TV TV TV

[Home]

War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press ... have turned war into a vast video arcade game. Its very essence- death - is hidden from public view.": Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for New York Times

=

"Television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation... Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.": Neil Postman

=

" The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.": Gore Vidal

Exeter Philosophy Circle
Meets at the St Sidwell's Centre, Sidwell Street, to discuss the nature of knowledge, existence & reality. Email for more information:- exeterphilo [at] defena [dot] me [dot] uk

Usually meets on second Wednesday of the month at 7 pm.

Chernobyl 'still causing cancer in British children'

The Independent & The Independent on Sunday

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor Published: 23 April 2006

Cancer

More than a third of Britain is still contaminated by radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster two decades ago, and children are getting cancer as a result, an Independent on Sunday investigation has established.

Official measurements - published in a report launched in London yesterday - show that at least 34 per cent of the country will remain radioactive for centuries as the result of the accident, which took place 20 years ago on Wednesday.

And scientists have found rates of thyroid cancer in children in Cumbria, the worst-affected part of England, rose 12-fold after the catastrophe - and blame fallout from the radioactive cloud that spread from the stricken reactor. This confounds government assurances at the time that the radiation in Britain was "nowhere near the levels at which there is any hazard to health".

The report - presented at a conference at the Royal College of Surgeons organised by Medact, a health charity - cites official figures to show that most of the highly radioactive caesium emitted in the disaster was blown across Europe by winds.

In Britain, about 81,000 sq km (31,000 sq miles) - mainly in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the west of England - were contaminated above 4,000 bequerels per square metre.

The report says the radioactive caesium - and the doses of radiation it gives Britons - will only "decline slowly over the next few hundred years".

Scientists at Newcastle University examined rates of thyroid cancer in children across northern England before and after the Chernobyl cloud passed overhead.

They found slight increases across the region - and an abrupt 12-fold jump in Cumbria, which received most fall-out. Professor Louise Palmer, who led the study, said yesterday that the results were "consistent with a causal association with the Chernobyl accident".

Chernobyl: The Great Cover-Up, Le Monde

The World Health Organisation and Nuclear Power

ALISON KATZ / Le Monde diplomatique 1apr2008

http://mondediplo.com:80/2008/04/14who

For 50 years dangerous concentrations of radionuclides have been accumulating in earth, air and water from weapons testing and reactor incidents. Yet serious studies of the effects of radiation on health have been obscured – not least by the World Health Organisation.

In June 2007 Gregory Hartl, World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman for Sustainable Development and Healthy Environments, claimed that the proceedings of the international conference held in Geneva in 1995 on the health consequences of the Chernobyl disaster had been duly published (1). This was not so. And the proceedings of the Kiev conference in 2001 have never been published either. Challenged by journalists a few months later, the WHO repeated the claim, providing references to a collection of abstracts for the Kiev conference and just 12 articles (out of hundreds) submitted to the Geneva conference.

Since 26 April 2007 (the 21st anniversary of Chernobyl), a large placard has informed WHO employees each day that one million children in the area around Chernobyl are irradiated and ill. IndependentWHO, the group organising the action, accuses the WHO of a cover-up of the health consequences of the catastrophe, and of failing to assist populations in danger.

The WHO, they insist, must end the agreement made in 1959 which binds it to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (2) and prevents it from initiating a programme or activity in the area of nuclear power without consulting the IAEA “with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement” (Article 1, Point 2).

Independence from the IAEA would permit the WHO to conduct a serious, scientific evaluation of the disaster and provide appropriate health care to contaminated people. A resolution to this effect is in preparation for the World Health Assembly in May 2008 (3) and an Appeal by Health Professionals has been launched (4).

Industrial and military lobby

According to its statutes, the IAEA (a UN agency which reports to the Security Council) is mandated to “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world”. It is in fact a lobby, industrial and military, which should have no role to play in public health policymaking or research.

The IAEA has vetoed conferences planned by WHO on radioactivity and health and, in turn, the WHO has endorsed the nuclear lobby’s grotesque statistics on mortality and morbidity relating to the Chernobyl accident – 56 dead and 4,000 thyroid cancers (5). Denial of disease inevitably implies denial of health care. Nine million people live in areas with very high levels of radioactivity; for 21 years now these populations have had no choice but to consume contaminated food, with devastating effects on their health (6).

For the nuclear lobby, any research indicating harm from ionising radiation represents a commercial threat that must at all costs be averted. Research on damage to the human genome (one of the most serious consequences of the contamination) was not part of the international project requested of the WHO in 1991 by the health ministers of Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation. Yet dental caries was made a research priority. And although these countries had addressed their research request to the WHO, it was the IAEA which planned the project.

This conflict of interest has already been fatal for hundreds of thousands of people according to studies by independent scientists and institutions (7). And the greatest burden of disease and death is yet to come – given long latency periods, the increasing concentration of radionuclides in internal organs from food grown in contaminated soil, and damage to the human genome over many generations.

Hundreds of epidemiological studies in Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation have established that there has been a significant rise in all types of cancer causing thousands of deaths, an increase in infant and perinatal mortality, a large number of spontaneous abortions, a growing number of deformities and genetic anomalies, disturbance and retardation of mental development, neuropsychological illness, blindness, and diseases of the respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, urogenital and endocrine systems (8).

But who will believe them? Four months after the meltdown Morris Rosen, the IAEA’s director of nuclear safety, said: “Even if there were an accident of this type every year, I would still regard nuclear power as a valuable source of energy” (9). Public information on the real health consequences of Chernobyl could seriously change the debate about nuclear options. And that is why the WHO is afraid of the children of Chernobyl.

