“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.