Radiation – facts, fallacies and phobias

Perhaps the relevent phrase should be “All ionising radiation is dangerous” when speaking of the LNT hypothesis.

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I will also answer the very recent entries shortly. But for now I’ll have to assume for the moment the kodak film story is correct as Luke has not narrowed down the reference for us in his very large document yet. Some extracts have been provide below to illustrate there are alternative forms of evidence suggesting there were greater releases in 1979. My own brief comments are in (…).
(From all the available written sources so far, there is a good enough case to support the view that the majority of gaseous radiation released was dependent upon the atmospherics present during that period. A map suggesting the likely paths of the plume (predominately Nth & Sth directions) can be seen at (http://www.southernstudies.org/assets_c/2009/04/wing_tmi_cancer_map.html). This being the case, then it is hardly likely any film fogging would occur with such low levels assigned to the large eastern & western areas, especially if the film was still inside the camera or in some sort of enclosure. We really need to known the areas the film was collected from for more accuracy & how they were being stored. Other references show examples of different tests either not being done, discontinued, results not being made available & even falsifying results. With this sort of behaviour how can we be sure film from the hotter Nth & Sth areas was honestly assessed anyway?)

In 1983-84, Metropolitan Edison was busted for falsifying documents related to the TMI accident and reactor safety. They pleaded guilty to six, and no contest to one, of the 11-count indictment.
The NRC relies upon self-reporting and computer modeling from reactor operators to track radioactive releases and their projected dispersion. A significant portion of the environmental monitoring data is extrapolated — it’s virtual, not real.”
At several locations, the General Accounting Office complained that “facilities’ operators were reluctant to provide public information for fear of creating public alarm that could result in new or prolonged current protest activities.”
In 1975, for example, excessive strontium 90 radiation was found in milk at a farm near the Shippingport plant. The following year, monitoring at that farm was discontinued.
The NRC eliminated the requirement that utilities collect strontium 90 data after Dr Ernest Sternglass’s findings in October of 1977 at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station at Waterford, Connecticut.
In 1981 the Reagan administration drastically cut the EPA’s radiation monitoring program well below the levels cited as inadequate by the General Accounting Office.

(There is no cause to think that reported cases of medical effects on some residents are in any way false, despite efforts of some critics to ridicule their claims & regard their cause as psychological).

A general practitioner in Middletown, said “We’ve had a real run on unusual rashes, allergic reactions, dermatitis, skin lesions, itch, and people complaining of a funny taste in their mouths,” Leaser told us in 1980.
He also wondered about an uncommon aberration he had noticed among his patients. “We have found abnormal counts of eosinophils–that’s a type of white blood cell–in what I would say is a significant number of patients,” he told us. “It isn’t a scientifically controlled study. But I’d say that when I review blood smears, it seems to me I see more.” A high count of eosinophils, he added, was a “well-known symptom of excessive radiation exposure.”
He added that during the fall 1980 venting of krypton gas from the TMI-2 core, “a number of patients who didn’t know it was happening came in independently complaining about the funny taste in their mouths. I hadn’t heard of that since the accident, and I haven’t heard any of it again since the venting.”
Dr Stephen Wing and his colleagues subsequently documented among people living near TMI symptoms consistent with acutely high levels of radiation exposure–skin rashes, hair loss, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, even pet deaths. Those symptoms indicate exposures of 50 rems or higher, far more than the 100 millirems the NRC estimates was the maximum dose at the site’s edge. The researchers also found lung cancer and leukemia rates two to 10 times higher downwind of TMI.
Inside the (containment) building readings showed a minimum of a million millirems per hour, a lethal dose. On site, the day of the accident, monitors 1000 feet from the vent stack showed levels of 365 millirems of beta and gamma rays per hour. A helicopter directly over the vent stack measured emissions three times as high.
“They were getting 63 curies per second, which would put us in the 1200 millirems per hour.”
These were truly enormous release rates of fresh fission gases, since in a single hour (consisting of 3600 seconds) there would be 3600 times 63 or some 226,000 curies being released in an uncontrolled manner without detailed analysis or significant hold-up to allow the most dangerous short-lived isotopes to decay.
Under the NRC’s own rules an evacuation should have been ordered on the disaster’s first day, when calculated radiation exposures in the town of Goldsboro, Pa. were as high as 10 rems an hour compared to an average cumulative annual background dose of about 0.125 rems.
The commission’s own Technical Assessment Task Force, in a separate volume, had concluded that iodine accounted for 8 to 12 percent of the total radioactive gases leaked from Three Mile Island. “The actual figure for Iodine release would be over 1 million curies” — a much more substantial public health threat.
Metropolitan Edison’s own readings indicated a finding of 105 picocuries per litre in goats’ milk at the Louise Hardison farm, less than two miles from the plant. And The (Baltimore) News-American reported that an independent survey conducted by an associate professor of nuclear engineering at nearby Pennsylvania State University produced seven readings of twelve hundred picocuries or more per litre. The findings led Thomas Gerusky to tell The News American that “there might have been more iodine out there than we thought.”
We know for certain that large amounts of radioactivity escaped from TMI, but the nuclear industry & the government didn’t collect release estimates for specific isotopes. An FDA report dated 6 April 1979, showed milk from 15 surrounding farms were found to contain elevated levels of iodine 131 & 12 samples had raised cesium 137 levels. If radioiodine & cesium 137 escaped it’s very likely various quantities of strontium 90, plutonium, americium & other isotopes did too. What were the ground measurements of these long-lived elements, & why haven’t they been released?
Based on radioactive iodine measurements in nearby animals, some experts felt the nuclear industry’s estimates were grossly understated. Also the notes of Dr Karl Morgan for 24 March 1982, estimated 45 million curies of noble gases & 64,000 curies of radioactive iodine were released, resulting in a likely thyroid dose to the population of at least 100 times the NRC estimate.
Dr Carl Johnson MD an expert in radiation illnesses, estimated that very likely other elements (plutonium, strontium, americium) escaped from the reactor core due to the molten fuel. When he asked the NRC & the DOE to do a survey looking for these elements in the respirable dust around the TMI plant, they refused.
The greatest dose arose not from the external gamma radiation measured by a survey meter or a film badge, but from the internal beta radiation from the inhaled fission gases and particles in the lung, the thyroid, and the other critical organs that concentrate the different substances according to their various chemical properties. So when the external gamma-dose rate on the ground was of the order of 1 to 2 millirems per hour, the true dose rate to the lung (inhalation) and other critical organs could be as much as 50 to 100 times greater.
The U.S. Bureau of Fish and Wildlife at Harrisburg also conducted a survey and reported levels of I-131 in rabbit thyroids considerably higher than what had been previously recorded.
In fact, Takeshi added, based on an August 1979 study by the NRC, as much as sixty-four thousand curies of I-131 had been released, a figure four thousand times what the public had been told, and a dose capable of endangering the health of the local population.
Meanwhile an article in Science indicated that extraordinary readings had been registered as far away as Albany-Troy (375km). Two independent techniques identified xenon-133 in ambient air at concentrations as high as 3900 picocuries per cubic meter. Another independent monitor noted high readings in Maine following the accident.
A station 96 miles to the northwest of TMI had comparatively high readings. It seemed to indicate an abnormal radiation level in Harrisburg confirming that the radiation from the plant had not spread evenly over the area, but had in fact blown in a narrow path to the northwest, toward Harrisburg–ten miles away.
Noble gas releases pouring out of TMI on Thursday, the night after the accident began, were so heavy that radiological experiments being conducted at a building in Harrisburg had to be discontinued because of radioactive interference.
Meanwhile news continued to surface of abnormal radiation levels in test wells around the TMI plant site, and in area groundwater.
The loss of coolant led to an estimated release of 43,000 curies of radioactivity, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission calculations acknowledge. But independent analysts have put that figure as high as 150 million curies.

In April of 1979, the NRC’s Harold Denton said that at one point at least twenty stack filters had been removed without being replaced. In other words radiation escaped because the filters were not there to stop it.
Research done by volunteer canvassers, working with Drs. Carl Johnson & Bruce Moholt, determined the cancer rate around TMI was 7 times that of similar rural areas. Mutations in plants were also found. A 1990 Columbia University study found no association between cancer & the proximity to releases from the 1979 TMI accident. Once again, faulty assumptions & legal constraints led to underestimation of effects. More recently, Dr Wing & his associates has found an increase in all cancers, particularly lung & leukemia.
But the University of North Carolina’s Steven Wing in 1997 presented evidence in a peer-reviewed study showing that lung cancer and leukaemia rates down wind of Three Mile Island are 10 times higher than upwind, and that animals and plants suffered chromosomal damage.

They also report that when readings from the dosimeters used to monitor radiation doses to workers and the public were logged, doses of beta radiation were simply not recorded. Beta radiation represented about 90 percent of the radiation to which TMI’s neighbours were exposed in April 1979, which means an enormous part of the disaster’s public health risk may have been wiped from the record.

(Surely all these additional effects support the claim of significant concentrated releases from TMI. Why do we have to rely just on the lack of film fogging for evidence of radiation levels?)
Main Sources: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO12.html
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO13.html
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO14.html
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp18.html
Nuclear Power is not the Answer Chap 3 (H. Caldicott)

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Allan,
I can’t deal with the all distortions of reality you posit but I will deal with one:

“Furthermore, the bar-chart shown in Al Gore’s new book (Our Choice p165) shows comparable carbon footprints for the main generating sources. Nuclear has a range of up to about 75% of the carbon footprint for Gas, using the once through method of fueling. It doesn’t seem practical or economical to pursue this nuclear route for only a small carbon gain, when there are several other significant disadvantages with nuclear generation. I personally feel there is a better way.”

Goodness, quoting Al Gore. Now, Nuclear’s range is not “up to about 75%” of gas. This is absurd. There is no reliable statistic or analysis that shows it more than 10% of gas and often LESS than wind.

The US EPA here:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/co2_human.html#fossil

Shows the true carbon out put of various forms of generation. Nuclear isn’t even mentioned as it’s statistically irrelevant. The overwhelming majority of studies that are not attached to advocacy groups show nuclear and wind CO2 to be almost identical.

THUS nuclear replacement for coal and natural gas…both…would be a huge aid in lowering GHG emissions. Just the opposite of what you allege.

This makes me doubt the rest of your post but I’ll leave it to others parse this out.

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Yes, its a load of subthreshold tosh. Alan, take your aches and pains and rashes and funny tastes in the mouth away and come back with some epidemiology.