Stronger than the tobacco lobby

For decades the tobacco, agrochemical and petrochemical lobbies have obstructed implementation of public health and environmental measures that might interfere with their profits. But the nuclear lobby is incomparably more powerful than any of these as it comprises governments of nuclear states, most significantly, the United States, the United Kingdom and France, and powerful intergovernmental organisations. The disinformation emanating from industrial and military lobbies is overwhelming – and dangerously, it carries state authority.

Furthermore, the corruption of science also concerns our most prestigious academic institutions which, as an editorial in The Lancet reported, “have become businesses in their own right, seeking to commercialise for themselves research discoveries rather than preserve their independent scholarly status” (10). Peer-reviewed studies, cited as evidence of the safety of nuclear activities, all too often emanate from, or are financed by, the nuclear lobby.

Corporate science, through denial, cover-ups and lies, has brought us to the brink of self-destruction in relation to global warming. So how can we contemplate trusting corporate science in relation to nuclear power? While the emissions responsible for climate change are amenable to control (in theory), nuclear technology and its waste products are not, and its consequences, even if nuclear activities ceased tomorrow, will affect life on earth for millennia.

The “science” that has informed the nuclear debate in general, and the Chernobyl catastrophe in particular, is corporate science in which the industry is judge and jury in relation to the health consequences of its own activities. The entire edifice of nuclear institutions, governmental, regulatory, military, industrial, scientific, research and intergovernmental, including Euratom and some UN agencies, is one incestuous happy family (11).

Pseudo science

The flaws in this pseudo science range from the flagrant and preposterous to the subtle and dishonest, as shown by expert Chris Busby, journalist Wladimir Tchertkoff, as well as the Permanent People’s Tribunal (12).

The first category includes falsification and suppression of data; failure to measure exposure, screen for cancer and investigate the relationship between the two; attacks on independent researchers and their institutions; censorship of studies revealing adverse effects, discounting thousands of untranslated studies from the three most affected countries; and exclusion from conference agendas of entire scientific domains (such as the health effects of chronic, low dose, internal radiation, accounting for almost all the contamination in populations around Chernobyl).

The second category involves dozens of manipulations of data, among them: averaging exposures over entire populations and ignoring local sources of concentrated contamination; ending studies after 10 years thereby excluding long term morbidity and mortality; qualifying five year survival as “cure”, only considering cancer, those still alive and the three most affected countries; claiming decreases in childhood cancers when in fact children have become adults with cancer and therefore no longer appear in that database.

According to the National Cancer Institute, cancer incidence (all sites) in the US increased by 55% between 1950 and 1995; the trends in Europe and other industrialised nations are similar. Non-smoking related cancers are responsible for about 75% of the overall increased incidence of cancer since 1950, and cannot be explained in terms of better detection or ageing (13). Cancer incidence increases in parallel with gross national product and industrialisation but the obvious explanation for this phenomenon – environmental pollution, chemical and radioactive – is ignored. Perversely, victims are blamed for their lifestyles.

Complicity of academe

The cancer epidemic is already affecting more privileged and articulate sectors of society who are demanding serious scientific explanations and real primary prevention, which means addressing root causes – chemical and radioactive pollution – not screening for early detection of disease, which is secondary prevention. Patients’ associations are calling for a boycott of the powerful cancer charities, closely linked with the billion dollar medical equipment and pharmaceutical industries, and cancer victims are attempting to bring those responsible for the cover-up to justice (14).

The commercialisation of science and the close relationship between industry and academic institutions should be at the centre of the WHO’s concerns. Upon election as director-general, Margaret Chan cited technical authority as one of the WHO’s unique assets. “We can be absolutely authoritative in our guidance,” she said. In the area or radiation and health, it would be more accurate to say that the IAEA (which has no competence in public health) can be absolutely authoritative in the WHO’s guidance.

Can we count on the WHO’s member states to take action? The Lancet editorial noted: “Governments, nationally and regionally, have consistently failed to put their people before profit” (15). We need serious, independent research on the health consequences of civil and military nuclear activities, and the results disseminated without hindrance. nuclear activities, and the results disseminated without hindrance.

Original text in English

Alison Katz is a board member of Centre Europe Tiers Monde (CETIM), Geneva, and was for 18 years an international civil servant with the World Health Organisation

(1) Charaf Abdessemed, “Les antinucléaires font le piquet devant l’OMS”, Geneva Home Information, 6-7 June 2007.

(2) The IAEA is an autonomous organisation placed under the auspices of the United Nations in 1957; it serves as the world’s intergovernmental forum for technical cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

(3) During the Assembly, delegates of 193 member states decide on the organisation’s policy.

(4) See Sign the Appeal by Health Professionals!

(5) The Chernobyl Forum, “Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts”, Vienna, April 2006.

(6) Michel Fernex, “La santé: état des lieux vingt ans après” in Galia Ackerman, Guillaume Grandazzi and Frédérick Lermarchand, Les Silences de Tchernobyl, Autrement, Paris, 2006.

(7) Pierpaolo Mittica with Rosalie Bertell, Naomi Rosenblum and Wladimir Tchertkoff, Chernobyl: The Hidden Legacy, Trolley Ltd, London, 2007.

(8) Alex Rosen. “Effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe: literature review”, January 2006.

(9) Le Monde, 28 August 1986.

(10) “The tightening grip of big pharma”, The Lancet, vol 357, n° 9263, London, 14 April 2001.

(11) Rosalie Bertell, No Immediate Danger: Prognosis For a Radioactive Earth, Women’s Press, Toronto, 1985.

(12) Chris Busby, Chris Busby, Wolves of water: a study constructed from atomic radiation, morality, epidemiology, science, bias, philosophy and death, Green Audit, Aberystwith, 2006; Wladimir Tchertkoff, Le crime de Tchernobyl: le goulag nucléaire, Actes Sud, Arles, 2006 ; Permanent People’s Tribunal, International Medical Commission on Chernobyl, “Chernobyl: Environmental health and human rights”, Vienna, 12-15 April 1996.

