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.