The internal review of statistical findings should be more rigorous with large organisations such as DoE and MIT. That alone cautions against small lobby groups of the 'foundation' kind. For example I believe large groups would try to balance the data clustering in the low dose range with more high dose observations.

Then again I go somewhat on small sample sizes; I've owned a tube of uranium oxide (yellowcake) for twenty years and my health is good. Theory disproved.

One thing that you can be 100 PERCENT SURE of is that the powers that be ARE LYING.

These three sites back up what Noel is pointing to, and much much more too.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/index.php

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31401

http://geo-terrorism.blogspot.com.au

The last reference with its associated links may be a bit far out for some - but perhaps far out is exactly what we need to counter the "official" lies/propaganda machine.

A few points -

obviously its not good to get any additional radiation and the surveys of survivors of the atomic bomb atacks are useful, but there are other areas research could look at to properly investigate this field. Firstly, American and Russian sailor work with nuclear reactors all the time, deep under water.. what can be said about their exposure and what affect if might or might not have on their health. However, it is my understanding that barring accidents, they don't get any additional radiation at all so there may be little to learn, but the author may want to check that.

Also, natural radiation varies quite substantially.. up to eight times our background in some Indian provinces. If low dose radiaiton is a problem then those problems should be noticeable in those regions. Then we could look at anyone who has received an X-ray or gone on a international flight. Those all involve small doses of ionising radiation, but then the author is saying that very low doses remain a problem.

then go back and look at the study. Its not looking at people who received low doses but at people who received higher doses and working down the dose-response curve from tha

Noel, the hormesis issue is intellectually fascinating but demonstrably irrelevant to whether nuclear power should be massively increased in a serious effort to prevent climate change.

Consider David Brenner's recent estimate of cancer risks associated with Fukushima in Nature:

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/05/world-health-organization-weighs-in-on-fukushima.html

Brenner isn't an hormesis advocate but a clear supporter of the LNT hypothesis. He calculated that the increased lifetime risk associated with radiation at Fukushima to the ~100,000 people involved was about 1 in 5000. This is ~20 cancers during the next 30 to 40 years. So of the estimated 40,000 normal cancers from things like red and processed meat, alcohol, cigarettes, being fat, being inactive and air pollution.

That estimate of 20 cancers is without any kind of hormesis assumption.

So lets compare the risk from radiation due to a nuclear failure caused by a massive earthquake and a 14 meter tsunami with the risks of lung cancer from living in any city on the planet. Let's pick Australia :)

The lifetime risk of getting lung cancer in Australia is
about 1 in 30 ... with 89 percent due to lung cancer (Cancer in Australia 2001 ... later editions don't give lifetime risks).

So lets assume that only 5 percent of the remaining 11 is due to air pollution (this is conservative, the risk is probably much higher) This gives a lifetime risk of lung cancer from air pollution of about 5 in 3000.

How does 1 in 5000 compare to 5 in 3000? (5/3000)/(1/5000)=8.3.

Ordinary Australian air is about 8 times more likely to give you lung cancer than surviving a 14 meter tsunami but being exposed to
Fukushima radiation. In Japan the situation is a
little different ... there is much more smoking and air pollution can really increase your lung cancer risk:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21325732

(Part II ... the last!).

Noel, you say the MIT study ignored "internal emitters". Do you understand the term? We all have internal emitters in every cell in our bodies, particularly our brains. Any food with potassium has a fraction of potassium that is radioactive and decays by beta and gamma radiation. We all have potassium in our brains so we all deal with internal emitters in our brains on a daily basis ... and so did the animals in the MIT study ... they were fed and their diet would have had potassium.

Robert Gale has been counselling workers at Fukushima, he estimates their lifetime cancer risk as risen by 0.2 of a percent.

http://www.japanprobe.com/2012/03/12/fukushima-accident-unlikely-to-cause-an-increase-in-cancers/

Who is Gale? He gave bone marrow treatments and treated the 28 workers who died at Chernobyl. He tried to save their lives and treated many of the 500 who were hospitalised. He has his name on 800 research papers, which is 800 more than Helen Caldicott. Keep in mind that there was acute radiation sickness at Chernobyl ... massive doses ... the Chernobyl reactor had no containment building. It was like a car without brakes. In contrast the reactor at Fukushima was brilliantly designed and engineered. Did anything survive that tsunami? The workers on duty owe their lives to working there and can be thankful they weren't installing solar panels on a sea front cottage. The reactors saved more than a few lives. More modern reactors are safer still. They use passive safety features which don't rely on backup pumps working.

Geoff Russell
wow! Good stuff..

Channelling Helen Caldicott again the author continues her crusade against nuclear power, the only viable alternative to the fossils in a post-AGW world.

Ionising radiation is dangerous but at the thresholds discussed in the article noone can safely have a CT scan or X-ray again.

In fact we had all better go underground because sunlight includes some ionising radiation.

Can the debate about nuclear power and AGW get any more stupid?