(13) Samuel Epstein, Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War, Baywood, New York, 2005.

(14) In France for example, Professor Pierre Pellerin (director at the time of the Central Service of Protection from Ionising Radiation) is being tried for fraud in the case of Chernobyl and thyroid patients.

(15) The Lancet, op cit.

source: 7apr2008

"Little" NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS:

NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS: BOTHERED, BEWITCHED OR BEWILDERED?

Nation Union Journalists

http://www.nujcec.org/paris/NUCLEAR-ACCIDENTS-BOTHERED

Wednesday 11 February 2009, by Patricia Brett

A version of this article appeared in the IHT in October 2008.

Nuclear energy results in the release of radioactivity into the atmosphere and into bodies of water, either through routine, scheduled releases or because of accidents. Each nuclearized country has a watchdog to control the industry, but how well do they actually perform? This article looks at a few worrisome examples of regulators at work.

A host of nuclear accidents [1] across Europe this summer, including 100 workers inadvertently contaminated and an off-site release of radioactive iodine, served as reminders that far from being clean, the industry is a source of routine and accidental radioactive pollution [2]. Operators and regulators were prompt to assure that public health was unharmed. Yet, when Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of AREVA came to visit SOCATRI, the subsidiary guilty of dumping uranium by error in local waterways, she was met by public outcry.

AREVA, the world’s largest nuclear group, was responsible for three of the events – six of which occurred in France, the most nuclear-dependent country with 80% of nuclear-produced electricity. Four of the French events concerned the 600 hectare Tricastin site.

Responding to critics on the 75 Kg uranium spill, Lauvergeon, said that nuclear installations are subject to “the most draconian international norms” and deplored public “confusion” about the “incident”. [3]

That nuclear power is a source of confusion is undeniable but comments such as Lauvergeon’s do nothing to dissipate it. For example, there are no binding international radio-protection standards. National regulators follow the ill-defined ALARA – As Low As Reasonably Achievable – guidelines allowing them suitable flexibility to set dose limits for each radionucleide.

ALARA itself is a source of bafflement. Many believe that exposure to ALARA levels is risk-free but that’s not the case, warns Jean-René Jourdain, head of internal dosimetry at the IRSN, the technical support provider for the French nuclear regulator, the ASN. Low-dose radiation produces the same damage to target tissues as high doses but with lower probability. How much lower is unknown, Jourdain says, because “what we know about low-level radiation was extrapolated from studies on atom bomb victims that were flawed” both in methodology and type of exposure studied.

Chernobyl provided unanticipated results on the effects of cumulative low-dose exposure, Jourdain says. “We expected leukemia in children, instead we found that infants were more prone to thyroid cancer – and much sooner than we’d expected, only five years after the accident rather than 10 to 15 years as we’d thought,” he adds.

SOCATRI added to the bewilderment by providing conflicting information and failing to inform the ASN in a timely manner [4]. As in most countries, the ASN relies heavily on operator data. Based on that, it classified the event, at a level 1 on its scale of 0 to 7. And this is discombobulating because on the ASN web site, an unauthorised off-site release ranks as a more serious level 3. [5]

Furthermore, the ASN waited two days before sending a team on site. “This is normal procedure based on the information given by the operator” Jean-Luc Lachaume, deputy director of ASN says. Even if the operator had released 360kg of radioactive uranium, as initially reported, this wasn’t a problem because the agency knows what the plant releases “it is one of a hundred such incidents in France each year,” he says.

President of the CRIIRAD, an independent laboratory, Roland Desbordes is perplexed by this reasoning because “360kg of uranium is equivalent to at least 9,000 MBq or more than 100 times SOCATRI’s annual limit. Brought down to ‘only’ 75kg the annual limit is overshot by 27 times”.

After the spill, the IRSN monitored radioactivity in surface and groundwater around Tricastin. In a report issued on Sept 4 [6], it found radiation levels three times higher than the national average in marine life and sediments in surface water.

An IRSN study released on Sept. 15, [7] on radioactive water pollution around all nuclear installations found radioactive pollution downstream of and groundwater contamination at nearly all sites. Tricastin again, chalked up some of the highest levels but the IRSN says it can’t identify the source of the groundwater contamination. The CRIIRAD incriminates a mound of radioactive waste buried on site since the 1970s. The IRSN report does point to old waste storage sites, in general, protected by obsolete technology as a source of leakage and pollution, some of it on-going for years. Asked what the ASN would do about the Tricastin mound, Lachaume testily replied that it was a defence issue and the ASN had no authority over it.

With 104 reactors, the US leads in the number of nuclear power plants. The Union of Concerned Scientists and others petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2006 to take action on a similar issue, documenting chronic leaks, some decades-old. [8] “The NRC responded that an industry voluntary initiative, that is by those that have been obfuscating for years, to report the leaks would suffice,” says Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear.

Radiation levels around Tricastin have been higher than average for over a decade but this doesn’t worry the IRSN which notes, in the Sept 4th report, that in 1991 (while investigating a previous spill [9]) it found radiation levels five times above the national average. The IRSN implies that since radiation is now lower than in 1991, which has apparently become the standard for “background” radiation at Tricastin, there is no need for concern.

“Background” radiation, often called “natural”, is baffling when confused with “naturally-occurring” radiation. Background includes artificial radiation produced by, among others, nuclear power plants – the more radioactivity is released and stays in the environment, the higher background levels become, explains Jourdain, of IRSN.

