Surely, horses pollute air much less than "Puffing Billy", but both them hardly help to overcome a tyranny of distance even physically.

By a way, there is an official recomendation in the UK to increase import of a meal in order to decrease own meal production as a step for cutting green gases.

No-one on this thread appears concerned about low-level radiation emitting from nuclear reactors.

There are now some alarming statistics disputing previous claims that LL radiation prevents no immediate danger.

Scientist, Christopher Busby, who has a 1st class honours degree in chemistry and a PhD in chemical/physics has given expert evidence to the European Parliament on low-level ionizing radiation and its effects when interacting with matter. His research into drug receptor interactions has been extensive.

The UK Herald, only today, has reported on the Scotland National Health Service's resistance to the release of local statistics on childhood leukemia around the Chapelcross nuclear reactor in the UK, where leukemia is purported to be double to other areas.

The Scottish NHS appear determined to keep the statistics secret and despite Freedom of Information, have appealed against an order for the release of these documents.

It appears that the usual cover-ups prevail, similar to the antiquated Chernobyl disaster, where scientists failed in their health statistics to include the fall-out over other countries where contamination from Chernobyl occurred and is continuing.

The scientifically acclaimed author of "No Immediate Danger" devotes an entire chapter to the cover-ups within the nuclear industry (including the arms' race) which the author claims is depleting the human store of health.

I remain convinced that the "dogma and delusion" is not from the proponents for renewables but rather from the pro-nuclear industry which is determined to achieve its goals for a more radioactive planet.

Surely, the nuclear industry must acknowledge that uranium ore is also finite and serves no long term purpose for humanity beyond the next generation or so and scientifically, that purpose is seriously flawed.

Dickie,

The release of radioactivity from power reactors is miniscule. Doses to individuals are too low to measure and are a small fraction of natural background radioactivity.

Childhood leukaemia is considered to be a “two-hit” sequence of molecular events. First hit in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (AAL) may well be an in utero event. It is not known if this is a genetic, environmental, or random event.

Post natal activity and infection are most likely the causal event for the promotion of the pre leukaemic clone. Greaves has argued that exposure to infection in early life is necessary for the subsequent proper working of the immune system. While Kinlen has presented evidence that leukaemic clusters are result of a non specific infection. Probably a virus, herpes virus and EBV are possible candidates.

The Comare 10th report of 2006, from table 2.1: 25km radius from Chapelcross; data was obtained from 33 wards; observed cases 24, expected cases 29.83, standardised incidence ratio 0.805.

Comare 11th report confirms that AAL occurs in clusters through out UK. Pattern is non random. However, the pattern DOES NOT show increased rate of clustering near nuclear installations.

Lastly, I will observe that Christopher Busby is best known as an anti nuclear advocate associated with, “The Low Level Radiation Campaign” and publications from “Green Audit.” He is not noted for his skill as an unbiased epidemiological scientist. The report in the HERALD of July23rd may well have great appeal to conspiracy theorists. The problem for the antinuclear advocates is to explain why their theories of disease causation are at variance with the great bulk of medical and scientific literature

Anti-green

COMARE's credibility has often been questioned with their methodology in assessing the public health risks to radiation exposure.

There is no consensus on the latest fad by some scientists that leukemias are a result of "post natal activity or infections." Many of us are aware that radiation exposure is responsible for accumulated cell damage which compromises the immune system.

Professor Sir Richard Doll, described by some as an "eminent cancer specialist" quickly changed his mind on the low-level radiation theory he earlier expounded, when his committees were funded to the tune of some 3 million pounds by the BNFL, UKAEA and CEGB.

The good professor even testified against leukemia victims. However, BNFL has paid out millions of pounds in compensation for workers who succumbed to leukemia and other related cancers. Why?

Kofi Annan stated that victims of Chernobyl are still suffering and 3 million children require treatment and many will die.

WHO, in April 2000, confirmed that 50,000 new thyroid cancers, among children living near Chernobyl, have emerged and the worst is still to come for more than 7 million people.

