Risks always need to be compared against alternatives, so the
risks of leukemia from living next to a nuke need to be
compared to the risks of living next to a coal fired
power station, or the risks due to a change in the global climate, or
whatever you think is a reasonable alternative. Stated on their
own, they mean little. Risks also need to be considered with
incidence rates. About 1 in 100 people will get leukemia in
Australia, while about 1 in 20 will get colorectal cancer. Since
about half of all colorectal cancer is avoidable by reducing
red meat intake to 1 time per week, red meat dwarfs any possible
risk from nuclear power as a cause of suffering.
If climate change brings extended
El Ninos, then the suffering this produces via occasional monsoon
failures will absolutely dwarf anything from nuclear.

You were a hero of mine, Helen, when I was a young and
avidly anti-nuclear. But you need to look at the bigger picture. I
have reluctantly changed my views and welcome IFR as about the
only hopeful technology that might help us out of the
current mess. It will also help us shut down uranium mines, so
if you really want to reduce uranium proliferation, you need
to be pro IFR.

Looking at the figures and not just cherry picking the results.

In an area of about 1400 sq km over about 20 years there were about 10 more incidences of leukaemia over 20 years. Which was only just statistically significant.

Findings in similar studies in Britain and France found no statistical significance.

Helen Caldicott like most Nuke protesters obviously feels that because her cause is "Right" she is not constrained to telling the whole truth, but only the fragments that support her crusade.

Nuclear provided about 16% of the world's electricity which is the greatest contributor to GHG

And your point is?

I presume that you then agree with the expansion in coal fired power (esp. in the developing countries of China and India) along with the associated health and environmental costs.

Just looking at Wikipedia there are some interesting statistics relating to coal mining

China 6,027 deaths in 2004
USA 28 deaths in 2004
Lung disease in the USA attributable to coal mining amounts to 4000 new cases annually.

I am sure further research would indicate similar figures in many other countries of the world and these only relate to those actually digging it out of the ground. As mentioned above, what about the side effects of pollution ? No one wants to live next to any power station, but given the choice, it would be a nuclear one for me.

Geoff Russell what is IFR and why do you use this acronym? Does this make you feel super Geoff, well sorry it makes you look supercilious.
Shadow Minister ditto on GHG.
Why can't you both just speak in plain English? It would make your case so much easier to understand or is that the real reason why you babble in acronyms?
Helen Caldicott After seeing the absolute spectacle of you jousting with Switkowski on TV I was astounded. If any male had put on the malevolent stare and almost frantic scribbling you subjected us to then the row would have been horrendous. The ABC would have lead the charge on male Bullying and you would have screamed the ceiling off. You are a megalomaniac whose only concern if for yourself and if you say it, I do not believe it.

Trying to seek more information I found this quote

"The study found that 37 children had come down with leukemia in the period between 1980 and 2003 while having home addresses within 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of nuclear power plants. The statistical average for Germany would have predicted just 17 cases in that group."

When figures get sufficiently low they become useless. Imagine if our road toll doubled this year when it was 1 last year but 2 this year, yep a 100% increase. If the energy needs of millions of people can be met at the cost of 20 more cases of a usually treatable illness then perhaps that's worth it. Actually you could just locate nuclear power plants more than 5km from population centers, in Australia that would be very easy, you could sit them 10km away without much trouble. Also new power plants probably capture their emissions better than these older designs. Can't see much reason here not to go nuclear.

We are talking about an additional radiation exposure in the realm of 0.0002 mSv for those living near a nuclear power plant, versus a background level of 2 to 4 mSv (depending on where you live) due to everything from cosmic rays to ground-derived radon emission to eating bananas (this last one gives you more radiation than the NPP). That’s 1/15,000 of your total yearly dosage from nuclear power (in the US). Living near a coal-fired power station would give you 100 to 300 times more radiation exposure than living next to a nuclear power plant, and even that is trivial and not the reason coal burning is damaging to your health. To consider the annual radiation caused by nuclear power stations as anything dangerous is a gross form of public deception.

The important BEIR VII of 2006 from the National Academy of Sciences (Washington) comments that an unavoidable weakness of environmental studies is the lack of direct measurement of individual exposure. So they can only be of limited value in assessing risk. With regard to populations living in the vicinity of nuclear facilities 16 ecological studies are sited and three negative case-control studies. A firm conclusion can not be made from these studies.

The Kaatch study as quoted is a case-control study. 593 cases of leukaemia over 23 years is 25.7 cases per year. The total population at risk is not stated so there is no estimate of incidence ratio and no control population with which to compare incidence ratios.

Kaatch points out that with regard to distance from a nuclear plant.
“It was not possible to account for the fact that children will naturally spend time at places other then their home address.”

According to Kaatch confounders other then radiation was not considered: such as social class, pesticides, immunological factors, exposure to ionizing radiation from other sources.

An accompanying editorial makes three important points (Int J Cancer. 2008; 122(4): page xi).

• Firstly and most likely this is a chance observation.

• The exposure to children is much higher then could be inferred from available measures.

• Thirdly Kinlen’s hypothesis is correct namely leukaemia is a rare response to as yet an unidentified an infectious agent. This is favoured by an influx of people and changing population into areas where there are large construction works. This would be especially likely if the incidence drops as the population stabilises and diminishes as the construction workers complete their tasks.

The 11th report of The Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (UK) notes that clustering both in time and space for certain childhood types of childhood leukaemia is common and is not always in the vicinity of nuclear plants.

Oh dear, it was only yesterday that K.Rudd made the announcement. I also speculated on another thread, how long before “things” started to crawl out from under the stones. Guess what? We’ve been “Caldicotted” again as rpg puts it.

Helen spouted so much rubbish in her last article that I can’t be bothered to get involved.

Good Night

Apologies to JBowyer and everybody else. IFR = Integral Fast Reactor.

Just briefly, it is a reactor cycle which uses as fuel current
nuclear waste and allows the closure of all uranium mines. So
it solves 2 of the major problems with nuclear power ... advocates
say it solves the rest of the problems also. For details see:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/05/25/p4tp-chapter-4-everyone-can-now-read-blees-on-ifr/

Apology accepted Geoff Russell and it is just so nice when people are courteous. Thank you very much.

What stage is IFR's at for commercial application?
What time scale if it was 'fast tracked' before it was generating power?

The statistics to do with leukemia have been and will continue to be arguable, but the balance keeps tipping against the nuclear electricity proponents and their experts.

Visit http://www.llrc.org for an update on the change in public view about low level radiation exposure. A jury of commoners has found that a UK soldier's fatal cancer is due to exposure to depleted uranium (in the first Gulf War).

Argue all you like, those of you who support nuclear electricity, But put your share money in alternative energy and energy efficiency technologies. That's where the smart money is going, following the exponential growth rates of these new industries and their encroachment on the centralised electricity generation market.

I don't think uranium will ever provide electricity too cheap to meter. What it does provide (but maybe only in Iran? ha ha!) is increased risk of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear war.

It's a shame tha the ALP has forgotten that among the conclusions of the Ranger Uranium Inquiry of the 1970's was the expert opinion, never refuted, that uranium mining contributes to the risk of nuclear war.

Myself, I prefer to live downwind of a windmill. No routine radioactive noble gas emissions, no deadly-force security culture, no threat of a catastrophic terrorist attack. Go figure.

And my best regards to Helen Caldicott.

Several commentators have made the invalid assumption that we have to choose between nuclear power and coal. To the contrary, the real choice is between dirty and dangerous energy sources (coal and nuclear) on one hand and sustainable energy sources on the other. Sustainable energy includes the myriad of technologies and practices of efficient energy use, solar hot water, wind power, solar thermal power with thermal storage, solar PV, and very soon hot rock geothermal power. We already have the technologies to begin a rapid transition to a 100% renewable electricity system, given the political will. Last year, the technology that added the most generating capacity to the European grid was wind power. Further down the track are wave and ocean current power.

Sustainable energy technologies and the policies needed to implement them are discussed in my book Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy (UNSW Press, 2007). However, federal and state governments in Australia have been captured by the Greenhouse Mafia and are failing to implement the necessary policies. Strategies and tactics for the climate action movement to overcome government inertia are discussed in my new book Climate Action: A Campaign Manual for Greenhouse Solutions (UNSW Press, 2009).

Thank you, Dr Caldicott for this very lucid and comprehensive article, covering the health, financial cost, and security/practical aspects of nuclear power.
Alas, it is not surprising, really, that the Australian government is supporting the present "rush for uranium".

Even the World Nuclear Association knows that the "nuclear renaissance" is not happening, as reactors close down faster than they are being built, and investors and tax-payers are reluctant to take on the financial burden of nuclear power
The short-sighted view of governments, seeing no further than the next election, is to promote their corporate backers. And who needs backing more than the uranium industry - to sell the stuff fast, before its market disappears?

At the same time, the pro-nuclear/uranium hype goes on. Part of it appears to be the wave of critical comments right here. These writers make little real attempt to answer the aspects raised by Dr Caldicott. Indeed, some of their efforts are laughable, appearing in what is supposed to be an informed, intelligent forum. ( It must be hard for some people to be faced with factual, well expressed information, when they have the job of countering it). I quote:
"Helen spouted so much rubbish" …."The malevolent stare and almost frantic scribbling" ..."a megalomaniac whose only concern if for yourself and if you say it, I do not believe it". (not very convincing, pro-nukers. You'll have to do better, or maybe rethink your position?)

Mark,

I went and read your article "The Base-Load Fallacy" where you start out defining base load as:

"A base-load power station is one that is in theory available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and operates most of the time at full power."

Rubbish.

"Baseload plants are the production facilities used to meet some or all of a given region's continuous energy demand, and produce energy at a constant rate, usually at a low cost relative to other production facilities available to the system"

The reason most of them run 24/7 is because to achieve high efficiencies they are built on enormous scales and take days to start and hours to stop, (Which is why they cannot be used for peak power not the need to repay capital cost) but produce power for a fraction of the cost of the peak or swing supplies.

Secondly you claim:

-The average generation capacity of a wind farm is about 34% (850/2600) - The large scale wind farms in Spain achieve about 20%

-"For widely dispersed wind farms, the back-up capacity only has to be onefifth to one-third of the wind capacity" - The CSIRO modelling indicates that this would need to be closer to 90% of installed capacity, due to the high correlation of wind velocities in various areas in NSW and Australia.

The other solutions you mention ie:

- Solar does not work when power is most needed,
- Hot rocks has yet to produce a single economically viable plant,
- Biomass because of the high water content is only viable when the boiler is close to a large continuous source of fuel otherwise the cost of transport is excessive.

My conclusion is that this paper could only have been written by someone with no practical experience of power generation and distribution, such as a student.

I look forward to you supplying supporting references not published by yourself.

It has been our experience in Illinois, USA -- the most nuclear-reliant state in the US -- that nuclear advocates are the ones who cherry-pick the most convenient data. Just one example:
In 1990 the Electric Power Research Institute study, "Efficient Electricity use: Estimates of Maximum Energy Savings" concluded: "RESULTS: Use of energy-savings technologies would result in a saving of...24-44% of electric energy consumption." This same conclusion was reached by three subsequent national laboratory studies in the 1990s and beyond.
Since the entire output of the whole US reactor fleet of 103 reactors only contributes ~19-20% of electricity need per year, we have known that simply being smarter and more efficient with the electricity we produce would obviate the need for the entire US nuclear industry electricity contribution -- and all the concomitant liabilities like: nuclear waste, "allowable" emissions, accidental releases, nuclear proliferation, security risks, etc.
As a previous comment correctly stated, the REAL choice is not between coal or nuclear; it is between sustainable renewables and efficiency vs. unsustainable, polluting and political destabilizing sources.
The facts to be faced are: 1.) both Americans and Australians are energy gluttons and highly inefficient users;
2.) the costs of new nuclear projects are simply off the charts compared to viable, already performing alternatives; and finally
3.) in a climate disrupted world, where WATER will become an even more premium resource, ANY technologies tied to steam cycles will be at an economic and environmental disadvantage. We have already seen that thousands of reactor-days of operation have been curtailed or eliminated entirely worldwide because of lack of needed water volumes and flows during severe drought conditions. Surely, the droughts in Australia, SW United Stated this year; SE US last year; and parts of Europe this year and in 2003 should be warning enough that steam-cycle fossil fuels and nuclear are a liability, not an asset.

The gallant and noble knight Sir Vivor is free to live where ever takes his fancy. There can be no possible objection to a dwelling down wind of a wind farm.

He might like to know that there is a reported mortality and morbidity incidence from wind electric generation.

http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk

Data presented by Dr. Switkowski in “Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy” indicates that for per GWe energy generation the nuclear industry has the best record of all. [0.006 direct fatalities per GWe/year].

Anecdotal stories of alleged and highly improbable harm from depleted uranium etc is hardly worthy of being called evidence. It is my view that the risks and hazards of low level radiation exposure are wilfully exaggerated by the anti-nuclear organisations.

I believe that there is a very strong case for Australia to restart a nuclear energy program. When Prime Minister McMahon cancelled the Jervis Bay Nuclear Reactor in 1972 much expertise in nuclear engineering was lost to Australia. Now is surely the time to regain that knowledge and experience.

Truly there is no such thing as a “Risk-Fee World.” The message from the Switkowski report is that the benefits of nuclear energy by far out weigh the risks.

The boutique energy solutions as suggested by Dr, Mark Diesendorf - assisted by generous government subsidies - have their place in the Australian energy mix. None-the-less with out the continuing use of coal and hopefully nuclear, it is very doubtful if our future energy requirements can be satisfied.

(skimming through this thread quickly...)

SM ("Nuclear provided about 16% of the world's electricity which is the greatest contributor to GHG") no, last I heard, approx TWO THIRDS of GHG emissions globally stem from industry, agriculture, transport and deforestation, according to the International Energy Agency.

In any case, when it comes to sustainability and safer, cleaner alternative energy sources, energy conservation and efficiency must come first. The remainder can certainly be a *combination* of alternatives, many of them obviously also de-centralised.

Furthermore, in dollar terms, aside from nuclear being un-insurable without the taxpayer, "The most recent cost projections for new nuclear reactors are, on average, over four times as high as the initial "nuclear renaissance" projections" - "The Economics of Nuclear Reactors, Renaissance or Relapse?", 18/6/09 by economist Dr. Mark Cooper.

Anti-Green, can you tell me whether Dr. Switkowski's "best record" statistics apply locally in the country around Chernobyl?

As for your regrets over the cancelling of Jervis Bay, did you ever consider how the Jervis Bay naval base might be affected by an attack on a reactor there? Say the base was targeted by an ICBM of the era, what would be the consequence of a nuclear explosion within the "bulls-eye" (CEP) zone of a Soviet missile in, say, 1980?

I would venture that, if the reactor were hit instead of the naval base, you would want the wind to be blowing out to sea for a long time, as the fallout footprint would be substantial. A near miss would also be inconvenient.

Who knows? Perhaps that's why the McMahon government thought better of building a reactor just there.

Despite your dire warnings, I'll still opt for living downwind of a wind farm.

Still, I have to admire your dogged persistence, in the face of a blizzard of change.

It is difficult to respect people who hide behind a pseudonym when they attack a scholar who publishes books and research papers under his own name. No doubt some of these characters are actually working for the coal and nuclear/uranium industries. Come to think of it, there isn’t much difference between these industries, since both of them are partly owned by the same corporations, such as BHP Billiton.

Shadow Minister is completely out of his depth. For instance, he claims incorrectly that “solar does not work when power is most needed”. Well actually, power is most needed during the daytime. During the night power demand is often so low that it is boosted artificially with low off-peak prices for electric hot water, just to keep several coal-fired power stations running. In Australia we could retire 4600 MW of coal power if we replaced off-peak electric hot water with solar and gas hot water. We could also replace the daytime generation from those retired coal stations with a mix of combined-cycle gas and renewables.

Shadow Minister seems to be unaware that some Spanish solar thermal power stations have thermal storage, currently up to 7.5 hours of generating capacity. There is no credible technical or economic reason why this storage could not be extended to 24 hours. At present 7.5 hours is sufficient for gaining maximum economic value during peaks in demand.
Biomass residues supply 10% of Denmark’s electricity and also significant contributions in several other European countries. They could supply at least 20% of Australia’s electricity.
On a global scale wind power has been growing steadily at about 30% per year. In China it has been growing at 100% per year for the past 5 years. This is no boutique industry!

Meanwhile, the percentage contribution to global electricity from nuclear power has shrunk to 14%. Furthermore, according to a recent detailed study by CA Severance, the cost of nuclear electricity has overtaken that of solar PV. No wonder the nuclear industry and its supporters are resorting to abuse, misrepresentation and obfuscation

Sir Vivor, the answer to you question is yes. I quoted from table 6.1 of the Switkowski review. Table 6.1 includes 31 direct fatalities from Chernobyl.

As you are well aware the Russian design RBKM reactor had serious design flaws and inadequate operation manuals. These problems I understand have been corrected. In any case a future Australian reactor will be a state of the art 4th generation machine and thus have none of problems associated with the obsolete Russian reactor.

The Chernobyl story has been described in detail see UNSCEAR 2000 – Annex J and the “Chernobyl Forum” and similar documents.

For information on the effects of a putative nuclear armed intercontinental missile I can only advise that you make a diligent search of the Hollywood film catalogues.

The significance of Kaatch et al (leukaemia near German nuclear plant) is that it confirms many other reports and according to scientific method (after Bradford Hill) strengthens belief in a causal connection. The occurrence of clusters that are not near nuclear plant does not prove that there is no causal link, especially when we consider that the contamination from the plant is, in many cases, deposited far away. Examples are Bradwell, Essex, UK, which discharges to the sea; the highest levels found by official monitoring of sediment are 15 miles inland at Maldon, Essex, which has a doubled mortality from cancer of the female breast, according to official data (we don't have data for leukaemia - sorry). The coast of Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland is another example, and the radioactivity in this instance came mostly from Sellafield.. See http://www.llrc.org/epidemiology/subtopic/dundrennan.htm.
The true death toll from Chernobyl was approaching 1 million by 2005, according to Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature ed. Alexey V. Yablokov, the late Vasilly B. Nesterenko and Alexy V. Nesterenko
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 2009. I outlined the mortality data in a BBC broadcast recently - it can be heard at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00kwn5l, 30 minutes into the clip. And see http://www.euradcom.org/publications/chernobylinformation.htm.
The point is that the radiation risk model advised by ICRP and the absorbed dose quantities on which it is crucially based are bankrupt. There are types of internal exposure for which the concepts of absorbed dose become meaningless (see for example, the Majority Report of the UK Government CERRIE committee reported in 2004 - http://www.cerrie.org). It is therefore impossible to use dose figures to dismiss observations of disease, where there are potential links to internal contamination. An outline of the argument can be seen at http://www.llrc.org/du/subtopic/dysonverdict.htm. The upshot is that comparisons of risk from various power sources have to use a different, more scientific basis for the nuclear option, if it is indeed an option to use a technology which confers such long-term genetic hazards.
Richard Bramhall
CERRIE member 2001 - 2004
Co-author of CERRIE Minority Report

Anyone who continues to quote the preposterous statistic of "31 direct deaths" caused by the Chernobyl accident is either an idealog, a shill for the nuclear industry, or deliberately uninformed.
First, even the "official" toll now is over 50.
Second, the issue of "direct" deaths is grossly misleading -- perhaps deliberately so. If they are "direct" the implication is the victims died from radiation exposure. If this is the issue to be concerned with, a true apples to apples comparison to other industries would beg the question of "how many people have died from direct contact with sunlight at solar facilities; or from contact with the wind at wind farms." To this writer's knowledge -- NONE.

