European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected

by Jerome a Paris
Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 04:15:28 AM EST

Experts Find Reduced Effects of Chernobyl
The report [prepared by a panel of more than 100 experts convened by United Nations agencies], "Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts," says 4,000 deaths will probably be attributable to the accident ultimately - compared with the tens of thousands predicted at the time of the accident.
Only 50 deaths - all among the reactor staff and emergency workers - can be directly attributed to acute radiation exposure after Chernobyl's Reactor No. 4 exploded in April 1986, the panel found. The rest will be from cancer at a higher rate than would otherwise be expected in people exposed to radiation near Chernobyl in the wake of the accident.
But for millions of people who were subjected to low levels of radioactive particles spread by the wind, health effects have proved generally minimal, the report found.

Other sources here (GoogleNews in English). On French radio, I heard one guy complaining that it was a whitewash, but he did not present any convincing arguments. Having lived in Kiev in 1994 and seen various parts of the former Soviet Union, I can confirm that it is impossible in any case to identify the causes of a number of diseases, with so many pollutants around.

Meanwhile coal mining in China alone caused 1113 deaths in the first quarter of 2005.

And 27 deaths can be linked to windpower worldwide since the industry exists.

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Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected (none / 0)

Did you mean to conclude that this shows that the dangers of nuclear power are exaggerated?

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 06:33:28 AM EST

I did (none / 1)

sorry if I did not make it clear enough.

My broader point is that nuclear should be kept as part of our energy mix. It's certainly not the miracle solution, but it has its place - and it is probably a lot less bad than the solutions we will otherwise turn to almost by default: coal and gas-fired plants.

Nuclear and wind are especially complementary, and they form a much better combination to provide cheap power in the coming 20 years than anyhting else.

Of course, we need to focus on energy savings most of all, and make every effort to develop all renewable energies, but we have to be realistic and acknowledge that we will require old-style cheap base load capacity, thus some nuclear.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 06:47:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected (none / 0)

I don't believe this report (based on the lack of evidence for opposite case)and I don't know how you can support nuclear Jerome...It's OK to be realistic and say we can not avoid nuclear but I am not going to support it ever...in my life...anyway who ever will ask me...

by vbo on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 07:25:35 AM EST

Peak Uranium (none / 0)

I was doing some reading on this, Jerome, and apparently Greenpeace and IPPNW have voiced some criticism of the study (could not find anything on their websites however) and say that the numbers of vicitims is much higher in reality.

However, what I did find interesting was a study by Greenpeace stating that climaprotection is not feasable with Nuclear power, because we only have Uranium for another 50 years. (if used at current levels).

So apart from the the other reasons (danger to environment via GAU, terrorist target, problem of storage unsolved) a new build would not solve problems permanently, instead it would take resources (money) away from development of new technologies (biomass, water, wind, photovoltaic)

to finish, I had never heard this argument against nuclear power and its limited live due to Peak Uranium. Interesting.

by PeWi on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 09:44:35 AM EST

Re: Peak Uranium (none / 0)

These arguments, and especially "peak uranium", are all valid long term reasons not to focus on nuclear power as a "miracle solution". What I am saying is that nuclear generates a lot of irrational fears and is a better medium term solution than coal for our power needs. We should not spend too much on research in that sector (beyond waste management and fission energy, which is a seaprate topic) in order to focus on renewabel development, but I don't personally think that it is totally silly to build a new generation of nuclear plants today that will last until wind and solar can provide all the base load power we need, which will require a few more decades of development and growth.

PS - what's "GAU"?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 10:14:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Peak Uranium (none / 1)

GAU is "Größter anzunehmender Unfall", German for "largest accident to be taken into account"; a shorthand that made it into general usage in German.

My own critical notes:

I consider waste management a serious, unsolved problem. One with a far longer reach in time than global warming.
Peak Uranium is predicted above with the current level of usage. Your suggestion may mean a radical increase.
AFAIK the timescale of building nuclear plants (a decade) is comparable to the timescale needed for development and replacement with renewables. The running time (c. 30 years) would be beyond that. It seems to me the preliminary solution argument would be more fitting for fusion power. (BTW, was 'fission' in your text a typo?)

