Now if most cancers were curable and people could get more than one cancer in their lifetime (more than two on average, see above), then the ten-fold increase could be true. But if cancer is usually not deadly, it somehow doesn't all that bad anymore, does it?
"Shut off all nuclear plants! A ten-fold increase in the common cold has been found near an obscure research reactor! We're all gonna die unless we switch them off immediately!"
You want me to believe that life expectancy near Sellafield is down to 35 years?! Repeating the calculations with realistic numbers, it shrinks to just 27 years.
Unbelievable.
Regarding the simultaneously comment: that would mean, most people recover from their cancer, wouldn't it? So cancer isn't all that deadly after all, is it? So what's your point, really? Are you maybe just spreading FUD, with invented figures nonetheless?
A lot of your other calculations are sound, but your [lack of] grasp of what it meast to multiply the death rate due to cancer by 10 is worrying.
Now we can discuss whether or not it is a fact that the cancer rates grew 10-fold, but not whether that is physically possible because everyone would have to die twice [as you have claimed]. Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
Anyway, since Gaianne is not gracing us with a reference, I decided to go fishing for one.
New Scientist: Science: Leukaemia and nuclear power stations ( 17 June 1989)
Subsequent investigations confirmed an excess of leukaemia and other cancer among children living near Sellafield, the complex British Nuclear Fuel runs in northwest England. ... Depending on which statistics are quoted, the excess represents up to a tenfold increase in the number of cases expected on the basis of conventional dose/risk models.
Depending on which statistics are quoted, the excess represents up to a tenfold increase in the number of cases expected on the basis of conventional dose/risk models.
Anyway, for anyone interested there is the COMARE 10th Report: The incidence of childhood cancer around nuclear installations in Great Britain (10 June 2005). Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
(On a side note: I cannot confuse "cancer rate" with anything, because that term is basically undefined and left to interpretation by individuals. It is only used by anti-nuke-kooks when applying statistical trickery.)
You'll note that a "ten-fold increase in the incidence of leukaemia in children" is quite something different than "ten-fold increase of cancer rates"
"standard dose/risk models underestimate the expected number of additional child leukemia cases by a factor of up to 10". A far cry from "cancer rates increased by a factor of 10".
But not simultaneously. We do have a lifespan of about 80 years, don't we? Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