And since the number is so "low" (except to the families of the victims), it is therefore somehow made to appear "acceptable." Acceptable -- to whom? And over what time period? This is the unique feature to nuclear accidents -- they don't end when the "direct deaths" are buried; they have temporal impact most other accidents do not exhibit, and given the wide distribution of the radionuclides a uniquely spatial impact as well - as every nation north of the equator discovered after Chernobyl.
Finally, there are more impacts of meaningful consequence than direct deaths -- such as direct injuries, survivable disabilities, long-term effects, and in the case of radiation, potential genetic impacts.

Anyone willfully choosing to ignore these unique effects of Chernobyl specifically and nuclear accidents generally engages in enormous deliberate distortion and does the public debate on nuclear power an incredible disservice.

Returning to the first comment, by Geoff -- yes, we assess risks by comparing them, however the comment moves swiftly to putative BENEFITS, passively inferring that nuclear can provide benefits such as prevention of climate impacts. The nuclear carbon footprint is significantly smaller than coal (the nuclear fuel cycle relies heavily on petroleum, as Australia knows) however, the excess COST, long DELAYS and as Helen correctly points out, the lack of supply chain for key components (like any moribund industry) mean that nuclear simply cannot deliver the alleged benefit. Therefore radiation risk is not balanced by this benefit.

FURTHER -- pouring public resources into nuclear (there is next to no private finance anywhere in the world) we set ourselves back from real solutions.

To invoke another expert, Dr. Caldicott's credentials and sources are sterling, in support of her: Dr. Amory Lovins' data shows energy efficiency delivers more than TWELVE TIMES the greenhouse gas reduction per dollar compared to investment in new reactors. See: http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E08-01_AmbioNuclIlusion.pdf

We must also factor that the impact that an unabated climate crisis would have on nuclear -- it is not pretty. Station black-out is about 50% of the risk of a major reactor accident. Turbulent weather brings down the power grid -- reactors depend heavily on off-site power. Yes, there is back-up, but look at the reliability figures -- what is already risky for health and for wealth, becomes compounded by unbridled climate.

We can prevent this by a UNIFIED investment by all thinking people in bringing the developed world into an "energy-lite" mode...USA first and foremost (yes,I am here, working on it).

FINALLY -- a source on GEN IV reactors including the Integral Fast Reactor (aka breeder reactor) -- also by Amory Lovins of Rocky Mt Institute. http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid601.php

These are not new reactors -- they are in fact, already failed technologies. An economy based on plutonium is not a wise next step for this planet. Let's wake up and start working together on real solutions.

Dr Caldicott's analogy that the push for nuclear power to combat global warming is like telling a patient to smoke to lose weight, is well made. There is pressure for nuclear power from vested interests, and from some scientists who appear to regard promoting nuclear as a test of their authority and a badge of honour. Even in Australia, blessed with abundant solar energy and other alternatives to coal such as hot rocks, we hear the nuclear mantra. Of course, given the Australian government's hypocritical uranium mining stance of "safe for overseas markets, but not for us", that in some ways is not surprising.

Business will keep telling us there is no other solution to the problems created by its extremely profitable burning of fossil fuels, other than for it to generate more profits through dangerous, waste-creating, weapons-proliferating nuclear power, which at the very least will create a profound toxic hazard for thousands of generations to come, if we don't blow ourselves up first. Nuclear proponents cannot deny that it creates toxic waste that we do not know what to do with beyond storing it in leaky drums, and that it creates the material for nuclear weapons. It is a short-term, extremely dangerous solution to the problems of global warming.

Nuclear enthusiasts will assure us that it is safe, that Chernobyl was an old reactor, a Soviet reactor, a Commie reactor - nothing like the turbocharged computer-geeky ultramodern ones they want to foist on us, clean enough to eat your lunch off. They will try to explain away Three Mile Island, blasts at Japanese reactors, the leaking of radon gas, and all the rest. They will tell us - wrongly - that only nuclear energy can step in to provide the base load power that coal does. They will tell us that the world which men like them have profited so much from warming up, now needs their nuclear power plants to cool down.

As Dr Caldicott argues clearly and cogently, we listen to the nuclear fan club at the peril of the entire human race.

We are presented with so many apparently good reasons for not investing in nuclear energy. If we accept these as being valid and that there are better alternatives for saving the planet, what alternatives are there? When are we going to hear about solutions rather than problems?

Can any one of the “no nuclear” subscribers tell us just how they propose to meet our energy needs without nuclear?

For instance, if it is true that the best the UK can ever hope to achieve is a 10% contribution from renewable energy, which can’t even keep up with demand inflation, how can this possibly be a realistic solution?

If “clean coal” is to be part of the solution, how do we avoid burning more coal to raise thermal efficiency so we can actually extract carbon?

If we must use comparisons of nuclear vs. non nuclear, why can’t we use the French who, as I understand it, are the largest contributors of nuclear power with some 75 reactors?

It is so easy to “knock” everything, so if you are so smart, stop doing a “Caldicott”, do the hard yards and tell us what the alternatives are?

Mark,

I am not the one posing as an expert in the field and shamelessly plugging my own book.

I have 20+ years in heavy manufacturing a portion of which was involved in designing, building and maintaining large cogen power systems running off waste and supplemented with biomass for the factories. In addition I was involved in the on sale of the excess power to the network. (never worked for any company with coal or nuclear interests)

So while I do not purport to be an expert, I have sufficient understanding to see that what you writing bears little or no resemblance to reality.

I would love to give my real name, but my position within the company dictates that writing under my own name could be construed as representing the company.

Your comment "No doubt some of these characters are actually working for the coal and nuclear/uranium industries. Come to think of it, there isn’t much difference between these industries, since both of them are partly owned by the same corporations, such as BHP Billiton."

Shows that your writings are inherently biased, and political rather than technical in nature.

For wholesale electricity Where does Solar fit?

PEAK PERIOD is from 7.00am–9.00am and 5.00pm–8.00pm on weekdays.
SHOULDER PERIOD is from 9.00am–5.00pm and 8.00pm–10.00pm on weekdays.
TOU OFF-PEAK PERIOD is at all other times.

Either you are out of your depth or you are deliberately liberal with the truth.

There is little solar generation outside the 9am to 3pm window, and heat storage adds hugely to the capital and maintenance cost of generation without any more capacity.

Like wise PV costs per kilowatt are now cheaper than nuclear per kilowatt, but are useless for 18hrs a day.

Mary Olsen,
re-read your Amory Lovins webpage. It states in its first paragraph that:
"... on closer examination, ... Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs) and thorium reactors reveal no economic, environmental, or security rationale, and the thesis is unsound for any nuclear reactor."

Anti-Green,
I’ve done a bit of Googling. Sadly, the item I would dearly love to see downloadable,

Nuclear war: the aftermath
in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio, in 1982.

just isn’t available online.
Therein are pictures of the fallout footprints I mentioned in my earlier post.

but read

"The Effects of Nuclear War on Health Services", 2nd edition, WHO, Geneva, 1987
whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/1987/9241561092_(p1-p82).pdf

which states on page 17 that:
"If a nuclear bomb attack struck a nuclear reactor or a nuclear facility its radioactive contents would be carried up in the mushroom cloud along with the fission products of the bomb and add to the fallout hazard. Their contribution to the radioactivity received by the population would be initially small in comparison with the amount of radionuclides of short life that are generated by a bomb. As the short-lived radionuclides decayed, however, the contribution of the reactors would gradually become preponderant, because of the long-lived radionuclides present in reactors and storage tanks. Thus, an attack on reactors in a major nuclear war could result in a significant increase in the long-term radiation dose."

Also, see

The Medical Implications of Nuclear War (1986)
Institute of Medicine (IOM), available free on line.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=940&page=227
showing a fallout map that I expect came from Ambio.

Page 228 tabulates deaths from attacks on US nuclear facilities and I point out the unpredictable effects of attacking nuclear targets, civil or military. The fatality estimates vary by a factor of roughly 5 to 10, meaning you 10. Meaning you can have a catastrophe, or a catastrophe times 5, or a catastrophe times 10. Go figure.

I didn't search the Hollywood film catalogues, but I believe the topic could indeed use a Hollywood thriller. Thank you for the suggestion, I'm passing it on!

Spindoc ("Can any one of the “no nuclear” subscribers tell us just how they propose to meet our energy needs without nuclear?")...
Despite feeling it's been said repeatedly (here and elsewhere), yet nuclear proponents fail to a) listen and b) understand that this is not a "coal OR nuclear" issue...

As I mentioned, for sustainability (if climate change is symptomatic of a bigger issue of ignorant western consumption & waste, on several levels), then energy conservation, then efficiency, must come first. Both of these REDUCE base load and peak load demands, for a given population.

EXISTING efficiency measures could cut energy use in the manufacturing, residential and commercial sectors by up to 30%, reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 15% and it would pay for itself in just four years. This report (by the Australian Ministerial Council on Energy) was signed off by every State environment minister.

Secondly, wind power has had an average annual growth of about 25% over the past 20 years. In recent years grid connected solar power has grown annually by 60%. Renewable energy is now the fastest growing of all energy industries and was worth $54 billion annually (2007 figures).

Australia could supply nearly 10% of its electricity demand from solar by 2020 simply by installing 3kW solar PV systems (ie, solar photo voltaic alone, excluding solar thermal or gas boosted solar) on just a third of Australian households. (Business Council on Sustainable Energy).

AND Australia already generates an equivalent amount of electricity from bio-energy to supply all homes in Tas. By 2020 bio-energy could supply a third of Australia’s electricity if it expands at the current 3% average for industrialised countries, generating an estimated 250,000 jobs.

Finally, I'm not sure if this has been mentioned: “Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power,” Craig A. Severance – one of the most detailed cost analyses publicly available on the current generation of nuclear power plants being considered. Romm, Joseph, “The Staggering Cost of New Nuclear Power,” Center for American Progress, January 5, 2009. http:climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/1/ (nuclear-costs-2009.pdf).

Atom1 and others, it's no longer up to you to state what the conditions are, or are not, that Nuclear Energy is debated under.

We need energy, the developing world needs energy and if coal is running out and is possibly guilty of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, (if you subscribe to that, fine) we need an alternative.

So Nuclear Energy OR coal (or anything else) is on the table - in the past the No Nuclear activists enjoyed the no competition situation, that's changed.

I can see how it is really irritating you all to have this now to argue in addition to vilifying Nuclear Power, but times change, so you better get used to Nuclear Power being held up against other power sources, and the hobby, early versions of renewables are just not realistic yet.

I'm not in the Nuclear, or even the power industry, but I can see we need energy, I can see coal is being vilified so use will possibly be reduced. (no one is paying me to write this or have the point of view I have, I thought I better state that now since it is part of the "anti nuke kit", like the AGW folks, you have to attack motives don't you. Like others, I don't reveal my identity as there are mitigating factors, not related to energy, but to privacy)

Really your only course of action if you want to continue with your Caldicotting, is to jump on the bandwagon to free coal of guilt and pump it up as a safe source of energy.

I do hope all the No Nukes folks feel properly silly that they have held back development of a technology and now that we need it in an advanced, safe for, it's not available - we could be up to 7th or 8th generation reactors by now. I'm sure someone from the Climate modeling world would be able to put something together to support that presumption. (/sarc)

rpg "held back development of a technology" ?? It's been with us for 60 odd years, and still accounts for only 14% of global electricity production.

As for any discussion on the Chernobyl disaster, it's worth bearing in mind some facts: The UN Chernobyl Report (whilst being only a draft report & thus compromising the World Health Organisation's relationship with the IAEA) ignores that 53% of the radioactive fallout fell across Europe, it ignores the long latent period of cancers and, thus, that no accurate assessment of the death rate can be made based only on the past.

I thank Richard Bramhall for drawing attention to the Committee Examining Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE). The committee ranged over many disciplines and sub disciplines in radiation science. No one person could claim to be a master over the whole field. There was no universal agreement among the CERRIE members; a spectrum of views was expressed from over to underestimating the hazards of radiation. This is not surprising considering the membership and affiliations of committee members. The dissenters (a committee term) were not allowed to publish a separate minority report, but their views were recorded. The greatest opinion differences were in the section devoted to epidemiology.

Radiation protection is at the interfaces between science and societal concern. The risks and/or benefits of radiation and setting legislative standards raise problems in economics, philosophy and ethics.

From the beginning of the 20th century ionising radiation has been of benefit to mankind in medicine, science research and industry. For the past 6 decades power generation can be added to the list. It is not claimed that there have never been accidents (some very serious indeed). However, these are well recorded in the literature. Studied and investigated in depth and remedial action taken. Few complex activities are accident free.

CERRIE points out many uncertainties in radiation dosimetry. However, humans have always had to make decisions on uncertain and inadequate evidence. This is certainly true in medicine and I am sure is also the case in business and governmental decision making.

It is clear that the “dissidents” have but one political aim; to curtail by law all applications of radiation science to human welfare. The downside and detriment of such a policy is never considered. Compared to say smoking and asbestos dust and certain infections, etc. low level radiation is a weak carcinogen

How would Dr. Caldicott like to practice paediatric medicine (even allowing for dosimetric anxiety about some modern imaging studies) with out the services of radiological and nuclear medicine facilities?

Atom1 "It's been with us for 60 odd years, and still accounts for only 14% of global electricity production.", yes because of the scaremongering and whiny activist industry.

Yes, it has been Caldicotted, that is constantly berated and beaten up by scare campaigns, exaggerations and general BS. The average punter is not going to fact check everything, and usually thinks where there is smoke there is fire .. it's reasonable to them.

If the industry had not been scaremongered and catastrophied to near death then we would have way more than the tiny percentage of nuclear plants - that's what I said above, but obviously you only want to believe what you want.

It would be generations ahead, but your activist society can be proud that you held it back with scare campaigns - well done that chap!

So now we have basically no alternative to coal .. good on you mate, that's great, do you feel good about it, fine. Don't tell me about "renewable" sources, none of them is mature enough to replace coal. Try me on "future" green technologies, pull the other leg, it will be decades before anything is nearly ready - Nuclear would have given us breathing space, but no, you people selfishly decided you knew better.

I'm not trying to convince, you, you're a believer, I'm reinforcing the doubt most reasonable folks see in all the BS that gets sprayed by Caldicotts, our modern version of Luddites.

AntiGreen seems not to have understood the clear message to be inferred from the arguments and links I provided and he falls into the trap of thinking "dose" is the right yardstick. It isn't, and that is the key message from CERRIE. The right yardstick is ionisation density at the target of interest - almost certainly DNA. There are no grounds for claiming that low levels of radioactivity are weakly carcinogenic. The Uranium which killed Lance Corporal Dyson was very weakly radioactive. In light of all the new information, especially from Chernobyl ("a low dose event", according to the old way of thinking) we have to revisit the whole topic.
AntiGreen is right that risks have to balanced but decision makers (including the public) need accurate information. This is exactly why Michael Meacher set up CERRIE as an oppositional committee to explore all views and explain the differences of opinion remaining at the end of its life. But the Committee fell under the influence of the old-fashioned Whitehall mindset and its Majority Report failed the remit - even COMARE criticised it for that. Some of its substance is farcical - see for example the reporting of the increase in infant leukaemia after Chernobyl (http://www.llrc.org/rat/subrat/rat61.pdf page 11)

Sir Vivor: "It's a shame tha the ALP has forgotten that among the conclusions of the Ranger Uranium Inquiry of the 1970's was the expert opinion, never refuted, that uranium mining contributes to the risk of nuclear war."

Yep, nuclear wars require nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons require nuclear reactors (processed fuel), nuclear reactors require uranium, uranium has to be mined. Did we really need an expert to tell us that?

Spindoc wrote:
"...what alternatives are there? When are we going to hear about solutions rather than problems?
Can any one of the “no nuclear” subscribers tell us just how they propose to meet our energy needs without nuclear?"

Thank you for proving my point about nuclear advocates "cherry picking" their data to reach their self-fulfilling prophecy that we "must have either coal or nuclear."
Within this very thread Spindoc either chose to ignore or did not read the FACTS I provided that THE major US electricity trade group (EPRI) AND three national labs on three separate occasions concluded that the potential exists to displace one to two entire US nuclear industries through conservation and efficiency ALONE. This situation has not changed; such enormous potential still exists -- probably in Australia as well.

For those who have chosen to ignore people like Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mt. Institute for the past 30 years, I invite you to read up on just one of many current programs that answer Spindoc's disingenuous question very specifically:
"Carbon-Free/Nuclear-Free -- A Roadmap for US Energy Policy," 2007, by Dr. Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (www.ieer.org). The book is available online in .pdf format for FREE at: www.carbonfreenuclearfree.org . Only after you have read, digested and engaged in some debate about this dynamic -- not static -- process of how to meet legitimate enegy needs without fossil or nuclear fuels will you be in a position to make such a preposterous statement that anti-nukers have offered no solutions. Makhijani is not anti-nuke by genetic pre-disposition; but by following the data and reaching that conclusion -- a process many of us have also engaged in.

Atom1, Professor David Mackay of Cambridge University, in his book Sustainable Energy – Without Hot Air ( www.withouthotair) estimates maximum sustainable energy production of theoretical or practical renewable resources in the UK at 18 kWh per day per person against a base demand of 125 kWh per day p.p.

Tide: 3 kWh/d
Offshore: 4 kWh/d
Hydro: 0.3 kWh/d
Biomass: 4 kWh/d
Solar PV: 2 kWh/d
Solar HW: 2 kWh/d
Wind: 3 kWh/d

This analysis is supported by the Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Tyndall Centre, the Interdepartmental Analysts Group, the Performance and Innovation Unit; and the proposals from the Centre for Alternative Technology’s plan.