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

by DoDo on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 10:46:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

GAU (none / 1)

"largest accident to be taken into account"

Or rather: "largest accident that must be assumed [of being possible at a certain facility]"

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

by DoDo on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 10:50:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: GAU (none / 0)

Sorry DoDO, I was composing my reply..... you made it so much quicker and neater, thanks

by PeWi on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 10:59:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Peak Uranium (none / 1)

Waste is not really unsolved. The French way seems good enough (see the links in my earlier diary linked to above). The volume of high risk waste is very tiny;
peak uranium is a valid concern, although as Rom point out below, there has been less exploration for it, so there could be ebough for, say, a 50 year window
the problem is that the first generation of nuclear plans needs to be replaced in the medium term. If all we do is complain about nuclear, we will avoid the potential deaths from nuclear for the certain deaths of coal.

Yes "fission" was a typo, sorry.

I don't understand why the energy put to fight nuclear energy, so far victimless in the West, is not put against coal which kills thousands every year and pollutes everything. I'd rather have a second generation of nuclear plants for baseload power, together with wind and a little bit of gas-fired plants for flexibility and peak, until solar becomes economic (because we invest to make it so), than coal for everything, but that's what will happen if we keep on banging on nuclear all the time. (coal has a simple political justification: jobs, jobs, jobs).

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 11:51:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Coal is being fought (none / 0)

Not just here in the National Sacrifice Zone (US' Four Corners Area) but around the country people are fighting to make coal safer, stop mountain removal, eliminate the pollution of water, soil, and air by the mining and burning of coal.

Also, to claim nuclear energy has been victimless is false. Sorry, I hate to disagree with you, I am continually educated by your writing, but the mining of uranium has caused many deaths. People who were told there was no danger and sent in to the mines with no breathing apparatus or any safety method. In our town, a smelter was run for the uranium and vanadium - I don't know how all of that worked - but the slag from this plant is low level radioactive. Back in the 50s and 60s this material was used as fill. Fill for residential houses. So now we have address lists of potentially radioactive foundations - but you won't find it at the realtors! Anyway, the point is there have been many, many victims and people are fighting to improve coal.

I would suggest a complete and holistic analysis of all energy sources for their costs on a per megawatt basis.

by red moon dog on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 03:04:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Coal is being fought (none / 1)

I fully agree with your suggestion/hope to have fully costed estimates for all energy sources. I have noted elsewhere that renewable energies are those closest to that goal; nuclear does not come so well out of that process, and coal comes out even worse.

But low level radioactivity is not very dangerous

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 06:16:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Coal is being fought (none / 0)

I agree.

Regarding supposed danger from low-level radioactivity:
parts of the world with high natural-background radioactivity have fewer cancer deaths. New Mexico, a major producer of uranium in the past and home to large ore veins that have yet to be mined, has a higher than average level of natural background radiation. It's higher than that of Chernobyl. Even with uranium miners, Los Alamos, Sandia National Labs, etc., NM has one of the lowest rates of cancer in the US--along with Utah (also a radioactive state) and Hawaii (ditto, thanks to vulcanism).

Uranium workers do not have higher rates of cancer, nor do radiologists, X-ray technicians, etc.--even though they receive greater exposures than people in other professions. Of all the professions, the workers receiving the greatest exposure to radiation are airline crews.

Greenpeace is an unreliable source of information about anything nuclear. Just ask Patrick Moore, one of its founders, who refers to his former colleagues as fear mongers and who speaks about the billions of tons of carbon that nuclear energy has spared the world.

There is no risk-free form of electricity generation.

See the website of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy:

www.ecolog.org

by Plan9 on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 06:35:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Peak Uranium (none / 0)

GAU - Groesster anzunehmender Unfall
biggest expectable accident
or
worst case scenario

epecially in Nuclear power stations, it is the type of accident, that is still managable - or has to be planned for as managable. f.e breaking of cooling system and subsequent threat of core meltdown without breaching security or radiation limits. It is a flexible term and has to be redefined in step with security developments as well as thread levels. there are regular GAU trainings, which include Terror threat scenario and some such.

not to be mixed up with Super-GAU.

