t make the finding go away. To do that you need
to find a statistical blunder or explain the finding with an alternative mechanism.
Which study? “Leukemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants”,
I haven’t read the full study (no access), but have emailed the authors for a copy.
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Geoff, I’m familiar enough with correlative statistical models from my own work to assert this:
I’m orders of magnitude more secure with the notion that our understanding of the physics of radiation is correct, than with the notion that a ‘statistically significant’ finding based on a linear model with small sample size and only some control variables included is correct (which, if this was the case, would overturn the aforementioned physics). In short, to me, it fails the ‘smell’ test.
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I have read that study and it is a crock. I hope you have a sufficient background to evaluate it properly, but I suspect you don’t.
Lets get something straight here. The study did not conclude that the nuclear power plants were the reason for the apparent increase in leukemia rates, and in fact the researchers went out of their way to stress that they could find any causal relationship with the nuclear power plants. But most importantly the study compared those living within five kilometers of nuclear plants to the general population. What it did not do was compare them to a demographically similar control group.
These power plants were built in highly industrialized areas,the populated living areas around them are not the richest parts of Germany. These zone have many potential carcinogens for other activities, and soil contamination that goes back to the Industrial Revolution. Drawing any conclusion without controlling for these confounding variables, is scientifically suspect.
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#26: Excellent … like I said in #25, statistical blunders can make findings vanish.
Those you describe shouldn’t have passed peer review, even at the funding
stage. If you can send me the pdf (geoffrey.russell@gmail.com) I’d like
to see it (I have majors in both pure and applied maths and spent
a couple of decades evaluating research protocols on Animal Experimentation Ethics committees). If you haven’t already done so, then you might like to copy your
criticisms of that study to On-Line Opinion.
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Barry Brook,
Elsewhere I am reading the detail of a climate science paper that attempts to make an omnibus conclusion by stitching together a number of proxy studies by other authors. The paper is Darrell S. Kaufman, et al, et al, (Science 9/4/2009) and the discussion is at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7005
This paper deals marginally with radioactivity (use of isotope dating) but I mention it here because of its methodology. Several publications are borrowed, one in a form decidedly unintended by the original author (notably, the climate data were later flipped upside down before use). From what I have read, the methodology is incomplete and probably unacceptable to mainstream scientists.
The point of my observations is that public statements, by blog or press release or publication, are stronger and more credible when the sources have been checked and verified. I posted here because that graph looked wrong in my experience. My posts here are not about the graph so much as procedural exactitude.
Back to the thread, Helen Caldicott’s work is perhaps less extreme in conclusions than http://www.nonukes.org/w15cancr.htm where the author concludes that even the children of nuclear workers at Sellafield are affected by the radioactivity that their worker parents bring home. That is a measure of the height of hurdles that people favoring nuclear power face.
For those with persistence, the 589 page book “The Apocalyptics” by Edith Efron 1984, ISBN 0-671-41743-6, is a model for the offering of science to the public. Not one of the several hundreds of references is from an industry source. All quotations are referenced, where possible verbatim to the authors. The book is credible because of the avoidance of hearsay.
These comments are made not to criticise you, but to note that when people embark on a public profile exercise, there are precedents for acceptance that older people are wiser for and seek assurances about.
Bruced at 21 seems to be on the same wavelength.
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I have ripped into this study on several occasions and in several forums. Here’s an example:
“These results are not significant. Studies of an association between childhood leukemia and the proximity of reactors have been inconclusive.
One 1991 study of 107 counties near 62 nuclear facilities by the American National Cancer Institute found that the childhood leukemia rate for the reported areas dropped slightly after the reactors started operating. Another report of the same study indicated that one childhood Leukemia cluster was associated with the Millstone Power Plant located in New London, Connecticut. Three of the studied facilities had significantly fewer leukemia cases than were expected. Windham County, Vermont, where the Vermont Yankee reactor is located was reported to have only 9% of expected childhood leukemia cases.
Repeated studies failed to uncover an association between The Three Mile Island accident and childhood leukemia. Even more remarkable, studies have failed to uncover a relationship between exposure to radiation from Chernobyl and childhood leukemia.
Two previous German studies showing the same thing were shown to be invalid, so of course they are going to try again. Nothing coming out of that coal controlled government can be trusted, they are out to destroy the nuclear sector in that country and they will stoop at nothing to get the job done.
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DV82XL,
But most importantly the study compared those living within five kilometers of nuclear plants to the general population. What it did not do was compare them to a demographically similar control group.
Might I put it this way –
while they checked for known carcinogens, they didn’t check for known risk factors.
Which must be done since not all risk factors are fully reducible to known carcinogens.
–would that be a correct re-statement, or perhaps a valid generalization, of what you said?
And with methodology that much lacking, should that study even have been published?
They effectively evaluated “proximity to a nuclear power plant” as a “risk factor”, while not correcting for other risk factors!
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Alexei – not really a good way to restate what I said. Basically they did not have good controls, and no they did not do the sort of work that would have identified all known carcinogens in the areas in question.
Look, this is not science it is politics. Someone is funded to do a very poorly designed study that shows some result even if it is below the error bars, and cover their asses by stating that they have actually come to no conclusion. The press picks up on it and blows it out of proportion.
Note that almost all the studies done that attempt to establish a health-link with nuclear facilities, have been done in countries that depend on coal and gas for most of their electrical generation. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has been running an on going study of the health of population around Canada’s power reactors that has been on going for thirty-five years. It has found absolutely nothing despite having the power of Stats Canada (the census) to collect data at their disposal and an antinuclear bias in the commission’s make up.
The depressing thing is that this sort of thing is becoming endemic in any situation where politics and science meet. There is a huge body of similar bits of nonsense out there on several other subjects, most notably concerning CAM and similar fields.
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Thanks DV82XL.
OK, so they didn’t even properly cover known carcinogens. But had they done so, would there still be a problem?
Was I wrong to think that
not all [known] risk factors are fully reducible to known carcinogens.
— ?
At least there’s an example of the opposite: fried chicken, that should have been a risk factor because of all the carcinogens, isn’t a risk factor. (Geoff Russell in #6)
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Alexei – It is not that simple. Experimental design has to try and take into account as much as possible to avoid confounding variables. Human populations unlike dice, for example, have very complex behavior, so in fact any study is going to have internal error and uncontrolled variables – the trick is to design such that these effects are minimized.
Cohort and case-control methodologies are the main tools for analytical epidemiological research. Other important types of epidemiological studies (mainly for generating hypotheses) include cross-sectional and ecological, and correlation studies. The conclusions that can be drawn from findings of these latter types are, however, much weaker compared to those of cohort and case-control studies.
All of these studies that purport to show a relation to nuclear facilities have been simple correlation studies, and they have not been very well done. The reason they can get away with this is that as stated above, correlation studies utility is in forming hypotheses, not drawing conclusions. The fact remains that when these hypotheses are revisited with properly controlled, long-baseline longitudinal studies, most of the time these initial correlations vanish. This has been the case with all of the so called clusters of health issues associated with nuclear plants. When they are looked at with the proper tools there is nothing to see.
The problem is, as I implied before, the popular media takes simple correlation studies reports the hypothesis as a firm conclusion, once that happens the anti(whatevers) treat it like it was a Law of Nature carved in stone.
Like I said it’s politics not science.
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DV82XL at 34.
That is very well stated. Even the shape of the low radiation dose response for humans is argued, between hormesis at one extreme and zero dose linear effect at the other, so correlations can have only so much value because they need a subjective input. Climate science is rather overflowing with subjective inputs, which has lead to this very sad statement in Melbourne’s “Age” last week:
“There is not, now, much value in arguing about the science of climate change. Even if it’s wrong, enough people now believe it that it may as well be right.”
Maybe this quote will help explain my earlier blog themes here.
