Back in 2007, I wrote about the first major study by Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection establishing a statistically significant link between nuclear plant locations and child cancer rates. At the time, the study-makers were perplexed that a health effect arose at general radiation levels orders of magnitudes below where one would expect it.

Now there is a suggestion that the phenomenon might be related to transient events: the escape of radioactive isotopes (in particular Iodine-131, but also noble gases) in gaseous state during the refuelling of the reactors. But data for analysis is hard to come by: the linked taz article (in German) mentions a request to the controlling ministry for half-hourly radiation measurements at one plant, but they only got data with quartal(!) resolution.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}