Nuclear power , not that cheap or safe it appears

Can you spot the Key words in the first report TJ?

predicted
estimated
expected
prediction
will

instead of words like documented, reported, recorded, have

Have you also noticed that the “New York Academy of Sciences” one is not a peer reviewed publication 🙄

ALARA As Low As Reasonably Achievable

Stochastic Effects

Page 15
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file49349.pdf

“The relationship between the probability of the occurrence of a stochastic health effect (the response) and the level of exposure to radiation (the dose) at the low levels of radiation exposure routinely experienced at work or in the environment is assumed, for the purposes of radiological protection, to be linear no-threshold (LNT)
– put simply, the response is assumed to be directly proportional to the dose with no threshold dose below which the effect does not occur. This approach is taken because it is believed to be prudent and so is likely to err in the direction of caution; it is also an approach that has the considerable merit of practicality for those managing radiation protection. The commonly used shorthand statement “There is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation” derives from this assumption of no threshold dose for stochastic effects, but is a distortion of the LNT approach because it equates “safe” with “no effect at all, no matter how small”, which is not correct –
it is the level of risk upon which a judgement is made as to whether or not an exposure is safe.”

TJ, since you obviously missed it way back on page 2:

The 2011 UNSCEAR report

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) produced a report drastically different to many appreciations of the effects previously produced. The report concludes that 134 staff and emergency workers suffered acute radiation syndrome and of those 28 died of the condition. Many of the survivors suffered skin conditions and radiation induced cataracts, and 19 have since died, but not usually of conditions associated with radiation exposure. Of the several hundred thousand liquidators, apart from indications of increased leukaemia risk, there is no other evidence of health effects. In the general public, the only effect with ‘persuasive evidence’ is a substantial fraction of the 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer in adolescents observed in the affected areas. By 2005, 15 cases had proved fatal.

The total deaths reliably attributable to the radiation produced by the accident therefore stands at 62 by the estimate of UNSCEAR.

The report concludes that ‘the vast majority of the population need not live in fear of serious health consequences from the Chernobyl accident’.

you’re terminology is loose, bordering on hysterical, and your argument accordingly weakened…….

your spelling is poor, bordering on chav-like, and your counter-argument is accordingly weakened…….

Steveo

UNSCEAR has conducted 20 years of detailed scientific and epidemiological research on the effects of the Chernobyl accident. Apart from the 57 direct deaths in the accident itself, UNSCEAR predicted in 2005 based on Linear no-threshold model (LNT) that up to 4,000 additional cancer deaths related to the accident would appear “among the 600 000 persons receiving more significant exposures (liquidators working in 1986–87, evacuees, and residents of the most contaminated areas)”.[104] Later this number was revised slightly up to 5,000. The number of excess deaths among 5 million people living in the less contaminated areas is estimated at 3,000–5,000. The number of excess cancer deaths worldwide (including all contaminated areas) is approximately 27,000 based on the same LNT.[105]

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment is an English translation of the 2007 Russian publication Chernobyl. It was published in 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences in their Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. It presents an analysis of scientific literature and concludes that medical records between 1986, the year of the accident, and 2004 reflect 985,000 premature deaths as a result of the radioactivity released. The authors suggest that most of the deaths were in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, though others occurred worldwide throughout the many countries that were struck by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl.[14] The literature analysis draws on over 1,000 published titles and over 5,000 internet and printed publications discussing the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. The authors contend that those publications and papers were written by leading Eastern European authorities and have largely been downplayed or ignored by the IAEA and UNSCEAR.[118]

the difference is you quote the deaths that have occurred with proven direct causality. Even then its wrong as more than that have died from direct radiation injuries amongst the emergency workers. The higher numbers reflect the excess deaths from cancer due to radiation that are predicted using various models.

I stand by tens of thousands to maybe hundreds of thousands deaths in total from chernobyl. People are still dying from it today

I stand by tens of thousands to maybe hundreds of thousands deaths in total from chernobyl. People are still dying from it today

We all die.

You mean premature deaths.

Which could be a week premature or 70 years premature.

Yes premature deaths or excess deaths

The higher numbers reflect the excess deaths from cancer due to radiation that are predicted using various models.

Which are calculated on the basis of a linear dose response, which, as you’ve already conceded, is bollocks ahem, far from being a foregone conclusion 😆

seriously TJ, can you see, or at least concede, that if the reaction to radiation does not follow not a linear response model, then the predicted death toll as a result of widespread low level radiation exposure from Chernobyl that you have relied on falls apart, simply fals apart, under scrutiny.

the predicted death toll as a result of widespread low level radiation exposure from Chernobyl that you have relied on falls apart

And I hear that housing there is very cheap.