Geoff, while you make some reasonable points, and technically you are correct about gamma emitting potassium, I don't think you are being completely honest about the internal emitters issue.

Are you honestly conflating potassium (half-life 1.248x10^9 years) with other radioactive isotopes that can be released from nuclear incidents like iodine-131 (half life 8 days)that can accumulate in the thyroid?

Or strontium-90 (half-life 28 years) that can accumulate in bones?

I don't think you are doing your argument any favours by dismissing these legitimate sources of concern as the same as 'natural background'.

Fukushima is far worse than Cherbobyl.The Russians put 800,000 personell into containment and building a concrete tomb to envelope the radiation.Tepko has dragged its feet and done very little.

It is the hot particles like caesium, idodine,uranium that remain in our bodies for years causing cancers.

If you really want a scientific analysis see http://www.fairewinds.org/fukushima Prof Arnie Gunderson has had 40 yrs experience in the Nuke industry.He currently decomissions nuke reactors.

Nooooo, cohenite, underground is where the radon accumulates! If there were any truth to the thesis that low dose ionising radiation is harmful to health, there should be measurable spatial correlations between ill health and the bright spots on the Radiometric Map of Australia (https://www.ga.gov.au/products/servlet/controller?event=GEOCAT_DETAILS&catno=70791, http://www.ga.gov.au/image_cache/GA13928.pdf). Good luck finding them.

@Arjay, that's patently false, and a really irresponsible thing to say. At Chernobyl, an entire reactor, with no containment at all, exploded, caught fire, and the vapourised radioactive contents of a whole reactor were taken and spread by the wind. At Fukushima the reactors did not catch fire, remained in containment with controlled venting, the main problem being overheating spent fuel. The total release of radioactive material has been about 4.5% that of Chernobyl, and this is well documented http://decarbonisesa.com/2011/11/13/fukushima-minute-by-minute/ The residual cancer risk in the exclusion zone is, as @Geoff Russell discussed above, virtually undetectable.

I'll be reading the thread with interest because despite Wauchope's outrageously evident bias, the key reference is peer reviewed. If we could possibly keep the total junk to a minimum, that would be just dandy.

Ben Heard,that is a blatent falsehood.3 of the reactors have exploded and look like they are in meltdown.Reator 4 is very unstable and has enormous amounts of nuke waste stored above the reactor.see the scientific analysis.http://www.fairewinds.org/fukushima

My mistake, cancel the underground; we'll all go down in yellow[cake] submarines.

@Arjay Mate, these issues are not a matter of opinion, the processes of both these accidents are extensively documented. You just seem to be confused.

Firstly, none of the Fukushima reactors have exploded. Three explosions of vented hydrogen gas occurred in the space in between the reactor containment (very strong) and the reactor building (not), with the result that the reactor buildings were damaged. An actual exploded reactor is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THING, far more serious. This is what occurred at Chernobyl as a result of a massive power surge in the reactor itself while in operation. The Fukushima reactors were all shut down automatically following the quake. The issues have been from decay heat. This can cause meltdowns, it's not enough to blow up reactors.

Furthermore, what is a meltdown? It is melted fuel. There are meltdowns at Fukushima, we have known that for quite sometime, but the material is basically going no where, it is in containment. Likewise the spent fuel; yep, there is a lot of it, it was overheating but it is now being cooled and the releases of radioactivity are well and truly under control, but of course still needs to be looked after.

You seem to be completely confusing the presence of radioactive material at an accident site with widespread distribution of that material in a way that could cause harm, as occurred at Chernobyl in a far more serious way than at Fukushima. 28 people actually died from radiation in the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl, yes? That should be a clue.

Thanks for the link. Arne Gundersen yeah? No comment. Why not read the minute by minute report of the incident and learn? It’s the "Special Report on the Nuclear Accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station" published by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.

A bit like my last comment, I don't wish to downplay the Fukushima site, it's a serious accident and is going to take a very long time to completely resolve. There is just no need to contaminate things with utter tosh.

Having read the report, most of the findings on low dose ionizing radiation is based on the results from high doses and extrapolating down. The numbers given for cancer the "low" doses are roughly 100 to 1000 times the normal background radiation level that one receives.

This is like concluding that as a car collision at 100kmph is 90% fatal for passengers, and collisions at 60kmph are 50% fatal, that a collision at 10kmph is likely to be 8% fatal. Considering that all the nuclear weapon testing from the 60s contributes about 0.05% of this background, we are using data from a mountain to extrapolate what happens to a pebble. The body has the ability to repair damage to DNA from radiation, chemicals and viruses, as the body has the ability to repair small injuries, and while the "precautionary" principle justifies the extrapolation, the reality is that there is no real evidence as to the effect of small radiation doses.

Arjay

Yes, your comments on the Japanese incident versus Chernobyl are completely wrong. Chernobyl was by far the worset incident by several orders of magnitude. Your comments on numbers of people in a tomb or whatever it was, are also wild nonsense. While you may wish to prove a point about your fears cocnerning nucelare energy it is always best to stick to the facts..