Comment – Surely these blood readings support a genuine physical effect rather than a psychological one ..

No, they surely don’t.

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David Walters – 10 Nov 09
All my included extracts are from genuine researchers & not ‘distortions of reality’. If there are any wild distortions present, they are not coming from me. Checking again, however, I have made a small typo error with the 75% figure. To promote nuclear plants as having a total carbon footprint less than wind power (which has been done for a while) is ridiculous when it is now better known that the mining & processing of uranium alone incurs significant amounts of CO2 release. Where on your EPA web link ref does it say the complete fuel cycle is considered? If it is important enough to factor in methane from animal belching for climate change data, then all sources of CO2 related to the nuclear cycle have to be accounted for as well. When the Olympic Dam project is up to full speed, about 25% of the state’s electricity output will be used there. I have used the bar-graph from Al’s book because it is a recent, fairer assessment from an expert source (given on the same page). If you do not have the time to follow up references, but rather engage in unsubstantiated ridicule, then your opinion will be regarded as worthless & not part of a rational debate. I have also indicated that Al Gore’s nuclear bar-graph is depicted as a range, due to the different variables affecting plant types, where the worst case is approximately equal to 65% of a gas plant footprint . No doubt you will still disagree with that figure. This allows for some plants to have a smaller footprint. If you read the associated text in Al’s book & his source material, you will see why it is that figure. Apparently, you have not seen the book yet before you launched an unjustified attack. The entire nuclear fuel cycle is included in the analysis as it should be. The EPA link you include doesn’t include the whole fuel cycle & therefore is a dishonest representation, just as the area of land required for nuclear power has also been misrepresented along with some other points. How about proving to us that low-grade uranium ore mining does not have a significant carbon footprint.
Your quote: “THUS nuclear replacement for coal and natural gas…both…would be a huge aid in lowering GHG emissions”. Unfortunately others have pointed out as well that ‘huge’ isn’t correct. There is no doubt the nuclear lobby are continually misrepresenting their data but you can’t be looking at the evidence for it.
Your Quote: “The overwhelming majority of studies that are not attached to advocacy groups show nuclear and wind CO2 to be almost identical”. Unfortunately you refuse to see that the nuclear lobby have already been caught out in some forms of dishonesty (falsifying documents) so they cannot be trusted with any in-house idealised figures. Advocacy groups are needed to check the nuke’s claims. There have already been new power generation ideas identified in recent years that will make nuclear power, coal & gas redundant very quickly. So why hang on to a flawed technology? We have a chance to benefit from the long experiences of other countries & avoid their unsatisfactory run with nuclear power.

DV82XL – 10 Nov
My included brief opinions are based upon the authentic sources included & are not ramblings. There were a lot of extracts that clearly many critics were unaware of, so they were included for their convenience in one place. When you do not agree with those extracts or my opinions, then you are required to show why those sources are flawed, rather than use ridicule. Just denouncing them without any evidence is hardly rational debate. I have provided sufficient references for you to follow up to check the context. The extracts were included for your benefit , & they can stand on their own merit. A considered reply involves useful counter evidence, not just ridicule. The research from Dr Wright is powerful enough on its own to limit nuclear expansion.

John Morgan – 10 Nov
If you took the trouble to check out the work of Dr Wing, it will be seen that it has been done satisfactorily, with his 1997 study being peer-reviewed. Again, ridicule cannot solve any difficult issues well enough. You need to provide useful counter evidence. Let’s see some to support your view about blood cell changes in some TMI residents.

perps – 10 Nov
I have limited my earlier entries, but the extracts were included all in one place for the convenience of others. Obviously, some people will not have the time to read the even longer web links in order to find the relevant sections, while others cannot fathom the importance of what is included, so use ridicule.

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Well, what an extraordinary response from DV82XL.

1) The references I have provided can adequately stand as both testimonial & research evidence for those who are reasonably free of any major bias, unlike yourself apparently. As some of your posts show, you often rely on just your opinion to torpedo any alternative views regardless of what evidence they produce. Mr Brook accuses some people of giving “lazy recycled objections” to the UK nuclear plan, yet too many nuke supporters display even greater laziness by inadequately dealing with our genuine concerns of a significantly flawed industry. That’s why our objections are repeatedly put forward, only to be brushed off again. Without providing any references, they often resort to personal ridicule, exaggerated claims & evasion to distract attention away from their own weakness in providing any good counterevidence. Is that the scientific code of conduct these days? Even Mr Brook has opted out of answering some points in detail or at all, also appearing as laziness. When my original long (Oct 2) entry was written, it had the WORD doc’s usual features, so that quotations would stand out readily from other text & be neatly arranged. Unfortunately, I learnt the blog site has limitations & does not recognise or conserve the posted original & neater WORD doc. The resulting post (Oct 2) layout was not deliberate. I was unable to remove it from the site, adjust the text & resubmit it. The small blog window isn’t good enough to accurately allow a precise preview how a lengthy WORD doc will look once it is finally in place even after some modest editing.
2) It looks like your definition of critical evaluation is to reject opposing views by any means. Just your opinion of my references being ‘rubbish’ doesn’t make them so. Let’s see your evidence showing that mine are faulty. Unfortunately, too many people are engaging in a ‘life & death’ battle to demolish our concerns under the sham pretence of a rational debate using the denial & ridicule approach. They are frauds. Is this what it takes to ‘sell’ nuclear energy? Mr Brook has even supported contributors who openly, either state or imply that Helen Caldicott has included lies in some of her written claims. Now that’s a bit rich in view of the industry’s 0.0002mSv misleading emission claim & Henry Myer’s account of dishonest behaviour I included earlier. Where are the examples expected from those critics to support their ‘lie’ claims? Where is the ethical approach? She may have made the rare error occasionally – we all do – including Mr Brook. Public trust would also improve if Mr Brook made all company names from private industry sources that are financially supporting his work. We should not have a repeat of the CSIRO ‘Total Well Being Diet’ conflict with vested interests. (http://perfidy.com.au/)
3) Here you mention ignorance & arrogance & concede to have been often engaged in arguments with people having opposing views. Does this mean you cannot conduct a rational discussion, but prefer to argue? All I have done is to quietly present references from people with adequate qualifications for the matters they are reporting on wherever possible & some readers respond with obvious malicious intent. So I have to respond to their errors as well. When you continue giving us your unsupported criticism & expect us to accept your implied authority on it without including any references yourself, then that is considerably closer to a state of arrogance than anything I have ever engaged in, & the more likely cause of any failure of a rational debate between us. As for ignorance, you have displayed some (in the least), in the way you have failed the basic principles of conduct in countering our concerns in a civilised manner. Any raving is coming from a different direction.
4) Anyone has the freedom to answer one or more of my points or included references at their convenience, without me having to rewrite them. They are readable enough despite the difficulties I’ve had with the blog limitations & my substandard eyesight if you don’t try to rush through them. The amount of material I presented was due to its relevance. No one was expected to answer all points. I am not discourteous – for example, I included all the Nov 8, extracts in one place for the readers’ benefit. It would take even more time to go through the included weblinks to find the relevant text. Is your current attitude of ridicule & insult, an example of how to be courteous then? You have readily misunderstood the situation at my end & certainly ‘forget’ about a “rational, evidence-based communication” approach as Mr Brook has recently put it. Even he has lapsed sometimes. If it is good enough for people to be upset about blatant misleading claims in the food industry (a), then it is even more important for the nuclear advocates to clean up their act as well.

(a) http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,,26348551-911,00.html

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@Allan McKay – You claiming that you are making a cognizant argument simply does not make it so. Lacing your tirade with accusations of payoffs to the site owner, is as I have said elsewhere on this site in another thread, generally an indication of intellectual bankruptcy by someone who has failed to establish any sort of credibility in one of these discussions.

To constantly have to cover the same ground on why the ravings of Helen Caldicott are of no value, or show that Wasserman & Solomon’s purported ‘evidence’ from Three-Mile Island are nothing more than a collection of anecdotes handed them by people that were attempting win money in a civil case against the plant, or why the endless amount of rubbish that is found in the popular press on radiation is not admissible in this sort of forum, has become tiresome. It is also a fool’s errand, since those that lack the capacity to vet this material themselves can almost never be convinced that they are in error.

Worse, once one is driven off or barred, a new crop show up, just as lii-informed and just as strident in their ignorance, and the cycle starts again.

It’s becoming tiresome, and little is being gained.

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DV82XL 19 Sept 09
Additional evidence has emerged recently that Chernobyl was a very serious accident (a,b). The lack of details from the Russians in the early stages readily fuelled incorrect western speculation of the casualties. Dr John Goffman however estimated casualties from radiation induced illnesses would be at least 500,000 & likely reach 950,000. He had particular expertise in this area, yet many skeptics readily ignored him. It therefore looks more likely that Dr Goffman’s estimate was much better than he was ever given credit for.
(a) http://www.counterpunch.org/grossman04232010.html
(b) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-26-01.html

The Hiroshima study has been adequately shown my many independent researchers to have had multiple errors (c,d,e,f) & has therefore been misleading.
(c) http://www.du-deceptions.com/downloads/HiroshimaStudy.pdf
(d) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2698250/pdf/12199_2008_Article_39.pdf
(e) http://www.ccnr.org/radiation_standards.html
(f) http://www.idealist.ws/atomicclock.php

Extract from ‘History’s Worst Inventions’ 2009 Chap 40

“The effects of the explosions continue to this day, affecting the health of the men & women exposed to radiation & of their children through genetic damage. The total number of people who have died directly or indirectly from the two bombs had reached 400,000 by 2007. The casualties from the initial blasts were startling: 70,000 in Hiroshima & 40,000 in Nagasaki. By the end of 1945, twice that number had died from burns, injuries or radiation sickness.”

All of these casualties as well as the ones in 1946-49 were excluded since they occurred before the study began in1950, thereby significantly affecting the conclusions. The figures given by DV82XL of only 700 dying of radiation related illnesses are therefore not believable, & is a typical example of the US government playing down the effects of their bombing. General Doulas MacArthur commenced an information blackout on radiation effects & downplaying their role in the casualties, as soon as he assumed control in Japan (g).

(g) http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0810-01.htm

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On Chernobyl.

