Some strange reasoning here; nuclear energy will increase greenhouse gas emissions? Nuclear waste is undoubtedly a toxic legacy but what about the legacy of fossil fuel burning? That's not just warming but heavy metals, particulates and organic toxins. I should state that I don't believe renewables can plug the energy gap for several decades so it comes down to coal vs nuclear.

I don't have a link but I believe there have been studies that show some low level background radiation correlates with population health; Florida and Colorado I believe provide a good contrast. Ironically the abandoned Chernobyl site has become an accidental refuge for embattled animals and plants. For more than 20 years I have kept a tube of yellowcake from the old Radium Hill processing works; admittedly I've kept it in a shed.

I'd advise scaremongers to change tack.

Dr. Williams,

Your paper is unbalanced and exaggerates the minimal risk, if any from low exposures say below 50 to 100 mSv. You quote:
“These doses are estimated to have already resulted in 430,000 additional fatal cancers worldwide by the year 2000, and a total of 2.4 million extra cancer deaths long-term.”
These deaths are theoretical only and not supported by body counts. How about some confidence intervals? What are the errors in transferring data obtained from a Japanese Population irradiated in 1945, to a modern population with a different age and sex distribution and not affected by the ravages of war?
Do you not agree that there are more potent environmental carcinogens then a weak radiation exposure? I have in mind, smoking, alcohol, dietary factors, numerous infectious agents, certain chemical exposures and so on.
The low dose argument or (collective dose) can be compared to the following analogy. A dose of 1000 aspirin tablets administered to one man will be fatal. Therefore one tablet given to each of a 1000 men will cause one death. Likewise a tenth of a tablet administered to 10,000 men will result in one death. This is clearly a manifest absurdity.

The rights and wrongs of, or more accurately the probabilities of something happening, related to levels of radiation is a question much muddied by the proponents of Nuclear. Bit like Climate change, the vocal climate lobby, prepared to use any data from anywhere, that was (IS?).
Yes I read the report of thriving animal life but it failed to record later life effecting illness, nor did it seperate reproduction from entry to a now uninhabited area. Since we spend so much trying to prolong human life this data is needed or perhaps the unwanted or people with no other choice will live there, a real goad to the competitive story.

If there are two ways of doing something one having a greater probability of harm then you choose the other unless.
1 are not in position to make choice and as we have seen over the Iraq illegal actions the public can be fooled into thinking the action correct. Of course they may still think the action useful, 650,00 extra deaths a trashed country and instability for the American umbrella!

2 you are not the entrepreneur, who will no receive no benefit if the more dangerous choice is not proceeded with or maybe you an Australian citizen standing to benefit from the trickle down effect of wealth, that is little.

3 you are not in a position to improve the present economy such that these measures of progress are no longer needed. Energy efficiency will go some way to improving employment, reducing GHG and adding to GDP, population reduction or at least rate of increase, meaning immigration ignoring prostituting your wife for the third Australian as Mr Costello would have you do, would help at perhaps some standard of living and any dependence on such schemes

This article is typical of the semi-truthful guff put out by the anti-nuclear lobby. Let us examine the facts:

1. They are quite truthful in saying that there is no safe level of nuclear radiation, and that there is no place on earth free of radiation.

2. They are truthful in quoting the small amount of additional background radiation due to nuclear activities, and the statistical number of deaths that would result from these activities.

3. What they do not mention is that background radiation increases by 1% every 23 metres that you rise above sea level. If they are so concerned at the deaths that result from nuclear activities, they should be campaigning to ban all air travel, as the amount of radiation absorbed by air travellers, particularly aircrew, dwarfs that from nuclear activities. An example of this is the uranium mine at Roxby Downs. This mine releases radiation into the environment. The amount is equivalent to living one floor higher in a building than you really are.

4. Their statistical calculation of the deaths from additional radiation takes no note, of course, of the lives saved by the electricity and other good things generated by the nuclear activities.