@Shadow Minister that's not my reading. Looks to me like they have divided the cohort by dose, including a substantial group below the 0.1 Gy mark and based their findings on that.

Unless you mean that these are all acute doses in which case, yes I agree that even 0.05Gy all at once is a lot more than most people ever receive. Can you explain a little further your reading of this please?

Ben,

Considering that an annual dosage from background radiation is in the order of 0.0024 Gy, 0.1 Gy is a lifetime's dose, which firstly I see as as stretching the definition of "low". Most of the results are of much higher doses. Secondly, most of the deaths below 0.1 Gy is due to non cancer related issues and given the post war conditions I find the inclusion of these into the studies as dubious. Thirdly, radioactive iodine is the most deadly single product of uranium fission due to the large proportion produced and the ready absorption into the thyroid. This generally gives a signature result of a preponderance of thyroid cancer, which is notably absent in this research.

Finally, the results from the area around Chernobyl do not show a significant increase in cancer other than thyroid.

For example the prefecture of Fukushima has received levels of between 0.0001 to 0.001 Gy with one village adjacent (evacuated) has received a maximum of 0.05 Gy and wonder what part of this research would be valid here.

@Shadow Minister

Considering that an annual dosage from background radiation is in the order of 0.0024 Gy, 0.1 Gy is a lifetime's dose, which firstly I see as as stretching the definition of "low".

Wholeheartedly agree, and Wauchopes conclusion fails to take into account the issue of getting it all at once, or getting it over a period of time, which of course matters a great deal.

"Most of the results are of much higher doses".

Disagree, Table 9. The two lowest dose groups are easily the biggest. Response?

"Secondly, most of the deaths below 0.1 Gy is due to non cancer related issues and given the post war conditions I find the inclusion of these into the studies as dubious."

Agreed, along with the absence of any actual mechanism by which radiation contributes to these conditions, this is clearly more correlation with the overall event than caused by radiation IMO. Infectious disease? That's just silly.

"This generally gives a signature result of a preponderance of thyroid cancer, which is notably absent in this research." A very good point.

"Finally, the results from the area around Chernobyl do not show a significant increase in cancer other than thyroid." Correct

"For example the prefecture of Fukushima has received levels of between 0.0001 to 0.001 Gy with one village adjacent (evacuated) has received a maximum of 0.05 Gy and wonder what part of this research would be valid here". Well contextualised.

Look, I agree with you overall, this author has no interest in any finding other than one that supports a pre-determined position. Her rubbishing of other's work is simple disgraceful, but clearly typical of her. There is indeed a great deal that works against these simplistic findings. My interest in looking more closely though was just the fact that is does, oddly enough, run linear and they do seem to have a large sample at levels for example 0.005Gy that bears a result. But it needs balanced commentary, not Wauchope's blatant activism. Why don't you rebutt?

The two lowest dose groups are easily the biggest. Response

ref table 3, these are mostly non cancer related deaths. Mostly probably related to reduced immune response. This could also be due to lack of nutrition, sanitation etc. In a city that has been nuked, I doubt that it was business as usual.

While the connection has been drawn between high levels of radiation and cancer, and logic would dictate that low levels of radiation are not good for you, the proof is not in this study. That is being used by anti nuke activists to raise alarm about dosages that are a tiny fraction of an annual background dose carries no weight whatsoever.

@Shadow Minister Most deaths, yes, but as per Table 9 the cancer deaths looks to have been enough to generate a result in those groups.

". That is being used by anti nuke activists to raise alarm about dosages that are a tiny fraction of an annual background dose carries no weight whatsoever."

Oh yes, in this I concur. Just trying to bounce of you to interpret the actual paper.

Oh dear oh dear! Out come all these worthy, presumably pro nuclear, commentators, with their quick condemnation of the significance of this 14th huge report, done over 62 years by many scientists - Studies of the Mortality of Atomic Bomb Survivors, 2012 Report 14, 1950 2003: An Overview of Cancer and Non- cancer Diseases.

I am amused that Ben Heard considers that these "simplistic findings" and conclusions reached by the report are MY conclusions;
"This landmark study of the survivors of the atomic bombings of Japan presents the strongest evidence to date that cancer risk not only exists at low levels of radiation, but may have greater risk per unit of dose than at higher doses. The study also shows that ionising radiation is associated with non cancerous diseases. Involving circulatory respiratory and digestive systems "

And even more amused to learn from Cohenite that I arrived at them by "channeling Helen Caldicott"

And Geoff Russell asks if I "understand internal emitters" . well, I do, but he doesn't seem to. Does he think that because we have potassium in our bodies, that somehow that makes it OK to add in radioactive isotopes like caesium?

One must wonder at the low level of knowledge of these critics who resort to disparaging one little writer, who has simply drawn attention to a huge, comprehensive and very important report.
Noel Wauchope

Jimbo,

A basic qualification in statics will tell you two things:

1 statistics based on a range of data can reveal information on that data range only. Extending the "findings" beyond this is pure conjecture.