Even more baddest than just worst. (deliberate misuse of the Englisch language )

or, an accident that is worse than what was planned for and is an accident that was not managable. - ie the actual core meltdown like Tschernobyl
more

P.S.
the article I was referring to says: in order to replace all the coal reactors in Germany alone, Germany would have to build 60 new nuclear power stations. Since it takes 8 years to build one, we would need to build 16 a piece. The technical capacity does not exist to achieve this.

I think I know where you are coming from, and in a world with unlimited resources and no terrorist threat and no problems with storage, nuclear power might be a medium term solution.

But we have lost the last thirty years with this hope and it is not a realistic one. All the money that could have been used in renewable energy development, but which went into nuclear research is lost. Thats why we need a consequent re alignement toward energy conservation and powerstation that are small and produce locally (wind, geothermal, photovoltic) selfsufficency for the individual household and money back for the surplus energy.
Building regulation that demand energy efficiency like separate water systems, where-ever possible

here are the other articles from Greenpeace. Atomenergie: Keine Rettung für das Klima. pdf and Atomkraft: Eine Frage der Wahl?.pdf all in German I am afraid and no, I am not a member of Greenpeace.

by PeWi on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 10:58:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected (none / 1)

Not the expert on uranium, but I heard (not verified yet) a number of objections to the fact that uranium is in short supply.

- there is only about 50 years of uranium available at current consumption rate: this is correct, but many more uranium deposits are expected to be discovered as the earth has not been searched extensively for uranium yet (unlike o&g).

- uranium exists at low concentration levels in many places and could be recovered, albeit at a higher cost, but which could become economical as energy prices soar. This would add further to the reserve.

- current technologies are very little efficient: only 1% of the energy content of uranium is actually used. Technological improvements and waste treatment and recoveries would again improve the prospects for nuclear.

I agree that the main issue is waste management. It breaks down into two separate issues: natural perils such as leaks of contaminated materials, and political threats. Some argue that political threats are already there given the amount of unaccounted nuclear material from the FSU.

'La fin désastreuse a répondu aux moyens indignes' Germain Tillion

by Rom on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 11:42:29 AM EST

Re: Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected (none / 0)

Thanks for this diary, Jérôme. There are many misconceptions about nuclear power and about Chernobyl, and it's great that you have made comparisons.

Chernobyl was definitely a worst-case scenario--worst reactor design, worst operators, politically-appointed managers who were ignorant in regard to nuclear engineering and safety, worst management of the disaster by government. And yet the actual toll regarding death and disease is surprisingly low. The horrible fact is that not one death or one exposure to radio-iodine ever had to happen.

The radioactivity in the Exclusion Zone of Chernobyl is lower than natural background radioactivity in La Belle France, Spain, and Finland.

The anti-nuclear-power propaganda machine has greatly exaggerated the threat regarding Chernobyl radioactivity. The propaganda has relied on sensationalistic predictions that were not based on data and that came out shortly after the accident. Since then, international medical teams doing double-blind, randomized health studies have produced very sound data that has been analyzed by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Japan as well as a similar agency in Britain. They came to identical conclusions regarding health effects.

There are two ways to supply baseload, 24/7 electricity: fossil-fuel combustion or nuclear power. Coal-fired plants burn the uranium embedded in coal and therefore release into the environment, along with particulates and greenhouse gases, about one hundred times as much radioactive material as a nuclear plant. This is especially true in the Four Corners area of the US, a place rich in uranium deposits. If the coal-fired plants there were nuclear instead, the population of the area would be exposed to much less radioactivity.

Uranium miners who worked in unventilated shafts were exposed to radon. When this exposure was understood, shafts were ventilated and incidences of cancer went down. By the 1970s the incidence of cancer in uranium miners was the same as it is for other hard-rock miners. If you mine coal you are also exposed to radon. Today in the US uranium is not mined--rather it is extracted by separating it out from water that has accumulated in closed mines.

The mines are closed because the price of uranium dropped. The US has acquired many tons of highly-enriched uranium that used to be in nuclear warheads aimed at us by the USSR. This is being blended down and used in US reactors that supply most of the emissions-free electricity in the US.

Apart from uranium and plutonium from weapons, there is enough uranium and thorium to run reactors for hundreds of years. Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel would reduce the volume of waste, and uranium can be recycled through a reactor many times.