You can quote 60% growth in solar and 25% in wind power and what we “could” do “if only”. You miss the point that if the maximum possible contribution from renewables is 10% of our needs, what good would even 100% growth in solar or wind be? It’s still 10% of sod all.

The question you have yet to answer remains, how do you propose to improve on a maximum of 10% contribution from renewable sources? To do that you have to counter the above research, not mine.

David Kraft, You have left yourself with the same problem, show us how you propose to better the 10% renewable contribution data. Whilst you’re at it perhaps you can address the economic sustainability of moving from $30-$35 per megawatt hour for coal against $200-$400 per megawatt hour for solar? (Calculated by the Productivity Commission)

You also suggest that nuclear advocates << must have coal or nuclear>>. It is Green advocates who are killing the options, “dirty coal”, “destructive dams”,” unresolved dangers of nuclear” and “scaling back our economies”. It is you who is removing options from the table. Stop creating problems and put solutions on the table.

Stop quoting someone else’s opinion pieces and explain to us dimwit’s how you propose to meet our energy needs without coal, dams and nuclear?

The data and the sources have been provided, all you have to do better the research and challenge the significant organisations who endorsed it.

spindoc perhaps needs more light in his/her room (don't switch on a light.. try opening the blinds) if he/she can't see the table he/she keeps referring to ("It is you who is removing options from the table. Stop creating problems and put solutions on the table."). You and your quoted source seem, yet again, to have blatantly ignored the paramount factors of energy conservation and efficiency.

Perhaps also ignored is that even IF nuclear were a clean, affordable, insurable, GHG emission-free, ionizing radiation emission-free, WMD proliferation-free, terrorism threat-free "solution" it still ignores the TWO THIRDS of global GHG from non-electricity sources. This is irrefutable.

Harry C and Sir Vivor, yes it's no accident the USA's thermonuclear weapons programme is run by the US Department of ENERGY.

Indeed:

'The IPCC considered a scenario involving a ten-fold increase in nuclear power over this century and calculated that it could produce 50-100 thousand tonnes of plutonium. The IPCC concluded that the security threat "would be colossal"'. – IPCC, 1995, 'Climate Change 1995: Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change: Scientific-Technical Analyses'.

'Given India's uranium ore crunch and the need to build up our minimum credible nuclear deterrent arsenal as fast as possible, it is to India's advantage to categorize as many power reactors as possible as civilian ones to be refueled by imported uranium and conserve our native uranium fuel for weapons grade plutonium production.' – K. Subrahmanyam, former head of the India's National Security Advisory Board.

'As China ramps up it's power capacity it is aiming to double the proportion sourced from nuclear energy to 4% by 2010. While it had enough uranium resources to support its nuclear weapons program, Madame Fu said China would need to import uranium to meet it's power demands.'- An admission from China's Australian Ambassador at a Melbourne mining club meeting that Australia supplying uranium to China would support their nuclear weapons program by freeing up their own uranium reserves for this purpose. – 'The Australian', 2/12/05, 'China warning on uranium'.

Spindoc

All the anti nuke posters seem to ignorant of any basic engineering principles, and blithly try and apply what is true on a small scale to a larger scale.

For example, peak periods occur in the early morning and early evening with the greatest peak being in the early evening. The ratio between peak consumption to consumption at midday is about 2:1. The big base load generators can cope with a ration of about 1.5:1 and the rest is catered for by expensive swing generators.

PV peak generation is at midday, If the PV peak load increases to 50% of the midday load (to about 10% total load) the ratio between peak and base load is now 4:1, and either the base load generators have to vent steam (which saves nothing) or the expensive swing generators will have to be increased to cover the entire peak and some of the base load, at huge capital and running costs.

Similarily for the unpredictability of wind, above 20% of generation begins to impact drastically on the cost of the rest of the generation.

The holy grail of reducing green house emissions is to find an alternative base load, and renewable technologies have a long way to go before they can do this. The huge growth in sustainable generation is largely due to renewable generation not yet approaching the levels of diminishing returns.

The same applies to energy efficiency. 10% can be achieved without much cost or effort, the next 10% requires expensive alterations to existing infrastructure, and anything beyond that needs to replace infrastructure.

By 2050 the demand for power is predicted to double. If renewables provide 30%, and increased efficiency delivers 25% then we are still only at 90% of today, and have run out of the low hanging fruit.

Nuclear is not the only alternative to coal, but without it we are just spinning our wheels.

Spindoc & Shadow Minister:

Where were you when semiconductors eclipsed thermionic valves?

I ask because I see that change as technological evolution spurred by energy conservation. Transistors can be used to control the same flows of information as valve technology, but with significant savings on materials and energy.

If you ask me, that is what evolution (both organic and cultural) is about: optimising flows of materials, energy and information.

Have you ever thought that you might be living in the past, advocating for technologies that are laying down to rest with the dinosaurs?

However much you want to believe that nuclear electricity is an expanding industry, your belief is at least arguable. Arguing it so trenchantly does not turn your wish into a truth.

The implementation of solar and wind generation of electricity, at exponential growth rates, proceeds in stark contradiction to your arguments. Meanwhile, nuclear electricity generation is forced more and more blatantly back into the niche from which it rapidly expanded in the 1950's: the supply of radioactive materials for weapons.

The ambiguity over Iran's intentions regarding its nuclear electricity program should make clear to all that whether a nation uses nuclear power for peace or for war is a matter of debate between allies and foes.

The expert evidence, as cited above by reputable researchers and reasonable amateurs, suggests to me that nuclear electricity is part of a fatally flawed system, of unsustainable scale, requirements and consequences.

My guess is that it is being replaced by more energy-efficient means of optimising our local and global flows of materials, energy and information. Social evolution in action.

I am guessing because I am not an expert, and am applying my biologist's understanding of biology in a very general way.

Which brings me to another point: Gentlemen, While I respect your right to anonymity, I do wonder exactly what your respective fields of expertise may be.
Are you willing to say?

I thank Bramhall again for his interest. It is well understood that there is considerable on going research into both micro and macro dosimetry. A proper understanding of this new work requires specialist knowledge.

Consider the linear no threshold hypothesis (LNTH) which is still the basis of ICRP recommendations. It is simple and easy to understand and a conservative estimate of cancer risk. The main disadvantages are that it leads to the notion that the smallest of exposures is harmful and can thus be exploited to magnify public fears of radiation.

It is difficult to find authentic examples of harm below exposures of about 50-100 mSv. Not having attending the coroner’s inquest I will not comment directly on the case of Lance Corporal Dyson. However, I fail to see how an isolated coroners finding meets the Hill criteria.

I am of the school that believes a LNTH seriously over estimates the risk of low level exposures. I reason as follows in favour of a ‘J shaped’ curve:

• DNA damage occurs from non radiation processes as well as radiation. Radiation it may cause direct damage or indirect from active species that are formed in cellular fluids. Single strand breaks are more common then double strand breaks. Single strand breaks are more easily repaired.

• Cells which are not repaired or damaged by other mechanisms such as the ‘bystander effect’, or genomic instability may be subject to apoptosis (programmed cell death) and thus eliminated.

• It is by no means certain that cells which show chromosomal defects or radiation markers will necessarily turn into cancers.

• Of those remaining cells which undergo malignant change some again will be eliminated by ‘immune surveillance.’

• Then there is the vast published literature on radiation hormesis or the ‘adaptive response.

• However, the magnitude of these effects is uncertain and subject to biological variation between different body tissues and different people.

I repeat my assertion, the LLRC and similar organisations wilfully and knowledgably exaggerate the dangers of low level exposure to further a political agenda.

Sir Vivor,

I spelled out exactly what my background was earlier in the thread: in short I have more than a passing knowledge of the field.

Comparing the advance of electronics to the future advances in renewable generation is extremely naive.

Other technologies have not advanced at such a pace. I remember in high school going to a university open day in nearly 30 years ago where they were discussing all of the same technological hurdles that they are facing today and were experimenting with solar heating by mirrors, thermal storage, and wind turbines. So 30 years down the track there have been improvements by factors of scale, but renewable energy is far from being an emerging technology.

Many of the hurdles faced by these renewable sources are logistical in nature and not technical, they can be mitigated to some extent, but never eliminated. For example:

The power that can be obtained from wind is proportional to the cube of the speed. So a 50% drop in wind velocity gives a 87% drop in power. You may get wind at some sites, but even with a huge spread, the output is variable.

The hot rocks need lots of water and capital. 3km deep holes are never cheap.

If we do nothing we will reach 2050 with no reduction in GHG at all.

As a power engineer I cannot see the technology being invented and rolled out in only a few decades.

etc

Shadow Minister, I understand your points and have great respect for your expertise and knowledge. This issue remains for others to answer, if the maximum contribution from all renewable energy is 10% of base load needs, where and how can we in Australia, better the UK?

The question was asked of Atom1, the response is irrelevant, incomprehensible and offers no solutions. We must assume that since the question cannot be answered, we have no hope of achieving 20% MRET let alone the 30% proposed by the Greens.

Sir Vivor, you ask “where I was when semiconductors eclipsed thermionic valves?” Actually, I was in Paulo Alto designing early PNP Substrates using arsenic and antimony impurities to create multi-layered semiconductors. I was a micro chip designer and spent 40 years in the information technology industries and others. And your point is?

As a matter of interest, where were you?

I don’t see myself as a dinosaur by challenging the “feel good dreamtime” so many wish to believe in, and yes I do have a good understanding of engineering and technology. From that base I am comfortable with what technology will achieve and yes we will engineer solutions. I am not comfortable with the unrealistic proposals and technological exclusions that are diverting science, technology and engineering.

Helen, you have been watching but refusing to contribute or respond to the comments.

You are polarising the masses when what we should be doing is coming together to solve a global problem - energy use/abuse.

Shadow Minister ("For example, peak periods occur in the early morning and early evening with the greatest peak being in the early evening").
What do you think makes this so?
Answer: tea and toast.

Yes. Hundreds and thousands of homes using electric toasters and kettles at the same time.

Now, ("The same applies to energy efficiency. 10% can be achieved without much cost or effort, the next 10% requires expensive alterations to existing infrastructure,") try bringing an electric kettle of water to the boil vs boiling only the mount of water really needed. Immediately you significantly reduce the volume of water requiring boiling as well as time it takes to do so. Now try the same using a gas stove rather than an electric kettle.
It's simple in the extreme to go well beyond that extra 10%, from domestic use alone.

I recall Dr Calicott's similar analogy, that the sensible use of clothes lines in place of electric laundry dryers where possible in the US alone would negate the nation's "need" for nuclear power.

This is the ATTITUDE required enmasse, via free, existing – and cost saving – means to get us through.

Next, the equivalent needs to be applied to industry. As a start it would help if BHP Billiton were required, as the rest of us are, to pay for the water it uses and be recognised as the largest electricity and water consumer in our driest state... all for, (you guessed it) Olympic Dam uranium/copper mine, let alone its proposed expansion.

Replying to anti-green; a hypothesis like LNT may be simple and easily understood, but that does not mean it's right. As I have said, exposure regimes characterised by high ionisation density are an unanswerable challenge to LNT's predictions and the ICRP itself has provided detail of the kinds of exposure I refer to.
There are very many disease observations which falsify the assertion that LNT provides "conservative estimate(s) of cancer risk". The routine response by conventional agencies is "They don't fit the LNT model so they didn't happen or were caused by something else." For example the Chernobyl Forum fails to blame radioactivity for increases in disease after Chernobyl (which they admit); Repacholi and other acolytes talk up "radiophobia" as a greater problem although there is virtually nothing in the actual Chernobyl Forum Report to support it.
The "notion that the smallest of exposures is (potentially) harmful" follows inevitably from reasonably good information about the mechanism of radiation induced cellular harm - i.e. that ionisations in vulnerable tissue can be caused by the smallest possible amount of ionising radiation (obvious, isn't it?).
If I might look at the obverse of anti-green's remarks, the unreasonable extrapolation of average absorbed dose considerations into low dose but high ionisation density situations can be exploited to obfuscate and diminish public fears of radiation.
The case of Lance Corporal Dyson is in line with the Bradford-Hill criteria in that it adds to the sum of evidence that challenges LNT.
However much you favour a ‘J shaped’ curve it cannot explain a million dead from Chernobyl. The detail with which you support your belief is open to challenge, but is too complex to debate in a forum like this.
We do not exaggerate the dangers of low level exposure. We have no agenda beyond advocating important truths.

Shadow minister, you said

"I have 20+ years in heavy manufacturing a portion of which was involved in designing, building and maintaining large cogen power systems running off waste and supplemented with biomass for the factories. In addition I was involved in the on sale of the excess power to the network. (never worked for any company with coal or nuclear interests)"

Yes, but let's be more specific. What are your qualifications? For example, can you name one professional society membership? Surely, that won't let the cat out of the bag?

As for your reply to my comments, you missed my point entirely. If you wish to consider a very speculative proposition, have a look at the wikipedia article on "the maximum power principle":

"The maximum power principle can be stated: During self organization, system designs develop and prevail that maximize power intake, energy transformation, and those uses that reinforce production and efficiency. (H.T.Odum 1995, p.311)"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_principle

Maybe these ideas would register more concretely if you had seen all the vacuuum tube computer modules sold as war surplus in the electronics junk shops along Market Street, in San Francisco, back in 1960. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hand-wired modules for a dollar each, because they were no longer competitive against semiconductors and emerging transistor control circuitry. By 1965, the introduction of chip technology meant that the shelves were filling up with transistor PC boards.

Whether the maximum power principle is the driver of evolution in living species, as well as other systems and system components, is arguable; but it is an interesting speculation.

Richard Bramhall - this seems to be an enormous exageration and is what we typically expect from the hysterical catastrophists to underline their campaign.

"However much you favour a ‘J shaped’ curve it cannot explain a million dead from Chernobyl."

What - a million deaths? !

"We do not exaggerate the dangers of low level exposure."

No, clearly you exagerate other things!

"We have no agenda beyond advocating important truths."

Ha! "truth" clearly has a different definition to some.

There is no credibility when you resort to utter bullshyt like that. Thanks for reinforcing what most of us think,you will say anything if you think it will aid your case.

Q&A - Helen only has one side, and only knows how to polarise, there is no creative side to the activism, it has like AGW to some, become a belief system with no tradeoffs, no negotiation and only scorn for anyone who disagrees.

Have fun, I'm out of this pool of sewerage.

Sir Vivor,

My Qualifications include an electrical engineering degree, a BComm in Economics and analysis, and an MBA. I belong to the IEEE but working in industry have never found the need to join any other engineering body.

What are your qualifications with respect to this topic?

The maximum power principle would appear to be pseudo science. I have no doubt that technology will proceed in all areas, but not at the same speed. I am perfectly aware of the rate of advancement in electronics, but also in generation and they are worlds apart. Motors and generators are not significantly different now than 30 years ago, and while more efficient, it is only by a few percent.

Saying we need not try nuclear because there will be a renewable white Knight to rescue us in the next decade or so is pure fantasy.

There are many issues with nuclear, but it is still the safest technology we have and it is ridiculous to reject it out of hand.

I am quite prepared to put money on the table, that once all the feel good technologies have been tried and found wanting that we will either have nuclear, or be building it by 2030.

Shadow Minister,
Thank you for clarifying your background.

As I said in a previous post, I am not an expert, and am applying my biologist's understanding of biology in a very general way.

I have a BSc in biology. I am particularly interested in evolution, but I would not qualify not qualify as an expert among academic biologists, or in a court of law.

Shadow Minister, could you kindly clarify, in two respects, your statement that:
"There are many issues with nuclear, but it is still the safest technology we have and it is ridiculous to reject it out of hand."

(1) How are you measuring safety, and how does it follow that nuclear technology is "safest"?
(2) Who do you mean by "we"?

Shadow Minister ("Saying we need not try nuclear because there will be a renewable white Knight to rescue us in the next decade or so is pure fantasy.")... again, you and other pro-nukers are simply NOT PAYING ATTENTION to what myself and the many opposed to the only energy sector with direct and indirect, covert and overt, links to WMDs (which happen to also gravely threaten our global climate) have been saying.
Odo ("how to polarise").... indeed.

Part 1

Richard Bramhall. I appreciate your passion. Scanning the LLRC site, I can understand your annoyance. Your organisation was instrumental in setting up CERRIE. Yet, the chairman and the bulk of the committee were not sympathetic to your cause. Nor would they agree to a dissenting report being published under their banner.

You talk of a “million dead after Chernobyl.” How do you arrive at this number? Over what size population and over what time interval did these deaths occur? What is the age and sex distribution in the population? Why are you so sure these are radiation deaths and not due to some other cause?
Can you provide details of all confounders and interaction? Can you supply individual dosimetry for a million people?

To illustrate the requirements of epidemiology two quotes from Cardis E et al (J Radiol Prot, 2006; 26: 127-140). This is a background paper for the Chernobyl Forum.

For Leukaemia (excluding chronic lymphocytic leukaemia) a number of ecologic papers are cited: from Greece, Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, European Childhood Leukaemia –Lymphoma Study, and two studies from Russia. Not all the cited studies demonstrated a positive association.

“None of these studies, however, is sufficiently sensitive to detect small changes in the incidence of a rare disease such as childhood leukaemia and all are subject to methodological problems that may limit the interpretation of the findings.”

Two case control studies are cited. In one the principal author is also a co-author to the Cardis paper.

“A significant association between leukaemia risk and radiation dose to the bone marrow was found in the Ukraine but results are difficult to interpret due to problems in the selection and comparability of controls in Ukraine. No significant increase was seen in Belarus or Russia.”

Continued

Part 2:

I am not suggesting that we should have a technical discussion over a particular epidemiological paper.

The point I wish to make is that in these complex matters you must be experiencing great difficulty in convincing many members of the radiation community of the correctness of your point of view.

Take the example of health. Vast numbers of patients are exposed to radiation daily for purposes of diagnosis and treatment. So much so that there is concern regarding the exposure following come repeated imaging studies. The cumulative exposure could exceed several tens of mSv.

Now individual doctors may not be in a position to observe a significant increase in radiation induced illness because numbers are small. However, there are many well run cancer registries in advanced countries and these are not reporting a spike in radiation induced cancers.

My concluding remarks:
• In practise the current ICRP standards are about right. ICRP has been serving both the general and radiation communities well since its beginnings in 1928.

• Critics will continue to attack some ICRP assumptions and/or simplifications. The attacks will be in all directions.

• Future research will inevitably throw up more radio-biological information. Scientific opinion is not static. Paradigms will change as more knowledge becomes available.