2 external factors that can contribute to the results need to be eliminated. For example for the lowest doses = about 20 years background radiation exposure, the change in deaths from disease (non cancerous) was 0.3% If this does not ring alarm bells then nothing will.

Your statement that low dose radiation may be responsible for these "excess deaths" is true, but based on these statistics, it equally may not.

Noel, can you please demonstrate your knowledge of the difference between Cs-137 decays and K-40 decays and tell me why 100 Bq of one is worse than 100 Bq of the other?

Have you seen pictures of Cs-137 shredding DNA in a cell? Have you seen pictures of casein (milk protein) shredding DNA in a cell? How do you tell the difference?

Please, these aren't rhetorical questions. I'm interested in your answers.

Geoff Russell - I am interested in the idea that you think yourself some kind of judge and jury on whether or not I am qualified to write.

Leaving that red herring aside, and getting back to the real point - the theme of the article - there is now further evidence that there is increased health risk from low dose ionising radiation.

From Oxford University comes a new report on childhood exposure to gamma radiation, showing increased leukaemia at low levels. The researchers have come at this question from a different angle, and their results contradict the idea that there are no adverse radiation effects, or might even be beneficial effects, at these very low doses and dose rates - ‘What is new in our findings is the direct demonstration that there are radiation effects at these very low doses and dose-rates.’ http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2012/120612.html
The Oxford researchers back up the accepted scientific position of the Linear No Threshold model (LNT) - that there is no level below which ionising radiation is not harmful, risk increases with each added unit of radiation)
Dr Kendall of the Oxford team concludes: ‘The findings are relevant to understanding the risks from low radiation exposures such as medical X-rays and CT scans; planning for the disposal of nuclear waste; and the risks from the exposures received by people living near Chernobyl or Fukushima.' Noel Wauchope

The issue isn't whether radiation can cause cancer. It can. Nobody doubts this. The issue is whether the risks from nuclear are so big that we won't use it in our attempts to prevent climate change.

Do you know anybody who feeds their children sausages? Do you allow them to do so? When the Japanese added red and processed meat to their diets their bowel cancer cases soared. By about 80,000 new cases EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Using LNT, experts expect Fukushima radiation to cause 20 cancers over the next 40 years. Which is more worthy of mounting a campaign over ... something which will cause 80,000*40=3.2 million cancers over the next 40 years or 20? Do you care about cancer or only some cancers?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17059355

With nuclear power, there is less air pollution, less pollution = fewer deaths from respiratory disease and cancer. The number of Japanese lives saved by its nuclear reactors is tough to calculate, but it will be in the many thousands. But you don't seem to care about those lives.

Noel,

If you look I have been spending time on this thread trying to understand the paper itself and its implications, precisely because it is an interesting peer reviewed study.

By simplistic, I mean assuming that this finding is the only relevant piece of work to understanding the impacts of low dose radiation. It isn't. You just chose to rubbish, wholesale, the stuff you don't like. That's why I don't respect you. Because you are biased. The cohort of A bomb survivors is a critical data set, no doubt. But it is not the only one, it is not the only research, and when a statistical conclusion that low doses of radiation are more dangerous that high doses of radiation conflicts with every bit of knowledge in radio-biology, then yes, I query the finding.

It is also simplistic to assume that the impacts of one-off "low" dose 60 years ago, much of which is still rather "high" dose compared to the levels within the exclusion zone, to a population that were in post-war ruin, is somehow comparable or relevant to what people stress about nowadays: tiny increases in background radiation like in the exclusion zone, that will mean a little more radiation over time. As Geoff Russell points out applying the LNT in it's purest form gives a negligible result. You confound these because it suits your message, a bit like confounding completely unrelated nuclear technologies in your previous piece.

I hate to break it to you Noel by from my POV, it's not about you. Your bias is too blatant, your research is too sloppy and one-sided. You've introduced me to an interesting peer reviewed study.

That's all.

Geoff, from your link:

"Guidelines on exposure to low doses of radiation have largely been based on estimated risks from models using data from Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs, where radiation exposures were brief and very much higher. ** As a result, there have been some long-standing uncertainties about the extrapolation of these risks to low radiation doses. **"

Which essentially makes the same point I was.

The article only found a link between radiation and childhood leukemia, not any other form of cancer. Also the article says: "
"That means even if the entire UK population were to move to mid-Wales, fewer than 15 childhood leukaemias per year would be prevented." and:
"The relative risk increase (of childhood leukemia)is likely to lie within a range from 3% to 22% per millisievert."

To put this into perspective, the contamination around Fukushima was about 0.01 to 0.1 millisievert. The Tsunami killed about 20 000.