5. In particular, they take no note of the millions of lives saved by the atomic bomb. Starting with the Allied prisoners of war, who all would have been killed if the war against Japan had been fought to the death, we need to add millions of Japanese who would have died in the invasion, and the millions of allied soldiers who would have also died in an invasion. Anyone who studies the death rate in the battles for Okinawa and Iwo Jima would agree with these figures. Then we need to add the millions that would have died in a war between America and Russia, which would certainly have been fought if it were not for the nuclear stalemate. So far, the atomic bomb has been a great boon for humanity, as it has protected us from ourselves.

Radioactivity is a health problem even at low levels? Hard evidence of that seems to be scarce. To make reference to models that predict numbers of deaths is to argue circularly.

Still, let's do something about it. Number one on the list should be the closing down of all coal-fired power stations, because they are significant sources of radioactivity; there are radioactive elements in coal, and the burning process releases them into the air. A typical coal fired station releases much more radioactive material than a nuclear generator of equivalent power.

In practice, of course, we're not going to do that. We need the power, and there are no economically viable alternatives (other than nuclear). Certainly wind and solar don't cut it. The only one that comes close is hot-rock technology, but that's still under development.

There is little doubt that radioactivity can cause some deaths, but poverty most certainly does. Bankrupting our economy out of a misguided desire to eliminate all risks will kill more people than the small amount of radioactivity released either by coal fired stations, or by future nuclear power stations.

Sylvia.

No safe dose... I would rather work in an Australian nuclear power station than in a Chinese coal mine any day.

The fact is that there is no safe limit to anything. My risk of car accidents was reduced when speed limits went from 60km/h (local roads) to 50. The same logic would apply if they went from 50 to 10km/h, and ditto if they were reduced to zero.

The reality is though that there are hazards from coal. Real health hazards. There are hazards from lead. There are hazards from cars, from gas and from hydro. People die when dams burst. Workers were killed in the Longford gas explosion in Vic also. Don't forget these people.

And with (ionizing) radiation - there is a background radiation level, from the ground, from the sky, from concrete, from xrays and from medical procedures which are now euphemistically called "scans".

However... I wouldn't rush in to nuclear power.

In fact I'd protest against it at the moment (why rush!).

So I'm anti-nuclear, for now, but I believe this article overstates the risks - which to me relate more to human error and carelesness.

My short question is -

We have the Ziggy report. I want to see the Trujillo report !

The critics of Dr. Williams will really have to do better than the above. Dr Williams' has set out a measured argument on the health hazards of the nuclear industry, and with authoritative sources quoted.
Contrast Dr Williams’ writing with that of these commentators.
We have the argument that “fossil fuel burning” is bad – (so does that make ionising radiation OK?) – and the comforting? knowledge that Taswegian has “kept a tube of yellowcake for 20 years”.
We have antigreen’s accusations of “unbalance and exaggeration” – and the argument that other things are toxic (alcohol, diet etc – does this make ionising radiation OK?)
We have pierdisus’s “millions of lives saved by the atomic bomb”. Apart from this being a dubious reading of the history of the end of the war in the Pacific – I do fail to see how that makes ionising radiation safe.
Then Sylvia puts up an argument for “poverty” as the alternative and worse health hazard. That’s an interesting one. The nuclear industry is entirely uneconomic, particularly in the costs of waste disposal and security, so future generations are likely to have both poverty (massive public debt), as well as their radiation – wherever nuclear power goes ahead.
Even white wombat thinks that all will be well – confident that there will never be accidents, spills, security risks related to nuclear power. I doubt that any risk assessment expert would agree.
Pro nuclear writers - you're going to need to do better than this - to convince anybody that the nuclear power industry is safe! Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

Let's look at how we got here.

It's not so long ago that the existence of "gases" was the dream of spiritualists. Once we got the hang of the idea that matter could be invisible yet exist all around us, we used that knowlege to crank up the industrial revolution.

Unfortunately, we hung on to the idea that if something was invisible, it was of no consequence. We have been using our terribly thin shroud of gases as a rubbish tip ever since.

If you can't see it, it's not there - right? WRONG!

We are just savages in suits.

Now we are set to repeat the same mistakes with fission energy. If you can't see it, surely it can't be much of a problem - right?

We will create intractible "badlands" - off limits to human life, because the energy inputs to remediate the problem will be in ever shortening supply. Those energy sources will fall into the hands of whoever has the power to command them.