AntiGreen; Contrary to what you say, CERRIE voted twice to include the dissenting material. Only one member voted against. Those decisions were reversed at the final meeting, after the Chair, Dudley Goodhead, produced legal opinions from two Government departments - vaguely threatening woffle laced with unspecified suggestions of libel. The wimps caved in. This is the way a flawed paradigm is defended.
I already said how "A million dead after Chernobyl” is derived. No confounders have been proposed for the infant leukaemia. You know that individual dosimetry is impossible; the suggestion that it's needed is a familiar pro-nuclear ploy because dose is a false consideration. One has to ask "Dose to what target? - what does it mean in terms of ionisation density?" Similarly no-one can provide details for all confounders and interaction. Be rational please.
Your leukaemia quotes are familiar territory. Most of the uncertainty derives from the difficulties of dose reconstruction and the wrong assumption that incidence has to conform with a linear dose response. This, as I already said, is the Chernobyl Forum view of the upsurge in ill-health which they admit is real. On the same grounds ICRP totally ignores Chernobyl and the chance it offers of learning something new.
Your point about cancer registries not reporting a spike in radiation induced cancers is incomprehensible. Radiation induced cancers look no different to cancers induced by other factors; nothing could be learnt about the increase in medical exposures unless one did a prospective study. CERRIE reported that in principle there is no difference between nuclear industry fallout and many nuclides used medically. The ECRR also is concerned - see http://www.euradcom.org/2009/lesvosdeclaration.htm (points 8 and 9).
There is a global cancer epidemic. It began with the nuclear era and shows variations in incidence with variations in fallout. It doesn't conform with the ICRP model which, for internal exposures, all sides now admit has a wrong basis in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A bomb survivors. Flatly contradicting your conclusion, the evidence implies a 300 - 1000-fold error in ICRP standards.

Posted on behalf of Richard Clapp:

There is so much misinformation (or disinformation) on some of the posts vilifying Dr. Caldicott that one hardly knows where to start. Let me say that she has been and continues to be an internationally recognized medical leader in the effort to raise key issues regarding nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation. I would like to associate myself with previous responses by my compatriots Dave Kraft and Mary Olson and not repeat the points they have made. Also, several people have noted that the exposures to people living near a normally operating nuclear plant are typically small - like “eating a banana” was one analogy I had never seen before. This misses the point. The issue is the fuel cycle, and in fact the highest exposures are in mining and milling operations, both to the workers and the surrounding community residents. The full fuel cycle needs to be taken into account when talking about human exposures. I have written about this in an editorial in Environmental Health Perspectives (see http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2005/113-11/editorial.html)
There were several references to alternative energy and the health and environmental impacts of fuel generation methods besides nuclear fission. The most effective “no regrets” alternatives, including conservation, wind and solar generation are readily available. A recent report by the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment called “Healthy Solutions for the low Carbon Economy” discusses these issues (see http://chge.med.harvard.edu/programs/ccf/healthysolutions.html).
Let’s get on with these alternatives and stop the name-calling.

There are many who intuitively feel that the more socially complex the “explanation”, the less likely it is to be true.

We have reached an impasse in nuclear energy debate for the same reason; the anti-nuclear “explanations” have become so obtuse and complex that the age old principle of “bull dust baffles brains” has kicked in.

It is curious that the debate has been diverted to areas of speculation and complex explanations when we have a real life example of what is being achieved. Yet for some reason, the Green lobby refuses to engage with this reality.

We have in France, a modern developed nation, with little in the way of natural carbon based resources, with the largest per capita source of nuclear power generation (74 x nuclear power stations) and a combined Hydro/Nuclear contribution of 80% of its power needs.

So why one might ask, do the “Caldicotts” of this world not offer comparison of all things nuclear, negative and nasty with what has already exists? Where are the comparisons of health, waste, cost and carbon emissions with a real life working example?

If there is anywhere in the world where it makes real sense to compare these critical issues, it is where what we seek to achieve in a low carbon economy, has already been done!

Similar comparisons must also be offered in relation to renewable energy. Why is it so unreasonable to ask the questions, where in the world is any nation achieving more than 10% of its energy needs for any combination of renewable sources? How are they doing it? And how might we improve on that?

Spindoc,

you say:
"There are many who intuitively feel that the more socially complex the “explanation”, the less likely it is to be true.

We have reached an impasse in nuclear energy debate for the same reason; the anti-nuclear “explanations” have become so obtuse and complex that the age old principle of “bull dust baffles brains” has kicked in."

Did you mean "abstruse", rather than "obtuse"? Just clarifying. Even so, I'm not sure what you mean.

Let's look at something simple, then.
Atom 1 recalls Helen Caldicott saying elsewherre "that the sensible use of clothes lines in place of electric laundry dryers where possible in the US alone would negate the nation's "need" for nuclear power."

Ah, if only it were so, everyone. The USA's "need" for nuclear electricity is inextricably woven into its "need" for nuclear weapons, and the sensible use of a cloths lines will not produce highly enriched uranium, plutonium or tritium.

I have such a difficult time understanding how the risk of nuclear holocaust or other state or non-state use of nuclear weapons factors in to your opinion of the safety of nuclear electricity.

I repeat, simply and non-abstrusely:
nuclear fuel is a proliferation threat

nuclear reactors are glowing, pulsing nuclear targets
and
while the risk of a national nuclear nuclear catastrophe may be low, the consequences are extremely damaging to the population health and the economy of the affected nation (and maybe its neighbours).

If you expect to be taken serously by anyone other than the choir you are singing to, you need to come up with authoritative estimates regarding these risks.

Spindoc,
perhaps you could strike a blow for peace and non-proliferation by organising the shipment of 1 million Hills Hoists to Iran, along with a volunteer corps to help erect them and explain to the Iranians how useful, energy efficient and non-proliferative they are.

You could go along yourself, and engage in some enlightened social exchange with people from a different culture and mindset.
Doesn't that sound interesting?

Richard Bramhall

We will just have to agree to disagree.

Lead the way John Loretz (Richard Clapp?) whatever. You lead the way and get stuck into working out renewables and whilst you are about it disconnect gas electric and water from your house. You and the greens can then collectively achieve an instant, and a long term fix eventually. Do not forget to tell your hero Al Gore to scrap the executive jet and disconnect utilities from his mansions there's a good chap, OK?

antiGreen - "agreeing to disagree" Ok, we can. And thank you for conducting this discussion with civility - so rare in this kind of anonymised forum.
At points like this my colleague Chris Busby tends to quote Joseph Conrad's "Every sort of shouting is a transitory thing, after which the grim silence of facts remains." When faced with policy that may produce such very grim silences, decision makers must not be satisfied with agreeing to disagree. That's why UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher and Health Minister Yvette Cooper gave CERRIE the task of explaining the scientific disagreements and that's why CERRIE's failure was so reprehensible

Interesting hissy fit Sir Vivor, now that you've vented your spleen, the question you were asked was;

"where in the world is any nation achieving more than 10% of its energy needs from any combination of renewable sources? How are they doing it? And how might we improve on that?"

Over to you.

This has been a good debate, timely and necessary.
Of course we have only been dealing with the tip of the iceberg - failing to address the pathogenesis of internal emitters, the significant contribution to global warming from the industrial nuclear infrastructure underpinning nuclear power, the risks and medical consequences of a nuclear meltdown, disposal of 64,000 tons of US high level civilian nuclear waste for one million years(EPA recommendation)with the inevitable pollution of flora, fauna and humans inducing genetic abnormalities and malignancies in all future generations. Last but not least the proliferation of nuclear weapons with the risk of nuclear war and nuclear winter. I refer you to NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER TO GLOBAL WARMING, published by MUP.
For those interested in solutions to global warming and nuclear power, download and read Nuclear Free Carbon Free, A Roadmap for US Energy Policy from IEER.org.

Sir Vivor,

The long and short term studies for human impact for the various energy sources per kWhr were done by an independent group and presented in this paper (it can be found elsewhere as well)

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull333/33302041419.pdf

Where the number of fatalities per kWhr is the lowest for three nuclear technologies, and far lower than any renewable source.

This is largely due to the huge focus on safety at these plants that is not present for other technologies.

The issue of nuclear plants being a target is a complete fabrication. For this to work the warhead would have to penetrate the containment wall to get close enough to the reactor for the neutron burst to "ignite" the core otherwise, the only contamination would be to scatter the reactor parts.

If you want to create a dirtier bomb all you have to do is to clad the bomb in U238 which will increase the yield and the fall out far more than bombing a reactor, and would enable you to air burst it above a population centre.

Atom1,

The extraction of plutonium, and the fabrication of a weapon is not something that one does in a back yard meth lab. If as in the west, there is adequate tracking put in place on all fuel rods, then it is nearly impossible to steal. If the production of the rods and reprocessing was done on an exchange basis could very easily tell if one has been tampered with or missing.

A nation state that wants to produce a weapon has to enrich its own uranium and plutonium in order to build a weapon, and in most cases, for the money you spend, you get far greater fire power from conventional weapons.

Osama is not going to get one unless someone gives it to him.

Spindoc,

re:
"where in the world is any nation achieving more than 10% of its energy needs from any combination of renewable sources? How are they doing it? And how might we improve on that?"

I missed your question entirely, as it was not addressed directly to me. Mark Diesendorf pointed out Denmark, I believe, on 15 September. Is it possible Denmark produces 11% (within the decent and conservative bounds of a precise estimate)? You might want to reread his post and see if it meets your stringent criteria.

I wouldn't be so restrictive as you, though. I would include energy efficiency improvements.

But how would you, personally, put the "unused energy" slice into the other 89% of your energy-use pie chart, for a given nation (say, Denmark)?

And what's wrong with sending Hill's Hoists to Iran, if it helps prevent nuclear war? My only reservation is that they don't make them like they used to.

If only it were so simple. If I really though it would work, and I had the money to spare, I'd do it myself.
As for nuclear electricity, the smart money knows it's no viable alternative. If I had any money to spare, I'd be investing it in renewables.

:)

Good old Helen Caldicott just like Kevin Rudd why say something in a simple and informative manner. Much better to inject lots of big words, adopt a supercilious tone, denigrate anyone who disagrees and spout the same old rubbish.
Helen go and sit next to Kevin and you can chat to each other. What a lovely sight both blowing hard, taking no notice of what the other one is saying and neither making any sense whatsoever!

Helen,

“There is nothing I’m afraid of like scared people”

Robert Frost

I have to agree with JBowyer. Your contributions have been obtuse, over complicated, emotional and full of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. There are many in our societies who are vulnerable to this sort of rhetoric. You are full of problems; you exclude any practical alternatives and offer no solutions. In the real world your rantings would attract a response such as; go check your facts, stop using the opinion of others, select sources that offer a non prejudicial view and finally, if you can’t do that, visit the Human Resources Office on your way out and collect your long brown envelope.

I have to wonder what marvel of human excellence might have been achieved were it not for such as yourself.

Sir Vivor, thank you for your measured response. You may be right about Denmark producing 11% of its energy needs from renewable sources. Given that we have not developed clean coal (without of course burning even more coal). The best that has been achieved from renewables is 11%, Australia has not produced any analysis of what we “might” achieve from renewable sources (either from a technical or economic perspective), no nuclear, no dirty coal and no destructive dams. If we look towards 2020, I think we are left with only one alternative that is to reduce consumption.

This leaves us with no technological solutions and a socio-economic problem. The answer it seems is to impose a carbon tax that will compound the residual socio-economic problems.

It is indeed true that “what we humans seek to avoid, we create.”

Dear Shadow Minister,
The paper on comparative risks which you cited appeared in an IAEA publication - given the IAEA's long track record of denying the health effects of Chernobyl there is no possibility that it was accurate. It contains no information on how the risks of nuclear were calculated. It is 18 years old. It is certain that, even if the health effects of routine discharges were taken into account, out-dated estimates based on ICRP were used. There is no point in debating this topic without considering the most recent information. ICRP has said its risk estimates cannot be used for post-accident exposures, which inevitably means that they cannot be used for exposures to routine emissions either

Richard Bramhall,

Your out of hand rejection of the independent study because the results were published in an IEAE paper are typical of the knee jerk reaction of the green movement to any information that does not support their cause. No independent study of this nature will ever be published in an anti nuke paper because it completely undermines the anti nuke rhetoric.

I challenge you to provide an independent study on the issue that significantly differs significantly from this.

The study was done independently in the UK, and whilst being 20 yrs old, the epidemiology of radiation has not changed significantly, and the fuzzy unknowns to which you refer are unlikely to alter the orders of magnitude difference between the safety of nuclear and all other technologies.

This means that if all coal fired generation was replaced today with nuclear there would be hundreds of thousands of lives saved, not including the loss due to climate change.

More information can be found here:

http://www.powerauthority.on.ca/Storage/82/7798_J2.3_Att_2_PSI_Comparison_of_Fossil_Nuclear_and_Hydro_Severe_Accidents_2001.pdf

Here is a link to a summary of another big study (from 1991) from the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It compares cancer deaths from 16 cancers, including childhood leukemia, between US counties that did or did not have a nuclear power plant

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/nuclear-facilities

" 'From the data at hand, there was no convincing evidence of any increased risk of death from any of the cancers we surveyed due to living near nuclear facilities,' said John Boice, Sc.D., who was chief of NCI's Radiation Epidemiology Branch at the time of the survey."

It is hard to believe that this result could occur if nuclear power were as dangerous as Dr. Caldicott and her supporters claim. If I had to choose between living near a coal fired power plant and living near a nuclear plant, I would certainly pick nuclear.

Shadow Minister,

Richard Bramhall stated in his email above is that the (1) IAEA has denied the health effects of the Chernobyl accident and (2) that the ICRP has said that its risk estimates cannot be used for post-accident exposures. He has also made an inference that seems quite reasonable to to me: that since post-accident exposure risk cannot be estimated using ICRP estimates, then neither can other low-level exposure risks be reliably estimated.

While you ask for an independent study comparable to the one done 18 years ago, that you cite, I wonder if you are aware (I expect you are) of the cost of duplicating such a study. Where, kind sir, is any independent researcher going to get the funds for a comparable study?

It seems obvious to me that big science is funded by big business, big governments or big international agencies. The big boys have the spondulics to design and carry out the studies, and the big boys can afford to publicise their results.

Unfortunately, this does not falsify the theories of the little guys; nor does challenging them to throw your kind of stone at Goliath, because no other stone will do.

Can any one of you people who are so vehemently opposed to modern nuclear power please tell me how YOU propose we get rid of the world's current nuclear waste?

Reality check: The ONLY way we can permanently rid the world of the highly radioactive actinides which we now term "nuclear waste" is through transmutation. Luckily enough, this can be achieved in an Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), which also happens to be able to provide us with LOADS of power for hundreds of years to come. The current volume of waste we have NOW will be reduced by two orders of magnitude and will be less radioactive than naturally occuring uranium-238 in less than 300 years, not 20,000.

By opposing IFRs you are essentially, pro highly radioactive "waste".

Also, the energy efficiency argument is utter rubbish. In a perfect world, maybe. It is utter fantasy to suggest that even Australia (one of the largest per capita GHG emitters in the world) will REALISTICALLY cut electricity consumption to the point where a 100% renewable energy based economy becomes viable.

To put into perspective the type of society we're trying to transform here I'll just mention this: I live with a guy who works for Greenpeace. He'll happily talk to me about "energy efficiency" and the evils of nuclear power, and then go and turn on an electric blow-heater in his bedroom, every day and night, all winter. We just got a $700 power bill because of it. And you're telling me that the rest of society is going to somehow miraculously become "energy efficient"? You have to be kidding me.

And let's not even start the discussion on the likelihood of developing nations such as India and China suddenly using less energy...

I respect Professor Diesendorf's enthusiasm for renewables, but honestly, I think it's the height of ignorance to suggest that the entire planet is going to become energy efficient enough to be powered 100% by renewables anytime in the foreseeable future.

As for Dr. Caldicott...the arguments made sense 30 years ago. Time to reevaluate.

It's not my knee that's jerking. Risk comparisons need to be revised. New theory and much epidemiology show radioactive discharges are between 100 and 1000 times as dangerous as officials currently think.
This blog began with the KiKK study. Initiated by the German government in response to public concern, it was designed by a balanced panel which included public interest scientists. That's as near independence as we'll ever get. German officials say KiKK demonstrates a 10,000-fold discrepancy with ICRP estimates. The 1991 American paper cited by Divergence looks crude. The method did not look at the distribution of discharges. Other studies show marked differences when locations downwind of the reactor are compared with upwind. In comments Divergence did not cite, John Boice said the counties "may be too large to detect risks present only in limited areas around the plants". KiKK doesn't fall into that trap.
The paper shows decreased childhood leukaemia after reactors went live. It is biologically inevitable that at some levels of exposure children will die of competing causes before leukaemia can be diagnosed. This is observed in some of the more contaminated areas around Chernobyl. It's more obvious for infant leukaemia (0-1 year) but the 1991 paper lumps infant leukaemia in with all ages up to teens, so it's not possible to tell what's going on, particularly since there's no data for exposures. It's no answer to KiKK, with its precise locational data, and it doesn't invalidate the Chernobyl studies or those showing increased childhood leukaemia around reprocessing plant.
Radioepidemiology is difficult because there are no uncontaminated controls. By 1964 all the human beings on the planet contained measurable amounts of Strontium90. We are living through a generalised cancer epidemic and the ICRP risk model is not capable of determining that it's not caused by the radioactive fallout. Episodes like Chernobyl provide abundant evidence of harm and the same is true of locations where radioactive discharges concentrate.
To get my vote, transmutation technology would have to demonstrate that its discharges and waste streams wouldn't fall foul of the shortcomings in the ICRP risk model

“Your out of hand rejection of the independent study because the results were published in an IEAE (sic) paper are (sic) typical of the knee jerk reaction of the green movement to any information that does not support their cause.”

Shadow Minister - The “independent” study to which you refer was prepared by S Haddad and R Dones who are staff members in the IAEA Division of Nuclear Safety. One could hardly refer to the paper as an independent source even though the authors did dredge up data from a paper published by someone else in 1989.

Furthermore, the fatalities published in the report were in terms of immediate fatalities. Delayed fatalities, and the long lag times between radiation exposure and health symptoms, also relevant for the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, are not included.

The IAEA is a pro-nuclear, intergovernmental agency. They have a vested interest in promoting nuclear electricity the world over as their statute advises.

The Chernobyl case is a classic example of the IAEA's inadequacy, questionable science and data diddlers.