Shadow Minister: That wasn't from my link, but Noel's. Not that it matters, your points are valid. As in all things, the issue isn't "is this a statistically significant effect", but "how big is this effect"

Ben:" ...when a statistical conclusion that low doses of radiation are more dangerous that high doses of radiation conflicts with every bit of knowledge in radio-biology, then yes, I query the finding"

Yes, so would I. Fortunately, this is not the case. The conclusion was that were was possibly greater risk PER UNIT OF DOSE at lower levels that at higher doses. This is evidenced by the deviation from the linear trend line at lower the lower doses in figure 4 and translates into figure 5 of the report. This doesn't conflict with 'very bit of knowledge in radio-biology' as far as I can tell.

Crisis averted.

Apologies Geoff, I meant to address Jimbo.

Your link shows how other externalities present at the time could have a far greater effect.

As I said, intuitively the assumption that radiation is never good for your makes sense, and in the absence of any information a linear model is the most likely. This study shows no proof as it relies on extrapolation to reach the conclusion rather than analysis.

@Bugsy You've clarified what I meant using a greater number of words, but this is fundamentally my point. Greater risk per unit dose at lower doses... this would turn some radio-biology assumptions on their head. But yes, forgive my obvious hyperbole.

But my point is there is no crisis from this finding in the first place, though I do think the paper is interesting. A bit like the IPCC with climate change, one must consider the total body of quality research on an issue to determine the state of knowledge. This author has no interest in this type of approach. The statistical finding of this study does not undo or invalidate knowledge from other types of studies and streams of knowledge, like radio-biology, it adds to it. This is not a direct scientific study of the effects of radiation on humans or other living things, it is a large scale work of correlation. That's doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Of course it does. But it does mean it's not everything.

But it's Geoff Russell who is really talking sense here. Making global energy decisions based on this information would be like freaking out about a paper cut when someone has just chopped your leg off.

Ben, assumptions are always meant to be confirmed or overturned, as they are made in the absence of knowledge. Hyperbole indeed, as "every bit of knowledge" morphs into "some assumptions". Still, I'm not sure whether 'turned on their head' is warranted. Which assumptions would these be?

You of all people should not be indulging in 'obvious hyperbole', you are trying to convince people to take up nuclear power. Hyperbole is what you are supposed to accuse your opponents of.

@Bugsy Assumptions, which are treated rather more as knowledge, that healthy cells have extensive repair mechanisms to deal with damage either from radiation or other sources. That provided the amount of damage at any give period of time is not too much, that it will most likely all be taken care of. But when the rate of damage is too great, the defence mechanisms may be overwhelmed, repair or cell suicide may not take place, and bad cells may remain to go on and form cancer. Breast cancer researchers recently filmed these processes in action. On this knowledge, treatment aims for the lowest inadvertent dose to healthy cells possible. It does not seeks some optimum low dose that takes into account an upswing in risk per unit dose at low levels. This would be in conflict with the process outlined. Additional tiny dose is really just business as usual at the cellular level according to this body of knowledge.

Two simple quotes from breast cancer research on this:

"Over time, the radiation damages cells that are in the path of its beam — normal cells as well as cancer cells. But radiation affects cancer cells more than normal cells. Cancer cells are very busy growing and multiplying — 2 activities that can be slowed or stopped by radiation damage. And because cancer cells are less organized than healthy cells, it's harder for them to repair the damage done by radiation. So cancer cells are more easily destroyed by radiation, while healthy, normal cells are better able to repair themselves and survive the treatment."

Then in the real lay language:
"“Cancer cell growth is unwieldy and uncontrolled—these cells just don't have their act together like normal cells do. When normal cells are damaged by radiation, they are like a big city with a fire and police department and trained emergency squads to come and 'put out the fire.' Damaged cancer cells are more like a disorganized mob with a bucket. "

CONT

CONT But again, these inadvertent doses to healthy cells are absolutely enormous (e.g. as much as 30 Gy over a month of treatment. The low dose range in the study? 0.005 Gy, 6,000 times smaller) compared to the "long term low dose" that we are being asked to worry about from Fukushima. But the human body copes. Cancer treatment specialists would dismiss this minuscule level of risk entirely.

Those quotes were from breastcancer.org. Hardly Wauchope's evil empire. A responsible opinion piece would have taken the new paper, contextualised it with other knowledge and given readers some realistic appreciation of just what it is we are talking about and what type of energy decision we might make as a result.

That does not appear to be Wauchope's agenda.

Have to echo Geoff again; difference between statistically significant and actually significant.

Sorry Ben, but what you are talking about is in no way in conflict with the conclusions of the study. What you are describing is largely irrelevant to what we are actually talking about.

Cancer specialists would certainly be balancing the risks involved in inadvertent irradiation with the risks of leaving the cancer to grow in the body. The doses described would be in 'larger dose' category, of which are much better known.

What is study has actually shown quite clearly is how cancer and radiation damage is a stochastic process, large doses become deterministic, but the variance increases the lower the dose you get.

I would take issue with Shadow Ministers assertion that it extrapolates from the higher dose range to find the conclusions, which it quite clearly does not.