For a period of time the Ukraine gov’t attributed ALL cancer in Ukraine to Chernobyl. There are, unfortunatly, real financial incentives for this to occur, not to mention huge popular pressure to do so. Urkaine radiation and doctors chimed in on this and even teh maintaining of the ‘Exclusion Zone’ is there more for political satisfaction, than for a serious concern over health and safety.

Thus the data used by Grossman, et al, are often, and again unfortunatly, often manipulated by the very gathters of that data and I’m afraid we’ll really never know the truth.

I don’t think this is the case with Hiroshima and Nag because the Japanese gov’t seemed to of taken a quite serious attitude ABOUT data collection, especially in the 1950s when they really started studying the effects.

The fact is that people now live at ground zero because the inonizating radiation from the bombs has disappeared completely. That’s the good news. The bad news is that survivors did continuelly get sick and it *often* contributed to premature deaths.

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Oh yes, I was skimming and got a bit mixed up on who said what!

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D. Walters 10 June 2010
I agree with your 1st point of what not to do, but no direct comparison between the Atom Bomb drops & Chernobyl was being made at all. Both topics were merely included in one entry like DV82XL did in his first entry due to the common theme he used. He was making a point that both incidents did not cause as many casualties through radiation effects as some people thought, while I presented references claiming the reverse. I don’t think either of us were comparing one tragedy with the other on a radiation basis.
The two Chernobyl references were included simply because no book extracts appear to be available yet on the net, (the book was recently published). The reviews are from writers with experience on that subject, having included some basic points. Neither of them are passing themselves off as nuclear experts but simply as reporters. Obviously, we all need to look at the book itself before ‘shooting from the hip’.
Yes, it is useful to be able to use ‘processed’ weapons-grade material in some reactors, but that isn’t really a sufficiently redeeming feature of nuclear power with all its other obvious disadvantages, being the more likely reason that alert people reject that form of energy. Virtually every aspect of that industry has an unusual, dangerous or expensive feature. Even modern engineering has not been able to cope with all the challenges to contain all of the radioactivity & build the plants economically, while heated disagreement about the effects of radiation releases continues unresolved due to huge amounts of money at stake. In any case, while nuclear power has cost so much being developed since the 1950’s, other lesser known forms of truly safer & much cheaper energy generation have been devised as well. This would be a far better way to dismantle most of the ‘insane’ nuclear industry. Yet the nuclear enthusiasts still don’t get it, having been totally mislead that the ultimate ‘Holy Grail’ in cheap, abundant energy has to be in some radioactive form, when it needn’t be. Even ‘the bomb’ wasn’t really needed to force Japan to surrender. The researcher Clay Blair found some US naval experts who felt their expanding submarine force (assisted by other services) could’ve blockaded Japan into surrender early enough without a large US invasion.
Chernobyl: I wouldn’t have thought the New York Academy of Science would publish the material without some reasonable checks being done. The nuclear industry doesn’t have any financial interests in playing down the radiation effects either I suppose. Be reminded then, that even at the highest level of US government (Bush Whitehouse) has had data manipulation & alteration taken place (a). It even looks like the Obama team is doing the same (b). The ‘peer reviewed’ process is apparently not immune from abuse by others with a hidden agenda. Jay Gould in ‘Deadly Deceit’ (US), included examples of blatant alteration of graphs about radiation. Both the British & Japanese have been caught out in data alteration in their own nuclear industries (c, d).
The Heidelberg Report in May, 1978, reveals the fraudulent methods used by the Atomic Energy Commission to alter their testing of radioactivity coming from a commercial nuclear power plant when those plants were first up for licensing. They routinely falsified their test samples by downgrading their radioactivity in order to establish that what a plant normally puts out into the environment is within ‘acceptable levels.’ (e)
When criticising Karl Grossman for manipulation, some evidence should be provided.

(a) http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/resources/globalwarming/documents/political-interference.pdf
(b) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/11/white-house-rejects-claim-skewed-expert-opinion-justify-drilling-ban/
(c) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/now-sellafield-admits-to-22-faked-nuclear-safety-checks-1120931.html
(d) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/aug/22/energy.japan
(e) ‘The People of Three Mile Island’ 1980 Chap 26

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Machiavelli – It is clearly apparent to me that you simply don’t have the background to evaluate the material you link to, what ever its source. Dr Rosalie Bertell, is not a well qualified researcher. She has written reams of utter rubbish on depleted uranium, that fails to have any connection with reality. Groups like The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, have no standing in the legitimate scientific community, nor can items in the popular press be trusted, as those that write this article never examine the topic in any depth.

Arguing with people like you is a waste of both of our time, as you have made up you mind based on your own preconceived notions. There are many more that are open to reason out there that I can better explain these matters to, and with some possibility of having them see the truth.

One thing is for sure: we are on the cusp of an energy crises, coupled with an environmental/climate crises, the magnitude of which could destroy civilization, or set it back so severely that human culture would revert to a new dark age.

The only technology that we have available to maintain ourselves long enough that we might be able to ride this out, or take corrective action, is nuclear fission. Nothing else comes close that doesn’t involve burning something, the most likely reason we are in this mess in the first place. To discard nuclear as a option on the bases of unproven fears, is to condemn ourselves to an existence several orders of magnitude more deadly than the worse these objectors could possibly imagine if all of their unfounded accusations were true.

If you don’t want to accept the inherent safety of nuclear energy as it has been explained here on several occasions, then at least think about the consequences of not deploying it.

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Mr. Machiavelli, your concerns about nuclear power must surely be dwarfed by the terrible truth Dr.Bertell has revealed about the horrific threat of chemtrails and the murderous conspiricy of world governments experimenting on helpless poulations. Please review Dr. Bertell’s work on this matter and provide us with a summary of her findings. I’m sure this would allow us all to put your concerns in their proper perspective.

(Chortle)

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B. Brook (10 June 2010)

I would’ve thought “all the bodies” would have been ‘processed’ in a similar manner as other forms of fatal illnesses. For example, at least 5 million people die worldwide each year due to smoking related conditions (a). There doesn’t seem to be any difficulties in arranging the final resting places for all those ‘casualties’ without the public noticing – how many people check the death statistics at any time? They have better things to do. Unlike the tragedy at Bohpal which killed at least 15,000 people in a small amount of time in one area, leaving a very noticeable death toll, global smoking & Chernobyl radiation related fatalities are spread out over several countries & are more readily hidden in their normal ‘processing’ system. We don’t get any indicators of these fatalities until we specifically look for them.

(a) http://www.inforesearchlab.com/smokingdeaths.chtml

Being unable to see the book yet, I can only suggest at the moment that allowance is being made for ‘normal’ cancer rates using statistical expectancies, so that any excesses are indicative of Chernobyl effects. This technique has been used for decades. Be reminded that it is well known now that (speaking generally) radiation can cause (or act as a co-factor) in several other illnesses apart from cancers. Even without any nuclear industry in Australia, cancer figures are considered too high (b).
(b) http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/cancer-cases-on-the-rise-says-health-report/story-e6frg6nf-1225882964569
If there is a hormesis effect, then it would appear to have a very narrow dose range & would likely have vary on different parts of the body. The effect would likely to be identified when strictly controlled & calibrated external radiation is used. Other factors which would be expected to influence hormesis might be:
(1) type of radiation (alpha, beta, gamma, cosmic rays, X-Rays, etc)
(2) mode of delivery (strontium 90, iodine 131, plutonium 239, caesium 137, X-rays, etc)
(3) internal or external dose
(4) which body area or organs were radiated
(5) duration of dose
(6) type of dose (intermittent or continuous)
(7) general health status of recipient (infant, adult or fragile elder)
Just these factors alone would be expected to make any hormesis effect difficult to consistently formulate general guidelines for practical application in the real world outside of a radiology clinic. The history of the nuclear industry clearly shows anyway, that they cannot safely operate within such tight guidelines due to the known 1,000’s of curies released annually from many nuclear plants in gaseous or liquid form, making the idealised 0.0002mSv value (averaged over the whole population) an unacceptably misleading claim by the nuclear industry. Recall the German govt has accepted the results of the KiKK reactor emission study (c). Furthermore, the BEIR VII report still supports the linear-no-threshold (LNT) risk model (d) with no really safe dose, implying there has not been good enough evidence for hormesis yet (e). Dr R. Wakeford (British Nuclear Fuels) felt the Taiwan Apartment study (that appeared to support hormesis) was not adequately done (f).

(c) http://www.hse.gov.uk/newreactors/presentations/250609/ian-fairlie.pdf
(d) http://dels-old.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/beir_vii_final.pdf
(e) http://health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/0001165/48 (see ‘No Threshold Hypothesis’)
(f) http://www.jpands.org/vol9no2/correspondence.pdf (Article starts at bottom of p33)

The differences between reactor radiation products & background activity has been well covered by other researchers such as Dr Rosalie Bertell & Dr C. Busby (UK) many years ago. Chernobyl radiation was very different from normal background radiation in its content, its intensity, its distribution & its mode of delivery to organic life-forms. There were even minute ‘hot’ particles (radioactive particulates) that were likely inhaled. It is readily known from nuclear engineering (without waiting for one to blow up), that a Chernobyl style reactor contained about 10-20 billion curies of radioactive inventory in its core, especially since that unit #4 had not been refuelled for a while. Even Dr Edward Teller warned against this danger in 1965. The core therefore contained significantly more highly dangerous radiation from the accumulated fission products over that period. When the top was blown off, (accounts vary), but possibly at least 60 – 80 percent of the multiple fission product inventory was released into the environment over a 10 – 12 day period. This must have deposited significant amounts of radioactivity depending on distance travelled. Just by analysing the fallout over Sweden scientists were able to identify certain fission products (with high melting points) that proved they were from a reactor with a total meltdown. It is highly unlikely that normal background radiation subjects humans to these sorts of fission products & ‘hot’ particles because they only come from bomb fallout & reactor releases. They have different biochemical pathways (with likely stronger doses) to gain access to our bodies via inhalation & the food chain due to fallout & are therefore more dangerous. Many residents in the path of the radioactive fallout appear to have absorbed at least 80 percent of the radiation internally (g).Unsurprisingly, any unborn infants are more susceptible to radiochemical ingestion by their mothers. Prior to the US bomb program, there were no man-made fission product releases possible to affect humans. But the Radium Dial painter (1920’s) tragedy showed that the power of radium alone was also underestimated. Internal radiochemistry is regarded as being significantly more dangerous due to the proximity & exposure time periods involved. Alpha, beta & gamma radiation differences also impact upon the severity of exposure, so all-up, “common sense” need not be violated at all, nor does “anti-science” need to be invoked once the multiple characteristics of reactor radiochemistry are better understood. The generalisation of “radiation is radiation” can therefore considered to be a significant over-simplification (g – j).