Rosalie Bertell has held positions of Director of Radiation Research, Senior Cancer Research Scientist and many other relevant posts. Her credentials are listed here:

http://www.layinstitute.org/securedweb/gjxjsg6os0o3i6uzxmhksyw5tr5ooiblspwafkwtcm7e3_msdlc62nzdvgmv2fkj.pdf

Bertell advises:

“The essential problem is that both the IAEA and the ICRP are dealing not with science but with politics and administration; not with public health but with maintaining an increasingly dubious industry. It is their interests, and those of the nuclear industry, to play down the health effects of radiation.”

I have in my possession Bertell’s publication: “No Immediate Danger – A Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth.” I recommend it to all who have concerns over the fragile state of the environment and the impacts of the military and civil nuclear industries on human health and the biosphere.

"Living near a coal-fired power station would give you 100 to 300 times more radiation exposure than living next to a nuclear power plant, and even that is trivial and not the reason coal burning is damaging to your health. To consider the annual radiation caused by nuclear power stations as anything dangerous is a gross form of public deception."

Barry Brook - To the best of my knowledge, coal-fired power stations operating in Australia are not required to analyse hazardous stack emissions for radioactive substances and if they do, why aren't radioactive emissions' reports available to the public, through the National Pollutant Inventory? Please provide links to support your references on the radioactive emissions released from specific coal-fired plants. My curiosity should not be interpreted as one supporting the coal industry.

I am disappointed that a man in your prominent position fails to refer to the entire nuclear cycle in his publications. The uranium industry in Australia has an ignominious history and the proposed increase in Uranium mines (especially in WA) is a major threat to Australia's sustainable future, particularly its leaks, spills, poor occupational safety record and its prolific use of water, energy and the quarantine of contaminated (and precious) land in perpetuity.

One can put lipstick on a pig but it would be hypocritical of anyone to list uranium as a "clean" source of fuel for a nuclear industry. Futhermore, the documented evidence of the mining industry's operations in Australia (and its regulators) reveals their profound incompetence and a total disregard for the environment and Australia's fragile biodiversity.

Protagoras, fear, dread, scare, other peoples opinions, problems, problems and not a solution in sight. Not to mention a bucket load of pseudo-science.

Why don’t you do a mail drop to the French and see what they have to say. They run some 74 plus nuclear power stations and you cannot help but live near one, even if you go to the beach you see them. They generate 80% of their energy from a combination of nuclear and hydro. Wouldn’t we just luuuuuve to have those figures.

Don’t know how many trillion Euro’s they have banked up in Kyoto Carbon credits, they must be absolutely wetting themselves with laughter at people like you. Actually, I doubt they have ever met someone like you because they don’t have an “anti-nuclear power lobby” obviously, and we all know how they deal with Greenpeace.

What you miss completely is the fact that some are already doing what you are trying to prevent. No matter what you present as the negatives, those who are actually doing it and really hacking down carbon emissions have proved you wrong by real world example, they just enjoy the benefits.

There is a message here somewhere, but I really don’t think you’re going to get it.

Protagoras,

I never claimed the article was independent, only that the paper upon which it was based was independent.

If you had read the post, or the acreditation beyond what you wanted to see: "This article is based upon a key issues paper (number 3) prepared by an international expert group under the chairmanship of M.J. Chadwick of the United Kingdom for the International Senior Expert Symposium on Electricity and the Environment"

Proof that you never bothered to read it is that the paper deals with long term issues as well as the immediate.

No one is saying that nuclear power is completely safe, just that the same scrutiny that is applied to nuclear is not applied to any of the other technologies, if this was done, the path ahead would be clear.

I include you in the challenge to find any independent study that contradicts these findings, as I couldn't.

People seem to be missing the point of what I have written on this blog. Exercises to compare risks have used invalid radiation risk estimates, while evidence strongly suggests that the true risks are between 2 and 4 orders of magnitude greater. For example COMARE reckoned the Seascale leukaemia cluster is 300 times greater than predicted on the basis of Sellafield's discharges; the UKAEA calculated that excess prostate cancer in nuclear workers was 1000 greater than predicted for any conceivable level of internal contamination; the German government agencies think KiKK is 10,000 times greater. There are many such examples. The comparisons therefore have to be revised. One could get an idea of what a revision would look like by revisiting any papers that give data for long-term public risks consequent upon routine discharges and multiplying them by any of the above errors. My proposal, of course, leaves aside the consequences of accidents.

Richard Bramhall, ,
I for one hope that I am not missing your point. I have been concerned about long-term exposure to low-level radiation for over 30 years.

Over the ensuing period, awareness of the dangers has increased, but the hallowed orthodoxies seem as sturdily indestructible as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

Folks like Spindoc and Shadow Minister are no more expert than I am when it comes to matters of low level radiation. They appear to be engineers, not biologists, doctors or health physicists. Yet they cling to their certainties and rely on the opinions of a cohort of recognised experts who may yet be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world.

I forget which one (of the two writers mentioned in the above paragraph) pointed out how extensively the effects of ionising radiation have been studied. Certainly that was recognised back in the early 1980's - I believe I remember reading it in an article by AC Upton, in the February 1982 issue of Scientific American.

I have to be philosphical about these things. I can only guess at whether the great religious texts may be subject to even more intense study than ionising radiation. If there is a common thread, it seems to me to be the dogmatism and dependence on a high priesthood that such study reinforces in some people.

Richard Bramhall,

I am perfectly clear as to the point you are trying to make, I simply find the information from independent organisations such as COMARE appear to differ hugely from your statements.

"COMARE is an independent expert advisory committee with members chosen for their medical and scientific expertise and recruited from Universities, Research and Medical Institutes. Members have never been drawn from the Nuclear or Electrical Power Supply Industries"

A couple of quotes from their latest publications:

"There is no evidence of excess risk of cancer mortality in the vicinity of Bradwell power station in Essex"

"Studies on people show little evidence for increases in adverse pregnancy outcomes in general when mothers or fathers have been exposed to ionising radiation"

"COMARE concluded that all three reports from Green Audit contain errors that result in an over-estimation of cancer mortality risks"

"Using a unique database (consisting of over 32,000 cases of childhood cancer that occurred in Great Britain between 1969 and 1993) COMARE studied the incidence of childhood cancer in the vicinity of all the major licensed nuclear sites (power stations and other nuclear installations) in Great Britain. Using the most appropriate statistical test for each site, we found no evidence of excess numbers of cases in any local 25 km area around any of the nuclear power stations"

"By contrast, the search for increased risk levels near to nuclear power generation sites shows no pattern of excess cases of childhood cancer close to the sites of these types of nuclear installation"

I don't find anything that supports the wild claims in your last post. Did you make them up or could you supply the links?

Sir Vivor,

As you implied, I do rely on a cohort of recognised experts, it appears you prefer rumour and inuendo.

Shadow Minister
"… little evidence for … adverse pregnancy outcomes [from] ionising radiation": LLRC is talking about internal exposure arising from routine discharges and fallout. What exposures are COMARE talking about?
Proximity to NPPs is a very poor surrogate for exposure to their discharges. Moreover, the population near Bradwell is too small to show significance, and the standard method used by COMARE ignores directional flows and mechanisms of uneven distribution. In this connection I wrote earlier of Maldon which, as far as the authorities are concerned, is nowhere near Bradwell but IS near the most contaminated mud and HAS high breast cancer rates.
In contrast to the KiKK study, COMARE's used very wide boundaries - a fudge, as we predicted long ago.
Allegedly "wild claims in my last post" (240909 8:26 PM):
1) 300-fold error implied by Seascale leukaemias is from COMARE 4th Report;
2) >1000-fold error implied by nuclear workers prostate cancer is in "Cancer risk has no effect on mortality" BMJ 1994;308:268-269;
3) >1000-fold error implied by KiKK is from Strahlenschutzkommission evaluation of KiKK [http://www.ssk.de/werke/volltext/2008/ssk0806e.pdf] page 5 4th bullet.
A detailed analysis of the NCI study is in Chapter 6 of "The Enemy Within" by Jay Gould and other RPHP members published in 1996 by Four Walls Eight Windows. The Radiation and Public Health Project (http://www.radiation.org/) tell me that NCI used two tricks to arrive at their conclusion that there is no increase in cancer rates near nuclear reactors. The first was by limiting the "exposed" counties primarily to only the rural county in which the reactor is located and only occasionally to one adjacent one, so that the number of cancer cases was generally too small to be statistically significant, even though we had found counties some hundred miles downwind to be affected. The second trick was to pick "control" counties that were mostly adjacent to the "exposed" county or close to another reactor, thus showing no significant difference in rates for "exposed" and "control" counties.

“Proof that you never bothered to read it is that the paper deals with long term issues as well as the immediate”

Shadow Minister - The information provided in the paper is taken predominantly from a study carried out by A Fritzsche. May I suggest you read past the first page?

The dot points attributed to Fritzsche’s study, continue to the last page of your link – ie. page 19.

Page 15 :

• "Delayed occupational risk. Delayed
fatalities arise mainly in coal and uranium mining,
and are of the same order of magnitude."

The IAEA omitted to include the following from Fritzsche’s study:

“Only the renewable systems utilizing the energy of the sun and the wind are not susceptible to severe accidents”:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119440729/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

The useless information you provided in the link and the nature of deduction in your argument is irrelevant and obsolete. The study refers to catastrophic industry failures. Why would one need to compare the catastrophic failures of nuclear, oil and coal when they belong in a medieval era but continue to be promoted by the planet's grim reapers who wear a lepers' bell?

Uranium mining has left the Navajo Nation in the US with a legacy of over 500 abandoned uranium mines, four inactive uranium milling sites, a former dump site and contaminated groundwater - structures that contain dangerous levels of radiation.

The town of Straz pod Ralskem in the Czech Republic, has up to 200 billion litres of contaminated groundwater - a legacy of uranium mining. Restoration of the site is expected to take decades to centuries.

This year, Scotland commissioned a windfarm which provides energy to over 180,000 homes and has the equivalent of displacing 500,000 tonnes of CO2 a year with government approval to extend this by another 130MW.

Please now advise us SM if you believe windfarms, solar, wave energy etc have the potential to cause the deaths, disease and destruction evidenced in the mining of uranium and in the civil and military nuclear industry?

Note: Two more fatalities in U mining - July and September 2009!

Shadow Minister,
I expect you will see things as they appear to you, but as we all know, appearances can be deceiving.

Since you’re no more a recognised expert than I am, regarding long-term effects of low levels of ionising radiation, and since you consider yourself, I expect, to be a reasonable person, do you mind telling us how do you deal with the likelihood that your experts may be wrong?

Do you manage your doubts by denying the possibility altogether, or by assigning a negligible probability, or by some other strategy? I am genuinely curious.

It may objectively be that Richard Bramhall is mistaken, but my understanding of cellular biology, ecology, physics and epidemiology suggest to me that "your" experts are more likely to be mistaken.

If I were to see opposing sets of expert evidence on the issue placed on the balance and found convincingly to be of equal weight, my bias would be toward Richard Bramhall's evidence, because, from a biological point of view, I would be respecting the precautionary principle.

I believe we ought to do without an energy conversion technology which increases the amount of ionising radiation (especially as particulate matter, which can enter the food chain) in immediate surroundings, as a precaution against several possibilities:

(1) significantly increased cancer and other disease rates from routine emissions and procedures.

(2) Increased risk of high-impact attacks on nuclear electricity plants and associated facilities by belligerent states &/or non-state actors.

(3) Other increased risks associated with warfare or civil breakdown (I wonder what the Khmer Rouge would have done about keeping nuclear facilities safe, had they had the opportunity back in the mid'70's).

(4) The lack of a credible nuclear waste disposal technology - a problem overlooked in the original proposals to build nuclear electricity generation plants, back in early the 1950's, when it was conceived as a means to an end: the production of tritium and plutonium.

(5) The increased risk of nuclear war.

(6) Availability of appropriate and sustainable energy strategies.

Shadow minister,
Are you applying the precautionary principle, and if so, from what perspective?

Sir Vivor et al, you speak much about “potential risks”, all of which is pure speculation because you cannot present any actual data to back your concerns. You are entitled to your concerns however; they do need to be proportion to what is real.

One measure of the dangers to humans from all forms of power generation is “deaths per GWy” (gigawatt-year).

The numbers from studies by the Paul Scherrer Institute and by a European Union project called ExternE, which made comprehensive estimates of all the impacts of energy production. (p 168, Sustainable Energy), might make you feel better. Still silly, but better.

Deaths per GWy:

Oil 4.2
Peat/biomass 2.8 (1.4 each)
Coal 2.6
Lignite 2.4
Hydro 0.9
Gas 0.4
Wind 0.25
Nuclear 0.2

As I read it, energy production from biomass is seven times more deadly to humans than nuclear power.

I look forward to your challenges of this data, even if it is with something really emotional.

Spindoc,
You appear to have missed my point entirely. I expect you and I will also have to agree to disagree.

Deaths per gigawatt-year may suit your requirements for comparing electricity generation technologies. Your measure provides a comparison based on results which are currently being gathered: they are part of an ever-lengthening track record.

The difficulty is that any one of a number of disasters could dramatically skew the figures. Nuclear war, civil disorder, plant malfunction and waste stream incidents could result in catastrophic release of ionising radiation from a nuclear reactor. Wouldn't that change your figures? It may be that as a result, the deaths per year attributable to nuclear electricity would totally eclipse any of the other figures you cite (however genuinely dreary they may be).

Richard Bramhall has been persistent in his efforts to clarify the impact of the Chernobyl disaster. Perhaps there will never be another "Chernobyl", in the sense that an obsolete type of facility is drastically mismanaged and the immediate results are then hidden by the contolling authorities. But is "perhaps" good enough for you?

I'm hoping that none of the risks I enumerated are realised on a catastrophic scale, but if you believe I should feel silly for listing them, then you are mistaken.

Hydroelectric dams are about the most directly comparable to nuclear electricity, in that failures there may also result in massive devastation and loss of life. Of course with hydroelectricity, there is no radiation likely to be involved (above the natural background levels) and no legacy of radioactive contamination, and no tritium or plutonium produced for use in nuclear weapons.

It is this indestructible nexus between energy and war that only this week had international leaders applauding themselves for agreeing to reduce their nuclear weapons stockpiles and work toward nuclear disarmament, then in the next breath threatening to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

I would not care to be living close downwind of Iran these days.

You are welcome to your table of deaths per GWy. I will hold by my precautionary principal

Could Spindoc tell us whether the source quoted provides any detail of how the risk figures are built? May we know what fraction of the 0.2 deaths per GWy for nuclear power is attributed to mining the Uranium, fabricating the fuel, routine discharges, decommissioning, recycling and reusing the fuel and other materials arising from decommissioning, and disposing of the waste? May we know what population is assumed to be at risk and what the time-frame is? If not, then the figure cannot inform a scientific evaluation, neither from Sir Vivor's point of view nor from mine.

Sir Vivor, I don’t have a need to “suit my requirements for comparison” at all, I cannot challenge the data therefore I accept it. If, and only “if”, I were an expert or professional in the field, I might question how the data was derived. Since the data was research by a Pro-AGW professor, The Paul Scherrer Institute and the EU project ExternE, I am prepared to accept the data. The most important thing to remember about these figures is, as stated in the research, it is pure, raw data and not opinion. It lays to rest, permanently, all the related “mythology” presented by the anti-nuclear power lobby.

Your response seems to accept this data, primarily because you have little choice however; you then try to link a whole raft of “possible disasters” that have the potential to skew the data at some point in the future, you accept the current data but suggest “Ah! but that will all change if my worst prophesies comes true” No one can argue that your doom possibilities won’t come true. Fortunately scientists and engineers work with “probabilities” and “contingencies”.

Your next assertion will no doubt be that coal, oil and minerals should be banned because they make steel, fuel and explosives which could be used by terrorists to make truck bombs.

Just to illustrate the point further, motor vehicles are 15,000 times more deadly to humans than any threat posed by nuclear power generation. This is a measure of just how far your irrational and emotive dogma has taken you away from reality.

Richard Bramhall, you ask, does the source I quoted provide <<any detail of how the risk figures are built? >>. Yes of course it does, the entire cycle is analyzed in detail. It is data Richard, not opinion.

As to the risk and time frame assumptions you need before you accept this data as “informed scientific evaluation”. What can I say? If you’re a scientist, get the reports yourself and start picking at the methodology. If you’re not a scientist you will have to accept the data. (www.withouthotair.com

1. No significant confounding was found in the KiKK analysis. Minor confounding can only reduce the relative risk (within 5 km) of 2.2(!) insignificantly.
2. The statistical power of all ecological studies, published before and after the KiKK study, is so low that they are inconclusive w.r. to the leukemia-proximity association . Within their confidence intervals, they are consistent with KiKK! There exists no valid challenge to the KiKK findings. The assertion that there exists a real scientific controversy about the leukaemia-nuclear-power-plant (NPP)-proximity is patently false. The only true controversy is about the public policy ramifications of the KiKK findings. And if this discussion would honestly raise the question: how many destroyed lives of children and their families who live close to NPPs is an acceptable price to pay per year and per power plant for running nuclear reactors, it could lead to a meaningful debate in the context of other "accepted" risks. However, authors of ecological studies that phrase their results something like “there is no evidence that acute leukaemia in children aged under five has a higher incidence close to nuclear power plants" (Bithell, GB) instead of honestly stating "our analysis finds no evidence . . ." are deliberately misleading. None of these studies are sensitive enough to detect the strong-gradient leukaemia effect.
3. A leukaemia-proximity association must be related to an environmental risk factor. The German government and its scientific team claim, "it cannot be radiation". However, a review of all data on risk factors of acute leukaemia in children in the January 2007 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) by members of the US Centers for Disease Control finds that the only established environmental risk factor is ionizing radiation! What, if neither the assumed emissions, nor the environmental distribution, nor the risk models of the current canon of radiobiology reliably describe the KiKK exposure conditions? Read:
1. Nussbaum RH. Int J Occup Environ Health 2009;15:318-323.
2. Fairli I. Med Conflict Surviv 2009;197-220.
3. October issue of EHP in Forum-News section.

Rudi H. Nussbaum
Prof. emeritus of physics and environmental sciences
Portland State University
Portland, Oregon
USA

Gee Helen Caldicote and her cohorts always load every bit of their nonsense with Acronyms and lots of big words and convoluted phrases and think that it makes them appear intelligent.
No Helen it lets us know that you are full of it!
Another poster castigated me for not believing all the AGW, sorry climate change nonsense. I was told would all these clever clog scientists lie and cheat? No of course not, they are all doing this completely honestly so why are we questioning the same scientists when they say nuclear is safe?
This is all a power trip and I hope Helen tries in the political field again so she can be shown what people think of her views.