You may argue that the relative risks are so low as to not have to worry about them, that's fine. But there is no basis to argue that the conclusions are wrong in that their statistics are in error or that they are in conflict with everything we know or assume about radio-biology. They aren't.

Bugsy,

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2012/120612.html

This large scale study at Oxford agrees with my assessment.

Guidelines on exposure to low doses of radiation have largely been based on estimated risks from models using data from Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs, where radiation exposures were brief and very much higher. As a result, there have been some long-standing uncertainties about the extrapolation of these risks to low radiation doses.

This link to the Oxford study on leukemia

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2012/120612.html

is now being used by both "sides". Noel thinks it shows "increased health risk from low dose ionising radiation" and ShadowMinister
thinks it shows precisely how tiny and insignificant low dose radiation is compared to the big guns in cancer causation ... cigarettes, red and processed meat and alcohol. Similarly, the fact that people can detect Fukushima radiation in tuna thousands of miles away says plenty about the sensitivity of measurement and absolutely nothing about the risk to the tuna. The big ocean risk from Fukushima is from debris that is now floating in the pacific. This of course comes from all the buildings not built like nuclear power stations which got wiped out with 20,000 people by the tsunami. Obviously what you should be building in quake zones on the coast is nuclear power stations because they are one of the few types of buildings designed for the job ... along with Taipei 101!

But while talking about leukemia, I notice that neither Noel nor any other anti-nuclear advocate has responded to my question about sausages. Please ... do you care about cancer or only radiation induced cancer. But perhaps its only leukemia and not bowel cancer that Noel is concerned about.

What causes most leukemia? As the Oxford article says, nobody knows. But here's something that needs more work ...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2842202/?tool=pubmed

A huge study showing total meat consumption is associated with a 45% increase in acute myeloid leukemia ... particularly nasty.

Is it the meat? That's not clear, there is no correlation with the major meat DNA shredders. But there are so many meat mutagens that it may be one of the lesser ones that is to blame. Still, since there is no reason at all to eat meat, it pays to be safe. With nuclear power on the other hand, there is a really really really good reason to take the tiny risks associated with radiation --- climate change and the total failure of renewable technologies to make a dent in the problem.

SM: "This large scale study at Oxford agrees with my assessment."

In what way?

The assessment about Fukushima deaths which is irrelevant to the point I am currently discussing?

Or your point on extrapolation from higher doses? Because these studies don't actually agree with your latter statement. They actually address some of the 'uncertainties' mentioned in the out-of-context quote.

And guess what? They BOTH agree that the LNT model of radiation exposure is valid.

How about that?

Now you can argue that dilution of released radiation from Fukushima will result in negligible deaths and so poses minimal risks, and I would probably agree with you. But the farmers from the region are finding it very difficult to sell their produce, which adds an economic element to the consequences of releases and accidents. You may say that the food is safe and the average Japanese consumer is silly to shun it (as the Japanese government is currently doing), but that doesn't really help maintain the markets. Consumer perception adds to the economic risks, even if the health risks are negligible.

Nuclear power is all about risk management, and the only reason you can argue that it is the 'safest' form of power is because of the risk minimisation and mitigation strategies that have been put in place wherever it has been used. The only way that people are going to be convinced to take it up in a larger scale and in areas where it has not been used before is if you can convince them that all risks have been considered and NOT idly dismissed, and that mitigation or minimisation strategies are or will be in place. The risks are real, whether they be 'relatively' small or not.

Trying to discredit what is actually reasonable research using misinterpretations and bizarre comparisons (eg. red meat consumption) is not going to help.

Bugsy, relative risks matter. As long as anti-nuclear activists keep making people more fearful of nuclear power than climate change, we are in serious trouble. I bring up sausages because it shows that the concern for safety of the anti-nuclear movement is either disingenuous or totally irrational, or both. It also shows the real disregard for climate change ... because everybody from Pachuri to Hansen has put meat reductions on the agenda.

Some comments on the Oxford paper follow, noting that I've only seen the abstract, uni press release and ScienceDaily article based on the first two (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120618150045.htm). I'd be interested in the views of anyone who has access to the paywalled version.

The most problematic aspect from my POV is with the dose assessment. "Radiation exposures were estimated for mother's residence at the child's birth from national databases, using the County District mean for gamma-rays, and a predictive map based on domestic measurements grouped by geological boundaries for radon." Using district means sounds very ropy, as the radiometric variations within districts would often be greater than the variations between them, with every possibility that human settlement patterns are biased one way or the other. Maybe this issue is addressed in the full paper (and the abstract says they've looked for confounding factors), but I'd take a fair bit of convincing.

The radon assessment would be more geographically precise, because it takes geology (the strongest control on natural radiation, at least near sea level) into account, but interestingly no statistically significant correlation was observed with radon. I'm a bit mystified as to why (apparently) geology was not also taken into account to improve the gamma dose estimation.