All nuclear installations routinely release radioactive liquids or gases. The releases authorised by the ASN and other regulatory bodies are site-specific and cover a variety of radioneuclides. Limits can vary greatly from one country or even from one installation to the next. In France, for example, one installation will be authorised to release 60,000 GBq of radioactive tritium while another is allowed 18,000 TBq [10]. Even allowing for differences in activity and location, these discrepancies can muddle the public mind.

To understand how these limits are set, the example of SOCATRI is enlightening. In 2006, SOCATRI began a new waste reconditioning activity and requested authorisation to release 85 MBq/yr of Carbon 14, a low-level radioactive gas. In 2006 and 2007, SOCATRI exceeded it’s authorised levels by 40 times at around 3,400 MBq/yr so it asked the ASN to increase its authorisation to 3,400 MBq/yr. The request was granted, Lachaume explains, because “we didn’t know how much would be released at first so we set the levels very low but when it turned out that these were unrealistic, they were slightly revised”. [11]

In June – reported in August – SOCATRI exceeded its annual limit and was shutdown. Lachaume says the Carbon 14 limit will not be raised again but has no suggestion as to how the plant should deal with the problem. “That’s their business,” he says.

In a 2006 review of the ASN, the International Atomic Energy Agency, found that “…some states may encounter difficulties in separating the regulatory control from the promotion and operation of facilities and activities…”. [12] . This is understandable in the newly independent (since 2006) ASN as the State is a majority shareholder in both AREVA and EDF, France’s nuclear utility. But even in the US where the industry is in private hands, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, headed by five presidentially-appointed commissioners, has been known to ignore safety issues in favour of financial arguments advanced by operators.

In 2002, the Davis-Besse (DB) plant came to within 3/8th of an inch of a nuclear disaster because the bottom line took priority over public safety, NRC records show. Both the NRC and the industry were aware of severe premature ageing problems due to boric acid corrosion which plagued reactor vessels world-wide since the 1980s. Yet the NRC allowed the industry to treated the issue as a financial problem, not a safety issue [13]. Loss of coolant can lead to reactor meltdown and massive release of high-level radiation. . In 2001, the NRC suspected DB of serious corrosion issues and told the operator, FENOC, to shutdown by Dec 31 to visually check for and repair corrosion damage.

FENOC planned to shutdown for refuelling in April and requested an extension citing the economic toll early shutdown entails. Convinced that safety requirements were not met, NRC staff drafted a shutdown order and sent it to the five-member Commission for approval. But Commission staff questioned the order, requiring 100% proof, available only by shutting the plant, that imposing a financial burden was warranted, a report by the NRC inspector-general shows In the end the NRC allowed the plant to run for an extra six weeks. When workers scrapped off years-old boric acid crud they found that a cavity 7 inches deep and 5 inches wide had bored through the entire outer layer of the reactor lid leaving only the 3/8th of an inch of inner lining to retain the primary coolant inside the vessel [14]. Loss of coolant can lead to reactor meltdown and massive release of high-level radiation.

Plants are ageing faster than expected, says Laurent Foucher, IRSN’s head of equipment and structural analysis, and finding replacement parts is becoming difficult.

Tony Pietrangelo, vice president for regulatory affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby group, says that “there’s a supply chain issue with ultra heavy equipment.”

Asked if deteriorating plans resulted in more near misses, Scott Burnell, press officer at the NCR says no but adds that “we’re having to deal with more complex situations”.

P.S.

This subject is highly controversial and I anticipate dissent from some quarters, hence the footnotes. But if you think it’s too much, I can take them out. Also not sure where it should go?!

Footnotes

[1] In nuke-speak these events are referred to as “anomalies” or “incidents”. I chose to use the Collins English Dictionary definition of accident – “an unforeseen event”

[2] 100 workers contaminated. See ASN Avis d’incident du 31 juillet 2008
iodine. See Agence Federale de Controle Nucléaire (Belgium) Communique de Presse du 6 Septembre 2008;

[3] interview to the JDD July.

[4] Confirmed in interview to JL Lachaume deputy director of ASN. Sept 8, 2008.

[5] INES scale

[6] IRSN Fiche technique SOCATRI du 4 septembre 2008.

[7] IRSN Report on Water around Nuke sites 4 septembre 2008.

[8] UCS petition and response to NRC response

[9] The 1991 spill is not mentioned in the Sept 4 report but is alluded to in the Sept 15 report.

[10] IRSN Report on Water around Nuke sites 15 septembre 2008.

[11] Figures confirmed by Lachaume at ASN .

[12] IAEA Integrated Review Service, Full Scope to France 2006.

[13] NRC INSPECTOR GENERAL DAVIS-BESSE REPORT DEC 2002
NRC Generic Letter 88-01 March 17, 1988
NRC Information Notice 90-10 Primary Stress Corrosion Cracking PWSCC Feb 23, 1990
NRC Lessons Learned
NRC Information Notice 86-108. Jan 5, 1995
NRC Degradation of Control Rod Mech… Generic Letter 97-01 April 1, 1997
NRC Bulletin 2001-01 Aug, 3 2001
NRC Bulletin 2002-01. March 18, 2002
NRC INSPECTOR GENERAL DAVIS-BESSE REPORT DEC 2002.

[14] idem.