The total volume of nuclear waste per year in the US is 2000 tons. Uranium is an extremely dense metal, so that tonnage takes up very little space.

Nuclear waste is being safely stored around the world in dry casks, spent fuel pools, and in a salt bed. Sweden and Finland are preparing repositories in deep granite. Concrete a foot thick prevents particles and rays from escaping into the environment. If coal waste were as strictly regulated, its radionuclides and toxic heavy metals would not be leaking into the environment.

I apologize for the long post. So many wrong ideas, so little time....

by Plan9 on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 06:25:03 PM EST

I was hoping (none / 0)

for your input!

Just one small comment - the Soviet operators of nuclear plants were actually pretty good. I remember when I was in Kiev in 1994, the people from EDF, who were there on a long term mission to help the Ukrainians improve the safety of their reactors (knowing full well that another accident there would doom the industry in the West) were very impressed by the ability of their counterparts to manage and fine tune their plants. Of course, the problems were that the design was substantially less safe, and that it had little tolerance for human error, but there was still deep admiration for what their colleagues, as individuals, were doing with limited means and constraining designs.

That's not the way to run a nuclear industry, obviously - the problems were systemic, not just some local errors.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 07:11:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: I was hoping (none / 0)

Agree that Soviet nuclear engineers et al are competent.

But according to Piers Paul Read's book, "Ablaze," which an UNSCEAR scientist told me is quite accurate, outlines the politics that were going on at Chernobyl, and the appointment of the head guy because he was a party functionary whose knowledge of nuclear plants was limited to a single correspondence course. He was an arrogant SOB who ignored the warnings of engineers.Then as the accident was in progress the coverup had already begun. That's what I meant by worst case on the human engineering side.

As you no doubt know, there are still old graphite reactors operating in Bulgaria. A nuclear engineer friend with EDF told me that they are a matter of concern.

All that said, I am glad that the countries of the former Soviet Union continue to use nuclear power and to spare the environment the deadly waste from coal combustion. And I am grateful to EDF for their guidance worldwide. Including in the US.

by Plan9 on Wed Sep 7th, 2005 at 12:58:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected (none / 1)

Plan9, can we have some links for all those assertions please?

For example, I have read reports that waste storage is in fact a critical issue already in the US as nuke waste is being stored in "hot ponds" which require artificial (powered) recirculation for cooling, and that the density of stored material at some sites exceeds original safety guidelines. Here are a few crumbs -- don't have time for a full-on search of my archives.

Bacterial Buildup in Hot Ponds
Controversy Over Vulnerability of Storage Pools
Pool Fire Risk?
More on Storage Pools
Nuclear Hot Potato (political difficulties of nuke waste)
Is there a Safe Dose for Radiation?
Skeptics Assert no Correlation between Low-Dose Radiation and negative health outcomes (which is not entirely unexpected from a paper published by the Society for Nuclear Medicine <wink>)
Radiation is Good For You! (somewhat clumsy translation of a feelgood paper unsurprisingly appearing in an electric/nuclear industry journal). 'Hormesis' is the lastest upscale buzzword for apologists for toxics release.
A Reassuring FAQ (DU is probably harmless, low dose radiation is also)
NAS panel disagrees: "Even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer over a person's lifetime, a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded. It rejected some scientists' arguments that tiny doses are harmless or may in fact be beneficial."
Industry Collides with EPA "A 2005 study released in the science journal Environmental Health Perspectives also conducted a review of research concerning bisphenol-A and found that over 90 percent of independent studies report harmful effects of low dose exposure to bisphenol-A, while 100 percent of industry-funded studies report no significant adverse effects." (refers to a review funded by the American Plastics Council).
Some Difficulties in Low-Dose Epidemiology

on the whole I find that the "hormesis" or "radiation is good for you" position tends to rely on data published in the energy or nuke trade press and/or funded by the industry. which of course makes my nose twitch with "follow the money" suspicions :-)

Here is Le Monde casting some aspersions on the French nuke-power complex:

