I am reminded of one of the snippets the New Yorker used to quote from other publications -- before they changed editors and came to realize that such facetiousness was deeply inappropriate -- at column bottoms.

It was about Maggie Thatcher being on the campaign trail and, according to the other publication, stopping occasionally "to kill and embrace small children". This caused the New Yorker to say, "She'll always be the Iron Lady to us".

--- G.R.L. Cowan ('How fire can be domesticated')
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/

The forest plot Geoff Russell presents is for studies up to 16 kilometres from NPPs. In another place (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9422)
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 the recent German study -"KiKK", which all authorities agree cannot be ignored. The Baker and Hoel paper Russell relies on here concludes "it cannot be ignored that the majority of studies have found elevated rates".
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.
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.
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. In the Caldicott blog I have said I'd need to know about the nature of emissions from IFRs before they'd get my vote. No information has been offered.

Fossil fuels really do harm children, and are enormously lucrative, both to the producing industries and to government.

"You again failed to provide any support or reference for your dummy spit and I seriously doubt you can."

Wrong again Shadow Minister. Here's but a few links retrieved at random and I have hundreds more - but "Mums" the word!

1. 2009: An MP has called for an investigation after it emerged that the Faslane naval base has suffered a series of safety breaches:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8019406.stm

2. 2009: Ministry of Defence figures show that there have been a total of 235 fires on nuclear submarines since 1987:

http://www.robedwards.com/2009/09/exposed-22-serious-fires-on-nuclear-submarines.html

3. 2009: Thousands of litres of radioactive waste have accidentally leaked into the Firth of Clyde from the Hunterston nuclear power station in breach of pollution law

http://www.robedwards.com/2009/09/revealed-radioactive-waste-leak-from-hunterston.html

4. 2006: The sudden stop at the Forsmark nuclear power plant just north of Stockholm was the most dangerous international nuclear incident since the destruction of the Russian Chernobyl plant 20 year ago, said nuclear expert and former boss at Forsmark Lars-Olov Höglund in Uppsala Nya Tidning on Tuesday.

4:1 2009: Safety procedures at a nuclear power plant in eastern Sweden have been criticised by inspectors, according to reports.

4:2 2009: Following a wave of scandals surrounding Vattenfall, the Swedish government has demanded concrete measures be taken by the board of the state-owned nuclear operator.

4:3 2009: The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) has observed a series of shortcomings since 2005. These involve weaknesses in management and governance, a lack of traceability of internal decisions, and failure to adhere to routines and instructions," it said in a statement.

http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=4487&date=20060801

5. Nuclear Reactor Accidents 1990 – 1995

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=cr81ZHY-6H0C&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=radiation+detected++nuclear+plant&source=bl&ots=VIcljgAvev&sig=KNHWS_uhzS1QCUKt8Zu6H-v078g&hl=en&ei=0lPDStOsCMuJkQWbtuS7BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=radiation%20detected%20%20nuclear%20plant&f=false

6. Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production site. The spatial distribution of plutonium in RFETS soils has been estimated with plutonium activities in surface soils ranging from 1,450 to 0.05 pCi/g, with the data showing a clear west-east trend away from an old drum storage site known as the 903 Pad. More than 90% of the Pu is contained within the upper 10-12 cm of soils downwind of the 903 Pad (Fig 2).

http://ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/highlights_archive/rockyflats.html

Don't give up your day job Shadow Minister - assuming you have one!

"Fossil fuels really do harm children, and are enormously lucrative, both to the producing industries and to government."
Posted by GRLCowan

Quite correct GRLCowan and it is not only children that FF emissions harm. Scientist Barry Brook advised that coal fired power plants emit between 100 to 300 times more radiation than nuclear plants.

Given that the radioactive emissions from coal fired plants are unregulated, guidelines for radiation measurements ignored and radioactive fly ash sold for use in other industries, do you truthfully believe that the "lower" emissions from nuclear plants would be more stringently regulated? And if you do believe that, what logic have you applied to arrive at that conclusion?

Good article Geoff, thanks.

I see the usual flat earthers and Luddites are desperately trying to stop progress as ever. Helen Caldicott will eventually be on a par with Ludd, when people realize the damage done to our environment by holding back a technology now we see we clearly need.

Instead of being generations ahead, it has been starved and we are left with hobby technologies like wind, solar and hot rocks.

It all seemed so innocent when we didn't think we needed an alternative power source, now that we do, in hindsight, it was stupid to nobble an emerging technology.

Nothing is perfect, and Nuclear Energy is not either, but we could have done a lot more by now to reduce the issues, if we had not tolerated such fearmongery and hysterics.

We'll eventually learn I guess, to be more suspicious of doomsayers and catastrophists. Now that we are getting to know the damage they can do and how devious and evil they can be to get their own way.