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Thanks DV82XL,
they can get away with this… correlation studies utility is in forming hypotheses, not drawing conclusions.
So it isn’t even supposed to have to be properly done… Great! I can look for a correlation between eating at McDonalds and, say, bulimia. I might find one, ESPECIALLY if I do not correct for the “junk food” risk factor, or as you’d call it, confounding variable.
My results therefore appear to apply McDonalds but not necessarily to other fast food chains.
My study is published. McDonalds commissions me to do another of the same kind, on Burger King and others.
Science blossoms.
A pity though you can’t answer me about risk factors versus cancerogens.
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Alexei – 36.
An experimental scientist friend tells me that a lot of studies done by other scientists are poorly done. Not everyone is great at experimental design and the stuff will get published somewhere.
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Mark at 37
It hones your skills when your pay package depends on your science being right. Also, when your next job is driving a taxi or even going to jail when you get it wrong. The key word is “accountability”.
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Oops. That should read (without blockquote):
“… and this subsequently generated a fair amount of heated discussion.”
Ha ha!. A ‘heated discussion’ as part of a debate about nuclear energy. Clever.
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Alexei – you asked if all [known] risk factors [I assume for cancer] are fully reducible to known carcinogens.I cannot answer that because I am not an oncologist or an epidemiologist and thus cannot comment on this subject. I was not trying to evade you or the question.
Also please don’t think that correlation studies should not be properly done: simple doesn’t imply sloppy. However they are easy to misuse as your excellent example demonstrates.
Geoff – Unfortunately more often than anyone would like pay packets depend on the results your patron expects, science be damned. You can look in the conclusions of the papers that are written under that sort of pressuer for the signal-words that indicate that the researchers are just paying the bills.
“…results seem to suggest that further study is warranted…” “…while results are inconclusive a possible mechanism for a link was uncovered that should be explored…” All attempts to make soup from stones to keep the funding alive.
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Geoff Sherrington @ 35
“Maybe this quote will help explain my earlier blog themes here”
My word it does! But we already deduced as much!
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Geoff – this Google search confirms our amazing deduction about your credibility and your stance on CC/AGW
http://www.google.com.au/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=Geoff+Sherrington&btnG=Google+Search&meta=lr%3D&aq=f&oq=
Give my regards to Jennifer Marohasy!
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DV82XL#26: The author of “Leukemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants” has sent me a copy of the study, and while I wouldn’t describe its controls
as perfect, it definitely isn’t the crock you describe. It didn’t compare leukemia
rates with the general population but with a control group from within the area
around the plant (about a 40k radius) and which matched the cases in age and sex.
I would have preferred socioeconomic matching also, but your crique was
overly harsh.
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Re 43 Perps
And you conclude precisely what?
For the record, I have never met Jennifer Marohasy. I have occasionally posted on her blog. Correct me if I am wrong, but nothing I have written there has been shown to be significantly wrong. The first entry you find on your Google search goes back to March 2006 and it was one of the first local pieces to start to lift the skirt on the bad science that now troubles the climate science sector. At first people did not believe the accusations I made, but many certainly do now. I repeat last week’s “Age” statement, with which I have disagreed since the mid 70s.
“There is not, now, much value in arguing about the science of climate change. Even if it’s wrong, enough people now believe it that it may as well be right.”
Think of the implications for scientific integrity. Don’t waste time shooting this messenger.
Past messengers include Edith Efron and “The Apocalyptics”, as mentioned. She wrote about the false accusation that man-made chemicals were producing a cancer epidemic – it has not happened; and Petr Beckmann “The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear” of Jan 1976 (whose fundamental physics and economics is still pretty relevant). I’d regard these as required reading unless you are into re-inventing the wheel. The methodology of good science has been said before. It does not change much with time.
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In order to address your challenge in the third paragraph of your latest posting, it would help to know some more how the radiation exposure figure given in the second paragraph was derived? Was it an average taken over a period of time under normal operating conditions? Or was it done some other way? Thanks
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Barry:
(to Geoff — presumably Russell)
I’m orders of magnitude more secure with the notion that our understanding of the physics of radiation is correct, than with the notion that a ’statistically significant’ finding based on a linear model with small sample size and only some control variables included is correct
Certainly so.
But, the study’s being correct doesn’t AT ALL mean that our understanding of radiation is wrong.
Radiation is merely one of zillions of possible causal chains (where plants cause cancers) on top of zillion-zillions non-causal chains (cancers correlate with plant sites without being created by plants.)
You will agree, I expect, that whatever it is that is happening, if new cancers are being created and the construction or operation of nuclear plants is the cause, then
***those cancers must be charged to those plants’ bottom line.***
Geoff Russell,
That was your point to score, hopefully you don’t mind my interference.
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Alexei — of course, but if it is not radiation (this is ALWAYS what is implied by Caldicott et al), then what mysterious miasma is it, something that is connected to NPP and nothing else?
Allan McKay — the time frame is irrelevant because the amount is so tiny. Let’s say, in the extreme, the whole dose of radiation got released once every 50 years, and then there was nothing for the other 49 years. That would still be a mere 0.01 mSv in that pulse, which is about 1/300 of yearly background radiation (and then 1/infinity for the other 49 years).
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Geoff Russell – The study is garbage. As I said it is a correlation study without proper controls and it draws no conclusions of scientific value, nor does it pretend to. If you cannot see that it has no value, and that it is poorly designed, nothing I am going to say will convince you, because you have decided to take a political stand on the issue.
As I said these studies are not science, they are just propaganda tools to manipulate the ignorant. I am not numbered among those, and nether I suspect are you. If you want to claim to see this as a legitimate study, you are doing so because it fits some preconception, or it supports some other contentions you are making elsewhere. But we both know the study isn’t worth the paper it is printed on.
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Critically though it has never been established that there is a linear dose-response for cancer to begin with.
LNT asserts that there is no threshold of exposure below which there is no adverse impact. In practice this means that if a particular dose of radiation is found to produce one extra case of cancer in every thousand people exposed, the LNT predicts that one thousandth of this dose will produce one extra case in every million people so exposed, and that one millionth of this dose will produce one extra case in every billion people exposed, and so on with no safe limit except zero. Thus it is claimed that radiation’s carcinogenic effects should be considered to be proportional to the dose an individual receives, regardless of how small that dose is.
The evidence against the linear model and for radiation hormesis has been solid as a rock for 40 years. Yet the LNT model prevails. Why? Follow the money and the politics. The health-physics community is divided, roughly along the lines of who puts money before principles. There have been some amazingly bitter fights within the Health Physics Society.
The LNT model was first considered in the 1940s purely on the theoretical grounds that a single hit by ionizing radiation on a single cell could cause chromosome damage that could cause a mutation or cancer without any hard evidence to support that contention. The justification for using the LNT model was that too many test animals or too much time would be needed to evaluate chronic dose rates. If the LNT model is correct, there is no “no observed adverse effect level” (NOAEL) for regulators to observe, thus officials responsible for public health can claim justification in calling for minimization of exposures to ionizing radiation. Note that this is tantamount to saying that avoiding sunlight is justified on the grounds that nobody will get sunburns in the dark. Added to this, during the Cold War a number of people promoted the LNT model in an attempt to discourage nearly all uses of nuclear weapons and nuclear power, and used it as leverage in their campaigns.
As a result the radiophobes and the politicians took a handy but false rule of thumb and enshrined it in law and regulation. The second problem, related, is that this results in a lot of stupid but expensive procedures where people and vendors can make a lot of money thus entrenching this false standard through special interests.