Dear Helen, if you insist on giving us so much "information",(gobbledegook) can you please compare all the nasty, dreadful, things that have and will go wrong with nuclear power generation, by comparing it with a real life example?

France will do nicely thanks, they have some 75 x nuclear power stations and generate 80% of their power from nuclear and hydro.

You also need to write to them and let their population know just how wrong they've got it.

So if you are going to predict a dreadful outcome, can you tell the French because we don't have nuclear power, thanks to people like you.

Can you also comment on the fact that power generation by biomass is seven times more leathal than nuclear, not to mention that vehicles are 15,000 time more deadly than nuclear. Or perhaps we should avoid letting facts get in your way?

Spindoc. You misquote me. No-one can take "data as “informed scientific evaluation”". Data are data; they inform scientific evaluation, which is what I said. In this context it is worth repeating that ICRP advice and any calculations based on it cannot be taken as data.
I have looked at "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" you cited earlier and at "ExternE-Pol: Externalities of Energy" (http://www.externe.info/expolwp6.pdf) cited there. As you say, that seems to take a cradle to grave analysis from http://www.ecoinvent.ch, but I cannot afford 1800 Euros to look at it.
Page 19 says operation of Nuclear Power Stations themselves (i.e. as distinct from making the fuel and disposing of wastes etc.) "contribute 5% or less to the external costs". And "Of the calculated costs 70% are radioactivity dependent". So I assume 70% of the 0.2 deaths per GigaWatt year you quoted are due to radioactivity. That's 0.14. Then I have to assume that the risk figures are based on ICRP's subjective, challenged, and admittedly inapplicable model. On that basis we have to multiply 0.14 by a conservative figure for the error in ICRP (see my posting 250909 9:41 PM), say 500, and it's 70 deaths per GWy, or more than 16 times the worst case - oil. As an empirical check on the scale of the error, IAEA, following ICRP, thinks the total deaths world-wide from Chernobyl will be 4000. The Yablokov book I cited (150909 8:43: PM) gives approaching a million dead by 2005. If we assume, most implausibly, that there will be no further deaths after 2005, that's an error of 250, implying 35 deaths per GWy.
The "Conclusions" of "ExternE-Pol: Externalities of Energy" (p45) note that nuclear external costs are penalized by not discounting long-term effects. Policy makers should beware of initiatives to ignore the long-term since many of the effects are extremely long-lived, in the shape of transgenerational genetic damage and, for example, peak values for Uranium entering the biosphere from failed deep repositories, which will arise far in the future.

Spindoc,
You maintain the values on your list of deaths per GWy for different energy generation technologies statistics are "pure, raw data and not opinion."

Plainly you did not read Richard Bramhall's post very carefully at all.

You may wish to go back to the study you quote, and further if necessary, to the studies quoted therein, to find the assumptions floating about in the wellsprings of your "pure raw data".

My friend, I believe you will find that between the gathering and publishing of the data you so singlemindedly extol, data summarised in a short table of numbers of two significant figures, is a good deal of compilation based on not only the opinion of the author, but the author's sources, about what should and shouldn't be considered as important.

While you are focusing on a few simple numbers, rounded and redacted for spoon-feeding to a starry-eyed and trusting reader of simple figures, like yourself, other experts are busy going about their paid work, working on the promotion and implementation of nuclear electric technology which is IMHO not only unsustainable but star-crossed, and a vast network of disasters in the making.

As to whether my concerns about risk are unrealistic, I suggest you read a bit about the Price-Anderson Act: the US legislation which limits the liability of the owners of civilian nuclear plants in that nation to a maximum of $ 10 billion US, and does not address the military facilities.

As for your remarks about my assumed willingness to tolerate much greater risks, such as that associated with owning and driving an automobile, they are a diversion from the point which you appear not to understand: Nuclear electricity and the nuclear fuel cycle present a risk of an entirely different type and character to driving a car or doing a pub crawl on foot, as it involves the distribution of radioactive material. Apples and oranges, old son.

As I said, we will have to agree to disagree. You are welcome to the last word.

Protagoras,

The study does make long term predictions, it also acknowledges the difficulty in doing so, and as such leaves a wide margin of error in its predictions on the mortality charts.

The acknowledgement that solar and wind are not susceptible to severe accidents does not mean that they don't carry a higher mortality.

A similarly air travel has occasional accidents with mortalities in the hundreds, but road traffic never has hundreds dead, but per kilometer travelled has a mortality 20x higher.

The reason is that public perception has caused huge focus on air safety, as it has done on nuclear.

But what I find staggering about the anti nuke proponents is the lack of perspective.

For example the release of nuclear components from coal combustion far exceeds the entire U.S. consumption of nuclear fuels in nuclear generating plants. This means that the exposure to radioactivity per kWhr from coal is in the order of 10x that of nuclear generation.

The main reason it is so difficult to estimate the long term effects of small doses of radiation is that the body is continuously exposed to back ground radiation.

Over the life span of a human at least 80% of the ionising radiation that he will be exposed to will be from natural background sources, The 20% from man made sources come mostly from medical and other non nuclear sources.

Remnants from nuclear weapons testing today makes up 0.14% and nuclear generation is estimated to less than 0.0001%, or in layman's terms equivalent to adding a teaspoon to a swimming pool.

Richard,

Please don't cherry pick. The report investigated the cancer cluster you mentioned, but found no causal link.

Cancer is caused by many factors such as chemicals, viruses etc other than radiation. Cancer clusters appear all over Australia far from any radiation.

Unless you suggest that COMARE is biased.

Sir Vivor,

In the unlikely event that the top experts in the world are completely wrong I will have to radically revise my views. In the interim I will stick to rational research instead of inuendo and scare mongering.

Shadow Minister, you say:

"In the unlikely event that the top experts in the world are completely wrong I will have to radically revise my views. In the interim I will stick to rational research instead of inuendo and scare mongering."

but why haven't you answered my two questions from September 18th, when you said:

"There are many issues with nuclear, but it is still the safest technology we have and it is ridiculous to reject it out of hand."

(1) How are you measuring safety, and how does it follow that nuclear technology is "safest"?

(2) Who do you mean by "we"?

Incidentally, I am not rejecting nuclear electricity out of hand. I have made an informed decision, as have many other people who do not want to see their tax dollars squandered on government subsidies to an unsustainable, inappropriate technology, which has yet to effectively solve its most basic problem - what to do with its radioactive wastes.

You are also welcome to the last word. Naturally I would prefer you dealt with my two questions directly and without prevarication, but that is so rarely the response of ministers at question time - perhaps shadow ministers are different?

Sir Vivor,

But I have answered the questions.

2)By "we" I mean globally.

1) The estimated mortality per kWhr generated incl mining, construction, operation, decommissioning and estimated long term issues is lowest with nuclear than any other technology presently available.

Neither Helen Caldicott or anyone else on this thread have produced anything to the contrary.

Sir Vivor / Richard Bramhall, the more you are put on the spot by reality, the more complex your responses. You are going round and round in ever decreasing circles like a bad smell trying to get out of a sieve. We used to call such exercises in intellectual bullying “death by creeping minutiae”.

Richard, even if it were reasonable of you to inject your “hypothetical” increased margins of error into someone else’s research data, which it is not, and even “if” your assumptions were correct, which they are not, and even if the predictions you make in relation to possible future fatalities from the Chernobyl disaster do eventuate, you will still be left with the same fact. That is, that the ordinary, everyday things we do, like going to work, are all thousands of times more deadly than anything to do with nuclear energy, fact.

You just don’t get it do you? You have absolutely no sense of proportionality at all!

Sir Vivor, I’ll say it one more time, not my data, not my research, I do not represent the EU or The Paul Scherrer Institute. I just pointed you to where the research data is. If you don’t like the data or the assumptions, don’t read it. Don’t whine because you don’t have any answers. The best I can do is send you a money order for 50 cents; you can then call someone who cares.

Sorry Sir Vivor but I just could not resist this, you say;

<<Nuclear electricity and the nuclear fuel cycle present a risk of an entirely different type and character to driving a car or doing a pub crawl on foot, as it involves the distribution of radioactive material. Apples and oranges, old son.>>

No, Let me explain “old son”, you see, when you die it is because something was, how can I put it, fatal. If you were killed by an apple the result is exactly the same as being killed by an orange. That’s logic, but as an irrational type, death by fear must be terrible for you

“The acknowledgement that solar and wind are not susceptible to severe accidents does not mean that they don't carry a higher mortality.

Shadow Minister – What is your innuendo? You appear to suggest that a high mortality occurs in the wind and solar industry. Please elaborate and provide us with data.

“For example the release of nuclear components from coal combustion far exceeds the entire U.S. consumption of nuclear fuels in nuclear generating plants.”

Again SM, I recommend that you read beyond the first page of the stuff you google and I also remind you that Barry Brook has already advised us of the radioactive emissions from coal fired power plants, however, he has deemed it prudent not to respond to my question on that issue.

As a result, I advise that I agree with Barry Brook’s information, however, about one percent of the radiation is emitted through the coal industry’s boiler stacks and with impunity I may add!

On a global scale this amount is indeed significant and extremely threatening to all life on the planet. Nevertheless about 99 percent of radioactive material at coal plants settles in the fly ash (as do many other hazardous compounds).

Now one would believe that capturing radioactive isotopes in fly ash is a relatively simple way to isolate and safely dispose of the radioactive components resting in ash – including thorium.

No so in Australia. In my region, there are mountains of fly ash in open spaces where the fly ash is carried for miles on the prevailing winds – over communities, to outback regions and beyond for these isotopes have no respect for geographical boundaries. In addition, I have witnessed native animals entering the unsecured grounds and indigenous children playing in the fly ash.

What’s more disturbing and of no concern to our regulators and seemingly, the scientific community, is that the radioactive fly ash is also sold for road base, to the agricultural industry for soil improver and to consumers, where the ash is mixed in gardening soils around the nation for sale at garden nurseries.

contd......

Surely SM, you're not trying to dupe us when you insist that radioactive emissions are stringently regulated? Are you? And why do you insist on dwelling on yesteryear’s technology when the majority of us have moved on? Electricity technology, which generates such hazardous compounds is so passé yet you insist on dredging it up in support of another equally hazardous and obsolete technology which is also responsible for the most catastrophic moments in history and which continues on its insidious path of destruction.

One does not require a science PhD to understand that if regulators around the world – particularly in first world countries, permit coal plant operators to emit radioactive substances with impunity, then they also permit the nuclear industry to do likewise. Of course the lack of regulatory standards in the nuclear industry is well documented.

Yet you believe that it’s OK to have tailings dams which contain 80 percent of the original radiation. Dam linings which must at least endure for 200 – 500 years but leak, tear and collapse within a few years and I speak not of rogue nations but Australia. Where are the prosecutions for breaches of licence conditions? Very few indeed! And what are those licence conditions? Very few indeed!

The claim that in situ leach uranium mining is environmentally benign is ridiculous. The process involves intentionally contaminating an aquifer in order to recover the uranium. ISL mining is the deliberate pollution of groundwater and these aquifers will never again render potable water for human consumption.

The Olympic Dam uranium/copper project also emits the highest rate of mutagenic and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the country, however, as with radioactive emissions, PAHs are a mere peccadillo for the irresponsible cartel who promote this environmental obscenity. This is an industry which has a flagrant disregard for Australia’s carbon emissions, which remain the highest in the OECD countries and will continue to do so.

And one must wonder to what depths of depravity the nuclear industry has descended when human mortalities per gigawatts per hour are part of a “dollars for deaths” equation.

Spindoc (your post of Monday, 28 September 4:48),
Taking no notice of the abuse, everything you wrote about my post is diametrically wrong, as any intelligent reader can see.

Shadow Minister (Monday, 28 September 2:40: PM),
It's not clear what you mean in accusing me of cherry-picking. I suppose you mean the KiKK study. There is no causal link with radiation IF the ICRP model is right. If. It's an important qualifier. That has been the point of my contributions throughout this correspondence.
Certainly there are other causes of cancer but the consistency and frequency with which cancer excesses are found near sources of radioactive pollution, and following episodes of pollution are more than great enough to trigger the precautionary principle, especially when alternative power sources are available.
Yes, COMARE's biased. It's far too big a topic to treat in detail here, but you could go to http://www.llrc.org and scroll down to the search pane. A search using "COMARE" will give an idea of how biased they are. It's a matter of grossly negligent mistakes and failing to take evidence from both sides of an issue and it's becoming legendary. There have been two motions in the UK Parliament calling for COMARE to be scrapped. Of course some of the committee members are uneasy about it - why else would we have received copies of the minutes anonymously through the post - but committees are subject to institutional controls and people are reluctant to lose their jobs and their research funding. For this reason it's pointless to talk of their claimed "independence". Just reflect that for many years the COMARE secretariat has been based at the HQ of the UK's National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB - now part of the Health Protection Agency, new hats, same people). Page 50 of http://www.llrc.org/du/subtopic/dysonrept.pdf will tell you just how complex and incestuous are the relationships between the allegedly independent bodies in this shady area.

Richard Bramhall, It’s fascinating to observe your responses (or not) as your “wriggle room” shrinks. Your case for not answering the simple questions posed is now because of my abuse, me being “diametrically wrong” and my lack of intelligence. OK, so be it.

Now can you please answer my questions? You can be as abusive as you like, I’m nothing like as sensitive as you.

1. Why are all the dangerous effects you assert in mind blowing detail in relation to nuclear power, of absolutely no consequence to the densest per capita user of nuclear power in the world, France?
2. How do you weight or prioritize potential threats to humanity that are factually thousands of times less than almost everything humans are exposed to, by just living?

I fail to understand, mostly due to my lack of intelligence, why you wish to present a case that no other country must be allowed an opportunity to achieve a very low carbon footprint like France. Especially since all the doom, gloom and scare mongering you present has absolutely no traction in the real world with the one country that has already done it. Where are all the French nuclear power problems?

I understand your need to disengage from this reality however, as such a well informed person on such matters, I’m sure you could succeed where so many have failed. Not one of the anti-nuclear activists has answered these questions. Helen Caldicott is MIA, Protagoras and Sir Vivor are still in the swamp wrestling opinion alligators.

Richard, we all understand risk, all that is being asked of you is to provide relative comparison with the real world as it is.

I may be the dim wit you assert but surely such simplicity is well within your capacity.

Protagoras,

There is no innuendo. I have spelt it out in several previous posts with links that you have read, and Spindoc has included in his posts the information you wanted. The point that nuclear is the safest technology has been made multiple times and as yet not challenged. If you want minute details I suggest you Google it yourself.

There are numerous INDEPENDENT studies done in the USA, Canada, The EU, UK etc and every one has found nuclear to be safe relative to all other technologies. If you can find any study to refute this then you are doing better than anyone else.

Richard,

Cancer clusters occur all over the world, many have distinct factors, some are simply a collection of bad luck.

What studies have shown is that while cancer clusters do occur within the vicinity of nuclear installations, the frequency is no higher than away from these installations. The particular study to which you referred found that the particular cluster was highly unlikely to be caused by the contamination in the area.

For example, radon is a major cause of lung cancer; a cancer cluster consisting of leukaemia even where radon is present is unlikely to be from the radon, and another factor should be sought.

Most clusters have more mundane causes such as viruses, chemicals etc.

I followed your link to LLRC and found an extremely one sided, unscientific website. Sitting on the lunatic fringe, normality seems biased. What a shower.

Their latest piffle is the finding of a cluster consisting of 3 cases of childhood leukemia in a population of 14000 over 5 years.

Puleez

"Purleeeze" is no answer. It is a symptom of a discussion degenerating into sarcasm and polemics.
To paraphrase Wilde, "One leukaemia cluster near a reprocessing plant, Shadow Minister, may be regarded as a misfortune; leukaemia clusters near all of them looks like carelessness". But it goes beyond the local population, so in north Wales - one of the only places for which we have sufficiently detailed data - we see high childhood leukaemia rates along the parts of the coast most contaminated by plutonium from Sellafield, nearly 100 miles away. See http://www.llrc.org/health/subtopic/wcisureptfinal.pdf for how we blew the lid off the cover-up, which COMARE has had to admit to. The rebuttal is also in the literature: Busby C C and Howard CV ‘Fundamental errors in official epidemiological studies of environmental pollution in Wales’ Journal of Public Health March 22, 2006. See http://www.llrc.org/epidemiology/subtopic/dundrennan.htm for another official cover-up. All the information is there so you can check the findings and see who is on the lunatic fringe and who is telling the truth.
So the Chepstow cluster, which you (SM) refer to, sits in a wide context. Different polluter at Chepstow, but the same Welsh cancer registry data-base and the same mechanism of causation - sea-to-land transfer. Your eye-rolling incredulity suggests you don't understand that there are epidemiological techniques for coping with statistical significance in rare diseases like childhood leukaemia.
Spindoc asks about public opinion in France. I'd say it's a bit desperate to rely on vox pops to resolve the complex scientific matters I've raised here but, from a quick Google this morning, the position looks less one-sided than Spindoc paints it. See Tom Burke on http://www.e3g.org/index.php/archive/archive-article/too-chic-to-meter-nuclear-power-in-france/. "Opposition to nuclear power in France remains strong," he says. Last time I had any contact with French anti-nuclear groups there were 300 of them.

“There is no innuendo. I have spelt it out in several previous posts with links that you have read, and Spindoc has included in his posts the information you wanted.”

SM

You have not spelt it out at all. I am entitled to a response since your innuendo implied that there were higher mortalities in the solar and wind industry. If you are incapable of backing up your claim then I will conclude that you have resorted to your usual hyperbolic nonsense.

In addition, you have conveniently side-stepped all six paragraphs in my post which were addressed to you.

“Where are all the French nuclear power problems?

Spindoc

You either know the following facts, are obfuscating them or are totally ignorant of those facts. Which is it?

Thyroid cancer has dramatically increased over the last two decades in France. The increased incidence is disturbing – 8.1% and 6.2% per year in women and men, mainly due to papillary type with an epidemic of micro carcinomas. France’s Thyroid Cancer Committee has recommended a national registry dedicated to thyroid cancer of youths (<18 years old.)

contd......

Frédéric Goldschmidt and Jean Marc Peres of the IPSN/Environment Protection Department France advised in their Radiological Impact Assessment of a Uranium Mill Tailings Repository in 2002 that:

"The quantity of uranium mill tailings currently stored in France is about 50 million tonnes distributed on 20 sites, five of which hold more than 5 million tonnes.