Finally, this is an important observation from the article: "There were no statistically significant associations between other childhood cancers and natural gamma-rays, or between any cancers and levels of radon in the natural background radiation." As Jaro touches on and Ben Goldacre explains in his wonderful book 'Bad Science', if you look for enough links between unrelated phenomena, eventually you will find a statistically significant association through random chance alone - and of course this is the one that gets the headline (but kudos here to the article for at least mentioning the null results).

Bugsy,

Evidently you have only skimmed a few of my posts as you have missed most of what I said. I said that the LNT model is intuitively correct, but no "proof" exists.

The Hiroshima study, does not actually look at low dosage exposure. The lowest dosages are in the order of 20 yrs back ground exposure in a very short time, and the "excess" deaths at these levels are all small and from forms of disease that can be caused by other factors such as a small increase in the intake of red meat. The cancers are all linked with much higher doses (100yrs background exposure).

Extrapolation from one area of data to another is scientifically tenuous, as the example I gave earlier of car crashes. A 90% fatality rate at 120kmph and a fatality rate of 60% at 80kmph does not translate into a 2% fatality rate at 5kmph for obvious reasons.

The quote I cut and pasted in my last post shows the scientific community's obvious discomfort with this extrapolation.

The Oxford study is the only study so far to show that low dosages of radiation have any measurable affect whatsoever. The studies of millions of people show a "statistically" significant increase of only one cancer type i.e. childhood leukaemia, nothing else showed any statistical increase. Even then the predictions of the effect range from a 3% increase per mSv to 20%.

This is similar to the large scale study into the linkage between mobile phones and cancer. The study of millions picked up a faint link. This was put in perspective by one of the researchers who said that a cup of coffee a day was many times more dangerous.

The safety of nuclear power is statistically proven with a wide margin. The number of deaths from all causes from nuclear generation is half or less of any other generation source including solar and wind.

The choice for the next generation is CO2 emissions or nuclear. Either AGW is a serious problem or it isn't.

SM, perhaps you could explain to those of us in the class who are apparently only skimming the lecture notes, how one 'extrapolates' multiple data points that deviate from the regression, such as that seen in Fig. 4 of the paper currently under discussion?
http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/pdf/10.1667/RR2629.1

The LNT is not 'intuitively correct', in fact your analogy to car crashes shows us that a Threshold model is more 'intuitive'.

Having worked in a nuclear medicine department for 9 years, I have some insights into the real problems of low level radiation exposure.

Calcium, zinc and magnesium valence two human structural/skeletal elements can be activated by low level radiation causing structural imperfections unrelated to any hormesis effects.

This primarily affects bone and teeth with predictable weaknesses or dislocations developing over time. Teeth in particular are problematic here. Bacterial overload from accelerated decay patterns can have disaterous knock on effects in the digestive and circulatory systems with tertiary involvement of the repiratory system due to bacterial plaque build up and immune response inflammation.

No cellular genetic compensatory effect (hormesis) is able to undo such broad-scale anatomical structural changes.

This is where the rubber hits the road in terms of lowering the Low radiation dose health standards.

World radiation panels will ignore skeletal and dental aspects of low level radiation exposure at their peril.
Perhaps some of these proponents already have plaque build-up in their brain.

QED

KAEP. I gave a link to a source showing about 80,000 extra bowel cancers annually from dietary change in Japan. I missed the bit in your post where anybody actually got sick or died from these "disastrous" low level knock on perils. Do you actually have any data that is relevant?

The fact that you can detect a change due to radiation, or eating chilli, or pumping iron, or jogging, or breathing cooking fumes says a great deal about detection methods but not much about whether the change is detrimental or beneficial. For that you need epidemiology.

Bugsy,

Refer to figure 5 and table 9

Given that an annual background dose is 0.0024G and the excess cases for a dosage of less than 0.005 is 2 out of 40 000 people and nearly 5000 cancer deaths, one can conclude that for lowest dosages it makes no difference what so ever.

For dosages between 0.005G and 0.1G (40 years back ground dosage) there are 49 "excess" cancer deaths among 30 000 people from nearly 4000 cancer deaths.

on fig 4 the bottom 14 plots are based on 51 deaths from 70 000 people over nearly 50 years.

No wonder the results are considered tenuous, especially considering the cancer deaths caused by external factors such as red meat consumption can have a greater effect.

SM: Perhaps I'll repeat my question, are they 'extrapolated'? And if so, how?

Where did you find your information on the bottom 14 doses (did you mean 4)?

Table 9 says that for all the doses up to 0.2Gy, there were 97 excess cases of solid cancer and 73 excess cases of noncancer diseases that were attributable to the dose.

For these doses, the total number of deaths was actually over 9000 for solid cancer and over 37,700 for non-cancer out of over 74000 subjects. Your figures don't quite add up.

You can argue that the relative risks are minimal, but the issue I took was that you stated the conclusions were based on 'extrapolations' of higher doses, you still haven't explained how you 'extrapolate' the data points seen in Fig 4 and Fig 5, given that they deviate from the regression (the actual extrapolation).