4 Forum messages

• 19 February 2009 21:01, by Alison Culliford
  1. Sellafield’s small ad in the Whitehaven News: ’We need your help. Did you work at Sellafield in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s? Were you by chance in the job of disposing of radioactive material? If so, the owners of Britain’s nuclear waste dump would very much like to hear from you: they want you to tell them what you dumped - and where you put it.’ Is this some kind of joke? Was it really placed by Sellafield or an anti-nuclear power group?
  2. I read an official report on Chernobyl issued by Nuclear Electric to all chief charge engineers in the UK (my dad was one, at Hinkley Point). It drew the conclusion that the normal safety valve of self-preservation was no longer present among workers in post-Communist Ukraine, and smugly judged that this could never happen in Britain. The latter is probably true if we retain our democracy, but selling reactors to the likes of Libya surely must be questioned.
  3. That said, Dad was disillusioned after privatisation. My brother met a 60-year-old surfer on the beach at Croyde Bay who was high up in Nuclear Electric. "Ah yes, the three awkward charge engineers," he said. My Dad and his colleagues, who had started out in nuclear power believing it was the new clean power, were given golden handshakes to get them out of the way in the mid-1990s. They insisted on doing things the old way. Dad, who used to leave on holiday with a suitcase full of Hinkley Point paperwork, constantly phoned in to work, and made us visit any nuclear site within a 500 mile radius in any country we were in (even if it meant staring at it through binoculars), ended his days walking on the Quantocks and gazing ruefully at the twin blocks of his former workplace. I think the worry finally killed him (if it wasn’t the radiation. He had a form of leukemia).
  4. But give me a good alternative. I would like to see nuclear power regulated by a stringent UN-enforced international regulatory body, staffed by people like my father, who wasn’t just in it for the money.
  Reply to this message
  
  
• 24 February 2009 14:47, by Pat
  Atomic power has, from its inception in the 1950s, benefited from both generous subsidies and unfailing governmental support. Many people believed in the radiant future it promised.
  Little was known at the time of the effects of nuclear power, especially of low-level radiation, to which we are routinely exposed. The only data available was extrapolated from data collected on the survivors of high-level exposure from the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the years, the data results were revised when what was considered the radiation-free control groups turned out to be contaminated by low-level radiation and developed cancers, cardiac and reproductive problems as well as genetic mutations typical of radiation exposure. [For additional information see: http://www.rerf.or.jp/]
  In addition to these flawed studies, other evidence indicated the nefarious effects of low-level exposure including among Navaho uranium miners and their families whose drinking water was contaminated by uranium tailings and sludge in the US. [See: http://www.downwinders.org/cortez.html]. And there was the high level of cancer and leukaemia deaths in the towns located near the US test sites – St. George, Utah, to name the most blighted of these.
  But the industry and the governments that regulate it chose not only to ignore this information but to suppress it. I too have visited nuclear sites where I am told that the radiation released is “safe?. Yet, the International Committee for Radio Protection, hardly a hotbed of anti-nuke activists, states that: “It is assumed that any exposure is capable of causing an effect, with no threshold.? Limits are set only to limit cancer deaths to “an acceptable frequency and “to prevent unacceptable levels of risk.? It all depends on the definition of unacceptable.
  Nuclear industry workers are the first to be affected by the suppression of mounting evidence that low-level radiation is more harmful than first believed. They are often over-exposed without being warned of the possible ill effects.
  Nuclear pioneers, such as your father, at least knew that they were dealing with a dangerous technology. But this attitude has faded with the years. For example, according to the EDF inspector general for safety, the safety culture at EDF is poor and a certain complacency has set in. [See http://energies.edf.com/html/IGSN/2007/rapportIGSN-2007.pdf]
  Regulators depend on the industry for information about everything that goes on at nuclear installations. Independent monitoring is deemed unnecessary.
  It is true that we lack studies to back up claims of the effects of low-level radiation. This is because only governments are capable of implementing such comprehensive studies but are too busy burying their heads firmly in the sand on this issue to do so. In a recent broadcast of “Pieces à Conviction? on FR3, André-Claude Lacoste, chair of the Authorité de sureté nulcéaire, said it was unnecessary for the ASN to undertake such a study because the effects of low-level radiation were too negligible to show up. In other words, he doesn’t need to study a controversial issue because he already knows the answer. It is always the same broken record “Don’t worry, be happy?.
  Last but decidedly not least, there is the problem of radioactive waste. The industry generates radioactive pollution that is a zillion times more toxic than anything found in nature and offers no viable way to dispose of it. Reprocessing plants such as Sellafield or La Hague spend a lot of energy and resources to simply recondition the waste and make the raw materials for bombs – plutonium and enriched uranium – more easily available by separating them from the rest of the waste. But it remains waste and as such, still needs to be disposed of and therein lies the rub. There is no way to predict what will happen to geologic formations hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years from now. To claim that deep repositories will withstand, without leaching into ground water reservoirs, the massive radioactive bombardment that they will be subjected to for the required centuries is a further example of nuclear industry hubris.
  Reply to this message
  
