Nuclear is Our Future Pro-nuclear activist group

A completely bogus study from Sweden purporting to demonstrate that people are more likely to get cancer if exposed to pre-industrial levels of radiation than if they were exposed to atomic bomb detonations once again raises a question about anti-nuclear groups’ unwavering support of the politically-motivated Linear-No-Threshold radiation impact hypothesis (LNT):

Why on Earth do they support it?

The LNT is, at its core, an assumption. A graph is constructed, with radiation exposure on the horizontal axis and cancer deaths on the vertical axis. The Japanese atomic bombing survivors’ exposure and cancer data is then plotted, and a line is drawn from there to zero radiation and zero cancer.
Seriously.
No low-dose data is included–not from pre-industrial cancer rates, which involved basically the same radiation exposure as today yet were practically nonexistent, and not from the definitive study on the matter, which tracked all the radiation ever received by maintenance crews in Navy nuclear shipyards–and found a mortality rate over 20% lower than their coworkers in non-nuclear shipyards.

But if anti-nuclear groups want a scientific investigation of the health effects of radiation, as they so often claim to do, why do they support an assumption?

Pro-nuclear, anti-nuclear, and in-between organizations all should recognize the fallacy of relying on assumptions, and insist on a well-funded NAS investigation of the health effects of ionizing radiation, with the objective of identifying whether or not there is a threshold, and if there is one, upper and lower bounds.
I call on anti-nuclear groups to show that they have confidence in their claims by submitting them for rigorous peer review.

Filed under Fun With Statistics, Health, Radiation, Research, Their Actions

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

I didn’t know it was this easy to get press. Maybe we should pour orange juice into a vacuum breaker and get the NRC’s response on video, or make an inflatable of a polar bear hugging a containment structure, or something like that.

How to turn a five-minute calculation into a “major, startling new report”:

1. Figure out how much nuclear waste was produced by nuclear power plants in each state from publicly-available numbers. Inflate this figure by a factor of 20-30 by ignoring the unused fuel still left in the fuel rods that are in storage.
2. Get population data.
3. Divide.
4. Give it to your state groups to make a hullabaloo, even if the number is all of two pounds.

That’s right. The most nuclear waste that anyone has accumulated per capita around the country is 2.15 pounds. That’s something to be proud of–how much carbon dioxide has accumulated in the atmosphere from coal burning, per capita, and how much particulate matter is in people’s lungs from coal burning, per capita? And how much of that nuclear waste is in the environment?

Zero.

Perversely, this is being used to justify a subsidy for fossil fuels, paid for by the operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. In Anti-Nuke World, climate scientists have it all wrong: carbon dioxide doesn’t cause global warming; nuclear power plants do. Sure.

Talk about social responsibility. Yes, nuclear waste is going to be around for a while; a lot longer if we don’t reuse the half-used fuel that poses the biggest part of the waste problem. But so are the Pyramids; the Pyramids have no conceivable use to the generations that have had to live alongside them. Like the Pyramids, there’s no way for it to magically disperse itself into the environment. Like the Pyramids, it doesn’t require any nannying. Like the Pyramids–and unlike chemical toxins from coal burners–it has a finite lifetime. Like the Pyramids, people regard it as magical and not the physical entity that it is.

Let’s cite this study in the future. It looks very useful, not just from the data, but from the source.

More from We Support Lee (plus background on the subsidy here).

Link.

Filed under Activism, Environment, Fun With Statistics, Sustainability, Their Actions, Waste

Posted on May 26, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“People living near reactors have higher levels of cancer and other illnesses, especially children. All radiation released into the environment will harm living organisms. Omissions [sic] are released every step of the way.”

-Mary Madigan, President, Western Port Action Group (Australia) (hat tip: Ed of Nuclear Australia)

1. I thought news organizations were supposed to be above printing special interest groups’ press releases.
2. They come up with the first statement by looking at cancer rates in counties that they cherry-pick to be “near” reactors, or worse, collecting baby teeth and analyzing them for fallout (which obviously could have come from atomic bomb detonations). And why would they compare, say, Cook County, IL (population 5,288,655 over 946 square miles) with Garfield County, MT (population 1,279 over 4,848 square miles)?
3. If all radiation harmed organisms, why have they been living with it for billions of years, at literally hundreds of times higher levels? Why is going from 90 millirem (pre-industrial, zero cancers) to 90.02 millirem (nuclear power plant) dangerous?
4. Nuclear facilities basically run on electricity or things that could be substituted with electricity. That electricity comes from fossil fuels when nuclear power isn’t used–is nuclear power not nuclear enough? And no, the radiation that comes from nuclear facilities is not in the form of radioactive materials that leak out–said radiation is the small amount that “shines” through the facilities’ shielding. There isn’t any substance leaking; it’s light, literally.

They sure do release omissions, don’t they?