But even sunlight, (also in fact a form of radiation,) can kill with too much exposure, conversely not enough will harm a human as well. Surprisingly a number of scientist believe, that what is true of sunlight, may be true of other forms of radiation. They claim that low-dose radiation has been shown to enhance biological responses for immune systems, enzymatic repair, physiological functions and help prevent the onset of cancer. This effect known as radiation hormesis: a moderate overcompensation to a disruption in homeostasis caused by the radiation; it is a stimulus to the repair mechanisms that cope with non-radiation damage as well, so that the overall effect is a health benefit. Many studies have been done that support this view.
There are studies that show populations living in areas of high natural radiation show a marked decrease in the cancers reported, and occupational studies on nuclear industry workers, where they had good radiation dosimetry and records, found that cancer mortality was statistically significantly lower among nuclear workers than among non-nuclear workers.
Frankly the bulk of these studies are as useless as those that show slight correlation in the other direction, and for the many of the same reasons that I have outlined above. The point being here that in the absence of properly controlled, long-baseline longitudinal studies, these are all conjecture at best. The on going long term studies that have been done by various national regulators of nuclear matters have found absolutely nothing, although these too are roundly discounted as being contaminated by political bias.
However, again those with proper training can evaluate those too, and in my opinion they are some of the best – and they show nothing for low dose situations.
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DV82XL#48: The reason you gave for the study being garbage was factually incorrect. I assure
you I’ve seen plenty of junk studies, but this isn’t one of them. It’s definitely not
perfect, but I don’t buy your conspiracy theories about it either.
I also got a copy from its author of the meta-analysis mentioned by Caldicott: “Meta-analysis of standardized incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukemia in proximity to nuclear facilities.”. The forest plots are all over the shop, even if the formal result shows a slight
increase in cancers. Altogether unconvincing given the difficulty of controlling for
confounding in the component studies … ie., plenty of studies on either side of
the “no effect” line.
Barry+Alexei: I have no idea what causes childhood leukemia but wikipedia has references
to an IARC study
which considered that magnetic fields might be a cause and are associated with electric
power plants in general. So again, it would be necessary to compare any findings around
nuclear plants with findings around a coal plant. But the IARC report is, apparently,
far from conclusive.
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Re DV82XL at 50
This is again very much in line with my understanding, with a hint at my #35.
The way in which the science was “adjusted” is covered in the early references I gave.
Even earlier, though I cannot find the primary reference now because my library is much slimmer, there was a conference at Texas A&M about mid 1970 where the history of the radon-rich health spas at Bad Gastein, Austria was summarised. Medical staff had kept records of patrons and resident staff since before 1900, before Mme Curie discovered radium – the baths had already been used for centuries. The radon levels can be measured again today if you doubt them. Typically, a patron received a radiation dosage of 230 mrem (2.3 mSv) per year, about double the average human natural body exposure in mSv. Some staff went many times higher. One principal finding was that no significant heath detriment was discovered over many decades of exposure far higher than most countries allow now. There is no need to speculate if there were “cures”.
An answer to the Caldicott speculation should need to answer the lack of adverse health affects at Bad Gastein.
Now to the graph in the header:
See http://www.solarstorms.org/WorldNuclear.html
which is the secondary source of the graph in the header dated March 2004, which seems to have been lifted from another source since the text is incompatible with the graph to a fair degree.
The Main Sources are given as the Uranium Information Centre (2002) Radiation and Life (Searches give Error 404); and
NRPB Radiation Protection Bulletin # 167, July 1995, pp 13-16 .
I have been unable to find the author of the graph nor any explanation of its construction. It appears to predate the massive collection of airborne gamma data that now covers much of many countries.
In passing, in the U-238 decay chain (and there are others), most gamma instruments mainly measure isotopes later than Rn-222; so, roughly speaking, a location low in Rn-222 is more likely to give a low gamma signal. That is one source of disquiet in the said graph.
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Geoff Russell – I am convinced that you want to find a link and are giving more weight to a very poor study, than to major ones that find no effect. If you think that any German study involving nuclear energy is not full of political bias, you are obviously unaware of the situation there.
I stand by my contention that the paper in question is garbage. True memory did not serve me well in pointing out the particulars of its flaws accurately, but its controls are pitifully inadequate for the conclusions they are drawing.
Here is a partial list of studies that have found nothing. You will note that in size and time frame they are much more complete than the small studies that have found links to cancer and the nuclear industry.
Canadian Study. A study released in 1991 by the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation, commissioned by Canada’s Atomic Energy Control Board, found no statistically significant increase in leukemia among children born to mothers living near five nuclear sites in the Province of Ontario.
Researchers examined data for 1,894 children, aged 14 years or younger, who died from leukemia between 1950 and 1987 and who lived within 15 miles of five Canadian nuclear facilities. The facilities were Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering and Bruce Power’s Bruce nuclear power plants, the Elliot Lake uranium mines and mills, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s Chalk River nuclear laboratories, and a former 20-megawatt nuclear station at Rolphton. Near the Chalk River laboratories, childhood leukemia was one-third of the expected rate. Near the Pickering power station, there were 33 childhood leukemia deaths between 1971 and 1987, more than the 25 statistically expected. However, the rate also was elevated during the 20 years before the station entered service.
American Studies. In September 1990, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health announced that a large-scale study found no increased incidence of cancer mortality for people living near 62 nuclear installations in the United States. The research, which evaluated mortality from 16 types of cancer, showed no increase in the incidence of childhood leukemia mortality in the study of surrounding counties after start-up of the nuclear facilities. The NCI surveyed 900,000 cancer deaths in counties near nuclear facilities that had operated for at least five years prior to the start of the study—the minimum time considered sufficient for related health effects to appear.
West Valley Study. A study by doctors at the University of Buffalo Medical School found no increase in cancer incidence among people living in seven towns near a former nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at West Valley in western New York. In fact, the doctors observed a slight reduction in cancer incidence. The study covered 1973 to 1983.
Pennsylvania Department of Health Studies. Two studies issued in 1991 by the Pennsylvania State Department of Health show no rise in cancer incidence among people living near the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. One study involved 31,000 people living within a five-mile radius of the plant. While 943 cases of cancer had been expected to have occurred among the group from 1982 to 1989, only 813 were recorded, the study showed.
The second study involved 5,292 women of childbearing age living within a 10-mile radius of the plant. Among this group, 36 cases of cancer had been expected; 35 were recorded. The state study found no association between radiation and cancer and no association between psychological stress and cancer.
TMI Health Fund Study. A study by researchers at Columbia University, released in 1990, found no association between the release of radiation during the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and leukemia, or childhood cancer in general. The study requested by public stakeholder groups near the plant and funded by the Three Mile Island Public Health Fund examined cancer incidence among 159,684 people living within 10 miles of the plant.
British Studies. A study by the U.K. Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS) showed no rise in cancer near nuclear installations in England and Wales—either for young persons or adults—even when focusing on types of cancer particularly associated with exposure to ionizing radiation, such as leukemia, bone cancer and multiple myeloma.
Investigators analyzed 8 million separate occurrences of cancer from 1959 to 1980, taking into account the distances from nuclear facilities. A follow-up analysis of the OPCS data by Sir Richard Doll of Oxford University confirmed all of the initial findings,
French Study. A study by two French researchers—reported in the Oct. 25, 1990, issue of Nature—found no increase in childhood leukemia near six nuclear installations in France between 1968 and 1987. The facilities included four nuclear power plants and the nuclear fuel reprocessing plants at La Hague and Marcoule.
Numerous other studies done since these have failed to support a radiation-cancer link.
On the general issue of risks from low-level exposure, there have been over a dozen studies of nuclear workers done by several entities, including the trade unions that represent these workers and in all of them the results were found not to be significantly different from zero. Most importantly, these studies were able to correlate actual exposures of the subjects and incorporate data from known incidents in the various plants.
While it is true that workers involved with underground mining in higher radon concentrated areas did show some increase, it was only from populations that had worked under the less stringent health and safety regimes of the past that showed some links, but again the number of other possible sources from mining practices in those times makes drawing any real conclusion impossible.
