"Conspiracy theories are the exhaust fumes of democracy."

(Christopher Hitchens)

Arjay,

"The indirect death toll from Chernobyl is said to be a million"

Said by who? The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation put the death toll at less than 60. http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html The World Health Organisation have concluded from models that eventually up to (a *maximum* of) 4000 people may die from the Chernobyl disaster. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html

"Fukushima is worse"

Bollocks. The radiological release from Fukushima was less than 5% that of Chernobyl. http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/safetyandsecurity/reports/special-report-on-the-nuclear-accident-at-the-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-power-station

"Dr Helen Cauldicott is a very credible source also."

Helen Caldicott has never released a peer-reviewed paper on the biological effects of radiation in her life. And she frequently makes things up. She even thinks the UN are in a conspiracy cover up with the nuclear industry about Chernobyl (see: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/30/prescription_for_survival_a_debate_on ). She is probably the least credible person I can think of when it comes nuclear - in a vein similar to "Lord" Monckton on climate change. And I mean that literally.

@Curmudgeon, I would put a decent sum of money down on the idea that that 0.5% of children had cysts greater than 5.0mm on March 10 2011, in other words, it's a back ground level. OF course we can't know because no one was looking then. That's the thing with epidemiology, it's difficult, and the first thing you look for is a baselines to compare things to. Unless you are this author, in which case the first think you do is make stuff sound scary and promote the longevity of oil and gas above nuclear.

One does not need to read past the second paragraph to realise this is an article fuelled by nothing other than John's personal emotions towards nuclear power. John, to imply that anyone *actually qualified* to be discussing risks of nuclear power generation in comparison to oil and gas, is a 'renegade nuclear scientist' just goes to show the nature of this article.

The second paragraph of the article states how John has no intent to consider anything a nuclear scientist would say when writing the article. So how did this article get published and why? What is the hidden agenda of John and Online Opinion?

The advert at the top of this page tells me to "Trade on oil, at trader24dotcom. Oil has already been found, now allow the profits to spill over". Clearly this article has been published so as to gain an audience from oil advocates, and thereby attract more click-through profits from trader24dotcome advertisements. Well if you can't beat them at their own game, join them at their own game.

http://decarbonisesa.com
http://thoriumaustralia.org
http://energyfromthorium.com

Thanks Ben. I'd heard this thyroid growth stuff and was intending to chase it back to its roots. You've done the work, thanks.

That's the problem with anti-nukes. They don't look deeper than headlines. Caldicott a reliable source? I recently watched her Canadian Press conference just after the quake. My favourite of her string of falsehoods was that zirconium ignites when exposed to air (3:30) into the interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV7Rn06j_cY

She's had decades to learn about zirconium fuel rods and is still as ignorant as ever. Here's a video clip of some engineers putting a blow torch to a fuel rod ... 2000 degrees and it didn't ignite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x__2yWx9zGY

You can find pictures of zirconium vases on the net. But the journalists just wrote it all down and probably quoted her as a source.

Her entire interview is like that ... a continual string of rubbish. When Caldicott started her crusade decades ago, there was no internet so checking stuff was tough. Now its easy, but the Arjays of the world just believe stuff without bothering to check.

@Geoff Russell thanks, but the thing is that only took me about 20 mins. The difference I suggest is whether one wants the truth or just want the angle.

For example, this only took about 20 seconds. Searching for "thyroid nodules" tells me this from the Australian Medical Journal of Australia site: https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2004/180/5/6-thyroid-nodules-and-thyroid-cancer

"The reported prevalence of thyroid nodules varies with the method of screening. In autopsy series, up to 50% of clinically normal thyroid glands contain nodules. A lower prevalence is found by ultrasonography. For example, nodules were found in 27% of randomly selected people aged 19–50 years in an iodine-sufficient area of Finland; only 5% of these people had a clinically detectable abnormality.2 Fifty per cent of people with clinically detected solitary nodules have additional nodules when studied further by ultrasonography."

With a note of caution that these stats are for adults and not children, we can see that thyroid nodules are basically as common as muck, if you look for them you find them, and most likely a third of us reading this article have them without knowing. On children this paper states:

"Thyroid nodules are less common in children and adolescents than in adults, the prevalence of palpable thyroid nodules in childhood being about 1.5%, whereas in adulthood it is 4-7%." http://www.hormones.gr/pdf/Management%20of%20thyroid%20nodules%20in%20children.pdf

So assuming "palpable" roughly equates with the 5.0 mm size, which seems reasonable, both these studies of Japanese children is roughly normal for detection of large nodules.

Yet this author sees fit to ignore all of this, instead contributing to efforts to scare parents who, I would say, have suffered enough without having their children's health being co-opted into this obvious oil and gas agenda.

I'm disgusted.