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Environment, Fun With Statistics, Health, International, Physics, Radiation, Their Actions

Posted on May 19, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“They still don’t have a way to store the waste which stays toxic for … it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.”

-Diane Beeny, Union County New Jersey Peace Council

It’s been stored for 50 years and hasn’t even gotten out, much less harmed anyone. There’s no reason why the systems currently in place (dry-cask storage) can’t work until the waste decays to the level of radioactivity of the natural uranium that was mined. That will take about 500 years.
So what’s the 4.5 billion years from? 4.5 billion years is the half-life of the fuel, not the waste! The actual “waste problem” is the partly-used fuel–plutonium–which still works as fuel for advanced reactors, if only Congress would legalize reuse of the 95% of nuclear fuel that is not used by today’s nuclear power plants.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Fun With Statistics, Physics, Waste

Posted on May 18, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s environmental impact statement gives facts and figures on the plutonium facility’s pollution and contamination. It reveals:

Workers at the facility would be exposed to a dose of 15 person-rem per year, three times the maximum limit of five rem per person, per year required by the Code of Federal Regulations.”

-Don’t Waste South Carolina

By what measure–the amount of radiation emitted by the materials, or the amount of radiation that gets to the workers?

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Fun With Statistics, Health, Plutonium, Practical Problems, Radiation

Posted on May 5, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“98: Percent of the nation’s commercial Low Level Waste curies were buried at Barnwell in 2006. “

-Don’t Waste South Carolina

Note: curies. Curies measure the number of particles radiated, not their strength or their effect on tissue. Curies certainly do not measure the volume of waste, or how much of this “nuclear waste” is actually radioactive.
It also doesn’t measure how much of that low-level waste production was unnecessary, spurred by regulations that required disposable shields to protect plant workers from doses equivalent to a vacation in the Rockies. Those end up as “nuclear waste”–at least the US doesn’t have the strange rules in place in the UK that order everything from a nuclear power plant (up to and including coffee cups from the breakroom) disposed of as nuclear waste, irrespective of any actual radiation output.
And it also doesn’t mention that hospitals, with their life-saving nuclear medicine departments, are prodigious producers of low-level “nuclear waste” in the form of used radiation sources, shields, gloves, and other equipment. Their campaign has very little to do with Barnwell and a lot to do with a desire to stop nuclear power–with no regard for what might happen to the critically sick who need nuclear medicine.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Fun With Statistics, Health, Radiation, Waste

Posted on May 1, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Nils Diaz has called for 100 new reactors in the United States. That means 100 times more nuclear waste and makes a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant 100 times more likely. And, given that new reactors like the old ones now in use are prone to breakdowns, it multiplies the chance of a serious accident by 100 as well.”

-Nuclear Information and Resource Service

“Jeeee-sus.”

-Former US Attorney General John Mitchell

There are 104 power reactors in the United States.

100 more like them would multiply the risks by 2, not 100.

And nobody is proposing to build reactors like they were built in the 1960s. NIRS apparently wants to pretend that we don’t know anything more about nuclear reactors than we did 40 years ago. Do they know or care that a Canadian reactor can run on American nuclear waste, meaning that we could double the number of reactors without any more nuclear waste production? Do they know or care the difference between a mechanical failure and a safety problem? Do they know or care that a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant would do absolutely nothing?

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Clueless, Fun With Statistics, Non Sequitur, Safety, Security and Terrorism, Waste

Posted on March 26, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 3 Comments »

“Closing Indian Point eliminates an obvious target and significantly reduces the potential for and consequences of a radioactive release in the event of an accident or successful terrorist attack.”

-Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition

Reduced below what?

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Fun With Statistics, Missing the Point, Safety, Security and Terrorism

Posted on March 13, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Fourteen of the 30 Dene who worked at the Port Radium, N.W.T. uranium mine have died of cancer.”

-Canadian Coalition for Anti-Nuclear Irresponsibility

That’s a rather small sample, and not really out of line with what is expected from the general population. Don’t get me wrong, the cancers are there and they are horrible. But just as it does not help to put the innocent in jail–because the real criminals are still on the streets–it does no good to blame a person’s cancer on one’s pet issue. These people deserve a real investigation, not politically-motivated knee-jerk scapegoating.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Fun With Statistics, Health, Scientific Method

Posted on March 8, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 2 Comments »

Hint: the backup power required to level out the intermittent production from renewables–which can be produced only by gas–would cause more emissions than the renewables could displace in France, which is 78% nuclear. “Doing everything we can to stop climate change” does not include taking actions that make it worse. Good luck to them, and one more reason why one size does not fit all.

More at We Support Lee.

Link.

Filed under Alternatives, Environment, Fun With Statistics, Non Sequitur, Politics and Regulation, Their Actions

Posted on March 5, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 3 Comments »