(g) http://www.ippnw.org/ResourceLibrary/Chernobyl20Rosen.pdf
(h) http://www.pnas.org/content/98/25/14410.full.pdf
(i) http://www.llrc.org/belarus.htm
(j) http://www.euradcom.org/publications/chernobylebook.pdf

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DV82XL (22 June)
All you have managed is a repeat of the same unjustified ridicule, using insults & false claims as you have done with other anti-nuke contributors. Is this your way of ‘debating’ & “showing respect” by insulting others & accusing them of the very same flaws you have repeatedly displayed yourself? No disrespect has been posted by me. All of the insults are coming from others. If anyone is taking “an ascendant tone”, you are with the “come here admitting you know little” approach. No demands have ever been made by me for insisting others to “answer a collection of random objections” as you claim. Any included questions are a civilized invitation for anyone to fairly answer to show us why nuclear is supposed to be the great saviour. You’re still evading direct comment on key links like Scientific American & the New Scientist preferring to continue with false interpretations & insults deliberately designed to malign dissenters. My included links are definitely relevant to the points associated with them & any brief quotations used are adequately valid if you take the time to read the links. But that seems to be the problem – you cannot cope with all of the nuclear industry’s many exposed failings, so you ignore any counter evidence along with Dr Hugh MacKay’s book ‘Right & Wrong’ (or similar). So how about debating without the unjustified insults?

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Finrod (22 June)
I have only seen one brief YouTube video of Dr Bertell discussing chemtrails. There are however many other sources showing photos & home video’s of obvious spraying activity where the unusual lingering trails could not possibly be just condensation (a). Soil samples have been taken from many areas showing high levels of Barium & Aluminium compounds well above the EPA limits. Additional areas of plant & shrub die-off are being identified widely in the US, possibly due to the alkaline metal fallout & perhaps sulphur compounds being also used (acid rain) (b). Since their government isn’t officially confirming it we are left in limbo again. With all the information available about geo-engineering however, we can easily see that experiments are already going on using many unmarked planes, because the global warming threat is real & urgent (c, d). Sure, it sounds incredible, but less so after you see the video footage & comments from scientists like Ken Caldeira (e). Notice his comments about trusting the government & some weaknesses of the peer review process, then check his very last response. If the above is correct, then it looks like humans are again stuffing up the environment in new ways & impacting upon our health hoping the net result will be beneficial. If Ken Caldeira is concerned about it, then why not Dr Bertell?
(a) See for example a DVD called ‘Sky Lines’ produced by Deborah J. Whitman 2008
(b) http://news.theage.com.au/national/change-skys-colour-proposes-flannery-20080519-2fz1.html
(c) http://www.theage.com.au/world/climate-to-warm-at-double-rate-20100706-zyyx.html
(d) http://www.smh.com.au/environment/we-cant-wait-for-the-un-to-act-on-climate-change-says-report-20100707-100q6.html
(e) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=geoengineering-and-climate-change

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John Morgan (12 July 2010)
Since apparently it is accepted that errors occur when using the small text window (due to the small text), then why aren’t I allowed similar latitude when preferring to conserve space? In a venue such as this (where others are making their own errors), paragraphs are not as necessary when saving space. In longer entries, I have been using ‘blocks’. On other occasions, when submitting an entry, the gaps I was using earlier were not conserved on the final loading – so it is hard to adjust to for larger entries. If you are so particular about layout, why aren’t you biased nit-pickers commenting on the many grammatical mistakes & layout variations made by many other contributors? No – selective criticism is conveniently reserved for those who can provide spirited counter-evidence to the predominant pro-nuclear views on this imbalanced site. How about concentrating more on the important issues of the ‘debate’ instead.

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Geoff Russell (21 Sept 2010)

“I have no idea what causes childhood leukemia….”

Although not directly about child leukemia, this link will still have some interest, being related to the nuclear industry workers. Since children are more sensitive to radiation, it will be relevant.

Click to access Leukemia_FactSheet.pdf

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Geoff Russell, on September 20th, 2009 at 8.32

“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. G. Russell (a)

At first glance, Geoff’s approach seems logical. But with a closer look, it may not work. Even though routine plant emissions were not under consideration in the early 1950’s, accidental releases were. In 1953, Dr Edward Teller told the US Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy:

“The “public hazard” arising from reactor accidents is due to the fact that nuclear plants contain radioactive poisons. In a nuclear accident, these poisons may be liberated into the atmosphere or into the water supply. In fact, the radioactive poisons produced in a powerful nuclear reactor will retain a dangerous concentration even after they have been carried downwind to a distance of 10 miles. Some danger might possibly persist to distances as great as 100 miles…The various committees dealing with reactor safety have come to the conclusion that none of the powerful reactors built or suggested up to the present time are absolutely safe. Though the possibility of an accident seems small, a radioactive release in a city or densely populated area would lead to disastrous results.”

“Dr Teller also mentioned past A.E.C. practices of requiring substantial “exclusion distances” around the experimental reactors it was building from which the public would be banned. The larger the reactor, the greater the required separation from the public. The Joint Committee did not pause to consider whether such practice should be required for the commercial reactor program it was considering. Nor did Dr Teller urge the congressmen to do so. To the contrary, he advised them that “rigid enforcement of such exclusion distances might hamper future development of reactors to a reasonable extent.” He also offered the general observation that “no legislation will be able to stop future accidents & avoid completely, occasional loss of life. It is my opinion that the unavoidable danger which will remain after all reasonable controls have been employed must not stand in the way of rapid development of nuclear power.” (b)

We know today, that Dr Teller’s warning about radiation releases were spot on – radioactive plumes DO indeed tend to remain concentrated for a surprisingly long distances. Perhaps he had some direct experience with now-known deliberate releases during the WWII bomb program. Yet despite this obvious danger factor, Dr Teller still advocated an unbelievable continuation of civil nuclear power program regardless of any likely casualties while utility providers were more concerned about economics.

“In reactor siting, for example, the companies pressed for permission to build nuclear plants close to the urban centres that would be consuming the power, rather than pay the cost of transmitting from more remote sites. This greatly increased the risk of exposing a large number of people to accidental nuclear radiation injuries. Abandoning their earlier siting practices, the A.E.C. were willing to accommodate the industry’s demand.” (b)

In 1969, Dr Teller made another simple prediction that was later tragically fulfilled at Chernobyl, effectively acknowledging how dangerous the technology was.

“So far we have been extremely lucky…..But with the spread of industrialisation, with the greater number of simians monkeying around with things they do not completely understand, sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof even in a foolproof system.” (c)

Additionally, it appears Australian safety issues wouldn’t be handled any better than other countries if nuclear power were introduced there. Several State Governments in Australia have already shown very inadequate performance in safeguarding the public’s health, with simpler issues (d, e, f). Furthermore, nuclear reactors require large amounts of cooling water which are more readily available near the coastline, which will mean closer proximity to varying population densities. Yet, if rising ocean levels do occur, then NPP’s shouldn’t be near the coastline. So Geoff’s initial logically sounding suggestion may not be possible. The Chernobyl disaster has adequately shown how even areas remote from the plant were subjected to considerable fallout.

“While gravity brought down a fine sprinkling of these radioactive particles over a broad territory, rainfall washed them out of the plume onto some places in much greater concentrations. The most contaminated patch of land recorded to date lies not inside the exclusion zone, but beyond it along the westward path taken by the plume in its early days. Last year (1990) scientists tested soil samples from this farmland between the evacuated village of Volodymyrivka and the still inhabited town of Poliske in northern Ukraine. They found radioactivity of 2667 curies (100 million million becquerels) per square kilometre. This level of radioactivity is more than 170 times the level that Soviet authorities regard as tolerable. They estimate that people exposed to radioactivity of 15 curies per square kilometre will absorb a tolerable lifetime dose of radiation of 350 millisieverts. Since 1987, Britain’s National Radiological Protection Board has recommended a maximum dose of 0.5 millisieverts a year for members of the public.” (g)

Let’s learn from the Chernobyl experience & NOT pursue this insane technology. How many of you would like to be confronted with having to be permanently evacuated from your home along with your neighbours, with likely health failures as well? We do not have to conned into accepting Alvin Weinberg’s ‘Faustian’ bargain’ at all just because nuclear physicists cannot improve their technology.

(a) https://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/19/radiation-facts-fallacies-and-phobias/#comment-27636
(b) ‘The Cult of the Atom’ by D. Ford 1982 Part 1
(c) ‘Poisoned Power’ by John Gofman 1979 Chap 6
(d) http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/child-poisoned-every-9-days-in-mine-town-mount-isa/story-fn59niix-1225900248172
(e) http://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/watchdog-fails-on-waste-20100609-xwuc.html
(f) http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/port-augusta-is-sas-cancer-hotspot/story-e6frea83-1225846333836
(g) http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13017655.100 May need to subscribe to view this.

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‘Let’s learn from the Chernobyl experience & NOT pursue this insane technology. How many of you would like to be confronted with having to be permanently evacuated from your home along with your neighbours, with likely health failures as well?’

(Sorry I still haven’t figured out how you do the quotations).

From this same logic, I could justify the following statement:

‘Let’s learn from the Hindenburg disaster, and not peruse this insane technology of jet aviation’.

Chernobyl was a military facility with virtually no safety features, built and operated in a backward despotic state. It can not be compared to a modern commercial plant, with multiple back-up systems, modern design, skilled operators, and most importantly of all, a containment dome.

Lets learn from Three Mile Island in that under worst case scenarios in the west, Nuclear Power is expected to kill no one, and damage no property.

Oh and Machiavelli, should we perhaps learn from the Banqiao Dam that we should persue this insane technology of Hydro-Electric Energy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

‘….just because nuclear physicists cannot improve their technology.’

Now this I take serious issue with. I was once against Nuclear Power as I was terrified that disasters would happen. I tried reading various people’s highly biased, and often highly emotional takes on this issue online (Nuke pros and antis), but it was only when I picked up a Nuclear Engineering textbook and started reading that I got anywhere near the truth.

I strongly suggest you read about Modern plants such as the EPR and AP1000. Come back and tell me if ‘Nuclear Physicists cannot improve their technology’.