  
• 28 March 2009 18:13, by peter russell
  Over recent years some extremely worrying facts have been brought to light by a number of scientists working independently of the establishment and therefore able to state their findings without fear of losing their jobs (though they might, one surmises, worry for their lives).
  First among these is Dr. Chris Busby, who has been measuring and making tests on the radioactivity around nuclear sites in England - notably Sellafield, the North Wales coast and Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset which is close to the Hinkley Point nuclear power station. His surveys in each of these places has produced considerably elevated figures for cancers and leukaemias, especially among children, close to the coasts of Cumbria, Conway, N.Ireland, and the Bristol Channel. Some of his results have been reported in Richard Bramhall’s periodical "Radiation Times". Busby produced a DVD, called "Nuclear Cover-ups", about the effects on the children of N. Wales some years ago, which I believe is still available. In 2006 Dr. Busby wrote a substantial treatise on the effects of low-level radiation, especially regarding particles inhaled or imbibed and lodging in the human system. This was unfortunately titled "Wolves of Water", which means little to most people, and expansively subtitled "A study constructed from atomic radiation, morality, epidemiology, science, bias, philosophy and death". In about 500 pages this covers the whole field of the effects of low-level radiation and the reasons for its serious effects on the human system and human health and human geneology. Busby also co-operated with A. V. Yablokov in the mainly-Russian report on the long-term effects from the Chernobyl disaster, titled "Chernobyl: 20 years after", another harrowing 250-page document full of unhappy facts relating to the continuing sickness and death caused all over Europe but particularly in Belarus and around Chernobyl.
  Another telling document is the 2006 book by Dr. Helen Caldicott, another dedicated expert on the effects of radiation, and called "Nuclear Power is not the Answer". Her reasoning and her references back up the findings of Dr. Rosalie Bertell, in her 1985 book "No Immediate Danger", and her subsequent pontifications on the subject of the millions who have died as a direct or indirect result of our nuclear activities.
  These and other writers are sufficient to persuade less academic but concerned people that the human race is indeed doomed, if not from climate change, epidemics, rain-forest loss and species loss, or just outright warfare, certainly without fail from the legacy of radioactive materials. All of these, sooner or later, will escape their storage places and contaminate the planet more and more to the point where the "background" radioactivity is so high that not one in three people will die from cancer, but everybody, and many in their pre-reproductive years. Unfortunately, the dire effects will also disrupt animal and plant life in general, and it may be many millions of years before the total radioactive load has diminished enough for life to be sustainable again, and Darwin’s process of evolution start all over again.
  I am one of those who are convinced that this is the scenario on which we are already well-embarked, and the pie-in-the-sky assertion that "science will solve the problem" is just not going to happen.
  Reply to this message
  
  
• 3 April 2009 13:16, by Pat Brett
  Thank you for pointing out the work of Dr. Chris Busby, I am not familiar with it and will try to look it up.
  I am familiar with the work done by Drs. Rosalie Bertell and Helen Caldicott. Interviewing them in the late 1970s combined with covering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s totally inefficient response to the accident at Three Mile Island raised my concerns about the effects of radiation and the lack of public information on the issue.

Yuri Bandazhevsky

Yuri Bandazhevsky

Yuri Bandazhevsky (born on January 9 1957 in Belarus), former director of the Medical Institute in Gomel (Belarus), is a scientist working on sanitary consequences of the Chernobyl accident.

On June 2001 Yuri Bandazhevski was sentenced to eight years imprisonment on the grounds that he had allegedly received bribes from students' parents. The institute's Deputy Director, Vladimir Ravkov, also received an eight-year prison sentence. Bandazhevski's lawyer claimed that he had been convicted on the basis of two testimonies made under duress, without any material evidence. According to many human rights groups Dr. Bandazhevski was a prisoner of conscience. Amnesty International has stated on their website "His conviction was widely believed to be related to his scientific research into the Chernobyl catastrophe and his open criticism of the official response to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster on people living in the region of Gomel." His arrest came soon after he published reports critical of the official research being conducted into the Chernobyl incident.

Yury Bandazhevsky was released on parole from prison on August 5, 2005, and prohibited for five months of leaving Belarus. He was afterward invited by the mayor of Clermont-Ferrand, in France, to work at the university and at the hospital on Chernobyl's consequences. Clermont-Ferrand has been since 1977 linked to Gomel where Bandhazevsky used to work.

See also

*Chernobyl accident

*Liquidator (Chernobyl)

External links

*An article about Yuri Bandazhevski at Bellona web

* The Council of Europe's Political Affairs Committee resolution on Belarus – see section 28, 29 Repression of opponents â€" Bandazhevski case

* Professor Yuri Bandazhevsky site

* Interview with Galina Bandazhevsky, wife and partner of Yuri

Lancet reports Chernobyl dissent

Debate over health effects of Chernobyl re-ignited

Lancet Ed Holt 24 April 2010

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2960605-8/fulltext

Controversy surrounding the true toll and disease burden caused by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 has resurfaced following the release of a new study. Ed Holt reports.

Calls have been made for comprehensive studies into the continuing health effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster after a rise in birth defects was identified in one of the regions most affected by the catastrophe.

A study by Wladimir Wertelecki of the University of Southern Alabama, AL, USA, found above average rates of a number of birth defects in one province in Ukraine—where the devastated nuclear power plant, which exploded 24 years ago, remains encased in concrete. Wertelecki says that the rise could be linked to continuing exposure to low-level radiation doses.

The findings, published in Pediatrics, are in stark contrast with a major, but highly criticised, 2005 study by WHO and other groups, which suggested that there was no evidence of an increased risk of birth defects in areas contaminated by the accident. Wertelecki says that the results of his study show claims that birth defects are not linked to the disaster need to be re-evaluated. He told The Lancet: “The official position is that Chernobyl and birth defects are not connected. That position needs to be reconsidered at the very least.”

When unit number four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in April, 1986, it caused the world's worst nuclear disaster. WHO has estimated that the total radioactivity from Chernobyl was 200 times that of the combined releases from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The blast and following fires sent a huge radioactive cloud spreading across Europe and 350 000 people in areas near the plant had to be evacuated.

The UN, WHO, International Atomic Energy Agency, and other bodies joined with the Russian, Belarus, and Ukraine Governments to set up the Chernobyl Forum to undertake a major study into the effects of the disaster and in 2005 released their findings.

According to their study, there had only been 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers and nine children with thyroid cancer) and an estimated 4000 deaths in future because of the accident. Also, there was no evidence of an increased risk of birth defects or other reproductive effects in areas contaminated by radiation from the accident.

The report included data from WHO showing that although an increase in birth defects had been found between 1986 and 1999 in Belarus—whose southern border is 30 km from Chernobyl and which was badly affected by radioactive fallout from the disaster—those rates were rising in both contaminated and uncontaminated areas.

But the study was heavily criticised by other groups who said it grossly underestimated the deaths and the potential future health effects of the disaster and had used selective reporting of data.