Can you spot the Key words in the first report TJ?

predicted
estimated
expected
prediction
will

instead of words like documented, reported, recorded, have

Very interested by this. Any chance you can point me towards any documented, reported, recorded, data on nuclear power stations that have been successfuly decommissioned? I’ve been trying to find something authorative, but can only find predictions and estimates of what they will be able to acheive in the future.

Have been avoiding this thread as I can’t be bothered debating “the wall”.

However, the debate about low doses and dose thresholds allows me to post one of my favourite graphics (big pic, might need to look at the original):

Apologies if it has already been posted, couldn’t be bothered to read the entire thread.

Original Pic Here[/url]

I think I’ve seen that chart on every radiation thread on STW at some point in the debate.

Given the number of years that the cigarette companies managed to shoot down any attempt to provide a statistically proven link between smoking and lung cancer, heart disease, throat cnacer and so on, the nuclear industry is going to have no trouble in denying there’s any link between low doses of radiation and various ills. Common sense says they are there though.

Edukator – Member
Common sense says they are there though.

That’s good enough proof for me.

Walk along a busy treet and make a sound recording as you go. As you walk past a shopyou distinctly hear some people arguing. Now display the sound recording as a graph and try to prove there are human voices on the sound track.

The background noise makes proving links between illness and low-level environmental factors very hard even though at higher levels the link is easy to prove. Commmon sense says that the link doesn’t disappear at background noise levels, the nuclear industry says it does.

TJ: “Consistent with” LNT does not mean that LNT is proven. It merely means that the cited papers do not *disprove* LNT.

There is some work which specifically set out to test it. A physicist at the University of Pittsburgh in the US studied lung cancer rates as a function of radon levels throughout the US. He found that cancer rate declines with radon level for very low exposures, then rises, which contradicts LNT.

You can download the full study if you’re interested:

Bernard L. Cohen, Health Physics, Feb. 1995, Vol. 68, No. 2, pp 157-174
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/LNT-1995.PDF

This has been criticized as an “ecological” study, meaning specific individual exposures for radon are not known. But LNT is an ecological hypothesis. If it is correct, then by definition each increment of exposure results in the same increment of risk. If one person has twice the exposure, they have twice the risk; the total number of cancers induced in a population should be the average exposure times the population times the (linear) risk per unit exposure. We don’t need to know the exposure distribution. To my knowledge, this study falsifying LNT has never been successfully rebutted.

About 1.3 million people die of cancer in Europe annually. The random fluctuation in that number, twice its square root for the 95% confidence interval, is about +/- 2300. Multiply that by a 70-year lifespan, and you can generate 160,000 “model deaths” that aren’t statistically detectable and thus can’t be disproven. Plus, other factors affecting cancer deaths (new treatments, changes in diet, etc. etc.) further confuse any effort to tease out the effects of low-level radiation.

Of course, with equal statistical (in)validity, I claim that the hormesis hypothesis is right, and the radiation released by Chernobyl will prevent 160,000 deaths over 70 years. Nobody can prove me wrong. 🙂

The only clearly detectable cancer from Chernobyl was thyroid cancer, because the background incidence is so small. And the worst-case annual risk of developing it, 15 years after the accident, was 1 chance in 9000 (11 cases per 100,000 population in Belarus).

Coincidentally, the annual death risk from driving a car in the US is also about 1 in 9000 (40,000 deaths, 360 million people). The difference is thyroid cancer has a 98% cure rate.

The take-home message is the worst directly attributable excess risk from Chernobyl to the general population was much less than an ordinary risk we take every day, for the worst accident ever. That makes nuclear power comparatively safe.

worst directly attributable excess risk

So if we know its there but can’t prove it it didn’t happen 🙄

Given that reputable analysis with a very tight remit gives 9000 excess deaths and a very large analysis with a much wider remit gives a million excess deaths I believe to say tens of thousand to hundreds of thousands of deaths seems like a reasonable and conservative position

to simply say we can’t actually show causality means it didn’t happen is a very odd position. These people still died and are still dying andwill continue to do so for decades

to ignore anything but thyroid cancer is also a very odd position.

Given that reputable analysis with a very tight remit gives 9000 excess deaths

I reiterate my previous comment, that you have not tackled!

