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