Over the entire planet, with 440 reactors, nuclear energy represents barely 6% of the energy consumed: a share much too marginal to limit recourse to hydrocarbons and to have an influence on the climate. And it's a share in decline: the International Energy Agency (IEA), although favorable to nuclear energy, acknowledged on October 27 that by around 2030 it would be less than 5% (World Energy Outlook).
Nonetheless, the atom's proponents would like to generalize the French model on a Continental, even global, scale. By keeping one nuclear reactor per million people as a guideline, that implies the construction of around 7,000 nuclear reactors in 20 years. All that to cover only around 17% of world energy usage, to remain 75% dependent on fossil fuels and to continue to aggravate global warming.
Now, in any case, that will not actually happen. China is presented as a veritable nuclear Eldorado because it foresees building ... 30 reactors. Far, very far, from the thousands evoked. And that to royally achieve 4% of its electricity from nuclear power. There is more: in the next twenty years, half the nuclear reactors now operating will have been closed down.

I think this is a very "hot" (you should forgive the expression) issue right now for a couple of reasons.

the peak oil scenario is urgent and there is building pressure to "find a solution" (preferably a fairytale solution that requires zero change in lifestyle for affluent people) -- the nuke industry is right there promising "cheap energy" again, despite repeated failures to deliver in the past, and people really want to believe it (just like they want to believe in 'the hydrogen economy' or corn ethanol)...
the BushCo mafia really wants to restart the nuclear weapons industry, and the nuke power industry is a great stalking horse or cover for this activity...
nuke plants are massive capital-intensive projects, usually with no local democratic input, and fit perfectly into the "security state" climate of secrecy that BushCo cultivates and Blair emulates: they are a paradigmatic technology for a militarised, centralised, control-and-command society (I really have to transcribe Adams' essay on this topic)... and a perfect playground for embezzlers...
the resource investment needed to pursue the nuke option full-bore is so vast that it virtually precludes all other options, meaning that all our eggs would have to go into that basket -- huge juicy contracts for the industry, no fallback plan for the country/world.... Halliburton Heaven.

another thing that bugs me about the epidemiology problem is that low-dose radiation effects could potentially be quite subtle and may not show up until the second generation -- supposing that any noise is injected into DNA by the exposure. not all birth defects are spectacular... would we recognise something like, e.g. a widespread reduction in immune function over an entire age cohort, if we saw it? and how, as Jerome asks, could we distinguish this from an effect of the chemical cocktail to which billions of people are exposed daily? there are no controls in this experiment and zillions of confounding factors. which makes it hard for either side to prove their position on LD radiation conclusively.

at any rate I think the direct "it will give you cancer" risk from nuke plant operation is not nearly so strong an argument as other socio-economic and practical arguments against the feasibility of a crash cutover to nuke power... some of which Le Monde outlines above. me, I'd prefer to see neighbourhood and town-scale power generation, from sources which aren't attractive to terrorists and don't require a highly educated, tightly coordinated elite workforce to plan, build, and operate... and don't produce materiel for nuke weapons (whether official or improvised).

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Sep 6th, 2005 at 08:42:26 PM EST

Re: Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected (none / 0)

Thanks De for your detailed and thoughtful input.

Just a note: the article from Le Monde is an opinion page by the spokesman of the "Sortir du nucléaire" (Get out of nuclear energy) association, which is the umbrealla group for all anti-nuclear associations in France, so not a partial source either. and he uses the same stupid argument that is used agaisnt wind: "nuclear cannot solve all the problems, so let's do no nuclear at all"

Nuclear can be PART of the solution. It is less dangerous than coal, which WILL be the default solution while anti-nuclear and anti-wind militants squabble.

Nuclear is not "good", but it is less bad than coal-fired power, and thus any use of nuclear should be targetted to displace coal, not to prevent renewables from taking the share they deserve. Let's not forget where the real danger lies today.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Sep 7th, 2005 at 04:30:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected (none / 0)

You are quite right--I should have included links. But at present I am traveling and do not have the time to spend online to go hunting them down. However I can give you some leads. Some of my remarks are based on information I acquired by talking to people in UNSCEAR and Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF). You can also check out the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Also the Centers for Disease control has a good website with relevant, academically-respectable links (as opposed to hysteria-promoting ones). See also http://www.oversight.state.id.us/radiation/radiation.htm

I exclude the extreme points of view at both ends of the spectrum because their information tends to be distorted and faith-based. The hormesis people may have some valid observations, but there are members of that group who have got religion. Greenpeace and its kin, while having done some good deeds in their time, also take a religious view and make assertions that do not hold up in the real world. The assertions of the Le Monde writer do not hold up in the real world. She is an anti-nuclear activist.