The models you’ve cited are calculated on the basis of a LNT response, which, as you’ve already conceded, is not a foregone conclusion

can you concede, that if the reaction to radiation does not follow not a linear response no threshold model, then the predicted death tolls you have cited are unreliable.

Quit simple, polite, scientifically based question for you TJ.

TJ says: “So if we know its there but can’t prove it it didn’t happen”

You’re missing the point. Scientifically, if we can’t prove something, then we DON’T “know it’s there”. Proof is what science requires; otherwise it’s the domain of religion.

You wouldn’t have any petrol in your tank if geologists didn’t best guess where to drill with no more proof than a hunch based on experience.

Science doesn’t need absolute proof, only the cigarette/nuclear industries and the politicians they pay need that. A best fit hypothesis is good enough for scientists.

Thats not the point – you are claiming as we cannot show a direct casual link then it didn’t happen.

We cannot show a direct casual link between an individuals lung cancer and their smoking – however we know its there.

Similarly we cannot show a direct causal link between Chernobyl fallout and excess deaths and health issues in irradiated areas. Howwever that does not mean it didn’t cause health issues.

there is a huge amount in medicine that cannot be proven

You can’t compare decomissioning Dounreay to the more modern power stations. That would be like comparing the emissions from a modern car and an old mini.

Coincidentally, the annual death risk from driving a car in the US is also about 1 in 9000 (40,000 deaths, 360 million people). The difference is thyroid cancer has a 98% cure rate.

And the difference between your examples is that driving a car has some (more) benefits to weigh against the risk than the generation of electircity by nuclear power as nuclear power is easily substitutable, whereas cars aren’t.

The fact that the risks are statistically as likely is irrelevant.

In fact it follows from your expressed view that as we are all going to die it doesn’t matter when or how it happens.

Which of course, is stupid.

Thats not the point – you are claiming as we cannot show a direct casual link then it didn’t happen.

We cannot show a direct casual link between an individuals lung cancer and their smoking – however we know its there.

TJ – we’re not claiming that you cannot show a direct causal link, we’re claiming that you cannot show any link at all.

I’d agree that you cannot actually show a direct causal link between an individuals lung cancer and their smoking, but you CAN show that lung cancer in the population of smokers, even after accounting for variables like social class and alcohol, is statistically massivley higher in the population of smokers than than it is in the (control) population of non smokers, we can also show that animals in controlled tests show the same massivley increased risk of smoke exposed versus control animals.

The difference here, is that you cannot show that – you cannot show any statistical increase in levels of any health problem above background levels between populations exposed to low level radiation and the rest of the control population.

The LNT hypothesis is the same as saying that because someone who smokes 40 a day for their lifetime has a higher chance of cancer than someone who smokes 20 a day, and this is again higher than the chance of non smokers… then by extrapolation someone who smokes one cigarette, once in their life to try it, has increased their chance of getting cancer by an unidentifable percentage.

Worse than that – you’re making the connection that if that person DID get cancer down the line, then its obviously down to the one single cigarette they smoked when they were fifteen years old, despite the fact that hundreds of people, day in, day out, get identical cancers despite never having smoked a cigarette ever.

And yet governments are prepared to take measures againt people getting low doses of smoke through passive smoking in pubs and so on, but tell us not to worry about low doses of radiation.

TJ: “Thats not the point – you are claiming as we cannot show a direct casual link then it didn’t happen…
We cannot show a direct casual link between an individuals lung cancer and their smoking – however we know its there.”

Still missing the point. The issue is not showing a “direct causal link” between individual cancer cases and exposure, which is of course impossible.

The issue is showing a statistical association between exposure and the rate of cancer. That has been proven for both smoking and for high doses of radiation. It is ASSUMED, not proven, for low doses of radiation. I don’t know how solid the data are for low doses of cigarette smoke; haven’t read the studies.

Here is another study which specifically looked at low levels of gamma ray exposure. One difference between this study and all other low-level radiation studies, including Chernobyl studies, is that the radiation exposures were measured rather than estimated and therefore are known much more precisely:

Matanowski, G. M. “Health effects of low-level radiation in shipyard workers, Final report, June 1991”. DOE DE-AC02-79 EV10095, 1991

If you really care, you can find all 452 pages of this at:

http://www.orau.org/ptp/PTP%20Library/library/Subject/Risk/shipyard.pdf

You can find references to it as the “Nuclear Shipyard Workers Study”, NSWS. It was a carefully designed case-control study comparing cohorts of naval shipyard workers performing similar jobs, one group in the reactor areas (thus required to wear dosimeters), the other not. An independent 8-member Technical Advisory Panel was charged with overseeing the cohort selection process to ensure that the cohorts really were comparable and avoid “healthy worker” bias. There were about 30,000 people in each group — roughly 10 times the numbers in a typical Phase-3 medical study. The author knew she was looking for a small effect.