"The half-life of some radionuclides (230Th is 75,000 years, 226Ra 1,600 years) present on repositories means that the period during which “nuisances” will be present will be practically infinite when considering a human life span.

"The radiological impact of repositories for these tailings currently takes account of:

"- the external exposure ;

"- internal exposures due to incorporation by inhalation of uranium dust, 220Rn and 222Rn, and ingestion of soluble 226Ra and uranium, induced by living close to the site, without considering the time factor."

That is the reality Spindoc and there is no repository!

The authors of the paper failed to express concerns about uranium dust's ability to hitch a ride on the prevailing winds thus exposing humans far removed from the location. Again, this omission demonstrates the tardiness of the regulatory bodies who are meant to protect citizens from exposure to radiation.

The dust storms which occurred in NSW and Queensland and indeed, were detected as far away as New Zealand, demonstrate the ability of hazardous plumes to travel thousands of miles from a source and not disperse close to the site as our regulators would have us believe.

The source of the recent dust storms was South Australia, in close proximity to the open cut Olympic Dam project.

Sulphur plumes from Kalgoorlie’s nickel smelters and gold roasters in WA have been detected in South Australia. The plumes from the massive chemical fire in WA during 2001, were detected in South Africa.

Yet information on radioactive plume measurements are censored - unavailable to the public. Why is that Shadow Minister?

“I may be the dim wit you assert.” That’s a frank admission Spindoc. Can we now expect similar from Shadow Minister who conveys images and myths that typically serve his interests?

You know Protag, the simplest way to determine if a proposition is “emotive” or “realistic” is to apply the “hype” test. Firstly, does the proposition “scale up”? And secondly, is it proportional?

There is absolutely no doubt that things go wrong with nuclear power stations, sometimes disastrously, security breaches, leaks, uncontrolled dangerous emissions. That is not the real issue. How big a problem is it “really”?

Let’s take the first test. If all the nasty things you and others have asserted can happen to just one nuclear power plant, what happens when we have a concentration of 75 x nuclear power plants? As is the case with France, highly concentrated population, geographically small, close proximity to multiple borders, millions of tourists, pan-European transport and logistics.

If your case is not emotive but “real”, then the problems you assert will scale to 75 X times the problem for France specifically, and it’s immediate neighbors in general. Not one single anti-nuclear poster has been able to make the case of “scalability”.

Secondly, is the threat proportional? Unless you can actually demonstrate that the threats you pose are factually “disproportionate” to other things that do kill us, often in thousands of times greater numbers, and demonstrate that these deaths are 75 x times greater in France, you have again failed and your proposition is emotive.

You, and others, bombard us with terrifying links to dozens of Armageddon publications. Yes they are a concern but they are not evidence of systemic, unresolved engineering problems. If they were you would definitely be presenting the case from France and their neighbors that were 75 times greater. You have not because you cannot.

These simple comparisons remain unanswered by Helen, Richard, Sir Vivor and you. If you cannot answer them, your proposition remains in the “emotive case basket”.

Protagorass,

The paragraphs which I "side stepped" have no references, no context, and are in most cases pitiful. You really are a joke.

In spite of your inability to back up any of your statements, here is more than enough for you to chew on, and covers all the main technologies, perhaps not at the same time.

The drawback is that often big words are used.

http://www.wind-works.org/articles/BreathLife.html
http://www.ieahydro.org/reports/ST3-020613b.pdf
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/ehs.html
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2006aug19_n.html

"For coal-fired power stations, there are 342 fatalities per terawatt year which are predominantly related to coal-workers actually extracting the coal.

"However, this number would be far worse if the figures where there were fewer than five fatalities per incident were included.

"With oil, it is 418 fatalities per terawatt year.

"With wind it is 197 fatalities per terawatt year.

"With natural gas, it is somewhat lower - 85 fatalities per terawatt year, and this refers to workers as well as the public.

"LPG-related fatalities are extremely high - 3,280 per terawatt year of electricity generated.

"With hydro-electricity - a method that some opponents of nuclear energy favour while some dislike - there are 883 fatalities per terawatt year which predominantly involves the public due to collapsing dams.

"Nuclear energy, with 31 fatalities per terawatt year. This is the lowest of all electricity-generation methods."

Richard,

The LLRC, to which you repeatedly refer appears to be a one man published website that re posts poorly researched work by such organisations as Green Audit, whose misuse of statistics could prove either that radiation is the cause of all evil or the cure for all diseases.

While there is opposition to nuclear in France, the 70% of public strongly in support is unlikely to bend to the fringe.

Spindoc,

I gave you the last word, but you largely spent it on the person you imagine me to be, rather than clarifying any of your ideas in favour of nuclear electricity.

At least you admitted that the data your rely so doggedly upon is built on assumptions; that's a step forward. With regard to that, I wonder whether you have examined the assumptions and context, or simply taken all on faith?

Spindoc, your argument about risk of death reminds me of the hogwash that came from from the mouths of Edward Teller, Sir Phillip Baxter and that lesser light, Lesley Kemeny, 20 and more years ago. Personally, I would rather choke to death on rice pudding tomorrow than have my children acutely irradiated 40 years down the historical track by one of your you-beaut, Gee Whiz radioactive contraptions; or the radioactive weapons, waste and pollution they generate.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just put on-line its July/August issue of 20 years ago. It is eerie in its prescience on a range of issues.

An article by Kosta Tsipsis (a recongnised authority on matters nuclear) states:

"The clearest "present danger" facing the United States today is environmental deteroration. both local and global. The "greenhouse effect", ozone depletion, acid rain, pollution of all kinds are threatening the air, the water, the very ground we live on. Unlike raw materials, these treasures are not contained within national boundaries. They cannot be captured as the spoils of victory, or secured by military force. They are indivisible. The healing and preservation of these global resources require cooperation rather than combat. Military might is irrelevant in the battle for the environment."

Tsipsis, K. (1989) After the Cold War: new tasks for arms controllers; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, v45 no6 July/August 1989 pp 7-8

http://books.google.com/books?id=3wUAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Spindoc, I feel I owe it to you to give you another shot at the last word. Remember, it's not about you and I, it's about the medical and social impact of an unsustainable technology.

Sir Vivor, How’s it going down there in the swamp with the opinion alligators? Thought we might have lost you there for a while.

Anyway, I see you brought a few more opinion alligators back with you for your post. Unfortunately, we said we didn’t need any more.

All we need you to do is tell us why France does not have 75 times more of these nasty “medical and social impact” thingies you keep telling us about. It’s a very simple question.

If, like Helen, Richard and Protag, you can’t actually explain this, it’s OK, don’t get emotional about it, and don’t worry. But please don’t drag any more opinion alligators in here, we can’t move for the damn things.

Even if Spindoc's arithmetic were correct, his French challenge is a blind, partly because the data are not available, and partly because, as we already saw on this blog, a large proportion of the external costs are borne far away from the nuclear power stations themselves. In addition, radioepidemiology has to overcome the problem that there is a global cancer epidemic and no uncontaminated controls. The Spindoc approach to policy would put the burden of proof on the exposed public but fortunately the precautionary principle is beginning to be applied. This recognises that experience of, for example, German NPPs and the doubled risk of childhood leukaemia nearby (discovered by a study carefully designed to overcome the problems I have outlined in this post) is transferable to NPPs anywhere. (I refer to the KiKK study of course, which was where we started). There are many similar findings that should trigger the precautionary principle in the case of nuclear power and Spindoc has addressed none of them.
In the same vein Shadow Minister ignores the evidence, slanders those he disagrees with and repeats risk comparisons which depend on wrong input values, for example "only 56 dead from Chenobyl" (in the cited http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2006aug19_n.html). There is no point in continuing dialogue with people like these.
Ultimately, so long as electricity production remains in the private sector, the market will decide; nuclear power cannot operate without pollution and investors know that the courts will hold them liable if they deliberately contaminate people despite the evidence of harm.

Richard Bramhall you said there was a "Global Cancer Epidemic"? Get a grip for goodness sake! Cancer comes with age, we are all living far far longer than other animals and we do a lot of things that other animals don't do. That's why there is a lot more cancer than previously, although for much the same reasons pets also suffer cancers.
Cheer up Richard all this doom and gloom is not good for you in fact it's very bad for you. Or is your glum visage so that you think you look "serious" or you look "inteligent"? Sorry people avoid you because you are just miserable.
Have a nice cup of tea and a lie down and think positive and happy thoughts, you really will feel better, I promise.

Once upon a time there was a small village called Dread. The Dreads were a small community, but very vocal. They were intelligent people, articulate and very good at research.

Due to their total lack of ability to quantify threats, their main focus in life was to research all things they feared, to find like minded people in other villages with whom they could not only share fears but could also obtain explanations and justifications for their own fears. These fears were traded in huge volumes by Dreads.

One day the Reality Inspector made his routine visit to solve any fear problems in the village.

We fear the Coal Dragons, said one. They give us the Power we need, but they “give off” nasty Carbons and we want rid of them, they damage us and everything.

OK said the Inspector, how many Powers do you need?

100 replied one of the Dreads.

Can you use other types of Power Dragons, asked the Inspector?

Oh yes, they replied, we could use Renewables Dragons.

So, said the Inspector, how many powers can you get from them?

Oh, heaps, said one. I heard 20 said another. Rubbish said the one with Green hair, more like 30 I’d say.

At best that still leaves you with 70 powers from the Coal Dragons, can’t you use the Reactor Dragons?

Reactor Dragons! No exclaimed the Dreads, far too fearful.

How big is this fear, asked the Inspector?

Look at this research explained one Dread; this fear has big, beady eyes.

I can prove said another that this fear can bite through carbon fiber laminated tungsten steel like butter.

But how “big” is the fear, insisted the Inspector?

It can read your mind, it eats children, it can fly, it can make itself invisible, claw its way through mountains and can live under water for a year without breathing.

It’s no use Inspector, said one Dread, you don’t understand, you ask the wrong questions.

We all know this fear is real because we have proof from other Dreads, and we can “feel” its vile presence.

Sleep easy.

Richard,

The only person I deliberately insult is Protagoras who has a long history of issuing insults.

As for the LLRC, I cannot find the name of a single member on the website, and some pages have not been updated since 2005.

One of the main sites quoted by LLRC is Greenaudit, whose statistical analysis has been shown by experts to be seriously flawed, and my comments simply reflect those of the experts. Although my 3rd year statistics is relatively rudimentry, some flaws are glaringly obvious.

As for the number of fatalities from Chernobyl, the actual death toll differs from original estimates, which were extrapolated from Hiroshima, for a number of reasons:

1 In 1945 the short term and long term effects of the radiation were not fully understood, for this reason no precautions were taken and no clean up undertaken.
2 There were little to no treatment for the survivors or surrounding inhabitants.

The majority of the casualties of Chernobyl died from the accident and clean up, and only 9 additional deaths due to contamination can be attributed above the expected mortality. (though admittedly the line is blurred)

This however, is largely due to:
a: the precautions taken by the population to avoid ingesting contaminants,
b: Strict monitoring of the population for adverse signs such as thyroid cancer,
c: Rapid treatment of those cancers that arose. For example, there were about 4000 cases of thyroid cancer as a result, but with early detection and treatment in stage 1 the fatalities were a fraction of a percent.

As the most radioactively toxic isotopes from a reactor have a very short half life, the original death estimate cannot be extended indefinitely.

The figure of 56 is likely to be on the low side, but figures in the tens of thousands would simple mean that every death from cancer was solely due to radiation.

If you really have reputable information to the contrary, then this is the place to show it. Considering that no one has yet to do so, I can only base my judgement on what is available.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/sep/06/energy.ukraine

Shadow Minister, your Guardian link simply recycles opinion about the Chernobyl Forum report which has already been discussed here. The relevant volume ("Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident and Special Health Care Programmes: Report of the UN Special Expert Group "Health"") says many diseases have increased since the disaster in 1986. Attributing this health breakdown to radioactive fallout is anathema to pro-nuclear bodies because it demonstrates a massive error in officially-sanctioned risk estimates. Doses, as conventionally assessed, were low - in the region of 2 milliSieverts. At this level no increase in disease should be noticeable against the background of spontaneous incidence IF ICRP WERE CORRECT. It is therefore vital to nuclear interests to deny the effects or to ascribe them to some other factor. The favourite is "radiophobia".
Here is what the Chernobyl Forum report actually says about "radiophobia". According to a small number of studies, populations classified as "Chernobyl exposed", compared with "unexposed", had higher rates of mental health symptoms, medically unexplained physical symptoms and subjective ill-health. The mental health symptoms were "mostly subclinical and did not reach the level of criteria for a psychiatric disorder", but they had "important consequences for health behaviour, specifically medical care utilisation and adherence to safety advisories." So these people were the "worried well". Their subjective and subclinical problems are no basis for dismissing the increases in clinical diagnoses of the objective conditions - cancers, congenital malformation and so on - which many workers have described and published in for example http://www.euradcom.org/publications/chernobylinformation.htm and http://www.llrc.org/health/subtopic/russianrefs.htm, and Yablokov's new book, cited earlier.
SM, until you substantiate your criticism of Green Audit I shall doubt you can. I note that you have ignored our very specific analyses of mistakes made by the Welsh cancer registry and the Dumfries and Galloway Health Board (my post 29 September 8:34 pm.).
A contact in France looked at this blog and sent me two messages. They are too long to post here but see http://www.llrc.org/einfrance.htm. I expect you will view them though your own filters.

Thanks for the link, Richard B. It leads to

http://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/index.php?menu=english&page=index

"An alliance of 841 French organisations"

"Why phase out nuclear power ?


A nuclear accident provokes countless victims and leaves vast tracts of land uninhabitable for thousands of years. Is such risk morally permissible ?

There exists no possibility of rendering nuclear waste harmless. It remains a hazard for tens of thousands of years and more.

The real cost of nuclear power is very high if all the expenses are honestly taken into account : public scientific research, decommissioning of nuclear power facilities, endless management of nuclear waste …

Part of the radioactive material produced in nuclear reactors has the potential and is used for hostile military use and for atomic bombs.
It may be that nuclear power contributes only small amount of greenhouse gases, but its waste contaminates the earth for millions of years. There is no choosing the lesser of two evils. The goal of a responsible, sustainable energy policy should be : no to nuclear, no to greenhouse gases.

The large component of nuclear energy in French power generation is an exception : we are the only country in the world to make such a confident bet on nuclear power. Neighbouring countries such as Italy, Germany, Belgium have already chosen to phase out nuclear power.

Therefore it is also possible to do so in France.

Richard,

With regards Green Audit, this should put it in perspective:

http://www.comare.org.uk/press_releases/comare_pr06.htm

For example, if you throw a dice 1 million times, the poison distribution will give you clusters.

Finding a cluster of 6 6s in a row, one could say that the odds against this are 50 000 to one and that the dice must be loaded, or you could back out and look at the entire distribution.

LLRC and Green audit's analysis have the finger prints of this cherry picking approach that to quote the COMARE press release:

"it is so deeply flawed that it cannot provide any reliable information or conclusions"

The aftermath of Chernobyl must be a PR nightmare for the anti nuke movement, as the predicted vast body count simply did not occur. The measures taken meant that the fatalities in the area were minimally above normal. They are grasping at straws to try and include other diseases into the mix where there is no causal effect.

I read through your posts, and whilst most don't have enough information to thoroughly review, the finger prints of selective statistical analysis are there.

Sir Vivor,

I notice that Belgium and Italy get a substantial portion of their power from France.

The number of new reactors being commissioned is at odds with the claim that it is being phased out.

Richard, Sir Vivor, Helen Caldicot, et Al

what I was trying to say has been encapsulated in the thread:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9509

The scary part is that GA and LLRC will be the most often quoted, because their manufactured statistics are more newsworthy.

Shadow Minister,

You say
"if you throw a dice 1 million times, the poison distribution will give you clusters."

Do you mean the Poisson distribution?

Poison distribution is what you get when radioactive gases are routinely vented from nuclear electricity facilities.

the United States RNuclear Regulatory Commission report:
"Radioactive Materials Routinely Released from Nuclear Power Plants"
Annual Report 1993
J. Tichler et al Brookhaven National Laboratory [USA]
NUREG/CR-2907
BNL-NUREG-51581
Vol. 14

The report lists the millions of Curies of radioactive gases that were released from US civilian reactors from 1974 to 1993.

Volumes 15 - 20 and upward have yet to be published - although I expect the statistics have been compiled.

Regarding your answer about who benefits from the expansion of nuclear electricity production, you say that "we", means globally. That seems very quaint to me; a charmingly naive 1950's technocratic parochialism shines outward from your statement of opinion.

My day is brightened by the likelihood that you, like me, are an individual of no consequence, in the larger scheme of things radioactive.

Shadow Minister provides us with a report from COMARE which suits his interests, however other reports by COMARE have been concealed, not least the study which summarises the work undertaken on the Dounreay nuclear plant:

• “Locating the source of the radioactive particles found in the general environment around the Dounreay Nuclear Establishment Scotland.

• Evaluating the possible health implications of encountering these particles.

• Considering whether ingesting these particles could be associated with the previously reported excess of leukaemia and non Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) in young people living in Thurso.

“The work was undertaken to find the route by which the particles are reaching the Dounreay foreshore and the beach at Sandside Bay is the subject of a report by the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC).

“COMARE has concluded that the particles, if encountered, present a real hazard to health and that the hottest particles could induce serious acute radiation effects.

"The Committee has stated that while the probability of encountering a particle is small, it is not negligible. If individuals ingested particles with radioactivity levels at the top of the range of those already found on the Dounreay foreshore, fatalities might occur.

"Particles with lower activities may cause severe intestinal disorders although these might not be attributed to radiation exposure.

“Three radioactive particles have been found on the publicly accessible Sandside beach. However, COMARE has considered whether contact with such particles could have given rise to the known level of childhood leukaemia in the area around Dounreay. COMARE approached this question by mathematical modelling.

COMARE also advises:

“Around other nuclear installations our study demonstrated similar results to previously published studies that showed excesses of some types of childhood cancer, with only one site being different.

"We found an excess of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) near Burghfield, Dounreay and Sellafield. Aldermaston, Burghfield and Harwell showed a significantly raised incidence of solid tumours in their vicinity."

Yet Shadow Minister's fallacies abound. Why feed the troll? Let's give this grave digger the flick!

