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.