Dr Yaroshinskaya, who lived 60 kilometres from Chernobyl at the time of the explosion, chaired the Chernobyl Investigations. She subsequently wrote a book "The Forbidden Truth" exposing the devastating impacts on the European and global communities resulting from the Chernobyl fall-out.

During Gorbachev's reign, she was forbidden to publish her findings on the massive deaths and morbidities. www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-04-21-yaroshinskaya-en.html

It is of some interest that Gorbachev is now totally opposed to nuclear power.

Joseph K Gong, Associate Professor Emeritus of Oral Diagnostic Sciences and Chair of the University of Buffalo's Radioisotope Safety Committee, is one of the few scientists who has, for some 20 years, extensively studied the impacts of low-level radiation on human health.

Christopher Busby is well qualified to advance his theories on LL radiation and is not financially propped up by the big end of town. You say his views are in contradiction to the "great bulk of medical and scientific literature."

I would be pleased if you could substantiate that claim without bias.

I want to take up each issue:

#Life span of nuclear plants. Myth: they last 40 years. Facts: more like 60. Every nuclear plant that has been running for 40 years in the US that has applied for a renewal has received them. ALL new Generation III plants: 60yr plants, at least! So:, nonsense about "limited" life span. Contrast this with expected wind turbines (10 to 15 years) and solar (20 years). The longest is hydro: over 100 years for a hydro plant.

#Proliferation. Myth: nuclear energy propagates nuclear weapons. Facts: you don't need nuclear power plants to produce nuclear weapons. Most military applications of uranium come from specific *military* designed nuclear plants for the purpose of weaponizing the plutonium. It is ALL A QUESTION OF POLICY. Building a nuclear power plant and keeping the plutonium from becoming weaponized is a policy disission ONLY. That's it.

#Waste. Myth: cannot get rid of the waste. Fact: wrong. It can and has been 'gotten rid of' by reprocessing and through half-life mitigation. 99% of the waste now is no longer even that radiactive. The most highly radioactive materials have become much less so and so less dangerous. The fuel can be reprocessed with so little left over that the volume would fit neatly into a few containers on a cargo ship. In the US there is 69,000 tons of spent fuel rods. The whole think would fit onto an Aussie football field about 2 meters thick! That's IT. There is not waste problem, it's only waste management and it's been managed EVERYWHERE very nicely thank you. The waste can sit on those onsite pools for ever, basically (after 20 years they are much less dangerous anyway) or they can be reprocessed. The anti-nuclear lobby has NO SOLUTION to the waste issue they argue is a problem. The refuse to propose *anything* because they know any solution only makes nuclear energy more attractive. Hypocrites!

#Fuel. Myth: There is not enough uranium, blah, blah. This has been dealt with and dispensed with so many times I'm not going to take it up.


David Walters

I don't agree that keeping the plutonium from becoming weaponized is purely a matter of policy. Once the uranium it forms in has undergone a high burnup, so has it. This makes it no longer weapons-grade, and there's really no way to reverse that. If wooden clubs and spears had to be fire-treated, their conversion, by too much fire-treating, to ash and gas would represent a similarly irreversible deweaponization.

Thus, the tens of thousands of tonnes of spent fuel from commercial power reactors are generally believed to be no proliferation threat, and the countries such spent-fuel caches are in -- about 33, as I recall -- outnumber the known and suspected nuclear weapons-possessing states, and do not include all of those states.

If small low-temperature reactors with no attached heat engines nor dynamos were harder to build and less numerous than commercial power reactors, and the reactor-bypassing Hiroshima method did not exist, then some proliferator at some time might have had to fall back on the not-bomb-grade plutonium in spent commercial power reactor fuel, or surreptitious limiting of some fuel to low burnup. Since small low-temperature reactors without attached power conversion equipment are in fact more numerous, easier to build, and easier to conceal, this seems unlikely and there is no known precedent.

Hey wait a minute, he's saying Nagasaki-style bombs can come from small concealed non-power reactors. We can't accept that unless he points to some such reactors! Hah!