The fact remains that due to the power of radiophobia, the reports that can be misinterpreted to show a possible link get wide and uncritical coverage in the press. And to suggest that the antinuclear movement does not misappropriate. misrepresent and misconstrue these studies for their own political ends is naïve to the extreme.
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[…] debate on the effects of radiation from nuclear plants is alive and kicking at Barry Brooks’ blog Brave New Climate. In his latest post, he takes on Dr. Caldicott’s latest junk piece that surfaced in Online […]
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DV82XL: I don’t believe ad-hominem attacks on researchers and citing political bias are the way to
deal with Caldicott’s scare mongering. Your list of studies supports my statement about
the forest plots in the meta analysis. The data is indeed all over the place, which is
a good argument against attributing causality to any particular finding … like the German
one. That’s not the same as calling those researchers incompetent or coal industry lackeys.
I’m happy to call Caldicott a scare mongerer because she used the meta-analysis to mislead
when the study makes a pretty clear case that causality by radiation is unlikely … a conclusion
also supported by the lack of plausible mechanism.
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Geoff Russell – I would be kidding myself if I refused to see the decline in the quality and indeed the ethics of certain fields in the research community in the forty years I have been following these things.
Work that no one in my generation would have tried to float as a term project in high school, papers that hardly have 2500 words but eight authors on the results of a survey asking patients to self-report on how they feel living near power lines, and similar abuses finding publication, make me very wary of motivations. The shear volumes of garbage on the subjects of depleted uranium, and non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation that I have had to wade through on two separate occasions professionally was staggering, and the implications could not be ignored.
The Green Party in Europe, and in particular Germany, have funded more than their share of this sort of drivel, and all of it not surprisingly supporting various elements of the Green platform. Science has become terribly politicized as anyone aware of the climate debate can attest to. It is unfortunate but it is part of what we must deal with when evaluating science reportage. To think otherwise is to accept too large a source of potential error.
If I have gotten too cynical in my old age, it is because I have seen too much by now to give anyone the benefit of doubt when it come to matters like this.
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There is a lot of controversy about the link between radiation and cancer. One is about the evidence that there is a linear relationship between radiation and cancer. There is quite possibly a threshold above which there is a relationship. People living in areas exposed to higher than average radiation often have LOWER rates of cancer. There is something called the “hormesis effect” which postulates that low doses of radiation actually protect you from cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
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Some other relevant links on Dr Caldicott’s past claims:
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/search?q=caldicott
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By in large Helen Caldicott is a spent force. She is now only milking the last few drops of value out of her ‘installed base’ of followers and sycophants – she is not gathering more support or growing her brand anymore.
Many in the antinuclear movement will say privately that she has become less of an asset to the cause, and a bit of an embarrassment because younger audiences in particular are not that receptive to her stridently doctrinaire style. They are looking for a discussion, not being harangued by their grandmother. In fact invitations to her for speaking engagement have fallen off a good deal, and she has been getting lukewarm receptions when she is presenting.
Soon we can start to sing ‘Ding, dong the witch is dead’ over Dr.Caldicott’s public persona.
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With respect to hormesis, here is an interesting excerpt from William Tucker’s 2008 book “Terrestrial Energy” (p315 — first page of Chapter 22, “Radiation”):
In the early 1980s, a Taiwan steel company accidentally mixed a quantity of highly radioactive cobalt-60 into a commercial batch. The steel was then used in the construction of 1,700 apartments. As a result, people living in these buildings were subject to background radiation some 7,000 times the amount that would come from living next door to a nuclear reactor. When dismayed officials discovered this enormous error 15 years later, they surveyed past and present apartment dwellers, expecting to find an epidemic of cancer. Normal incidence would have predicted 160 cancers among the 10,000 residents. To their astonishment, the researchers discovered only five cases of cancer — a 97 percent reduction from the anticipated amount. The findings were published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons in 2004. As one researcher phrased it, exposure to high levels of background radiation had apparently bestowed upon residents “an effective immunity from cancer”.
The journal reference is here (with link to free full text PDF):
W.L. Chen et al (2004) Is chronic radiation an effective prophylaxis against cancer? Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 9: 6-10.
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Barry Brook – Thanks for your response, but unfortunately you haven’t really answered my question. It would be useful to know (to many other readers as well)how the figure of 0.0002 milliSieverts was arrived at. If you have to supply a reference to support your view, that’s fine, but what you have included suggests even that low amount may not be released as an average figure. Surely in this age of considerable refinement in measurements a better picture can be obtainable in understanding such a basic concept. Would that amount be a minimum, maximum or an average? The time element involved in the dose certainly seemed to be important in the New York Times article about the TMI release (28 March 1979 – still online). Thanks
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Allan, the 0.0002 mSv figure comes from pg 76 of the 2006 Switkowski review, which is sourced from a United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) review paper (read it here). These figures are verified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and are the product of systematic monitoring of ambient emissions. Using a linear no-threshold model, this would result in 0.018 fatalities per million person years (pg 83, Switkowski report).
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/protects-you/radiation-monitoring.html
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/rpp/nee/index.htm
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/contaminants/radiation/crmn-rcsr/react-nuclear-eng.php
Here is a brief summary from a physicians FAQ:
http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q279.html
“Q: How is radiation measured around nuclear plants? What do the results tell us?
A: Radiation in the environment of nuclear power plants is generally measured by examining the pathways of human exposure to effluent releases. Effluent releases are possible by both the air and water pathways. Gamma-emitting fission products in air can be measured directly using pressurized ion chambers and thermoluminescent dosimeters. Airborne fission products can also be detected using high-volume particulate samplers. Airborne fission product releases which may accumulate on the ground can be of concern if there is a pathway to the human food chain. Therefore, samples are taken of food products such as garden vegetables. Airborne radioactive iodine could also accumulate on pasture grasses, so milk sampling is also conducted.
Nuclear power plants which are on bodies of water are required to check for radioactivity in all nearby lakes, ponds, and streams. Water samples are also taken from the effluent stream of the plant. Other water samples are taken from public water supplies close by. Since bioaccumulation can occur in fish, samples of representative species are caught and analyzed as well. Although not a human pathway, bottom sediments can be a sensitive indicator of releases into water. The vast majority of the measurements taken serve to document natural background radiation. Background radiation, which is never zero, should be measured and documented carefully so that if there is ever a significant release from a nuclear power plant, its effects can be distinguished from background. Unfortunately, this kind of information was not readily available during the event at Three Mile Island in 1979.
The amount of radioactivity that power plants are allowed to release is strictly controlled by the utility and heavily regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); therefore it is quite rare to measure anything above background in the environment. Additional information and general guidance on setting up an environmental monitoring program can be found in NRC’s Regulatory Guide 4.1 “Programs for Monitoring Radioactivity in the Environs of Nuclear Power Plants.”
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Barry Brook @ #62
Excellent response, thank you.
There is probably no aggregated figure counting the number of people and man-years spent in nuclear radiation safety measurement, monitoring, and improvement; but the effort is enormous, as it should be for prudence and for the concerns of one person for another.
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Geoff Sherrington – strange you should say that.
In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride and a few others at Oak Ridge looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.
The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals’ bones at around 18 millirems a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.
The paper estimated that individuals living near coal-fired installations are exposed to a maximum of 1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation yearly. To put these numbers in perspective, the average person encounters 360 millirems a year from background radiation.
For sure the health risks from radiation in coal by-products are low. Other risks, like being hit by lightning, are three or four times greater than radiation-induced health effects from coal plants. Certainly too other products of coal power, like emissions of acid rain–producing sulfur dioxide and smog-forming nitrous oxide, pose greater health risks than radiation. Nevertheless while the nuclear industry is expected to be anal about even small losses of containment, coal gets a free ride.