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Tom Williams, on 1 September 2010 at 22.41 Said:

From this same logic, I could justify the following statement:
‘Let’s learn from the Hindenburg disaster, and not peruse this insane technology of jet aviation’. T.W.

No, I don’t think you could justify that comparison, even though Prof Brook has already used it. Unfortunately, it isn’t really valid when you think about it. The Germans were using a hydrogen-filled Hindenburg largely because they were forced to by the pre-war US embargo on Helium exports. So what happened after the tragic accident……the Germans ceased using that gas, forcing them to stop making dirigibles at that time. Whereas the conventional aeroplane manufactures all around the world weren’t affected so they continued production because the use of hydrogen gas wasn’t required in their industry (either then or now) in the large amounts being used in the Hindenburg.

The use of that inappropriate comparison is just another attempt to play down the real dangers of nuclear power. Looked at another way, the Hindenburg completely ‘failed’, as a result of the gas it was using on board for lift being somehow ignited. It is hard to imagine how the Hindenburg could have been more seriously destroyed when it was using only what technology it was carrying. Fortunately, there were still many survivors.
Now when a nuclear power plant completely ‘fails’, as tragically illustrated at Chernobyl (a), then the damage & casualties are far greater than the Hindenburg accident. Therefore, even though the Hindenburg had a much lower ‘uninhibited potential damage risk’, the design was still discontinued probably because they already had an adequate aircraft industry. Whereas even after several near-misses & the worst accident at Chernobyl, some nuclear supporters want to CONTINUE building MORE nuclear plants that contain even GREATER amounts of radiation inventory (f), while refusing to see anything wrong with their reasoning, & still use the flawed argument that there is ‘no other way’ other than going nuclear.
To many people, this is an insane approach, especially so when the lesser known nuclear engineering flaws are noted, which are NOT included in many text books. To make matters worse, they want to start building hundreds of Fast Breeder reactors that each require even greater attention to engineering rigor to extreme operating conditions while using several tons of plutonium. The operating temperatures are closer to the plutonium melting point – humans are not that good at quality control. Have a look at the failed THORP project in the UK.

“Let’s learn from Three Mile Island in that under worst case scenarios in the west, Nuclear Power is expected to kill no one, and damage no property.” T.W.

This statement reveals an extraordinary lack of research. The 1964 AEC WASH-740 extracts below clearly show your “expected to kill no one, and damage no property” line cannot be correct. How can you justify that claim? Chernobyl has demonstrated ‘worst case conditions’ where there has been a shocking ill-health & death toll along with large areas rendered unsuitable for food crops (b) not to mention the huge financial losses.

“Last year scientists tested soil samples from this farmland between the evacuated village of Volodymyrivka and the still inhabited town of Poliske in northern Ukraine. They found radioactivity of 2667 curies per square kilometre. This level of radioactivity is more than 170 times the level that Soviet authorities regard as tolerable.” New Scientist 1991

The industry has already demonstrated during the last 45 years that it cannot adequately prevent serious accidents. The AEC has commissioned their own studies, confirming the significant dangers. Admiral Rickover & President Carter both knew the TMI accident was much more serious than officially acknowledged. Even the French & Japanese had significant problems with their breeder reactors. Man-made machinery will always break down in a variety of ways, so we need much safer technology that doesn’t kill, injure or impair one’s health when it does malfunction in a totally unacceptable way that ‘Chernobyl # 4’ did. The nuclear industry cannot provide any safer technology, as defined by the public. Even the Kemeny Commission acknowledged that serious accidents cannot be stopped, even if their recommendations were implemented (b). The AEC deliberately with-held publication of their own WASH-740 update (1964) having accident casualty figures greater than their earlier assessments, so as not to interfere with the ill-fated Fermi fast-breeder being constructed then & LW reactor expansion.

If the insurance industry isn’t convinced by the nuclear assurances of ‘a remote chance of an accident’, then why should the public accept it?

WASH-740 1964 AEC – Brookhaven Update Extract
Theoretical Possibilities & Consequences of Major Accidents in Large Nuclear Power Plants
“It must be clearly recognised, however, that major releases of fission products from a nuclear power reactor could conceivably occur & that a serious threat to the health & safety of people over large areas could ensure”.
“The results of the study suggest that the Price-Anderson liability level should not be reduced. Rather an increase by a factor of 40 is suggested by the calculations (US$280bn).”
“Anticipated deaths from a single nuclear plant accident were increased by the US government to 45,000, & injuries up to 100,000 with property damage ranging from $17bn to $280bn.”

The nuclear industry has already spent huge amounts of money trying to make a viable fission-powered automobile, aircraft, surface ships, submarines, a rocket engine along with other expensive nuclear programs about x-ray lasers, fast breeder reactors & fusion reactors. Very poor value for money has been achieved for the low success rate. It still doesn’t dawn on some people that nuclear engineering has been the greatest modern-day technological failure in relation to the money spent & the shocking risk-benefit ratio.

(a) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-26-01.html
(b) http://www.threemileisland.org/downloads/188.pdf (see Overview)

“Chernobyl was a military facility with virtually no safety features, built and operated in a backward despotic state. It cannot be compared to a modern commercial plant, with multiple back-up systems, modern design, skilled operators, and most importantly of all, a containment dome.” T.W.

The Chernobyl complex was primarily for civilian power generation, just using their favourite carbon-pile design having descended from the military program. All your managing here is to support the proliferation argument that B. Brook doesn’t agree with. The safety systems, as they were then, were effectively rendered inoperable in order for their special tests to be done. Yes, no doubt modern designs do have greater safety features included – but there is still a problem. One engineering authority has pointed out that added complexity could even partially cancel out any added benefits (c), because there is still the fundamental reactor core that can readily melt down because there isn’t a convenient instantaneous ‘switch’ or ‘circuit breaker’ to turn off the nuclear fission process promptly or the ‘decay heat’. Huge amounts of radioactivity can be released from a melting core. The containment sealing integrity can be easily compromised by various doors or hatches being left open or blown open by a hydrogen explosion.
(c) http://www.questia.com/library/book/the-accident-hazards-of-nuclear-power-plants-by-richard-e-webb.jsp
(May need to subscribe to view it)

“should we perhaps learn from the Banqiao Dam that we should pursue this insane technology of Hydro-Electric Energy?” T.W.

Care to show me where I have supported hydro-electric generation?

“I tried reading various people’s highly biased, and often highly emotional takes on this issue online (Nuke pros and antis), but it was only when I picked up a Nuclear Engineering textbook and started reading that I got anywhere near the truth.” T.W.

Unfortunately, you have been mislead, as many nuclear textbooks do not generally cover radiation issues or reactor disadvantages, but concentrate on educating the new engineer with the required practical maths & physics. I have included several references from US govt sources confirming the dangers of nuclear power. You can’t get much more authoritive than that. The Kemeny Commission Overview is also a must read (b). This is a ‘life or death’ issue – engineering texts are not enough.

“I strongly suggest you read about Modern plants such as the EPR and AP1000. Come back and tell me if ‘Nuclear Physicists cannot improve their technology’.” T.W.

Apparently, we do not have the same interpretation of ‘nuclear technology improvement’. Even though I have mentioned this point more than once before – the nuclear industry has had about 60 years to develop their reactors, having the advantage of modern materials science, huge government provided research facilities & finance with large numbers of scientists & engineers being trained over this period. What has it achieved? I accept there has been some improvement, but it is nowhere enough. Yucca mountain repository has been cancelled. Even with all the human creativity available, all reactors are still potentially very dangerous for a variety of reasons (c). They cannot make them truly safe as defined by the public, so they employ public relations firms (like big tobacco) to use psychological methods to convince them that all their defects are nothing to worry about. Many US industry insiders have taken action to try & bring the engineering faults to the attention of their government. In the Union of Concerned Scientists, there are many MIT & industry staff as members. If all these experts from that industry consider nuclear power unsafe, then the public is entitled to be treated a bit better than be accused of suffering from irrational ‘radiationphobia’.

I am aware of the EPR & AP1000 reactor designs. Apparently you are not aware of some of their identified faults (d -f). Another less well known fault is that the plutonium build-up in conventional reactors can pose a criticality risk under the right meltdown conditions, for a ‘low-order’ nuclear explosion (c). Would you really want to live near one of these reactors?

Wash-740 Update (suppressed AEC- Brookhaven 1964 report)
“In any machinery as complex as a reactor facility, it is inevitable that structural failures, instrument malfunctions, operators’ errors & other mishaps will occur, despite the most careful design & rigid schedules of maintenance. Such has been the experience with reactor installations.”
“The emergency Core Cooling System cannot be made foolproof.”

NRC ‘Special Inquiry Group’ on TMI Accident
“The generation of nuclear power can never be risk-free. It will inevitably present certain risks to public health & safety no matter how “safe” plants are made.”

If the US government agencies conceded safety issues in non-published reports, then why should we accept nuclear power? It is NOT the last choice.

(d) http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/07/edf-nuclear-reactor-chernobyl-risk
(e) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/defects-found-in-nuclear-reactor-the-french-want-to-build-in-britain-808461.html
(f) http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/new-nuclear-plants-will-produce-far-more-radiation-1604051.html

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Wow! Some scary sounding articles in the Independent and Guardian you found there. I’m convinced. Hand me a sign up sheet for the anti nuclear brigade, please, Machiavelli.

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Poor Occupational Safety in the Nuclear Industry

Here is one of the worst examples of industrial radiation injury occurring to an employee (there are others). There are several points of interest in this tragic story, where each of the three sources has added some new details. Even though this 1973 example is from Sellafield, it still illustrates the unfortunate inability of humans to adequately foresee possible serious nuclear accidents, deal appropriately with them once they have occurred & honour any obvious liability after the event. Some employers still use any means to evade responsibility for their failings in providing a genuine ‘duty of care’ to their employees. The nuclear industry makes huge demands on many modern scientific, engineering, medical, human health & social knowledge bases. This example, along with others, still shows they have hopelessly failed to achieve any of their early engineering ‘vision’ statements & provide safe employment for trusting workers, while deserting them whenever possible. Needles to say, the public have been poorly protected as well.