The results showed a 20% lower overall standardized age-adjusted mortality from all causes in the most-exposed group. Furthermore, there appeared to be a dose-response relationship (a smaller group with 0-5 mSv exposure had lower mortality than the unexposed group, but higher than the 5-to-50 mSv group). (Table 3.1.C1, page 303)

In any other context, such a dramatic result would have been shouted from the rooftops, but because it was very far from what the authors were expecting, the report was quietly shelved and the outcome waved away as some unknown selection bias (despite having convened a blue-ribbon panel specifically to prevent that).

The results showed a 20% lower overall standardized age-adjusted mortality from all causes in the most-exposed group. Furthermore, there appeared to be a dose-response relationship (a smaller group with 0-5 mSv exposure had lower mortality than the unexposed group, but higher than the 5-to-50 mSv group). (Table 3.1.C1, page 303)

I’m not going to go and read it, but the obvious question here is for how long after exposure was she tracking mortality rates?

Are you ASSUMING that some findings she made over a short period are applicable over a lifetime?

http://www.nlassociates.co.uk/2011/08/the-fukushima-reactor-accident-and-the-issue-of-food-contamination/

“Chernobyl, 1986

In the aftermath of Chernobyl, Caesium-137 was deposited on some upland areas of the UK, where sheep farming is the primary land-use. Sheep grazing on these areas ingested the Caesium and levels up to 3600 Bq/Kg were detected.

Following the accident, over 4,000,000 sheep were placed under restriction. Now in 2011 there are 330 farms that remain under restriction in North Wales, and only 8 in Cumbria, England.
”

RightPlace — The time base of the study was quite long, or very few of the subjects would have died. About 2/3 of the dates of hire were between 1950 and 1970, and the study was published in 1991. No, the findings are not short term.

Macavity — I have no idea where Lightfoot’s data is derived.

Here is a chart of Cs-137 in Germany in cow milk, 1960-1998:

http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~aubrecht/coalvsnucMarcon.pdf

scan to page 19, look at Figure 11.21. The original source is cited as umweltbundesamt “daten zur umwelt” 1998. I don’t have that publication so I don’t know the full context, but this chart shows levels roughly comparable to the aftermath of atmospheric weapons testing, but not as long-lasting, on the order of 8 Bq/l for two years. It is worth noting that natural K-40 in milk is about 50 Bq/l.

With growing global populations will the need for food become more important than any perceived need for nuclear power stations?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/29/sheep-farmers-chernobyl-meat-restricted

http://www.rff.org/rff/Events/Valuing-Health/upload/5390_1.pdf

http://www.openengineering.talktalk.net/nuclear.html

http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/news/radioactive-contamination.html

New or old a nuclear site is a nuclear site

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn222.pdf

Do also bear in mind that you can insulate and efficiency out of the need for the nuclear stations – and for less money. The obstacle is that our government and big business do not want that as a) they sell less product (energy) and b) they want to build huge projects that can overrun on cost and time and make them look great engineers, not have to go and sort out Mrs Miggins house on station road for a week or so.

Currently recruiting

http://www.cnc.jobs/

Do also bear in mind that you can insulate and efficiency out of the need for the nuclear stations – and for less money

I would refute that, Matt. I agree that we could make massive improvements with a proper Retrofit for the Future programme, but we need to stop throwing carbon into the atmosphere and gas, coal and oil are far worse options for that and other reasons. There will be an electrification of our energy – electric cars, no domestic gas etc etc. That will drive up electricity consumption more than insulation can drive it down.

Good news

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/17/radioactive-contamination-controls-sheep-farms
http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/livestock/chernobyl-movement-restrictions-could-be-lifted/43124.article

Would wool from radioactive sheep be more effective at insulating my house than normal wool?