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Barry,
I was wondering if you could tell me approximately what the additional exposure to radiation (in millisieverts) would be for people living near uranium tailings from a mine site (at Olympic Dam for example). I don’t think many people actually live significantly close to uranium tailings (in Australia anyway), but hypothetically speaking. Or perhaps even increased radiation exposure for people living as far away as Roxby Downs. I’ve tried searching for these figures, but have been unsuccessful.
Uranium tailings are obviously not a problem with Gen IV, but is certainly still seen as an issue for many when considering Gen III, as the mining must continue…
Cheers.
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Still very interesting, & getting more so.
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Geoff Sherrington @ 45
I conclude you are a troll.
As the majority of us prefer to obtain our information from credible scientists and scientific organisations, the debate regarding the science of CC/AGW is over. Time to move on to more pressing problems.
This blog, sensibly, attempts to find workable solutions to the situation.
Therefore I suggest you return to your favoured blogs (I see you visit Andrew Bolt frequently too)where you will find like-minded pseudo-sceptics.
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Perps @67
Unscientific.
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DV82XL at 64
Since my company at times owned coal mines and power stations and uranium mines, we did not spend much time comparing and contrasting. The properties of coal are variable, with U contents ranging over an order of magnitude or more. So a comparison needs to be put into context for the parameters studied. Rather, our emphasis was on ensuring high safety standards with whatever we worked with.
Re TeeKay at 65
If I could assist Barry in answering the question about the safety of tailings, it is one of containment. Tailings are a bit like sharks. If you never want to bitten, you do not go in the sea. If you keep a few hundred m away, you will not have your background natural dose raised appreciably.
The alpha and beta radiation from solid tails is harmless if you keep more than a few meters away. If you wish to do mathematics of different scenarios for gamma radiation, you might try
http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/gammaandexposure.html
If this is too mathematical, hopefully Barry will provide more general information.
It would make it easier to answer your question if you stated why you asked it. It’s a large topic to cover and you interest might be in a few smaller parts.
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Geoff Sherrington – My question was why is it a violation of a nuclear power plant’s license to have a coal fire inside the fence because of the level of released radioisotopes. In other words a coal fueled power station releases more radiation into the environment than a nuclear fueled on, yet the radiophobes are worried about the latter and not the former.
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Oh and in case it isn’t clear – the question that I posed in 70 is rhetorical,
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Geoff @ 69
I ask about the radioactivity of tailings because the mining aspect of the nuclear cycle is being used increasingly as an argument against nuclear energy by many anti-nuclear campaigners.
Jim Green from Friends of the Earth is a good example – run out of (debunked) arguments against the electricity generating part of the cycle, turn to the mining aspect. The Greens have been doing more or less the same.
I’ve heard everything from “the tailings are as radioactive as coffee” to “strong enough to be considered medium-level waste”. None of these claims referenced.
I had a look at web site you recommended, but without the data I have no numbers to plug in. Thanks though, I’ve bookmarked the page and might play around with it when I find some more info on the matter.
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It would appear people can only worry about one issue at a time.
Promoting a plutonium-based economy – based on the most toxic element known – is no answer to the growing menace of global warming.
A few kilograms of plutonium scattered over densely populated areas, or even large regions, would ensue in a widespread epidemic of cancer. History tells the extreme fallibility of humans virtually guarantees destructive agents of this type will end up being used in conflicts.
Time and again “peaceful” nuclear programs have been translated to N-weapon programs around the world.
An expanded plutonium economy, involving uranium mining and transport networks, greatly increases the risks of accident or theft.
Differences between the climate impasse and the nuclear menace:
(1) At >1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels (accounting for the masking effects of sulphur aerosols and for albedo loss of melting cryosphere), global warming being a reality likely beyond human control.
(2) The proliferation of nuclear facilities, peaceful or otherwise, exponentially increases the probability of nuclear accidents and nuclear terror, the worst effects of which could evenprecede the worst effects of global warming.
(3) In terms of the scale and duration of effects, global warming above 2 degrees and nuclear proliferation lead to almost equally unaceptable consequences for durations ranging from milleania (greenhouse effects) to tens of thousands of years (plutonium – Pu-239, has a half life of 24,360 years).
(4) No reason has been given why truly safe technologies, such as solar/thermal, geothermal/dry rocks, wind. tide etc. should not be preferred to plutonium-based economies. Arguments based on the unsatiable economic growth overlook the fact that such open ended ‘Growth Fetish’ in itself guarantees the demise of civilization.
(4) That the same powers which promote the use of the atmosphere as an open sewer for carbon gases equally promote the proliferation of plutonium, cauncels caution.
A ‘Nuclear Winter’ is in no way preferable to a ‘Greenhouse Summer’
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Andrew, the above is so wrong, on just about every single point, that I just haven’t got the energy to argue it all. The misrepresentation of this matter is simply breathtaking. Perhaps someone else will muster the willpower.
Briefly, point 1 = wrong (we can solve multiple problems simultaneously), 2 = wrong (toxic compared to what?), 3 = wrong (how, and what do you mean by ‘epidemic’?), 4 = wrong (when has it ever happened?), 5 = wrong (IFRs and LFTRs will nearly halt movement of Pu), 6 = unrelated to nuclear, 7 = wrong (and do you know what the word exponential even means?), 8 = I can’t even parse this nonsense, 9 = wrong (read this damned blog), 10 = wrong (or do you think I’m promoting the same?), 11 = how is this relevant?
Well, what a bitterly disappointing tirade, especially given that it comes from someone whom I formerly had a lot of respect for (including hosting many of your guest posts on this very blog).
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Further note
From point of view of natural history, whereas episodes of global warming (arising from solar forcing, volcanic or asteroid events, or from methane emission) are known to have resulted in mass extinction of species, global dissemination of Plutonium may lead to unprecedented consequences on a yet higher order of magnitude …
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Another evil robot. It regurgitates some words from earlier in the thread in order to look human. If some utility program or website asks permission to take control of all the bad cyber-actors, asks you to click a button that says something like “Activate Top-down Botnet Control’, you should probably just click it, ’cause we need the help!
(How fire can be domesticated)
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Barry, I will be happy to provide further evidence and elaboration of the points I made above (including a couple of figures) in an article for your Blog.
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Andrew, indeed, you ought to provide some evidence for what amounts to assertions on your part. Also review these comments and under the other blog entries so you know what you are up against.
D. Walters
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@Andrew Glikson:
I have to go to work now. Otherwise, there would be much to say concerning the disingenuous nonsense you’re spouting here. Tonight, perhaps.
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I’m guessing/hoping that Andrew has been too busy to follow all the
energy based postings on this blog and hasn’t read Tom Blees. I would
desperately love to believe that renewables were enough, but remain
utterly unconvinced. But I’m happy to maintain respect for
Andrew, despite thinking he’s wrong. Hell, I disagree with everybody
on something or other, so I’d end up not respecting anybody if agreement
were a precondition :)
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Andrew, that interjection is simply gauche in its ignorance of the discussion that has occurred here and developed over the last 12 months or so, indeed in the period in which you have contributed articles, so one would have presumed you were paying attention.
The way you use scare words like ‘Plutonium economy’, and the capitalization, and the poor spelling, just reads like so much semi literate late night denialist rant.
It is indeed the contention by many here that a ‘plutonium economy’, as you call it, is the answer to the problem of global warming. Unlike your embarrassing spray, it has been substantially argued and developed through literally thousands of comments on this blog. It is indeed the inconvenient solution.
No reason has been given why truly safe technologies, such as solar/thermal, geothermal/dry rocks, wind. tide etc. should not be preferred to plutonium-based economies.