If the present political and economic jumble is anything to go by, I would not trust the words of the captains of industry, who always profit by "externalising" the costs.

The quasi-religious utterances by the savages in suits will be the death of us.

It's time for a revolution in human attitudes.

Nuclear power is moderately less economic than coal fired power in Australia. It is not by any measure "entirely" uneconomic. Nor is it true that it creates massive public debt. The costs of waste disposal (or rather storage) and security are included in the price of electricity produced by nuclear power, as indeed are the costs of decomissioning. These costs are routinely covered by a levy on the electricity, with the levy being paid into a fund that pays for the required work when it needs to be done.

Sylvia.

Christine,

Have you ever come across the principle of hormesis? Sometimes called the adaptive response. Hormesis states that a small dose of a toxin may be beneficial. This is not to be confused with homoeopathy. In hormesis the exposure dose is small, but measurable. As with all low dose effects, the response is also small and there are statistical errors, the response may also be variable and vary for different members of the same species. If you type hormesis into Google, Google Scholar, or Pub Med you will find a plethora of papers on hormesis due to either chemical or radiation exposures. Alternatively, you could look up UNSCEAR 1994, Annex B pages 185-172 deals with human epidemiology. Other authors in this field include Myron Pollycove, Edward Calabrese, TD Luckey and many others.

The point I make is that hormesis is one of several other factors and mechanisms ensuring that the low dose response curve is not linear.

Just one example. Sponsler R and Cameron JR. summarised the findings in the 1991 report of the nuclear shipyard study in USA.* The late Professor Cameron was a member of the study team headed by Dr. Matanoski.

Study group 1. Cumulative exposure greater then 5 mGY mainly derived from CO-60 in coolant water in nuclear propelled vessels. 27,872 workers; death rate 6.4 per 1000; SMR =0.76

Study Group 2 Lower cumulative exposure less then 5 mGy. 10,348 workers;
death rate 7.1 per 1000; SMR= 0.81.

Controls, workers doing identical shipyard work, same exposure to asbestosis, and other chemical hazards. 32,510 workers; death rate 9 per 1000. SMR= 1.

Of course I do not use one example to make the leap from a correlation to a cause. Yet, these findings are none the less very impressive.

• Int J. Low Radiat; 2005; 1:463-468.
• SMR= Standardised mortality rate.

Fabulous article which is supported by some very eminent scientists:

Albert Einstein a short time after the two nuclear fission bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaski stated: "The splitting of the atom has changed everything, save our mode of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe".

Theodore B Taylor, a former nuclear weapons designer and former Deputy Director of the Defence Nuclear Agency in the USA stated:

"Increasing alarm about global climatic instabilities caused by continued release of greenhouse gases particularly CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels, has stimulated many advocates of nuclear energy to propose widescale displacement of fossil fuels by nuclear power."

"Such proposals would require building thousands of new nuclear reactors to achieve substantial global reduction in combustion of fossil fuels. This would greatly compound the dangers of destructive abuse of nuclear energy."

He said: "I have found it necessary to call for phasing out all nuclear power worldwide. To accomplish this while being responsive to the environmental disruption caused by continued large-scale use of fossil fuels, I also find it necessary to call for intense, global response to opportunities for saving energy and producing what is needed from renewable sources directly or indirectly derived from solar radiation."

Theodore Taylor's advice on solar radiation has been ignored by greedy governments since he wrote the above passages in 1996, which to me, reveals a man of wisdom and foresight and his forecasts are fitting for the mess we are in today.

Perhaps the proponents of all things nuked would be wise to access the writings of Rosalie Bertell. She has a doctorate in biometrics and has worked in the field of environmental health since 1969. She also led the Bhopal and Chernobyl Medical Commissions.

She has written a book titled: "No immediate Danger". Why the title? Because this is the "cover-up" phrase usually expounded by those with vested interests after a nuclear leak or accident occurs.

The uranium/nuke energy cycle is dirty and dangerous. Check out the increase in thyroid cancers in the USA - 103 nuke reactors yet the largest polluters on the planet!