Alternative studies contradicted some of the Chernobyl Forum findings and suggested that the health effects of the disaster were much greater. One, the TORCH report published in 2006 by British scientists Ian Fairlie and David Sumner and commissioned by a German Green Party MEP, indicated the uncertainty surrounding the health effects of low doses of radiation and of internal radiation doses through ingestion and inhalation of nuclides.

Wertelecki's study concentrated on the Rivne province of Ukraine, about 200 km from the Chernobyl plant. Its northern half, Polissia, was classified as being “significantly affected” by the disaster and the ground, as well as food, in the area still contains low doses of radioactive caesium 137.

The study, which covered births in the years from 2000 to 2006 in Rivne, showed that of 96 438 babies born in the province in that time, the rate of some birth defects was far above the European average. It showed that 22 of 10 000 babies were born with a neural tube defect compared with the European average of nine per 10 000 babies.

The rate was even higher in the Polissia region with 27 of 10 000 babies born with a neural tube defect. Polissia also had high rates of microcephaly and microphthalmia than in other parts of Rivne. The study recorded 3·7 cases of microcephaly per 10 000 children in Polissia, while the rate in the rest of Rivne was 1·3 per 10 000. Meanwhile, the rate of microphthalmia was 1·8 per 10 000 while it was just 0·4 per 10 000 in other areas of the province.

But Wertelecki is keen to point out that the study does not claim that radiation exposure is definitively the cause of the defects. The study lacked data about prenatal drinking and the diet of mothers in the region, he stresses. Both are key to understanding the causes of the defects as fetal exposure to alcohol and a lack of folates during pregnancy can lead to both types of birth defects.

Alcoholism is rife in the Ukraine and generally low standards of living for much of the population also mean diet can be poor. “Alcohol and folates are among the factors involved in certain birth defects. A lack of folates combined with ionizing radiation could multiply the risks of birth defects or at least greatly enhance them. Alcohol is a factor in microcephaly, as ionizing radiation can also be, and combined their effects could be enhanced”, says Weretlecki.

“That data [on prenatal fetal exposure and folates in mothers' diets] was not available to us and to prove that one factor is behind the birth defects rather than others or that the factors are all combined is a matter of resources. But what is key is that these birth defects can be prevented.”

He adds that so far studies on the possible effects of radiation had been focused on external exposure to radiation near Chernobyl rather than other forms. “Models used so far have mainly concentrated on external exposure levels—eg, permissible levels of radiation in the air and how much these have been exceeded etc. But what needs to be studied is the internal exposure—eg, in what is eaten, drunk, consumed, or breathed in through the air”, says Wertelecki.

When contacted by The Lancet regarding Wertelecki's study and its apparent contradictions to the Chernobyl Forum's findings, WHO said it supported efforts to undertake new studies, but stuck by its own findings in the 2005 report. Igor Pokanevych, head of the WHO office in the Ukraine, tells The Lancet: “The conclusions of the Chernobyl Forum study were based on the data collected in the Forum's studies. We found that there would likely be no major effects on birth defects. But our conclusions do not match those of Dr Wertelecki. We are not saying that he is wrong, or that he is right, just that our data was different to his and our conclusions were different. He perhaps had access to data that we did not.”

Pokanevych says that Wertelecki's method was different to the WHO study and that he made conclusions based on studies of one particular part of the wider Rivne province rather than at nationwide level. “We would definitely welcome more studies on this and any efforts that will help prevent birth defects. But any studies need to have the same methodology to be comparable”, he says.

Both local and international studies into the long-term effects of the disaster have been hindered by difficulties in the health sectors in affected countries, including lack of funding, infrastructure, and lack of local experience in chronic disease epidemiology.

Wertelecki is also critical of the claims made by the Chernobyl Forum that one of the greatest dangers to health in the wake of the nuclear plant disaster was the fear of becoming ill because of it, rather than actual illnesses as a result of the disaster. The Forum's report said: “The mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem unleashed by the accident to date.” It suggested that the psychological effects of the disaster had led some to ignore warnings of collecting food from contaminated areas and turn to overuse of alcohol and tobacco, and unprotected promiscuous sexual activity in the belief that such behaviour was no less risky than their exposure to the effects of Chernobyl.

But Wertelecki thinks that such statements hindered further studies. “At grassroots level in the Ukraine people are offended when they hear that the biggest health threat is radiophobia [anxiety about radiation safety] and the fear of illness from Chernobyl. Statements like that can also put a deep freeze on funding sources for other studies”, he says.

The Ukrainian health ministry and health authorities in Rivne declined to comment when contacted by The Lancet. But Wertelecki says that the authorities in Rivne are keen to create international partnerships with other bodies to do research in the area. Ukraine still spends between 5—7% of its gross domestic product every year on Chernobyl-related matters, including health. Benefits programmes have been set up for people classed as Chernobyl victims and Ukrainian authorities have designated 2·4 million Ukrainians, including more than 400 000 children, as having health problems related to the disaster.

Wertelecki says that the most important thing now was to begin wide-scale studies to try to identify the cause of birth defects in the region and prevent them. “Chernobyl is a complete tragedy and work needs to be done now to prevent birth defects”, he says.

Nuclear Power - What's the Problem?

This is an index to a variety of articles, reports and books on the issue of nuclear power. Intro with link to full article. See also Low Level Radiation Campaign [documentary]

1. Questioning the validity of

research / reports from institutions & academic bodies responsible for overseeing the nuclear industry.

2. Alternatives to a nuclear future.

3. Politics of nuclear power.

1. Questioning:

Lancet reports Chernobyl dissent

Debate over health effects of Chernobyl re-ignited

Lancet Ed Holt 24 April 2010

Calls have been made for comprehensive studies into the continuing health effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster after a rise in birth defects was identified in one of the regions most affected by the catastrophe.

