I came across low radiation studies, and although an issue was still unclear, a convictional wisdom is that low radiation levels are positively critical to a human development and well being.

Chapelcross was substantially demolished in May. Perhaps, oncoming few years will reflect changes occurred if any link existed.

There is genuine science on the long-term low-level radiation question. Antinukes never cite it because they know truth is not their friend. See http://www.radscihealth.org/RSH/ or look up the work of Rosalyn Yalow.

Multiple independent studies show that big geographic variations in natural background radiation levels, big enough that a low-background county could not be brought up to the level of its high-background neighbour even if a thousand nuclear power plants were built in it, make no public health difference. Not in humans, not in animals, not in latecomers, not in populations that go back generations.

Troublemaker Nuclear energy requires the creation of more greenhouse gas than is saved in the short power stations life time. Beyond that a nuclear powerstation is a white elephant consuming national income for no reason other than stopping people from being killed by it as it falls apart. Uranium resources have past their peak , to switch to nuclear power now would be economically and technologically incompetent on our behalf.

Nuclear power has no environmental benifit at all, no economic benefit at all to a nation. Only the owners of a nuclear powerstation benifit if they recieve welfare/subsidies from the public. Most of those beneficiaries are over 50 and will be dead before most of the burden of the harm they caused destroys Australian life.

Howard himself can flippantly decide his government support such a dinosaur industry because as an elderly man he has a slim chance to live so old to see the damage he has created to the environment , to the economy and to the Australian people beyond 15 years or so.

The bottom line concerning your post is there is no technology that is 100% fool proof.Even tighly controlled nuclear industries such as in Scandenavia and Japan have had problems with accidents and record keeping and the reporting of accidents. What nuclear companies claim is irrelevant to any debate , especially American based companies as there is a strong culture of lobby in the U.S.

Meanwhile alternative energies are creeping in and slowly gaining momentum to eventually compete with coal , nuclear has been exposed as a dud.

GRLCowan,
the site you recommended, refers to the use of very low level radiation for health benefits in the treatment of illness. it has no bearing whatever on the collapse of a nuclear power plant in the event of an earthquake, bomb.... etc. nor is it referring to the possibility of nuclear storage dumps being damaged, the containers breached and the radioactive contents leaching into groundwater...
Read West's post. try to think clearly about what you are promoting, and ask yourself if you would like to live in the vicinity of either a radiation waste dump or a power plant and answer yourself honestly. Millions of people are going to be living next to them if you have your way. What would you honestly prefer -- a solar panel or a nuclear reactor on your roof? Think long and hard about that.

re
"See http://www.radscihealth.org/RSH/ or look up the work of Rosalyn Yalow.

Hormesis and radiation phobia are ideas which find far more support in among proponents of nuclear electricity than among health physicists. It always amuses me how these novel ideas garner such wide publicity among the people who turn a blind eye to more practical ideas about alternative proposals for non-nuclear electricity.

As for the quality of the argument at the website listed above, decide for yourself:

"Government agencies suppress data, including radiation hormesis, and foster radiation fear. They support extreme, costly, radiation protection policies; and preclude using low-dose radiation for health and medical benefits that apply hormesis, in favor of using (more profitable) drugs."

And I wonder how anyone can argue in favour of hormesis on the basis of this statement:
"Multiple independent studies show that big geographic variations in natural background radiation levels ... make no public health difference. Not in humans, not in animals, not in latecomers, not in populations that go back generations."

No difference means neither positive nor negative difference. Thus no difference implies no hormesis.

I would be interested in GRL Cowan's opinion on how much radiation is realeased into the environment, annually, by nuclear electricity generation in the USA, and the proportions of each category of release that he (or she) identifies.

My own preference is, of course, to benefit from electricity and other energy technologies which do not carry the risk of nuclear proliferation and sabotage. If hormesis were an accepted biological mechanism in humans, which it is not, I would not care to balance its touted benefits with the impact of direct radiation and fallout from a nuclear accident or intentional explosion.

The Ranger Uranium Inquiry concluded, in the 1970's that the nuclear fuel cycle increases the risk of nuclear war. Who can go beyond dogma and delusion to credibly demonstrate that we in Australia decrease that risk, by mining uranium or by involving ourselves further in the nuclear fuel cycle, for the sake of highly centralised, vulnerable, politically dubious and capital-intensive nuclear electricity generating stations?

The International Atomic Energy Agency's Criteria for Statistics for People Exposed to Radiation:

1. If a radiation-caused cancer is not fatal it is not counted

2. If a cancer is triggered by another carcinogen, but accelerated by exposure to radiation, it is not counted

3. Auto-immune diseases or any non-cancer, caused by radiation exposure, is not counted

4. Radiation-damaged embryos or foetuses, which result in miscarriages do not count

5. A congentially blind, deaf or malformed child whose illnesses are radiation related are not included in figures because this is not "genetic damage" but rather teratogenic

6. Radiation, causing the genetic predisposition to breast cancer or heart disease, does not count since it is not a serious genetic disease in the Mendelian sense.

7. Even if radiation causes a fatal or serious genetic disease in a live born infant it does not count.

8. Lung cancer in the occupational health of workers does not count if the victim smoked.

It appears that if all else fails, it is possible to claim the radiation dose below some designated dose does not cause cancer.

This was a technique used to dismiss the sickness of the Gulf war veterans who inhaled small particles of ceramic uranium which stayed in the lungs for two years and the body for 8 years, irradiating and damaging cells in a particular part of the body.

France and Russia are losing foreign customers due to the high cost of reprocessing. The UK, Russia and Japan are unable to recycle their separated plutonium of some 250 tons - sufficient to build some 30,000 nuclear warheads.

The $58 billion Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, which has a capacity to inter 77,000 tons of waste, is already inadequate and will not have the capacity to take all the current stored waste around the country. Its many stuff-ups will not see it operating until 2017 (doubtful), with 2,000 tons of additional waste accumulating each year.

Dwight Eisenhower is credited with stating:

"If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it."

This appears appropriate advice for the nuclear apologists!