Nuclear power , not that cheap or safe it appears

If you are thinking of giving this Christmas: the Chernobyl childrens charities are a worthy cause.

http://local.stv.tv/coatbridge/news/24993-children-of-chernobyl-visit-coatbridge-fire-station/

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/9385813.Dorset_County_Hospital_helps_Ukraine_children/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/10/ukba-treatment-chernobyl-children?newsfeed=true

http://www.ccll.org.uk/ho/

http://www.south-ayrshire.gov.uk/news/Chernobyl-Children-visit-Dolphin-House.aspx

http://www.challengescotland.com/friends-of-chernobyls-children.html

Macavity — Here’s a link to the sheep monitoring program:

http://animalhealth.defra.gov.uk/about/publications/gvj/GVJVol17.pdf

Thanks, I had not known about these details before. It turns out that in most soils, Cs-137 becomes bound to clay minerals and is not bioconcentrated in plants and the animals that graze on them, but the soil in the North Wales uplands has very little clay.

Nevertheless, the chart on page 25 shows that the percentage of animals measuring above the legal limit fell below 1% after six years (by 1992), and is now very low indeed. Even the animals failing could be reclaimed by grazing in lower pasture for several months (Cs-137 has a biological half-life in sheep of about 20 days). They excrete the Cs, which then becomes bound to clay and isn’t taken up again.

There’s been a food-safety radiation monitoring programme in place since the 1960’s in the UK.

Rationally, you need to compare this risk to the risk from, say, the assorted pollutants entering the air and water from coal burning, since a large fraction (about 44% in the US) of electric generation capacity is coal. I think you will find the latter risk is far greater. ExternE thinks so, anyway.

Matt — No engineer will argue against efficiency and conservation, but it does not seem likely to me that on a global scale those will be sufficient to balance out the growing demand from rural populations in China, the Indian subcontinent, and Africa to stop living in medieval conditions. China’s CO2 emissions now exceed the US in absolute terms, and will continue to grow. Nuclear needs to be part of the mix.

Google Pecala and Socolow, “stabilization wedges”. One of those wedges is nuclear.

diogenesnj

Do you want to share this nuclear tech with the rest of the world? Iran? Korea? Sudan?

If not then it is no part of the solution to global warming

Where are you going to get the fuel from?

Waht are you going to do with the waste?

how are you going to fund the decommissioning?

You dtuff ondeath rates is very misleading as well
1) nuclear is a very small % of the worlds electricity generation so I would expect less deaths
2) nuclear is principally the preserve of first world countries with high safety standards.

http://www.mwg.utvinternet.com/iss_nuc_monitor.html

http://bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/sellafield_SNPcloses

http://www.sellafieldsites.com/UserFiles/File/Site%20Specific%20Baseline%20Information%20Jun11.pdf
“The amount of radioactivity discharged to the atmosphere from the Sellafield and Calder Hall facility during 2010
included 8.57 10-5 TBq of alpha emitting radionuclides (some 9.7% of the annual discharge limits), 1.00 10-3 TBq of beta emitting radionuclides (2.4% of annual discharge limits), 9.76 101 TBq of
tritium (8.9% of annual discharge limits), 2.73 10-1 TBq of carbon-14 (8.3% of annual discharge limits), 4.53 104 TBq of krypton-85 (10.3% of annual discharge limits), 4.00 10-5 TBq strontium-90
(5.6% of annual discharge limits), 7.40 TBq of antimony-125 (24.7% of annual discharge limits), 9.64 10-3 TBq of iodine-129 (13.8% of annual discharge limits), 9.33 10-5 TBq of caesium-137
(1.6% of annual discharge limits), and 2.16 10-4 TBq of plutonium-241 (7.2% of annual discharge”

“In 2010, the Sellafield site emitted 223,000 tonnes of CO2, a significant amount arising as a result
of the consumption of 410,000 MWh of energy, compared to 188,000 tonnes of CO2, and 380,000
MWh of energy in 2009.”

“An estimated 1,600 m3 of soil is contaminated with radioactive material to Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) levels. Much of this contamination reflects the industrial activities that have taken
place on the site. Contamination is mainly located in the centre of the Sellafield site. The site also overlies an aquifer in the underlying sandstone geology which is known to be significantly contaminated to the southwest due to the migration of contamination from the site.
As well as the estimated 1,600 m3 of soil contaminated to ILW levels there is also estimated to be just over 1,000,000 m3 of soil contaminated to LLW levels. There is also estimated to be some
11,800,000 m3 of soil contaminated with radioactive material which will require management as
High Volume Very Low Level Waste (HVVLLW).
Since 2006, the application of enhanced beach monitoring near Sellafield using the techniques developed at Dounreay has identified a number of contaminated finds on local beaches. These
are more diverse and generally contain less active radionuclide material than the material identified at Dounreay. Arrangements are in place to monitor for these items and recover those which are found.”