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.