See NAS's "Issues in Science and Technology" article on nuclear power by Paul Lorenzini.

Speaking of the real world, let's talk about risk from low-dose radiation. We in the US receive about 360 millirem per year on average. Of that, 300 millirem comes from natural background radiation and the rest from manmade sources--mainly medical. Some medical treatments bombard patients with millions of millirem. Although the Environmental Protection Agency enforces a rule that no nuclear facility can expose a person living on its boundary 365 days a year to more than 15 millirem per year and eating nothing but food grown on the site and drinking only from wells there. In the real world, practically nobody lives on the boundary of a nuclear site. In the real world, people live in places like Ramsar, Iran, getting an exposure from a radium-laced geological formation of 70,000 milllirem per year. They do not show symptoms of radiation poisoning, do not have a higher rate of birth defects, etc. In the real world, people who live in NE Washington State get an annual exposure from soil and rocks of 1,700 millirem per year and health effects have not been found. The land under Chernobyl is a former swamp without much natural radioactivity. The accident increased the level to 300 millirem/year, which is half what people living on granite in Finland are getting.

DNA evolved against a much higher level of radiation than exists on earth today. Some creatures have more efficient DNA repair mechanisms than others--there are certain bacteria that thrive in radium springs and nuclear waste pools. Our DNA is repairing destruction from cosmic rays, rays and particles from soil and rock, etc., all the time. The linear, nonthreshold hypothesis holds that an exposure to human tissue of even a single ionization is damaging. This is not a real-world assumption. Below five rads it is impossible to tell what effect radiation is having. If you go to the Health Physics Society website, you can find info on real-world observations.

As for exposures to low-level radiation having consequences in second generations, this has been studied for many decades by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a joint project of Japan and the US that has been following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors and their children and grandchildren. Thus far, the rate of cancer among the first generation is three percent higher than among the control group. Thus far, no detectible birth defects attributable to exposure have appeared. They do appear in offspring of irradiated mice but not in humans. Medical studies of Chernobyl have also monitored the exposed population and concluded that a predicted increase in the rate of birth defects did not occur. Unfortunately, heavy industry in the region, uncontrolled pollution, and poor lifestyle have probably contributed to a steady increase in birth defects and cancer over the past several decades (the upward trend began long before Chernobyl). I refer you to the IAEA, UNSCEAR, and WHO websites for details. Not many Chernobyl survivors will live long enough for cancers to manifest because of the high rate of alcohol abuse and smoking.

The latest National Academies of Science report from the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation panel VII has taken the conservative view. In essence, the conclusion is that since we cannot know at this point what happens below five rads of exposure because of so much background noise, we will assume than even the smallest trace of radioactivity causes harm to humans. Therefore any facility should try to maintain exposure at a level as low as reasonably achievable.

In the real world, nuclear technology has improved steadily, just as computer technology has. The nuclear industry--which I think has made some really stupid mistakes in the US--has been upgrading and working on human engineering. The safety standards for US plants are the strictest in the world--probably unrealistically so. Nuclear energy in the US is now slightly cheaper than coal, and would be the cheapest resource of all if coal-fired plants were required to isolate their toxic and carbon emissions. The reason that so many new nuclear plants are being built in Asia is that they will be an inexpensive form of energy. Utilities in the US want to add more nuclear plants because economically they make sense. I refer you to the US Energy Information Agency, the World Nuclear Association, and IAEA. Some of these sites have tables comparing risk from various forms of energy generation. As you no doubt know, several years ago the EU decided that nuclear power was the safest large-scale, baseload form.

You will also find links on the Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy website, ecology.org. It is true that they have an agenda, but their sources of information are respectable and nonpartisan.

As for neighborhood generation, an admirable concept, Toshiba has a small reactor with many safety features. I don't have time to go into it now--sorry.

Finally, Jérôme is right. We need nuclear power. Over a billion people depend on it for all or part of their electricity. Populations without electricity have a life expectancy of 43 years.

by Plan9 on Wed Sep 7th, 2005 at 11:44:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Tchernobyl toll much lower than expected | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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