Bugsy,

Sorry, typo, I started saying something below 1.0 and forgot to modify.

A dose of 0.1G is 40yrs background dosage and calling it a low dosage is ridiculous, let alone 0.2G. The data in fig 4 below 0.5G is just noise could be just as easily represented by a horizontal line at an ERR of 0.03. If the expected rate was out by just a few percent (i.e. with additional external factors), the threshold model would be more applicable.

To reiterate, I have never said the LNT model is not applicable, just that the data collected in this study does not statistically support it.

SM: I bet the authors are glad they did not have you as a reviewer. They did a formal threshold analysis ( outlined on page 3 or p.231). The data actually does statistically support no-threshold model. Sorry mate, but just calling it 'noise' and dismissing a carefully analysed dataset is not going to cut it. The doses analysed go down to below 0.005Gy, which if 0.1Gy is 40 years background, then 0.005 is 2 years background. What would constitute a 'low dose' here?

Bugsy,

The excess cancer deaths below 0.005G is statistically zero. See table 9

Given that the excess radiation from Fukushima is in the region of 0.0001g or lower 0.00001G, where is the validity of this study?

SM:

From the WHO report referenced in Geoff's earlier post:

In Fukushima prefecture the estimated effective doses are within a dose band of 1−10mSv, except in two of the example locations where the effective doses are estimated to be within a dose band of 10–50 mSv.

-Which is approx 0.01-0.05 Gy isn't it? Which I would say is reasonably relevant.

Estimated thyroid doses are much higher in some areas.

The dose you quoted are from neighbouring prefectures and the rest of Japan.

This is of course, all aside from the mandatory evacuation and associated further disruption of the lives of many thousands of people, which is how they copped a lower dose in the first place.

And so after more than a year, they've been told that they are unlikely to die from cancer from the nuclear plant.

Great.

Now this is one plant. How many do we need worldwide?

The safety record for deaths associated is impressive, and so is the failure rate of reactors. According to this website: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html over 14,500 cumulative reactor years of operation, they count only three major accidents (I guess they don't count pre-1979 accidents).

This conservatively makes about 4833 reactor years of operation per major incident. And then you realise that over 440 reactors are currently working worldwide, which means a rate of about one major accident per 11 years of operation across all reactors. And that's a conservative estimate.

How many reactors are going to be needed? We currently generate about 13-14% of our power globally with nuclear, will we need to double that?

I know you are trying to say that the medical consequences of reactor failure are nearly negligible for the general population, but that doesn't really tell the whole story of what happens to an affected area post-failure does it?

Many people hold legitimate concerns over the long-term safety and feasibility of nuclear power. These risks will have to be properly weighed against mitigation of emissions.

Bugsy ... how about factoring in lives saved by nuclear power during the past 40 years. Apart from large numbers of mining deaths and diseases, if it were not for nuclear power, all the countries that have it would have had more air pollution deaths. Many of the workers at Fukushima would be dead if working installing Solar panels on the coast. Three mile island wasn't a serious accident ... costly yes, but serious no. Over a thousand people are killed in plane crashes each year. But nobody figures planes aren't safe, they just do the maths ... car or plane? plane safer, easy. People who think planes are dangerous are sent to a shrink .. But nuclear is treated differently. The evacuation more than likely killed more people than it saved. We had a large petrochemical fire in Adelaide some months back. It spewed carcinogens all over the place. Did anybody demand an evacuation? No. Did anybody even bother calculating the future deaths from the cancers? No. Did anybody bother to calculate the cancer deaths from the Chiba refinery fire in Japan after the Tsunami. Why not? Because the anti-nuclear movement has succeed in getting people to put nuclear risks in a different category. When Tokyo was firebombed during WWII, more people were killed than with the atomic bombs, they all breathed in huge amounts of carcinogens. Where are the cancer studies? Ditto the bombings of Dresden. The anti-nuclear movement typically knows absolutely nothing about cancer at all except radiation cancers. They aren't phased by 80,000 extra cancers from red and processed meat but go absolutely bananas over 20 cancers over 40 years. Why? Has any of them seen a bowel cancer patient die? Is it somehow better than dying of leukemia that it deserves no attention? It isn't. It's tragic .. and so is falling off a roof installing a Solar panel and ending up in a wheel chair. I just want risks assessed rationally and compared properly. Currently the anti-nuclear movement is another arm of big coal and a serious problem in getting action on climate change.

Bugsy,

My error, It would then appear that some people in two areas of Fukushima might be threatened with a 0.3% increase in cancer.

Note that one major incident resulted in no release of radiation, one was due to a 1 in 1000 year Tsunami that killed 20 000 people and ruined thousands of square km of farmland, and the worst was a 1950's Soviet design with no protection. The question you should ask is how was any safety system 40 years ago?

New designs are far safer, and the chances are that any "accident" like 3 mile island will not result in anything like Chernobyl or Fukushima