NAS studying cancer risk among people who live near nuclear facilities

Since September 2010, the United States National Academy of Sciences has been working on a comprehensive study of cancer risk in people living near U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission-licensed nuclear facilities. A committee meeting for this study is scheduled for today. You can watch a live webcast, or, if you live in Chicago, attend some of the sessions that are open to the public.

• [Anonymous]

  According to those who are NOT Nuclear Industry shills, like Physicians for Social Responsibility, “There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period.” And it’s really irresponsible for these shills to compare background radiation exposure to those ingested in food, especially dairy products. UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering has already found radioactive cesium in samples taken from milk sold in San Francisco!

  • [Salviati]

    Cool down there, Anon. I know it is easy to pidgin-hole people online based on a few comments, but I can assure you I’m not a shill for anyone. I do work in the industry, but my thoughts are my own. For some perspective, I consider myself an environmentalist which is what lead me into the nuclear power industry in the first place. My spouse has an MS in Environmental Engineering, and we are both vegetarian specifically to lessen our environmental impact.

    Now back to the point. Of course there is no ‘safe’ level of radiation. However, we have to keep a proper perspective when talking about the risks we face. My point was simply that any radiation exposure from a US nuclear facility to any homes is effectively nill. I also agreed that nuclear material released from Chernobyl and Fukushima have had environmental impacts, which we have yet to understand. But again, this article and study were about the effects of local nuclear power plants.

• [Anonymous]

  To those who compare this stuff with bananas and airplane trips, the US National Cancer Institute will calculate your increased risk of cancer due to atmospheric weapons testing: https://ntsi131.nci.nih.gov/

  I’ll take the USNCI or NAS over someone who works at a nuke plant any day.

  • [Salviati]

    @Anon – How does weapons testing fallout relate to living near commercial nuclear power plants? You should certainly be skeptical of my comments due to my current employment (that’s why I mentioned it). I agree that US regulatory and scientific bodies are a great source of data in these matters, but your comment is not pertinent to this issue. And BTW, that link only works for people born before 1971 (during the period of weapons testing) of which I do not apply.

• [Anonymous]

  I have been analyzing cancer incidence rates for about five years with SaTScan, and I see some signs of an association between proximity to nuclear power plants and thyroid and brain cancers.

• [chgoliz]

  Burr Ridge is about 20 miles away from Chicago and requires a car to get there. It’s not someplace you can drop into for a session over your lunch break. Unfortunately.

• [JayByrd]

  Deceit, deception and outright lies have been part and parcel of the commercial nuclear power industry since its inception, so I’d like to see an honest study.
  The “no one has been killed” myth ignores the thousands who have died premature deaths all along the nuclear fuel cycle.
  A personal friend of mine who I trust, working for a nuclear subcontractor in the 1970s, was part of a team that tracked down an employee who took a section of fuel rod home because it was “neat” and warm. She said he died within days — and it was covered up, of course.
  And I had another friend who was in Middletown, Pa., when Three Mile Island vented. He said he could taste metal in the air. I lost touch with him but I suspect he’s no longer with us.
  A good place to start on a study would be nuclear submarine crew members. They always look sickly due to lack of sunshine, but maybe there’s something more to it.

• [Anonymous]

  If I remember correctly, studies in Germany have found obvious higher numbers of leukemia in children living around nuclear facilities, which can’t be explained because they don’t come with any detectable amount of increased radiation or any other direct link to the facilities (plants or storage, etc.). So the nuclear industry so far mostly got away with claiming they’re not to blame.

• [Salviati]

  Full disclosure, I work at one of the “NRC-licensed nuclear facilities”. Unless you live near one of the well-known nuclear disaster sites (Chernobyl or Fukushima), there is no additional risk by living near a commercial nuclear power plant. Just for reference, we are all bombarded with natural sources of radiation all the time – from the sky, the earth, and even the carbon and iodine which makes us up. These natural sources of radiation amount to approximately 620 milliREM of dose per year.

  If one were to measure the total radiation level at the outside wall of the shield building or auxiliary building of an operating nuclear plant, the level would already be indistinguishable from normal background radiation. In addition, the amount of radiation diminishes in an exponential function of distance. For example, say you experienced a dose rate of 1 REM/hr (a very large dose rate) at a distance of 1 foot from a source. If you then take a step back to 2 ft away, your exposure would be 0.25 REM/hr. If you were to step back to 10 ft away, your exposure would be .01 REM/hr. If your house was 5 miles away (like mine), it would be 0.000000001 REM/hr. This is less than 1/50,000 of the normal background radiation.

  The only exception to this example would be if actual nuclear material were to be entering the environment. Such material is highly controlled and monitored. Under normal circumstances, there should be no fear of normal civilians becoming exposed to any material. Unfortunately at Chernobyl and Fukushima, this was not the case and the local environments have been contaminated. But unless you lived near these sites, no one should be afraid that they received unsafe exposure from their plant. In fact, you may have received significantly more radiation exposure if you live near a coal power plant, if you have taken a plane trip, or if you live above sea level, or even if you’ve eaten a banana.

• [Anonymous]

  “Proper perspective”? Hahaha. There’s radiation in our food! There are detectable levels of cesium 137 in milk sold in northern California. This is the one with the half-life of about 30 years, and about 12% of it will still remain in the body after 90 years. It accumulates in fatty tissues, liver, spleen and muscles.

  See:
  “Radioactive cesium levels continue to rise in milk from San Francisco Bay Area”
  http://uleak.it/?19e

  and

  “There is no ‘safe’ exposure to radiation” http://uleak.it/?19f

  People are eating radiation-contaminated food because Nuclear Industry “experts” are saying that the radiation levels are “low” and so there’s “no cause for concern,” it’s just like flying in an airplane or getting an x-ray. Riiiight.

  Of course there’s cause for concern, considering how many nuclear power plants are in the U.S. So excuse me but I will not be cooling it anytime soon.

  • [Meng Bomin]

    “Proper perspective”? Hahaha. There’s radiation in our food! There are detectable levels of cesium 137 in milk sold in northern California. This is the one with the half-life of about 30 years, and about 12% of it will still remain in the body after 90 years. It accumulates in fatty tissues, liver, spleen and muscles.

    Dramatic much? Detectable ≠ concern to health, especially in the case of radioisotopes, which are detectable at levels far below background levels of radiation. It should be noted that life has never existed in a radiation-free environment and even potassium, one of the elements vital to life, has a low level of radioactivity.

    I would like sellers of hysteria like yourself to explain what the heck you mean by “There is no ‘safe’ exposure to radiation”. From what I know, there is no science to back up that statement. Regardless, even if the assumption that there is a linear relationship between dose and lethality were true, there would still be doses where health effects would be negligible (i.e. the levels of cesium-137 present in California).

    In case you’re wondering, I have never received any pay from the nuclear industry.

• [JohnnyOC]

  There is a nuclear power plant about 50 miles from where I live. My brother lives much closer to it and I would switch places with him in a second.

  Why? The reason is that there are 4 chemical factories within 15 miles of my old house instead. Anecdotally, many of my friends parents died of cancer, mostly brain, that lived very close to these factories. There would be a chlorine leak once in a while in the area but since the EPA is pretty toothless, the company gets a fine of a couple of million which they easily can pay and is probably in their annual budget.