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 »

A species of fungus has been found to grow faster while being irradiated by Cesium-137. No, it didn’t mutate and eat Tokyo.

Yes, it’s a preliminary study; yes, it will have to be replicated; yes, it needs to be studied instead of ignored.

Link.

Filed under Health, Radiation, Research

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

Apparently it magically becomes more radioactive when dispersed.

Need more evidence that anti-nuclear activists have joined the creationist war on science?

Filed under Physics, Radiation

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Seems that the Ossining Chamber of Commerce is having a one sided presentation on “Where Electricity Comes From” with the primary guest speaker Entergy’s own societal misfit, Jim Steets (new nick name is poop drinker). For those not familair with this Indian Point mouth piece and his work, when the news about tritium leaking into Buchanans sewer system went public, he quipped to a reporter, well, if it were not for the other stuff in the sewage, its clean enough to drink. What a guy.”

-’Porgie Tirebiter, Royce Penstinger and Pinto Bean‘

Way to elevate the discourse. And yes, 60 times less radiation than orange juice is safe to drink. It’s not going to make sewage clean, but it doesn’t make it dirty, either.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Crackpots, Environment, Health, Radiation, Their Actions

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Sen. Dick Durbin requested that an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services perform an independent study of the health effects of not being exposed to a material that’s 60 times less radioactive than orange juice and chemically identical to water.

They’ve concluded that there is no effect.

What a shocker.

Link. (hat tip: Know_Nukes)

Filed under Environment, Health, Radiation

Posted on May 20, 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 »

via CBC.

1. The article says that the plant will be a two-unit 2200-megawatt CANDU, which almost certainly means an ACR-1000.
2. Chernobyl did of course melt down, but the meltdown was incidental to the major accident, which was a burst cooling system caused by a power spike. The heat produced by the power spike burst the metal cladding around Chernobyl’s fuel rods, allowing some of the lighter already-split atoms to get into the destroyed cooling system and out into the environment. As that power spike is impossible (not improbable, but actually physically impossible) in an ACR-1000, Chernobyl isn’t relevant to the discussion.
Also not mentioned in the article is the fact that Chernobyl was designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium; no civilian reactor would be designed like that. The Chernobyl-type reactors weren’t even a “thing of the past;” they don’t belong lumped in with nuclear power plants. In most places (read: everywhere but the Soviet Union) building them was never allowed–for example, they were banned in the United States in 1950, when the first American nuclear power plant started up in 1957.
3. It really should not cost $6.2 billion. They should be able to get 12 units for that amount of money, and would be able to if someone would get going on an IFR or MSR.
4. “Nuclear has been around” for 50 years, not 30. The excellent safety record mentioned in the article also applies for 50 years, as well.
5. The Chernobyl accident killed not “countless” people, but between 50 and 4,000, according to the UN. Greenpeace’s estimate of 250,000 was obtained by drawing a line on a graph from the Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ radiation exposure and cancer rate down to zero, taking the amount of radioactive material in the reactor and, assuming that it all got out (which it didn’t) and all got to people (which it most certainly didn’t), finding that amount of radiation exposure on their graph. Voila: 250,000 deaths–which is more than the total number of people who have died in the area since, of all causes.
6. They will be applying for the Canadian equivalent of a construction permit on June 15.
7. Why the Sierra Club needs to worry about how much environmental protection will cost–and how much not killing people with coal fumes cost Ontario in terms of nuclear power plant construction costs–is beyond me.
8. Nuclear waste does not have a half-life of 50,000 years. The actual waste decays to the radioactivity of the original uranium in about 500 years; that assumes an intelligent waste policy that separates the waste from unused and half-used fuel–the half-used fuel posing the greatest long-term threat. Plus, the term “half-life” is meaningless in this context: since it is a combination of many different radioactive materials, each with its own half-life (that combination depending on the composition of the fuel and the amount of time it spends in the reactor), it can’t really be said that nuclear waste has one definite half-life.
9. No, it’s not a “quick fix” (their term). Would you rather have a quick fix or something that works? And dare I mention that suing to stop the project sort of disqualifies one from complaining about how long the project is taking?

More from Rod Adams.

Filed under Chernobyl, Economics, Environment, Financing, Health, Industry Performance, International, New Build, Physics, Politics and Regulation, Radiation, Safety

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 »

“The radiation doses that the Energy Department estimates for workers at a new plutonium factory that it wants to build would cause about one fatal case of cancer for each four and a half years the plant operates, according to the draft environmental impact statement.”

-Don’t Waste South Carolina

No, that’s their radiation dose plotted onto your chart, your chart being the radiation that the atomic bomb survivors got, their cancer rate, and a line drawn from that point to zero radiation and zero deaths. And when asked for the reason why this was chosen, the response is invariably that it’s the rules. No data supporting this assumption, just rules.

BTW, it’s not a plutonium factory. The plutonium is already here; it’s either going to be in atomic bombs or nuclear reactors. Currently it’s in atomic bombs; I’d personally rather use it to replace coal-burning power plants, which kill 30,000 Americans every year (the equivalent of dropping one of those atomic bombs on an American city every three years).

And what data from any other similar facility supports this idea? Why aren’t nuclear workers dropping like flies?

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Health, Plutonium, Radiation

Posted on May 4, 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 »