Where have you been? There has just been the most intense debate on a series of articles by Peter Lang that comprehensively argue precisely that point. We have the posts
“Does wind power reduce carbon emissions?” (166 comments)
“Solar power realities – supply-demand, storage and costs” (438 comments)
“Solar thermal questions” (101 comments)
“Solar realities and transmission costs – addendum” (276 comments)
Thats just the recent material. Track back to find many other articles on this topic, with equally well subscribed discussions.
You appear to be saying nuclear power poses an equal threat to global warming because the duration of climate effects is, according to you, similar to the decay half life of plutonium. This is such a wrongheaded argument its breathtaking.
That the same powers which promote the use of the atmosphere as an open sewer for carbon gases equally promote the proliferation of plutonium, cauncels caution.
What on earth are you talking about? You appear to have conflated two different bogeymen. The fossil fuel interests (those promoting the open sewer approach) are economically directly opposed to the nuclear lobby. These two are direct competitors, they do not equally promote
plutoniumproliferation scare words. On the other hand, it is those who are directly opposed to the atmosphere-as-an-open-sewer are promoting nuclear power, as, arguably, the only feasible solution.Your comments are breathtakingly ignorant, of both the actual issues and of the discussion here. You’ve basically just walked into an intelligent conversation and dropped your pants. No doubt others will start to point out your shortcomings.
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woops strikethrough should have just been through the words ‘plutonium econonomy’.
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Response to David Walter and Finrod (comments #78, #79):
Expressions such as “assertions” and “disingenious nonsense” hardly constitute technical or logical arguments.
In my comment #77, I wrote I will be happy to elaborate on technical points regarding the dangers posed by a global plutonium-based economy, a principal point being the consequences of dissemination of the toxic plutonium (Pu-239 half life 24,360 years) in the environment, in particular when inhaled.
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Please address in detail realistic mechanisms whereby this dispersal will occur.
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Apparently this thread has been hijacked by a demagogue who is just playing to the cheap seats, no doubt becase he has learned that this post has been linked to by other sites and thinks he has an audience.
I have better things to do with my time than engage in a troll-abatement exercise. It was a good discussion while it lasted – see you all next time.
-DV8
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I wonder if fly ash from coal burning gets two bites at the cherry for increasing background radiation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash
In the US about 43% is recycled in uses such as cement production. It contains 10-30 ppm uranium and coals may contain up to 10% of inert materials. At times we will all be centimetres away from structures partly made from fly ash.
I gather it is not currently economic to mine fly ash dumps for valuable elements. However tailings dumps at places like Olympic Dam contain rare earth elements and thorium which could one day be extracted.
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“Your comments are breathtakingly ignorant, of both the actual issues and of the discussion here. You’ve basically just walked into an intelligent conversation and dropped your pants.”
Well said John M, that describes my frustration (nay, exasperation) with Andrew’s comment perfectly.
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Time and again “peaceful” nuclear programs have been translated to N-weapon programs around the world.
That’s really not true. Sweden, France are two examples.
In fact what really happens is that people use the pretext of nuclear energy and lie about the real reasons which is to obtain weapons.
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I’d like to think the person posting here as “Andrew Glikson” is some mischief-making spoofer and not the one who signed that document from Hansen alongside Barry and others declaring that nuclear power was a matter for individual states to determine.
He has made a very positive contribution to the discussion on AGW and in a tone sharply at odds with what has been presented here in his name.
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For Barry Brook
While I admire the way in which you have approached this blog and given good access to contributors, I’ll thank you for hearing me, bid you cheerio and wish you well with the future. Thank you.
It is not a hobby choice to read the words of dogma-driven young smarties surfing Wiki, more intent on protesting than on listening to those with experience to contribute. Better things avail.
My preference is for sites where people like DV82XL and Peter Lang and the like are in the majority, each hoping to be able to gain new references and new angles from each other to improve their knowledge bases.
Like them, I have an innate responsibility to help educate genuine learners with open minds, but it is no longer fun to confront the closed mind. This applies from the Prime Minister down.
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And one may add, FWIW, that if the Australian government were so minded, Lucas Heights would be far better set up to produce weapons-grade plutonium than any nuclear power plant built here.
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@ TeeKay, #65:
The thing about tailings from a uranium mine is that they do not contain anything that isn’t naturally present in the Earth at that site.
Sure, tailings can contain, say, radium-226, and the other daughter products in the uranium decay series, but it’s exactly the same radium-226 which is naturally present in the uranium-bearing rock, in exactly the same quantity.
The amount of radium-226 or airborne radon-222 in the environment surrounding uranium-rich geology is likely to be higher than the background in an environment without significant uranium mineralization. The radon naturally diffuses up out of the ground where uranium is present. However, I remain to be convinced that simply digging up the uranium-bearing ore increases human exposure to radioactivity from those daughter products above the natural background.
Over a very long period of time, mining uranium will decrease the natural background dose of ionising radiation to which people are potentially exposed due to things like radon in the environment, since you’re removing the uranium which will ultimately decay into radon. However, this effect takes a very long time to show up, since the ingrowth of daughter products in the very long lived U-238 takes a long time.
In fact, based on the above argument, some of Bernard Cohen’s work features his calculation of the large number of lives saved due to uranium mining, if we just assume that the linear non-threshold model is valid and assume that it’s true that environmental radon is responsible for many lung cancers.
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I hate to be blunt about this, but your entire post is nothing more than the kind of disingenuous BS that would make Caldicott proud.
Does the notion that plutonium is “the most toxic element known” have any real basis in any kind of science at all? It doesn’t – it was made up by people like Ralph Nader.
If you’re so certain that it’s true, get in touch with Bernard Cohen regarding his challenge to eat plutonium before the cameras. Nobody has ever taken him up on it.
Of course, if you’re talking about radiotoxicity, you need to specify which nuclide – Pu-237 has a half-life of only 45 days, but Pu-244 has a half-life of 80 million years, so there’s a huge possible variation in radiotoxicity if you only specify that it’s Pu and don’t specify which nuclide.
Let’s assume that we’re talking about Pu-239 specifically, as plutonium dioxide, since this is the form in which it’s usually used in nuclear fuels. The usual claim by people like Caldicott is that inhaling one microgram of plutonium will give you a fatal lung cancer – but that’s demonstrably nonsense.
The committed effective dose equivalent (CEDE) for inhaled PuO2 is 3.1 Sv/µCi. The specific activity of Pu-239 dioxide is 55.6 mCi/g.
Assuming the Linear-no-threshold hypothesis to be a workable, conservative estimate of the dangers of ionising radiation exposure, we can consider the figure, taken from ICRP 60, of 5×10−2 excess fatal cancers per sievert of ionising radiation dose due to internal α-particle irradiation in the lungs. Thusly, the inhalation of one microgram of 239PuO2 is determined to be associated with 0.0086 excess fatal cancers per person.
Of course, if you assume that the LNT model is valid, there are countless other radionuclides – Ra-226 and Rn-222 in nature for example – which are far, far more dangerous than Pu-239 in terms of sheer radiotoxicity, since their specific activities are far greater.
Long ago, during WW2 and the Manhattan Project, the military studied the idea of using the newly available radioactive fission product materials coming from the Hanford piles to make a radiological weapon. Of course, they knew immediately, using the crude knowledge of nuclear and radiological science of the time, that fission products exhibited much higher radioactivity and radiotoxicity than Pu, and that the expensive, hard to manufacture, valuable resource of their plutonium was far too valuable to be squandered for negligible gain in such a purpose.
(Soon after, they abandoned the idea of radiological weapons all together).
Of course, there are countless weaponisable chemical and biological agents that can be used for the kind of attack you describe – particularly biological agents, which could deliver far more casualties per gram of material weaponised than any chemical or radiological attack.