Shadow Minister,
I asked you to support your attacks on Green Audit with logic. You responded by citing an opinion piece in which Geoff Russell tries to allay concern about leukaemia and nuclear power. The forest plot he presents is for studies up to 16 kilometres from NPPs. I have already said radial distributions are flawed because they don't take account of downwind effects nor where the radioactive emissions locate. Many authorities agree on this. The earliest I can recall was the UK Small Area Health Statistics Unit over 10 years ago. 16 km is too large a distance - far larger than the areas used by KiKK, which all authorities agree cannot be ignored. The paper Russell relies on concludes "it cannot be ignored that the majority of studies have found elevated rates".
Second, as I have also said here, NPPs themselves cause less than 5% of the external costs attributable to the nuclear fuel cycle, which is another reason for not seeing them as surrogates for exposure.
Third, leukaemia studies are difficult because of the rarity of the disease. We should be looking at other cancers and also at non-cancer diseases and I repeat that real-world exposure data should be used, as Green Audit has done in the Irish Sea studies.
Russell states that comparing numbers for child leukaemia in France and Australia shows "any effect from nuclear plants is small or zero relative to whatever else is causing these cancers". You can't do radio-epidemiology like that - it is obviously ridiculous to draw such a simplistic conclusion from such widely separated and different populations and environments. SM, you swallow nonsense from a fellow nuclear enthusiast but you libel Green Audit.
Russell's change of heart on nuclear is based on support for Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs). His present attack on the leukaemia data seems at odds with his opposition to Uranium mining. Perhaps he hasn't thought this through. I said earlier that I'd need to know about the nature of emissions from IFRs before they'd get my vote. No information has been offered.

Richard,

In my post of Saturday, 3 October 2009 9:15:30 AM I gave a brief break down of the major flaw in the Green audit analysis.

A more detailed comment along the same line was provided by COMARE (for which I provided a link) and by Geoff Russell. Even the 2 page example given by GR is a simplistic, condensed version, watered down for the non technical readers.

However, in spite of your attempt to nit pick around the fringes, the base logic stands, and for any one purporting to be produce technical documents GA should have got the message clearly that one such flawed analysis could be excused as mathematical incompetence, by a political organization, but continuing to publish "reports" using the same flawed "meta-analysis" being aware of its short comings amounts to deliberate mis-representation or fraud.

I can find no evidence that Green Audit even bothers to submit their papers for peer review before publication, indicating that even they do not have the confidence in their work to pass scrutiny and prefer to lob political hand grenades to real research.

Having been an external examiner to final year students, I would expect to see a far higher standard than what is in evidence on the Green Audit website.

Sir Vivor,

I am heartened by the fact that the only fault you can find is a typo.

As coal fired electricity is extremely cheap, economics and public opinion is against nuclear. As the ETS kicks in and prices increase sharply, I suspect both will change as they did in France.

As a I am involved in the purchase of large blocks of power and setting of standards for quality along with other continuous industries, our requirements are reliable base load supply. Given the alternatives to coal the generators have limited options. The failure to get this supply greatly increases our costs.

Protagorass,

I see you have reverted to your cut and paste postings again without links or context, and the few I do recognize I recall came with caveats that you conveniently omitted.

“I see you have reverted to your cut and paste postings again without links or context, and the few I do recognize I recall came with caveats that you conveniently omitted.”

Shadow Minister – “Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.” (Native American proverb.)

You would do well to heed that advice SM for I note that for one who constantly monopolises these threads, you have provided very few links to support your own blatherings. A cursory glance reveals some sixteen posts in total for this thread!

Furthermore, I prefaced my previous post by advising that the information I provided was from COMARE. In addition, I have a set of ethical guidelines to which I adhere and on no occasion, do I provide information which cannot be substantiated.

You state that you “only recognize a few of the links or context(?)” yet all the information I provided was obtained from the website YOU provided - proof of your falsehoods and your cherry picking!:

http://www.comare.org.uk/press_releases/comare_pr10.htm
http://www.comare.org.uk/press_releases/comare_pr03.htm

I would also suggest to other posters not to go to the trouble of providing links for your convenience.

At no time do you acknowledge or refer to the information provided on uranium mining, leaks, spills, accidents, explosions, fires, shabby or non-existent regulatory standards, a global epidemic of thyroid and breast cancer, radiation plumes in air, soil, rivers and groundwater, atomic blasts and its legacy of global illnesses including the ongoing environmental contamination by the military – particularly the more recent depleted uranium arsenals used in the Gulf regions where civilians have been used as cannon fodder.

The time has come Shadow Minister when those who have a licence to kill (and their sycophants) can no longer avoid difficult questions by artful subterfuge, tricky manoeuvres, deceptions and a reliance on red herrings. I would imagine the pro-nuclear camp has become increasingly embarrassed by your disgraceful and evasive tactics though I daresay every forum needs a comedian.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/02/eveningnews/main3447744.shtml - Quality Assured? Hilarious!

Note: Protagoras has one “s” - not two!

Shadow Minister, you claim (4 October 7:47p.m.) there is a major flaw in a Green Audit analysis. Like COMARE, you fail to understand the study you refer to. Read the paper; you haven't, have you.
Bear in mind that a large mudbank offshore Burnham on Sea exposes citizens to resuspended radioactivity originally discharged from Hinkley Point NPP. A group of Burnham citizens, concerned that this exposure might be causing observed health detriment, and concerned that the cancer registry was mishandling data, set out to collect their own data in a door-to-door survey. The prior hypothesis (a requisite of good epidemiology) was that living closer to the beach might be associated with a greater cancer risk. The results showed that it was. Even greater risks were found in people who visited the beach frequently. However, the COMARE press release you cite suggests that the prior hypothesis was required to demonstrate cancer rates for the entire ward. The cancer registry appears to be complicit in this misrepresentation.
While we're on the subject, you almost certainly don't know that your COMARE press release was their second attempt. In the first they made a stupid error, assuming that the Burnham citizens' survey had achieved a 30% return on a 100% canvass of households. This would have meant the study was fatally flawed by "reporting bias" and consequent over-reporting of cancer. In fact they had achieved a near 100% return on a 30% canvass. The missing returns were for households where someone had recently died of cancer, so if anything the study under-reported the prevalence of cancer. So much for COMARE.
Your analogy with throwing a die 1 million times and the nonsense presented by Geoff Russell (thanks for accepting that it's simplistic) are irrelevant. I'm not the nit picker nor the fraudster; you must by now have realised that "the base logic" is "What are the health effects of exposure to internalised radioactivity from nuclear processes?". It's time to get real.

Protagoras,

Congratulations for your first attempt at substantiating your posts. Such a pity that the conclusions drawn differ so dramatically from your shrill claims.

"We examined the incidence of childhood cancer in the vicinity of all
nuclear power stations in Great Britain. We found no evidence of excess numbers of cases in any local 25 km area, which would include either primary exposure to radioactive discharges or secondary exposure from re suspended material."

The call for others not to provide links for my "convenience" where as I thought they did it to provide credibility for their posts which obviously is not important for you.

All the claims I have made are supported by links. However perhaps I should repeat them further down the thread.

Similarly the 3 particles that you mention would have to be swallowed to be toxic, so while this is a serious breach, it it unlikely to have impacted the health of the local population.

Similarly your cut and paste comments on uranium mining need to be substantiated as my reading does not concur with your conclusions.

In the news recently was that there have been about 250 000 deaths in Chinese coal mines in the past several decades. This is higher than the entire body count of the nuclear endeavor incl Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl etc.

I have never claimed that nuclear energy isn't perfect only that it is safer than what we have presently.

Well done Herr Minister - finally you spell my name correctly.

"Similarly the 3 particles that you mention would have to be swallowed to be toxic, so while this is a serious breach, it it unlikely to have impacted the health of the local population."

SM - For one who boasts expertise knowledge on power plants, your ignorance on radioactive particles is profound.

PM 2.5 is considered by the scientific community as the most lethal of the particulates. The very fine PM 2.5 particulates can be composed of such things as dioxin or radioactive particles. Ambient aerosol particles of PM 2.5 pass beyond the larynx and reach the thorax or chest during inhalation and they remain there. The victim remains oblivious to the fact that he/she has inhaled the hazard. Naturally, this is of no concern to the blood sucking vampire bats in the nuclear industry.

Your silly post has no relevance to the officially documented and elevated morbidity figures caused by anthropogenic radioactive emissions.

"Similarly your cut and paste comments on uranium mining need to be substantiated as my reading does not concur with your conclusions."

The information I have provided on uranium mining has long been substantiated and the links I have provided on this forum far outweigh yours. Odd that an energy "expert" consultant on power plants has resorted to bludging on OLO - peddling nuclear propaganda during working hours.

Protagoras,

I could not find any reference to them being falling into the PM2.5 classification (usually used for air emmissions). Also as they were discharged as liquid effluent, the chance of inhalation is extremely improbable. As per the in depth study of the issue:

http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0952-4746/27/3A/S02/jrp7_3A_S02.pdf?request-id=889f0330-af89-43c9-b46b-2fd168633698

http://www.sepa.org.uk/radioactive_substances/decommissioning/dounreay/idoc.ashx?docid=cad6ea68-48c4-444e-9237-1c606cb17a05&version=-1

"The probability of contact for a number of critical groups has been assessed in several recent reports (e.g. Pellet 2004, Smith and Bedwell 2005) Inhalation is not considered a possible contact route as Particles are much larger than the respirable size fraction. The probabilities of contact with the skin or via ingestion may be as high as 8 × 10^-6 (lobster potters) or 4 × 10^-7 (bait digger at Sandside Beach). However, more typical activities have contact frequencies that are well below 1 × 10^-7.

Recent work by the Health Protection Agency (Harrison et al 2005) has concluded that doses resulting from contact with even the most active of the Particles found at Sandside would be below the threshold for deterministic effects to human health."

To sum it up,

- The chances of ingestion or inhalation are infinitesimal,
- and even if it does happen, the probability of death or serious illness is also extremely small.
- No further emissions have occurred.
- The chicken little horror approach from your post appears to be fabricated.

Considering the sparsity of your links, refering to links from weeks and months ago not related to this post is ridiculous.

I have yet to see anything that indicates that existing uranium mining operations are any worse for human health or the environment than mining coal, gold, nickel etc. And considering the small relative quantities even more so. (about 250 000 coal miners in China have died in the past few decades)

Odd that a self confessed energy dunce has chosen to pontificate so poorly during his working hours. But from the quality of the information you provide there was very little time or effort taken to verify anything.

“Also as they were discharged as liquid effluent, the chance of inhalation is extremely improbable.”

SM – Solid waste is NOT liquid effluent. Further, as a result of “regulation,” solid waste materials produced during reprocessing operations were to be disposed of to the licensed disposal and storage facilities on the site, however, they were “inadvertently” released into the site’s low active drainage system and discharged into the sea.

So why not cease your whitewashing and tell it how it is? That the particles are specks of irradiated fuel some hotter than others? Furthermore, the blood sucking vampire bats from whom you take your propaganda – in this case, the UKAEA advised:

”The assumption then was there might be hundreds of thousands of particles but, based on current knowledge, we now believe the actual number discharged may have been in the order of tens of thousands. We have acknowledged that the number is likely to be substantial.”

Current knowledge eh? Are we to believe then that an inventory for discharges was unavailable for illegal, radioactive particle discharges – "tens of thousands" of them?

“Recent work by the Health Protection Agency (Harrison et al 2005) has concluded that doses resulting from contact with even the most active of the Particles found at Sandside would be below the threshold for deterministic effects to human health."

Well perhaps you should get out and about more and read the report from SEPA, somehow “overlooked” by the UKAEA:

“Radioactive particles present a novel exposure pathway for members of the public. For typical assessments of potential doses received by members of the public, habit surveys and environmental monitoring combine to allow the assessment to occur. In these circumstances it is believed that the probability of encounter/consumption is certain.”

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VB2-4T2RYYR1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1036065896&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1a4d2fbee33e56e6375a866a44441d20

While the pro nuke camp boasts of futuristic Gen 1V you beaut reactors – which Spindoc once advised “there had never been an accident,” never mind that they don’t exist, the blunders continue so do the coverups from the nuclear industry.

Government regulatory agencies in Australia are culpable by collusion for the worst environmental catastrophes this decade.

contd……

This decade we've witnessed a total disregard for public safety by governments in the areas of lead, hazardous waste, mercury, alumina, atomic waste, uranium mining and resource "recovery." These industries continue to contaminate this fragile biodiversity with impunity.

1. 2005: “Australian uranium mining company Energy Resources Australia has been fined AUS$150,000 after being found guilty of a series of contamination breaches at its Ranger mine.

Two of the charges relate to incidents concerning the connection of the drinking water systems with the process water systems used during uranium extraction - at the Ranger uranium processing plant in March 2004. Another relates to contaminated vehicles leaving the site.

Twenty-eight workers fell ill after drinking and showering in water contaminated with FOUR HUNDRED TIMES the legal limit of uranium.

Symptoms included vomiting, headaches and skin rashes. A total of 159 workers were exposed to the contamination.

In separate incidents, three works vehicles left the site contaminated with uranium ore. The company has been ordered to pay the prosecution costs of the case, AUS$25,000, in addition to the fine.

http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=10034

2. 2007: “Secrets in the Sand – Coverup at Maralinga”

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2007/2019647.htm

http://www.anthonyalbanese.com.au/file.php?file=/news/WRIAZQAESKMBBMOWFYZNGCAW/index.html

3. "The British Nuclear Tests – Was the test policy indifferent to human suffering” (Robert William Varney - Bachelor of Technology- University of Adelaide)

http://www.pariahnt.org/pages/Bob_Varney_Thesis-Ch10.htm

4. 2009: Olympic Dam: “(Scientists and Doctors) have written to the State Government warning that up to 5.5 million tonnes of toxic waste in dams with an area of 4000ha will reach ground water within 150 years and dust storms could blow thousands of tonnes from the 242 million tonnes of waste into the atmosphere and all over the state for hundreds of years”

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25943922-2682,00.html

That’s it Shadow Minister – Your “lies, damned lies” and greenwashing of the atom is tiresome and fatuous. I daresay the people of this nation would agree.

Little Johnny made the same blunder didn’t he when he talked up the “Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy” publication released prior to an election - "Trust me citizens of Australia - there's no *IMMEDIATE* danger!"

Dearie me, that’s when he had the meltdown!

Let’s face it Protagoras, Shadow Minister has you done and dusted. You are firing blanks from a scatter gun, a person who has hit rock bottom, and started digging.

What amazes me is your dogged persistence and total lack of embarrassment.

Protagoras,

As spindoc says, your scatter gun approach of pulling up mining accidents (of which I notice no fatalities) is purely to draw attention from the safety record of mining.

http://www.minerals.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/6223/e-mis_2004.pdf
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/5204.0Main%20Features502007-08?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=5204.0&issue=2007-08&num=&view=
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/145E222CF0CADBC0CA257410000FC26C?opendocument

Industry, mining, construction and transport provides about 37% of GDP of which nearly one quarter comes from mining.

In this group there are more than 200 fatalities annually of which roughly 5% come from mining, and roughly 0.5% from uranium mining. None of which appear to be linked to radiation.

Considering the more than 5000 accidental deaths in Australia p.a. it would appear that it is safer to be working on a uranium mine than most other day to day activities.

As for the particles, with one exception of thousands studied, were insoluble and of low activity, so the particles if ingested (inhalation was considered extremely unlikely) would pass straight through the gut within 24hrs with negligible exposure. The study I supplied estimates this probability as less than 1/million per annum for lobster pot workers eating scavenger seafood.

Your link to SEPA is broken and I could not find the report to which you refered, however I did find from SEPA:

"This fuel fragment would be classified as "minor" according to the DPAG categorisation and does not present a significant hazard to the public"

http://www.sepa.org.uk/about_us/news/2009/particle_found_at_site_of_prop.aspx

A news article that several medical doctors and scientists have signed a green petition against what the greens with their vast geological knowledge have predicted might happen in 150 years does not carry much credibility.

I also struggle to see what weapons testing in the 50s and 60s has to do with nuclear power?

Your chicken little approach is similar to those who oppose vaccines, where the 1 in a million chance of adverse reaction is blown out of proportion to the thousands of lives saved.

For every person that has ever died from nuke mining, generation or even weapons, dozens have been saved from the isotopes extracted from these reactors.

"Let’s face it Protagoras, Shadow Minister has you done and dusted. You are firing blanks from a scatter gun, a person who has hit rock bottom, and started digging."

Same dog - different haircut.

Here's how the French deal with some of their nuclear waste - another disaster waiting to happen.

If only weasel words could solve the world's problems - - the PR Spivs of the heavily government-subsidised French Nuclear Electricity Industry would bring us world peace in a week!

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/6310714/EDF-sends-used-nuclear-material-to-Siberia.html

EDF 'sends used nuclear material' to Siberia

EDF, the French firm which owns eight of Britain's nuclear power stations has shipped hundreds of tons of used radioactive material to Russia.

By Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 6:30AM BST 13 Oct 2009

More than 1,500 tons of spent fuel produced by the power company EDF was discovered in metal containers near a Siberian town.

The company claims that it recycles almost all of its fuel. Environmental experts have claimed that 13 per cent of the spent fuel from the company's French power plants is on the site and described it as "really dirty stuff".


The largely state-owned French utility has plans to build a further four reactors in Britain.

France's nuclear industry has long claimed that it produces only "clean" low-carbon energy at its nuclear plants as the fuel can be mostly reused.

However, according to nuclear experts cited by the Libération newspaper, thousands of tons of that fuel actually end up 5,000 miles away in Seversk, Siberia. They claimed that polluted, depleted uranium sits in an open-air "parking area" in metal containers and is visible from satellite images.

"No nuclear waste [is sent] to Russia," said a spokesman for [EDF]

"Only recyclable uranium, reprocessed from EDF's nuclear reactors, is sent to Russia to be enriched," he said. The company added that according to international "contracts relating to uranium", the depleted uranium was now the property of Russia, not France.

The French ecology ministry said there was "no desire to be secretive", saying it was simply an "industrial choice".

"France's dependency on Russia on this strategic subject is a real issue," a ministry spokesman added.

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2009

Sir Vivor,

Considering the low level of radioactivity of reprocessed uranium, even with the 232, 234 and 236 isotope contaminants, and the low chemical reactivity of the metallic uranium, storage in lead lined metal containers is perfectly safe for the short time (few years) before re enrichment, as the most dangerous non uranium isotopes have already been removed, and the radioactivity is less than 0.01% of spent fuel rods.

Reprocessing and re enriching the uranium greatly reduces the volume and radio activity of spent fuel, and if implemented for all fuel will render the Yucca mountain and other storage sites largely redundant.

The technical article below should provide some illumination as to what is done and why, and the properties of the products.

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_1529_web.pdf

As Russia has the largest re enrichment capabilities, this would seem a natural place to send it.

Once again the press has reacted in a knee jerk fashion to anything that has the label nuclear waste.