The 1957 accident may have been the most serious that ever occurred at Windscale, but it certainly was not the last. Despite persistent claims by BNFL that their safety record is good, it has had one of the longest lists of incidents of any nuclear establishment in the world. At the 1977 Windscale inquiry, BNFL were asked for a detailed list of incidents. They submitted one with 177 cases occurring between 1950 & 1976. These included numerous spillages of plutonium & other radioactive materials, several fires & contamination of many individual workers. Between 1952 & 1981, official accounts show there were more than 100 incidents involving plutonium.
James Cutler & Rob Edwards 1988

The first attempt to reprocess oxide fuel involved the use of a Head End plant built on to the old military reprocessing plant at Sellafield & completed in 1969. The spent oxide fuel was chopped up into pieces & dissolved in boiling nitric acid before passing on for chemical separation in the new Magnox reprocessing plant.
The Head End plant operated for only 4 yrs, reprocessing only about 90 tonnes of spent oxide fuel. In Sept 1973 it had to be shut down when there was what was described as a small release of radioactivity into the operating area of the plant, contaminating 35 workers. As a result BNFL was left with about 350 tonnes of overseas fuel on site that it was contractually committed to reprocess. For several years, the company talked of refurbishing the Head End plant & reprocessing the remaining fuel, but finally the plant had to be written off. This leftover business from the Head End plant will cost BNFL a great deal of money, depending on how well THORP operates.
H. Bolter 1996

In September 1973 an unexpected chemical reaction in the Head End Plant led to a leakage of radioactivity which slightly contaminated thirty-five employees; the plant was shut down and eventually abandoned. The accident was caused by tiny granules of fission products, insoluble even in nitric acid and intensely radioactive, accumulating in a process vessel. The handling of these granules is one of several technical problems which arise in the reprocessing of high burn-up oxide fuel. The fierce radiation from fission products tends to tear apart the molecules of solvent, especially in the first stage of chemical separation; and the replacement and maintenance of key components, like the shear for chopping up the fuel, which operate in parts of the plant filled with searing radiation, continues to raise questions about the cost and feasibility of reprocessing oxide fuel. Several attempts to reprocess oxide fuel have proved unsuccessful. Walter Patterson 1983

On 26 Sept 1973, workers in Windscale’s Head End reprocessing plant noticed an acrid smell. Alarms began sounding & radiation monitors moved off-scale. A senior health physicist ran through the multi-story building shouting to everyone to leave. Most did, but two painters & two electricians were still found inside. The plant was closed down, never to reopen. Overheating of a process vessel due to radioactive deposits had caused a steam explosion with the resulting radioactive cloud being blown back into the building. The 35 workers were later found to have skin & lung contamination mainly from ruthenium 106. Levels of contamination inside the building were found up to 100 times the permitted maximum. But the Official Inquiry Report stated that no radiation above background levels were detected outside the plant boundary.
Stanley Higgins was on duty on 23 Sept 1973 when the ruthenium 106 release occurred. After assisting with the plant evacuation, he returned inside to try & determine the cause of the leak. From the account he left, he sniffed at the leaking ruthenium gas in an effort to pinpoint its source. It was later determined he had inhaled a massive dose of ruthenium 106. It contaminated his nasal passages, his throat & the upper lobes of his lungs. A swab from his nose gave about 100,000 counts per second, compared with the maximum permissible 5 cps or 20,000 times over the limit. Even then, the radiation was so intense that in order for the instruments to cope, they had to be held 12 inches away from the swab. Contamination on the outside of his body was giving about 2 rems per hour, or about 3,500 times the maximum whole-body annual dose for workers of 5 rems. After much ineffectual body scrubbing, the horrible truth dawned on the Windscale medical staff. What they first thought were persistent patches of external contamination on his chest & back were really radiation fields radiating out from inside his lungs. It was estimated that about 40 microcuries of ruthenium 106 (with smaller quantities of other isotopes) had become trapped in his upper lungs & lymph glands. This was estimated to give him a massive dose of about 800 rems over the following 12 mths. This was more than 50x the maximum permissible dose of 15 rems.
From a fit & well built rugby player, his health deteriorated dramatically over the remaining 5 years. His thyroid was later found to have atrophied, causing blood circulation problems. He died of a heart attack playing golf on a course near Sellafield, at 50 yrs of age. Near the end of his life, his wife developed breast cancer, possibly due to Stanley’s radiation.
The official inquiry into the accident accepted the company’s estimate of Stanley’s radiation dose would only result in a 1 or 2% increase of a cancer risk. Even in 1987, BNFL were still denying any responsibility. Even though BNFL has belatedly conceded a connection between radiation & cancer, they have only once admitted legal liability in one employee’s case despite all the (worker’s) contaminations & mounting toll of cancer victims at Windscale. All the other compensation cases have been settled out of court without any accompanying admission of legal liability. Although common sense suggests the substantial payments, implies guilt, the law suggests otherwise. It is this legal technicality that has enabled the nuclear industry to claim that no one has died as a result of radiation from the UK nuclear power program. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards 1988

For the industry workforce, there has been a reduction from 15 rems a year in the early 1950’s to 5 rems a year now, while BNFL voluntarily operates a stricter regime prompted by the Gardner report in 1990. Although the earlier 15 rem limit now looks far too high, it was exceeded fairly frequently in the early days of the industry, usually due to unplanned incidents rather than routine operations. Despite the best efforts of the regulators, unplanned incidents do & will occur. H. Bolter 1996

At a press conference to explain the changes, the NRPB’s new director Dr Roger Clarke, admitted there were about 2,000 British nuclear workers in 1987 occupationally exposed to more than the new limits, while thousands more had been similarly overexposed in earlier years. What he was in effect saying was that for the last 40 years, ever since the dawn of the nuclear age, the Government’s advice had been wrong. Radiation was in fact far more dangerous at lower doses than had been thought earlier. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards 1988

Discussion

a) The first two accounts describe the released radiation as small, while the 3rd account gives figures of 100x permissible limits inside the building. Stanley most certainly did NOT get a small dose.

b) How were the boiling nitric acid vapours dealt with? Not just vented to the outside I hope.

c) The company clearly did not know enough about the process in failing to allow for highly radioactive insoluble fission granules to accumulate as they did. Walt Patterson confirms it is a difficult process. Isn’t this example able to show how dangerous nuclear processing is?

d) The building apparently had no emergency public address system or evacuation tone at that time. Someone had to run through the building to warn everyone. Gas masks may not have been available immediately. Similarly, in the TMI-79 accident, the authorities could not cope initially.

e) The employer then refuses to acknowledge any legal liability, even though it was an obvious work-related injury. How can Stanley’s internal dose-rate be regarded as being harmless?

f) The apparent uselessness of the official inquiry to learn the true facts of the radiation doses.

g) In hindsight, H. Bolter acknowledges that 15 rems was too high, making Stanley’s dose even worse.

h) Who would want to work in that industry once they know how dangerous it is & the employer abandons you in serious accidents using legal loopholes? Don’t think for one minute that industrial conditions have improved much since then.

Conclusion
Don’t have anything to do with the nuclear industry. This & other examples adequately show it isn’t suitable for humans to work in as H. Bolter agrees that accidents will always occur. Workers cannot be totally protected at all times from radiation releases. Obviously employers & official inquiries cannot be relied upon to fair & honest. Any Hormesis effect will not save the industry.
Shut the industry down, as there isn’t a truly safe dose of radiation from their processes & already other dissatisfied residents in nuclear power countries are actively opposed to nuclear power (a, b).

Even the US EPA has stated:

It should be pointed out that radiation effects, including carcinogenesis, have been reported at doses 2 to 100 times the annual background dose for both high & low LET radiation. Chromosome aberrations & other radiation effects which, if not health effects per se, are closely related, have also been reported at dose-rates slightly above background & in areas of high-level background for high & low LET radiations.

‘Most Germans Don’t Want Nuclear Power’
(a) http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,718419,00.html
(b) http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gSyrJ0gyVJ2Aylv5McUjM7EOEOZQ

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Poor Occupational Safety in the Nuclear Industry II

‘Rigged’ Studies

The first official study of the long-term health implications of low-level radiation for British nuclear workers was not published until December 1976 in the lead-up to the 1977 Windscale inquiry. Carried out by the Government’s radiation watchdog, NRPB, it only examined the incidence of leukaemias, lymphatic & bone cancers in Windscale workers between 1950 & 1974. This ‘interim report’ concluded, ….‘(it) shows that the number of cancer deaths in the working Windscale population is not significantly different from that expected.’
However, at the inquiry, two charges were levelled against the NRPB report. Firstly, its own figures showed that bone-marrow cancer was 4 x greater than expected. This cancer is considered to be the most readily induced & explainable by radiation. Secondly, the report had consciously left out of its calculations all the workers that had either left, retired or were too ill to continue. The study was therefore obviously biased as it had excluded the very likely group of workers that had experienced radiation ill-effect. It appeared to be rigged in order to endure an acceptable conclusion. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards 1988

Stung by the attacks on NRPB report, BNFL decided to establish a comprehensive & continuing health survey of all its employees, including those that had left for whatever reason. The study was meant to be monitored by an independent advisor, Dr Peter Smith from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. By 1983, after 7 years of waiting he started receiving some data from BNFL. They claimed there was no greater incidence of cancer among Sellafield workers than in the general population. Dr Smith however concluded that there were unexpectedly high rates of bone-marrow cancer, leukaemia & bladder cancer in Sellafield workers, & that the risk seemed in direct proportion to the amount received. In particular, they were 65% more likely to die of bone-marrow cancer than people of the same age & sex in the general Cumbrian population. He also found 30 workers who died of ill-defined cancers, were about double the expected number.
Dr Smith’s analysis was reinforced by another study conducted at Dounreay for the UK Atomic Energy Authority in 1986 by other epidemiologists from the same London school of medicine. They found that Dounreay workers were significantly more like to die from leukaemia & thyroid cancer than average. Further evidence came from an American study of nuclear weapons workers at Rocky Flats in Colorado, published in 1987. Conducted by a group from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, they found that workers who had ingested plutonium were 5-10 x more likely to contract cancer than those who had not. There were also noticeable incidences of lymphatic, oesophagus, stomach, colon & prostate cancers among the 5,400 workers. Once plutonium has entered the bloodstream, it migrates around the body, ending up being deposited in the bones & liver. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards 1988

Industrial Injury

On 30 June, 1971, Bill Sherwin was transferred to another building & preparing for work, he inserted his hands into the gloves of a ‘glove-box’ but found instead something sharp inside one of them. An abandoned screwdriver corroded from nitric acid & coated with plutonium had cut his hand. In the works surgery, strips of flesh were removed from the wounded hand, & the area scrubbed & washed for each of 14 days, but with minimal effect. In hospital, larger sections of flesh were removed. The plutonium that had entered his blood stream formed lumps in his arm & were surgically removed. In 1974, his gall bladder ruptured. While it was being removed, his liver was found to be damaged. BNFL’s own records showed Bill had been contaminated by about 50 x the permitted level yet they still refused to accept liability & initially offered him only £400.
Even more recent stringent precautions have not prevented human error that allows plutonium ingestion. An internal inquiry of a simple incident in April 1981, showed how plutonium was deposited in an operators nose by simply wiping his face inadvertently with his gloved hand.
J. Cutler & Rob Edwards 1988

The following two links are included only for general interest & do not appear to be directly referred to in the above extracts. Keep in the mind the real possibility of further bias as also illustrated in the above account. They are looking for a very subtle statistical trend, that can be easily missed with poor techniques.