Even poorly manufactured impure defoliant herbicides can generate cancer and teratogenesis in populations over a wide area when sprayed from the air, as we know. A hijacked truck full of chlorine can generate many, many casualties in a populated area, and all of these things will be far, far easier for terrorists or warmakers to acquire, and will be more dangerous, than a plutonium radiological weapon. Even if you wanted to build a radiological weapon, you certainly wouldn’t choose Pu to do it, when there are far more radioactive alternatives.
Over the last 60 years or so that access to nuclear technology has been widespread, nobody has ever used a radiological weapon, either in war or in terrorism. Doesn’t that tell you something?
Care to provide examples?
Accident or theft involving what? Uranium mining and transport?
Given the essentially negligible radioactivity associated with natural uranium, the fact that it is not useful for any kind of nuclear weapon, and the fact that it is widespread throughout the world, neither accidents or theft are arguments that make any real sense at all in the context of uranium mining.
Nuclear accidents? Like what? Care to provide examples of any relevant nuclear accidents, and what their consequences actually were?
Nuclear terror? So, there is nuclear power, and there are terrorists. OK. So, what are the terrorists actually going to do, and what are the consequences actually going to be?
Whilst a “nuclear winter” may well be a very concerning possibility, you fail to show any relationship at all between nuclear power and a large scale nuclear war.
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Regarding radon, Dr. Philippe Duport, Director of the International Center for Low Dose Radiation Research at the University of Ottawa, says
as quoted here.
Each atom of radon exists because one atom of uranium decayed some time earlier. So how deep do you have to go to find 10,000 Bq/m^2 of uranium? 16 cm.
In other words, as much radon exits the ground, enters the air, as would be doing so if all the radon atoms born 16 cm deep or less, and no others, were escaping. Because their mean lifetime is ~5.5 days, if they don’t escape within days, they never do.
There’s an interesting consequence: ploughing makes the radon release peaky and troughy (but does not alter the long-term average rate of release). By being turned, soil that was about 16 cm deep, and therefore relatively radon-rich, becomes 0 cm deep, and its radon atoms can escape immediately. That’s the peak.
Days later, some of the radon atoms exiting the top surface are ones that took those days to diffuse up from the soil that was formerly, before the ploughing, on top. It is still radon-depleted because of having been so. Therefore the rate of radon exit is now lower than the long-term average, so that’s the trough.
Now, is anyone near the turned soil shortly after it has been turned, and not near it at other times? That person gets a little extra dose. This is the another of the large-by-nuclear-engineers’-standards little doses that are ignored by radiation alarmists whose alarms apply only to doses that are side effects of activities that deprive government of fossil fuel income. (The classic example is the cosmic ray exposure of airline workers.)
(How fire can be domesticated)
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Andrew Glikson @ 73
What a disappointment to read this kind of ideological, obviously sloppily researched, drivel from you.
Where have you been over the last couple of months? Certainly you can’t have been reading this blog. I suggest you go and do that right now and relieve yourself of your left over (from the “No Nuclear Power” 60’s) outdated prejudices. There have been several converts to nuclear power, myself included, because of the excellent information on this blog and as a result of reading Tom Blees “Prescription for the planet” where your blatantly wrong assertions are demolished.Shame on you Andrew!
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Geoff Sherrington @ 90
Unscientific and a pompous ass!
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Fran@#89:
“I’d like to think the person posting here as “Andrew Glikson” is some mischief-making spoofer and not the one who signed that document from Hansen alongside Barry and others declaring that nuclear power was a matter for individual states to determine.
He has made a very positive contribution to the discussion on AGW and in a tone sharply at odds with what has been presented here in his name.”
That’s a very good point, Fran. Perhaps Barry could check that the commenter ‘Andrew Glikson’ on this thread is in fact who he purports to be.
Response to David Walter and Finrod (comments #78, #79):
Expressions such as “assertions” and “disingenious nonsense” hardly constitute technical or logical arguments.
You’re clearly hard of comprehension if you couldn’t pick up that I didn’t have time to give you a detailed response when I posted that comment. I was so rushed that I even misspelled ‘disingenuous’.
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Alas, it is he, as he sent me the same comment via email. I’m glad others share my frustration — I was thinking that maybe I was just getting too jaded.
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“Alas, it is he, as he sent me the same comment via email. I’m glad others share my frustration — I was thinking that maybe I was just getting too jaded.”
Well that’s a damn shame. Has he offered any clue as to why he’s abandoned the path of reason?
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# by Glikson, says,
“…. global dissemination of plutonium may lead to unprecedented consequences on a yet higher order of magnitude…..”
It seems he is reading from Nader and Caldicott. Annex C of the UNSCEAR 2000 Report tells us that between 1947 and 1962, 520 atmospheric bombs were exploded follwed by another 23 by the naughty French and Chinese. Most of these bombs used plutonium and it is estimated that between 5 and 7 tonnes was disseminated in the atmosphere. [The Nagasaki bomb contained 6kg of Pu, of which only 1 gram fissioned].
Between 1960 and 2000 world population doubled. Was this an unintended consequence?
Plutonium the most toxic element known? [#73] Why not natural polonium 210 which is far more radiotoxic than plutonium? Or radium. Both of these elements discovered by the Curies.
By mentioning half-life as an indicator of potential harm he is perpetuating a myth all too readily accepted by some members of the teaching profession and the media. If long half-life is a menace, pity the dolphins and whales and all that lives in the oceans which contain more than 3 tonnes of uranium [half-life 4.5 billion years] in every cubic km. Add to that the knowledge that the average crustal uranium concentration is about 600 times that of the ocean.
The natural potassium 40 [half-life 1.3 billion y ] in our bodies contributes much of the 0.3 mSv radiation dose we receive per year from natural radioactivity in our bodies. This takes me to a related topic, the radiation dose received from nuclear power operations which is estimated to be less than 0.2 microSv /y which is 12,000 times lower than the world-wide per capita exposure of 2.4 mSv. Look at UNSCEAR [United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation], Report, para 34. The same report tells us in para 37 that radiation doses received by those living near coal power plants and other industries may receive 1-10 microSv/y.
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Well Finrod, whatever one may think of his view, he’s unlikely to set about offering a reason for being unreasonable. That would be even less reasonable.
The tone in which he approached the matter here struck me as highly emotional and invested. His repeated references to a plutonium-based economy – and the most toxic element known are meant to trigger visceral rather than rational responses, as they no doubt have in him. Similarly his contrasted pairing greenhouse summer/nuclear winter are purely rhetorical in this context and again appeal to the emotions rather than the mind. His apparently rhetorical query:
also contains the emotive pairing truly safe versus plutonium economy summoning visions of people being irradiated as they plugged in their toasters rather than being able to marvel at the natural electricity coming from the powerpoint.
He then continues …
The use of the word fetish is an appeal both to those of moral bent and us Marxists but again, especially in concert with instatiableit’s neither a scientific concept nor even one that can be separated from essentially moral arguments over the cultural evaluation of modern consumption in the constitution of humans.
Andrew stands on ground that is very common to left-liberal critics of contemporary society and does harken back to the days of the counter-culture: Man versus Machine, the artificial and contrived versus the authentic and natural, peace and war etc …
It’s a shame that this is where he is, but perhaps he needs to be encouraged to explore the bases for his predisposition, to self-interrogate and specify those things that are woerthy and attainable and thew means that inform them. Perhaps then he will be able to set this discussion into context
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[Promoting a plutonium-based economy – based on the most toxic element known – is no answer to the growing menace of global warming.]
That has to be one of the most ignorant, illogical things I’ve ever read on this blog. Botulinum toxin is much more toxic than plutonium in any form. It’s lethal at 1 nanogram per kilo. That means that 1 kg could kill every person on Earth if delivered correctly. Does that mean we stop the millions of doses of Botox given every day?
Only if you are Glikson and looking for any straw to grab on to.