The findings, published in Pediatrics, are in stark contrast with a major, but highly criticised, 2005 study by WHO and other groups, which suggested that there was no evidence of an increased risk of birth defects in areas contaminated by the accident. Wertelecki says that the results of his study show claims that birth defects are not linked to the disaster need to be re-evaluated. He told The Lancet: “The official position is that Chernobyl and birth defects are not connected. That position needs to be reconsidered at the very least.”

[Read more]

Chernobyl 'still causing cancer in British children'

The Independent & The Independent on Sunday

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor Published: 23 April 2006

Cancer

More than a third of Britain is still contaminated by radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster two decades ago, and children are getting cancer as a result, an Independent on Sunday investigation has

established. ...

[Read more]

Chernobyl: The Great Cover-Up

The World Health Organisation and Nuclear Power

ALISON KATZ / Le Monde diplomatique 1apr2008

http://mondediplo.com:80/2008/04/14who

For 50 years dangerous concentrations of radionuclides have been accumulating in earth, air and water from weapons testing and reactor incidents. Yet serious studies of the effects of radiation on health have been obscured – not least by the World Health Organisation.

[Read more]

Chernobyl Effects Could Last for Centuries

By Pavol Stracansky 30.08.2010

http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/30-08-2010/114807-chernobyl_effects_could_last_fo-0/#

Nearly 25 years after the worst nuclear accident in history, new scientific findings suggest that the effects of the explosion at Chernobyl have been underestimated. Experts last month published a series of studies indicating that, contrary to previous findings, populations of animals decreased in the exclusion zone surrounding the site of the former nuclear power plant, and that the effects of radioactive contamination after the outbreak had been "overwhelming." [Read more]

NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS: BOTHERED, BEWITCHED OR BEWILDERED?

Nation Union Journalists

http://www.nujcec.org/paris/NUCLEAR-ACCIDENTS-BOTHERED

Wednesday 11 February 2009, by Patricia Brett

A version of this article appeared in the IHT in October 2008.

Nuclear energy results in the release of radioactivity into the atmosphere and into bodies of water, either through routine, scheduled releases or because of accidents. Each nuclearized country has a watchdog to control the industry, but how well do they actually perform? This article looks at a few worrisome examples of regulators at work. [Read more]

2. Alternatives

Summarising "non-nuclear" opinion in the sustainable energy world: there are a vast array of alternatives to nuclear power. The first is conservation of energy. The second is to change the economic and social structure in ways that reduce demand for energy e.g. transport, housing, consumer goods etc. The third is the development and expansion of existing technology with appropriate fiscal and monetary stimulus coupled with planning for local production for local consumption. These technologies include , wind, tidal & wave [in wide range of innovative models] together with solar thermal for heating and electricity and photo voltaics. Big saving are made from combine heat and power both large and small scale such as micro CHP for small housing complexes.

There are innumerable developments under way from algae breeding to fuel cell storage to ground & air heat pumps to hydrogen production from bacteria working on biodegradable organic matter. The links below are just a starter to news & views on some of the innovative clean, sustainable, safe, efficient and appropriate methods of producing and or conserving energy.

Most of these technologies are controllable by the community and local society. Nuclear power is most certainly not controllable by those it supplies. Nuclear power represents an enormous trust in the mechanism of power in the UK and the infallibility and accountability of private corporations. Alternative options are posted below.

Greenpeace paper on decentralised energy versus nuclear power [2007]

http://www.mng.org.uk/gh/resources/no2n_decentralised_energy.pdf

50% electricity from marine renewables by 2050

http://www.renewableenergyfocus.com/view/13581/europe-50-electricity-from-marine-renewables-by-2050/

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/safe_alternatives_to_nucle_27062006.html

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/haog-ef080609.php

http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2007/11/hydrogen_bacteria
x

3. Politics

Economics of nuclear power:

Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute reports that the US Government is offering massive subsidies to the nuclear industry to construct new nuclear plants. There are no takers as yet. Lovins also questions the energy & carbon accounting of the industry. Interview here on Democracy Now - interview 3/4 though programme.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/16/amory_lovins_expanding_nuclear_power_makes

Reuters reports on a Vermont Law School study

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS16237343320100916 warning of risks to the taxpayer from the development of nuclear power.

When the Soviet Union collapsed there was panic in nuclear regulator circles as the nuclear programme was bankrupt, haemorrhaging skilled staff and without the possibility of funding basic safety guidelines. Are we so confident that Europe, Britain etc. can guarantee financial security for ever?

Prisoner of Conscience on Chernobyl

Dr. Bandazhevski was a prisoner of conscience. Amnesty International has stated on their website "His conviction was widely believed to be related to his scientific research into the Chernobyl catastrophe and his open criticism of the official response to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster on people living in the region of Gomel." His arrest came soon after he published reports critical of the official research being conducted into the Chernobyl incident. [Read more]

http://unreportedworld.blogspot.com/2000/01/yuri-bandazhevsky.html

The Rocky Mountain Institute has undertaken some detailed analysis which demonstrates that alternatives to nuclear power can achieve similar objectives at lower cost. Amory Lovins, of RMI says:

“So the big question about nuclear "revival" isn't just who'd pay for such a turkey, but also...why bother? Why keep on distorting markets and biasing choices to divert scarce resources from the winners to the loser — (3)

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/

CURRICULUM VITAE (Mar 2010)

Prof. Dr Christopher Busby

http://unreportedworld.blogspot.com/2000/01/dr-c-busby-cv.html

Download at http://www.llrc.org/misc/subtopic/cvbusby.pdf