Click to access 188.full.pdf

Click to access v056p00793.pdf

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for G.R.L. Cowan 1 Oct 2010

Well hello there. Are you the same G.R.L Cowan (from Canada) who posted a response to Senator Ludlum’s recent article in the Australian, defending nuclear power?

If so, I’ve been waiting for you. Repost your comments on this site in the appropriate column so we can all see them. If you have already done so, point them out to me please.

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Peter Lalor, on 1 September 2010 at 21.39 Said:

“In regard of Chernobyl, it would seem incumbent on you to refute the statistical objections that have been raised to the methodology used by Greenpeace in its well-known study of the matter.” P. Lalor

“I look forward to you showing me how the NY book refutes the objections to the Greenpeace study and/or if it reaches identical conclusions to that study.” P. Lalor

I would’ve thought a reading of the NY Academy book yourself would’ve been the best way for you to see the counter evidence. Any brief extracts I supplied here wouldn’t carry the same weight. In the meantime however, there are several interesting on-line sources for you to pursue. I have already supplied one of them earlier (a).
Can you provide the Greenpeace study link you appear to be referring to? I am aware of many Greenpeace studies, so we need the right one.

“Please also address pro-nuclear statements made recently by the radiation biologist writing a few weeks ago in New Scientist……” P. Lalor

Can you clarify which “radiation biologist” you are referring to? I know of a British expert who has recently written in the New Scientist suggesting radiation limits should be raised, but he definitely is NOT a biologist of any kind.

“….I am getting tired of the Chernobyl controversy being wheeled out as settled fact by both sides to this debate. It is just treading water or running on the spot.” P. Lalor

The nuclear industry& the sympathetic radiation watchdogs are the only ones who are claiming that the accident casualties have been settled. ‘Both sides’ most certainly have never agreed to it being settled. I can understand how the subject can be daunting to newcomers, but if there wasn’t so much obvious evasion from groups with a clear interest in minimising the tragedy, then a clearer picture would’ve become available much earlier. Human attitudes are the main cause of the mess this planet is in.
ECRR Chernobyl: 20 Years On
(a) http://www.euradcom.org/publications/chernobylebook.pdf

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Machiavelli writes,

Are you the same G.R.L Cowan (from Canada) who posted a response to Senator Ludlum’s recent article in the Australian, defending nuclear power?

If so, I’ve been waiting for you. Repost your comments on this site in the appropriate column so we can all see them. If you have already done so, point them out to me please.

My comments here.

(How fire can be domesticated)

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For a scientific and hopefully unbiassed assessment of radiation accidents, see Nenot, 2009 (J. Radiol.Prot.): http://iopscience.iop.org/0952-4746/29/3/R01

This also quotes heavily from a conprehensive study of Chernobyl by a WHO panel see Cardis Et Al 2006 (also in J. Radiol. Prot.):

Click to access 0952-4746_26_2_001.pdf

Both are publicly available as downloadable files. I won’t pretent to have the expertise to evaluate these but what I read is:
1. It is still too early to be certain of the health effects of Chernobyl on the wider population, even after more than 20 years.
2. There is a clear increase in Thyroid cancer especially amongst adolescents, but very few of these are fatal to date (15 at 2006 according to Cardis Et Al).
3. The number of directly-attibutable deaths is somewhere between 28-50, which is far lower than most people intuitively assume it to be.

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The Cravens reference is from Power to Save the World.

Read the book and check the notes, and affiliated articles.

the info about washington is from p. 71 of her book. Rip Anderson says this (the guy who designed the PRA for the Waste Isolation Pilot Project).

Ms. Cravens is a very nice person. I have communicated with her often when I had questions about her book. She answered them or tracked down her source and the source answered.

You should be able to find her email. if not, email me at gmeyerson@triad.rr.com.

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G.R.L Cowan,

Thank you for that info. However, this gives the imprerssion that the Chernobyl accident was a fission runaway reaction. I understood this was not the case. I understand it was basically steam pressure which blew the cap off the moderator, then the graphite caught fire and carried radioactive contamination into the atmosphere. (also the core melted). So the problems were the lack of a containment building and graphite that could burn and cause upward convection to carry the contaminants into the atmosphere. That is my simple view. Would you or anyone else like to elaborate of correct this – but in a way that will not cause confusion for the general readership.

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As for the book overall – it is a stunningly blatant exercise in propaganda presenting the many aspects in the most positive light possible, often at the expense of fairness & impartiality. It can be readily refuted on many points.

Interesting claim. Care to back it up? Try just one example.

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Machiavelli:

i found one numerical mistake in the book. we may be talking about the same one. too many zeroes.

I’ll check it.

what are the other mistakes?

stun me with your examples of its propaganda. perhaps she can respond.

what led me to defend nuclear was my sense that I had been fed propaganda from anti nuclear people nearly all of my life: about radiation, about proliferation, about safety, about life cycle emissions, about the viability of hi penetration renewables, about peak uranium, etc. etc.

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greg meyerson, on 8 October 2010 at 3.47 Said:

“I found one numerical mistake in the book. We may be talking about the same one. Too many zeroes. I’ll check it. What are the other mistakes?” G. Meyerson

No I don’t think so – I was referring to a different example just in passing. First things first: You still haven’t provided the relevant chapter or page I have asked for above (6 Oct). Going back even further, I see also you ignored my earlier request as well (a). P. Lalor & GRL Cowan have also appeared to ignore my requests for simple material recently. Then I will have a surprise for GRL Cowan soon.
(a) https://bravenewclimate.com/2010/07/28/nuclear-power-yes-please-for-cc/#comment-92361

“Stun me with your examples of its propaganda. Perhaps she can respond.”

G. Meyerson

Without deliberately targeting the G. Craven’s book, I have already adequately countered many of the points mentioned in it with my other entries. If time permits later, maybe I can specifically counter some of her key points.

“What led me to defend nuclear was my sense that I had been fed propaganda from anti-nuclear people nearly all of my life: about radiation, about proliferation, about safety, about life cycle emissions, about the viability of hi penetration renewables, about peak uranium, etc. etc.”

G. Meyerson

You have been totally mislead, while you are also certainly NOT helping your own case by refusing to provide links & references for viewing by others. It appears I will have to update my basic five-point response. They are all predominantly still valid & in our favour. Even though it is a very large subject, we are in the greatest information boom ever experienced, yet apparently you are not doing enough research to find answers or check the anti-nuke claims for yourself.

“Yes greg. If there’s one thing that makes me really angry, it’s the sense that I have been lied to.” J. Morgan 8 Oct 2010

Accusations of lying are coming from your side don’t carry enough weight & do you no credit. The nuclear industry has plenty of known examples of dishonesty & falsehoods, such as found by Henry Meyers (b). Then there were efforts to rig radiation health studies (c). Then read about falsified data in the US from ‘Deadly Deceit’. There are other examples. So guys, how about continuing with the debate & the supportive evidence?
(b) https://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/19/radiation-facts-fallacies-and-phobias/#comment-101138
(c) https://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/19/radiation-facts-fallacies-and-phobias/#comment-101696

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Finrod, on 8 October 2010 at 13.22 Said:

“You’ve claimed that there are easily contestable examples of misleading propaganda in Gwyneth Craven’s book. What are they? Show us just one. Put up or shut up.”

Get on the end of the queue, I have to respond to G. Meyerson first, (then P. Lalor) now that he has provided a page number (have to relocate the book too). Similar to my comment above, if you were not so one-eyed, you would’ve spotted the suspect passages yourself now that I have provided many links recently covering similar points.

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machiavelli:

I gave you above the book and page number and who made the comment about n.e. washington (rip anderson) and offered to give you g. cravens email and you tell me I’m “refusing to provide links and references for viewing by others.” do you admit that this is a bogus accusation? if you don’t admit it, you’re dishonest and I won’t take you seriously.

I was persuaded by the argument from natural variation that has made been by Cravens and many others, including barry in this original post: if ionizing radiation is a powerful carcinogen, then the signal should be clear and cancer incidence should show up as appreciably higher in areas with appreciably higher background radiation.

if you can show that this argument is wrong, it would have some impact on my views, though not a decisive one due to the weakness of the overall argument for hi penetration wind and solar.

after all, according to the EPA, and various national labs, in the u.s., if you live within 50 miles of a nuke plant, you are getting an average dose of .009 millirem.

Now there are circumstances where major regulatory agencies distort the truth to favor corporations. but you’d really have to convince me that that’s what’s going on here.

Frankly, a wing of the anti nuke side would like to get rid of the millirem altogether and focus on curies, but as I noted in a previous post, curies alone can’t give you “body burden.”

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greg meyerson, on 8 October 2010 at 21.56 Said:

“I gave you above the book and page number and who made the comment about n.e. washington (rip anderson) and offered to give you g. cravens email and you tell me I’m “refusing to provide links and references for viewing by others.” do you admit that this is a bogus accusation? if you don’t admit it, you’re dishonest and I won’t take you seriously.” G. Meyson

Sorry about that, but I had a simple timing problem. Someone else offered to load my entry while I was busy, but it was either held up or they loaded it too late, after your page number entry. I did later acknowledge receipt of your reference.

“one death per 300,000 mrems would mean that one of every three people in northeastern washington state would die from radiotoxicity? (1700 mrem/person/year) before they were 70.” G. Meyerson

I’ll accept the 1,700mrem as being likely correct for now. What I was more interested in was, seeing if there was any mention of the use of 70 years. It appears then that your large 70 year result occurs because of a ‘magnified error’ effect, being possibly why it isn’t used in the book. This simple method of estimating risk (using a minimum of data), will likely tend to be most accurate in the short-term, but where the tolerance & inaccuracy increases with the time period used, then the error becomes more significant. Commonly, 12 month periods are used. No population size is mentioned, but if we use 100,000 people as an exercise, & still using 1 death / 300 rems, then we will end up with about 560 casualties over 12 months, being about 0.33% of that population. This is still well within the general limits given below. Death from malignant disease occurs in about 20% of the population.