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In some fairness to Andrew… a plutonium-based economy is what it is. We have a fossil fuel based economy, it is common to refer to a low-carbon economy, or future hydrogen economy… I think it is a pretty valid term. In terms of PR you could do worse – eg nuclear economy.
Also – people are fooling themselves if they don’t think there are a great many well educated people, including academics, who have come to the same conclusions as Andrew. Just because one pops up on here is not cause for a feverish witch hunt… it is the reality of the situation. People are not going to change their minds if when they state what is a commonly held opinion they get roasted. But in time with more facts and figures and science people like Andrew should turn… but you are challenging what is to many people, especially those who are particularly committed to a low-carbon future, a core and simple reality – nuclear power is dangerous and leads to weapons proliferation. And there are references and citations to prove it.
As for myself, I continue to be impressed by the arguments that are presented on this blog and am a convert as I have stated before… just in case I was about to get roasted for sticking my neck out in partial defence of Andrew…
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Actually I take that back… it is not really a plutonium based economy at all:) heck I’ve been on holiday for 6 weeks and am playing catch up.
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Contrary to inferences in some of the comments above, I have been following the literature on nuclear energy and weapons since the 1980s, when with Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA).
While safety levels of nuclear facilities have improved since the 1980s, plutonium derived from light and heavy water reactors has proved the source of Nuclear weapons proliferation in several parts of the world. There is no guarantee the hundreds or thousands of tons of plutonium in IFRs around the world will not end up in a similar way, the critical mass of 239Pu being just above 300 grams (about 1/3 of 235U).
Regarding the toxicity of fissile materials and their relations to cancer, look at the writings by John W. Goffman (Medical physicist, first Director of the Biomedical Research Division of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory) (“Nuclear Witness”).
Animal experimentation showed a few milligrams of plutonium per kilogram of tissue is a lethal dose and when in the bones more toxic than is radium (Voelz, George L., 2000 “Plutonium and Health : How great is the risk?”. Los Alamos Science (Los Alamos (NM): Los Alamos National Laboratory) (26): 78–79). The use of 239Pu-rich “dirty bombs” with consequent ingestion and in particular inhalation of concentrated doses would be fatal in the affected areas.
Bernard Cohen, author of “The Nuclear Energy Option” betrays a blind faith in future plutonium security arrangements, hardly justified by the history of missing fissile materials to date (google “missing fissile materials”).
In a world already stressed by advanced climate change, the prospect that further dissemination of weapons-grade fissile material will not be used in conflict situations are not too good.
Even if IFR facilities were safe, which they are not, their application over the next 20-30 years will do little to mitigate climate change which (as CO2-e levels track toward 500 ppm – the upper limit of glacial-interglacial conditions), would by then exceed 2 degrees C.
Increasingly US climate scientists are looking at fast-tracked attempts at lowering the dangerous levels of CO2-e to below 350 ppm.
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I believe the exact Ian McKellen/Gandalf quote is “When did you leave the path of reason for madness –“, followed by wizardly combat.
His responsiveness to my and others’ comments in Towards Climate Geoengineering suggests it wasn’t so recent.
Supplementary to my previous post: 10000 atoms per (square metre and second), times their 5.5-day mean lifetime, times the Earth’s land surface area, makes for 260 grams of radon in the whole Earth’s atmosphere. By next week it will be 260 grams of mostly new radon, this week’s having mostly decayed by emitting alpha rays.
Two of the daughters, 218-Po and 214-Po if I recall, promptly emit one more alpha particle each, making this more-or-less permanent component of our atmosphere as alpha-active as 180 tonnes of segrium.
(How fire can be domesticated)
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Jim Brough: the Nagasaki bomb couldn’t have consumed just 1 gram of its virtually segrium-free plutonium. It must have been 1 kg. 1 gram would then be the difference in mass between the fission fragments and the plutonium atoms they formerly were.
(How fire can be domesticated)
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There is something very confining, even nullifying about being in a narrowly defined anti-anything organisation. Much better to work out what it is you stand for and then work on achieving it, than to choose something which merely represents what you stand against and then work on eradicating it.
For example, one might be dismayed at the destruction of native habitat caused by the ever expanding suburbs. You read that one of the contributing factors is the encroachment of European weeds such as blackberry into the surrounding bush and so begin a campaign to eradicate them. Admirable. While your ripping them all out and making sure no one is harboring them in their gardens, you’re also re-planting with local natives and encouraging others to do the same in their gardens. However, because you’ve focused too narrowly on being anti-weed (so to speak) your missing the big picture. People didn’t just bring weeds they brought non-native predators. Now the shrub which, in the untouched eco-system, protected the wren from the snake, does nothing to protect it from the cat. What does protect the wren? The blackberry bush. Just down the road in a less diligent suburb there is a thriving community of wrens safely fortified within an unruly bramble bush. If you’ve become doggedly anti-weed you would rip it out, if your aim is to ensure the survival of the wren you might think twice.
May I suggest Andrew, that you are not in fact anti-nuclear but are instead pro-environment and pro-humanity and that your anti-nuclear sentiment is but a misdirected representation of some pretty decent core beliefs.
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There is no guarantee the hundreds or thousands of tons of plutonium in IFRs around the world will not end up in a similar way, the critical mass of 239Pu being just above 300 grams (about 1/3 of 235U).
Andrew:
There are plenty of people that have dealt with the proliferation issues and how to prevent it while using nuclear energy. I really think you’re not thinking this through well at all.
The world potentially would be a far more dangerous place in terms of wars, human conflict and commensurate destruction in an energy starved world. Perhaps you don’t accept who or what we are but then that’s a different discussion. A modern industrial civilization requires enormous amounts of energy. We’re beginning to realize that with 50% of the world’s population joining the developed world the need for energy is going to be insatiable. We also realize that producing energy the way we are will end us up in the soup. Frankly renewables such as wind, solar and thermal can play a part, however it isn’t going to sustain our demands.
Nuclear does carry some risk, however the risks aren’t as big as you make out and with an effective mechanism to prevent proliferation I really don’t think we need to worry all that much. 4th generation reactors have great promise in that they don’t use up a lot of dangerous stuff and leaves very little waste.
If you really want to have a Hobbesian world then the best way to achieve that end is to starve the world of energy.
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Marion#108: “Ever expanding suburbs …” Sorry, you hit an off topic nerve here :)
It isn’t suburbs which destroy the vast bulk
of habitat. Work it out … In Australia 21 million people
on 1/4 acre (=0.1 hectare) blocks comes
to roughly 2 million hectares … the ABS gets much the same
number using far more accurate
means. So 2 out of 770 million hectares in Australia is suburbs.
343 million is used to run sheep and cattle. Its what you choose to eat that
destroys wildlife not the suburb you live in.
Here’s another way to look at it. Think of all the food you can
grow in a square metre during the course of a year (there is even a book called
the “Square Metre Garden”), tomatos, beans, peas, etc etc. Or if you choose
animal products you can have, at most, … an egg. Just one. The proof is
left as an exercise to the reader :)
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Andrew
All of your arguments pertain to botulinum toxin, but moreso as it is 1000x times more toxic than plutonium.
There is no guarantee the Botox won’t end up being dispersed, it is dangerous blah blah blah.
We are aware that plutonium can be dangerous. Lots of things can be dangerous.
That is not an argument for never using them. I can only conclude that you are a fool.
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You make a reasonable point Geoff — one that I’d broadly accept — without showing that suburban sprawl isn’t pernicious to habitat.
Self evidently, if you cover 1600km2 with a density of 30 persons per Ha, as we do in Sydney, you are going to destroy a lot more habitat than if you squeeze 60-70 people per ha into 800Km2.
And let’s not even consider the energy implications of filling all that extra space with motor vehicles (which then sit in slowly moving queues for 20-30 hours per week) made necessary by the fact that the suburbs and services are so far apart that public transport becomes expensive, inefficient and often unfeasible.
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