“only a small part of the total cancer mortality burden in the United States can be attributed to radiation effects—less than 3%.” (Seymour Jablon and John C. Bailar III 2004)

I agree that 30% (or more) does appear large, even though a dose of 119 rems accumulated over 70 years is a significant level, it would be interesting to view cancer statistics for that area covering the long time.

Regarding the TMI reference on the same page 71, (lower down), I have already entered several points & links to support greater radiation releases (earlier in this column), so rendering Dr Anderson’s figures invalid.

Your mention of G. Craven’s offer of help is interesting, even more so if she could participate with comments on BNC soon, or, maybe Dr R. Anderson as well, since their book seems to be establishing itself as a ‘bible’ for your case.

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you’re a funny guy. My (and all the references on this site connected to the radiation question) references are “bibles” and yours are the truth.

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Frankly i do not know why this troll is being fed. He endlessly recycles old and thoroughly discredited studies that have demonstrated absolutely nothing of value in this matter. His deep ignorance of this subject is apparent, as his desire to use this thread as a personal soapbox for his idiotic ideas.

This is obviously someone that knows that if he started his own blog, no one would read it, so he parasitizes this one. He is not interested in a conversation or debate, he is only interested in vomiting antinuclear propaganda in front of the small group of people that follow this thread.

He will probably never stop, but that is no reason why he should be encouraged by acknowledging his existence.

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greg meyerson, on 8 October 2010 at 21.56 Said:

“I was persuaded by the argument from natural variation that has been made by G. Cravens and many others, including Barry in this original post: if ionizing radiation is a powerful carcinogen, then the signal should be clear and cancer incidence should show up as appreciably higher in areas with appreciably higher background radiation.” G.M.

These effects ARE showing up in studies being done by independent & some industry researchers, but they are being ridiculed by hard-line nuclear interests. This has already been covered earlier (a), beginning with the quote below:

“Even the pro-industry, 1959 ICRP publication (# 2) stated:”

One leading independent UK researcher is certain of genuine ill-effects being present, along with accompanying official denial & cover-up occurring for years (b).

“In the US, a local medical health officer, Dr Carl Johnson, found adult cancer rates in the suspected plutonium polluted areas around the American Rocky Flats nuclear facility, to be 15-20% higher than expected. At least twice, there had been major fires spreading contamination downwind. Dr Johnson’s results were savagely attacked by the nuclear industry, & he even lost his job. A later study that allowed for the criticisms, still confirmed his original results.” G.M.

(a) https://bravenewclimate.com/2010/06/18/21c-nuclear-renaissance/#comment-86216
(b) http://www.greenaudit.org/wolves.htm

“It was the impact of the 1957 fire at Windscale which initially interested Yorkshire Television. In 1983, when the NRPB finally admitted that the released radiation could’ve caused about 33 deaths, researchers descended on the location to look for victims. Common sense suggested that the most likely victims would be the young children who lived nearby in the southerly direction which received the highest fallout. They would’ve consumed contaminated milk for the first two days before a ban was imposed & possibly locally grown vegetables that received no ban. Yet no follow-up studies were ever done of their health.” J. Cutler & Rob Edwards

“Months of research had produced a list of 11 children & young people under 25 yrs who had developed cancer in Seascale between 1954 & 1983. John Urqhuart from the Newcastle University quickly grasped that their uniqueness was that they had been drawn from very small areas where the contamination was the greatest. Seascale’s 5 known leukaemia cases meant that its early-childhood rate was 10 x the national average. The under-15 yr rate was also too high. When the other known cases from nearby Bootle, Waberthwaite & Muncaster were included, the under-15 yr cancer rate for the whole coastal region south of Windscale was found to be 5 x the norm.”
J. Cutler & Rob Edwards

The 1983 Yorkshire Television data clearly showed a distance-dose relationship with the Windscale plant.

While Dr Alan Craft & BNFL attempted to deny the existence of cancer clusters around Windscale, & the dose-distance relation, local doctors were submitting contrary evidence to the Black enquiry. Confidential minutes show that the two doctors that ran the group practice containing Seascale, confirmed the genuineness of the cases used by Yorkshire Television. They also pointed out that local children used Seascale beach & the Ravenglass estuary as their main playgrounds. The major fear of locals was the inhaling of beach-side air. The seaspray blowing in from the beaches can travel up to 1 ½ miles inland. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards

The Black Report was released in 1984, effectively saying that Windscale radiation was unlikely to be the cause of the cancers. Since its publication, it has attracted much criticism, even though its internal minutes show Windscale radiation was the only real suspect. The NRPB worked out how many leukaemia deaths would be expected in Seascale resulting from the admitted level of radioactive discharges. Since the actual casualty figure was much higher than expected from this value, the NRPB concluded Windscale could not be to blame, without ever questioning the scientific model used for that calculation. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards

A similar approach is being used to explain the German 2007 KiKK child leukaemia study.

An examination of the secret evidence to the inquiry showed some massaging of figures had been done to give a reassuring picture. In analysing the small area statistics for the northern region Dr Alan Craft compared the childhood cancer rates of Seascale with 765 other electoral wards. He drew up tables of the top 10 wards having the highest cancer rates. These were included in the Black Report to show that Seascale came only 6th in the table for all cancers, & 3rd in the leukaemia table. Dr Craft also restricted the time span used to 14 yrs (1968-82) thus conveniently ignoring Seascale’s high cancer rate either side of that period. When the time span was stretched by just 1 year, the two cases in 1983 put Seascale at the top of the leukaemia list in the northern region. A 3rd case was also omitted even though it was diagnosed within the 14 yr period (1975). With all three cases included, it became 1st in the top 10 for all cancers, with its leukaemia rate 24 x the national average. A leaked document of Dr Craft’s evidence also showed he had omitted 2 other cases in another key area. Their inclusion gave Bootle over 6 x the regional average, placing it well within the top 10. This correction also further highlighted an obvious geographical relation with Windscale’s location. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards

One of the Black Report’s recommendations was to set up a government advisory body. In 1985, COMARE was formed, delivering its first report in 1986. It concluded that substantial releases of radioactivity had occurred from Windscale in the early 1950’s that had not been revealed to Sir Douglas Black’s team. In particular there had been a release of about 20 kg of uranium oxide to the atmosphere beginning in 1954-55. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards

Another cancer cluster was found near the Berkeley & Oldbury Magnox nuclear power stations. It was later learnt these stations had a radioactive discharge limit 3 x higher than any other British nuclear plant. Radioactive gas releases were unlimited. The Department of Environment had measured doses of 23 x background radiation, or about 40 x the annual public dose limit at their perimeter fence. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards

By 1987, leukaemia clusters had been identified near 15 UK nuclear installations & was considered ‘overwhelming’ evidence. Sir Douglas Black even changed his mind, saying that there was a ‘high likelihood’ that in small areas near Windscale there was an increased risk of leukaemia in young children. He described the evidence around other installations handling radioactive materials as ‘disquieting’. There was now, ‘quite a likelihood that there is a genuine link’ between nuclear power plants & childhood leukaemias. J. Cutler & Rob Edwards

How can anyone have confidence in an industry & government regulatory bodies like these?

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Welcome back DV8 -I know you are right (don’t feed the troll) – and that is it from me to Machiavelli.

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Machiavelli (and others who may be sucked in by his hysteria) this is the scientific research I am talking about – watch and learn.

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Lalor – You obviously didn’t watch the whole video or you would have understood that a scientific study on the animals, notably voles who live underground and were thus most affected by the radiation, by Prof Ron Chesser and his team from Texas Tech University , showed no adverse effects from this exposure when compared with a control group.
So – Machiavelli (and now Lalor) – here is one example of the scientific studies you asked for.

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from texas tech website on Ron Chesser:

Texas Tech Professors Chronicle Decade of Chernobyl Studies in American Scientist Journal
Written by John W. Davis

After 12 years of studying the Chernobyl disaster and the repercussions radioactive fallout has had in the area, two Texas Tech researchers say populations of plants and animals in the area are better off than in non-affected areas.

The story, Growing Up with Chernobyl, was published in the October issue of American Scientist. It chronicles how the two scientists have learned that the answers to low-dose radiation exposure don’t come easily. Ronald Chesser, director for the Center for Environmental Radiation Studies, and Robert Baker, Horn professor of biological sciences, co-wrote the piece.

Though many studies claim radiation is responsible for genetic differentiation in wildlife populations and blame it for causing cancers in people, Chesser says many of those genetic differences could be a result of natural genetic variations and not mutations caused from radiation exposure.

“Chernobyl is a very emotional subject,” Chesser says. “People tend to choose sides, and I’m afraid we’re seeing a lot of that in the literature. The real work is trying to attach cause and effect. That’s a difficult piece of work for one to do. Most of these studies have put very little effort into trying to understand cause and effect.”

During the past 12 years, Chesser says it’s been difficult to grasp exactly how low-dose radiation exposure can affect plants and animal life. While scientists know that too much radiation can and will kill a living being, the exposure to low-dose radiation isn’t fully understood.

“We only know what happens when plants and animals are exposed to high doses of radiation,” he says. “At low doses, it seems to have very little effect. It takes very detailed, meticulous studies to find these answers. We haven’t had the money to do a study like that.”

Putting Bias Aside

Even Baker and Chesser admit they’ve had to rethink the way they conduct their experiments.

In the beginning of their studies, they concluded that certain rodents suffered significant genetic rearrangements, but more recent assessments suggest that these animals have not experienced mutations that can be attributed to the nuclear accident.

At the end, Chesser and Baker list suggestions for improving Chernobyl studies, such as having researchers archive tissues for others to replicate testing, reporting both positive and negative results from their experiments and using double-blind experimental standards to combat personal biases.

“Sometimes, you see what you want to see,” he says. “But in science, our own biases aren’t supposed to influence what we’re seeing.”

Visit the American Scientist Online to read the article abstract. Contact John Davis at (806) 742-2136 or e-mail john.w.davis@ttu.edu for a copy of the story in PDF format.

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