Understanding the Facts About Radiation and Public Health at Turkey Point

The following guest post was submitted by NEI Media Manager, Mitch Singer.

Last month I attended two public hearings in Homestead, Fla., focusing on the proposed two new additional nuclear plants, Turkey Point 6&7, at the nearby facility that has two operating reactors and a natural gas plant. Turkey Point has significant support and people are upbeat about the prospects of the additional units.

Aerial view of Turkey Point

But as to be expected there were a number of opponents. One person who testified identified himself as a biologist.

Unfortunately, he sounded more like a script writer for a 1950s horror film as, he accused the operators of Turkey Point of causing all sorts of flesh-eating maladies as the result of radiation leaks from the plant.

Back in high school, all of my science teachers taught me the same valuable lesson: science is the pursuit of truth based on evidence from study and experimentation.

It was a lesson I took to heart, and one that I wish more members of the public would apply to questions of public policy, like the licensing of new nuclear power plants.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sets an individual exposure limit for nuclear plant workers of 5,000 millirem (mrem) per year. The average plant worker receives 115 mrem…that’s less than one percent a year of that amount. To put it into perspective, the average American is exposed to about 600 mrem of radiation per year from all sources. That includes natural background radiation. As it turns out, the largest source of radiation exposure to the general public is from medical applications like X-Rays.

If you were to Google facts about radiation the search results would be voluminous. NEI has saved you the trouble by creating a Radiation: Standards and Organization Provide Safety for Public and Workers fact sheet with top-line information and footnoted sources from reputable, independent organizations including the National Academy of Sciences and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

I hope the biologist/screen writer takes a look at this information. Perhaps he’ll discover the lessons of scientific study that were drilled into me during my youth in New Jersey by dedicated teachers like Mrs. Lustbader, Mr. Mitros, Mrs. Kratt, Mr. Edack and Mr. Susskind .

Nobody is more concerned with protecting the health and safety of its workers and the surrounding community than the operators of a nuclear power plant. After all, the folks who work at the plant also live in the surrounding community. Their diligence doesn't only buttress their own safety, it also guarantees the safety and health of their family, friends and neighbors.

Perhaps the most compelling input I heard at the hearings was from Faith Banks, a quality assurance manager who has worked at Turkey Point for more than two decades. During that time she never worried about her health because of the emphasis on safety by plant owner, Florida Power & Light.

“I worked before, during and after my two pregnancies,” she said. “I’m healthy and my children are healthy.”

Editor's Note: Over at the News section of the new NEI website, we've recently posted a story about Turkey Point's economic impact on South Florida.

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Why You Can't Trust Joe Mangano and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League on Radiation and Public Health

More than a few folks have passed along a news clip to us from The Chattanoogan detailing another "study" by Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) claiming that they've discovered higher mortality rates in populations living near the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant. We don't believe this study is credible.

Mangano and company are making these claims despite the fact that nuclear power plants only account for .1% of the radiation that a typical American is exposed to over the course of a year. Meanwhile, exposures from life saving medical procedures like CT scans and X-Rays account for about 50%.

Putting that aside, a number of third party experts and journalists have regularly taken turns debunking Mangano's research. In 2011, Michael Moyer of Scientific American said the following about one Mangano study that claimed Americans were suffering from severe health effects in the wake of Fukushima:

[A] check reveals that the authors’ statistical claims are critically flawed—if not deliberate mistruths.

[...]

Only by explicitly excluding data from January and February were Sherman and Mangano able to froth up their specious statistical scaremongering.

This is not to say that the radiation from Fukushima is not dangerous, nor that we shouldn’t closely monitor its potential to spread (we should). But picking only the data that suits your analysis isn’t science—it’s politics. Beware those who would confuse the latter with the former.

Here's a statement from Ralph Andersen, NEI's chief health physicist regarding Mangano's track record:

Mr. Mangano's allegations of health effects associated with emissions from nuclear power plants have been reviewed in detail and repeatedly discredited by at least 8 state and 2 county public health departments, as well as the USNRC, as follows:

USNRC; State of Connecticut; State of Florida; State of Illinois; State of New Jersey; State of New York; State of Pennsylvania; State of Minnesota; State of Michigan; Westchester County, NY and Suffolk County, NY.

In fact, we are not aware of any federal, state, or local government public health departments that have reviewed Mr. Mangano's allegations and found them to be credible.

As for BREDL, they have a dubious track record of their own. Back in 2007, our own David Bradish took a closer look at some of BREDL's claims in regards to Plant Vogtle in Georgia and found ample evidence that BREDL manipulated the numbers to "fit their presumptive conclusions."

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Snakes in a Nuclear Plant

We can settle issues of risk, but we cannot settle fear – at least, not without a great deal of effort. If you are afraid of snakes, you’re afraid of snakes – your snake loving friends won’t understand, but there it is. If you don’t live in a snaky area, the fear will never show itself, but if you do, it may cripple you socially. But in general, people recognize their fears without letting them guide their destiny. And don’t live in towns called Snakeville.

There’s a basis for the fear in reality – snakes bite and can be poisonous - but the risk of being bitten by a poisonous snake is exceedingly small.

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But there are other fears and though you could choose not to live in Nuclearville, why should you?:

The results are in and Cape Cod residents have spoken. Last night Falmouth, Yarmouth, Brewster, Orleans and Harwich voters passed a public advisory question to call on Governor Patrick to request the Nuclear Regulatory Commission uphold their mandate to close the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station because the public safety of Cape Cod cannot be assured.

This was  a second vote. Other towns voted at a different time and the same way. The effort to kick out Pilgrim is spearheaded by a group called Cape Downwinders, who I guess have done an exceptionally good job of inducing fear in their neighbors.

The mission of Cape Downwinders is to take action to protect the lives and welfare of the residents of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket against the threat of death or injury resulting from the use of nuclear energy at Pilgrim and other locations.

There is no safe level of radiation.

That’ll be news to the local medical community, as we’ll see. But let’s stick to Pilgrim: How many people on Cape Cod have been harmed by radiation? You already know the answer to that one: none. Pilgrim has shut down to fix issues, but did any of these outages release radiation or cause other hardship? No.

Pilgrim, which is owned by Entergy Corp. of Louisiana, first lost power Friday night when three offsite power lines were knocked out of service during the storm, according to regulatory filings and the NRC. The plant was taken offline, and diesel generators powered its safety systems. Electricity temporarily returned to the plant on Sunday morning, but went out again when plant operators believe a transformer was struck by falling ice.

This was in February and was the worst I could find – and it’s a pretty big stretch. Did this cause hardship beyond what the storm did? Wouldn’t seem so; if power lines are getting knocked down and ice is raining down, there’s not much point in keeping the plant thrumming along.

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Interestingly, a recent report addresses the risks of exposure to ionizing radiation, issued by the Health Physics Society. This isn’t a group likely to be in the tank for dangerous, risky activities, so there’s credibility here.

This collection of papers, Radiation Risk: Expert Perspective, addresses the every- day role of radiation in energy and medicine, how we are exposed to it and how risk is managed and approached through science and responsible policy. The experts explain how we are constantly exposed to radiation from sources all around us, those man-made and those occurring naturally, from space to our food, and how much each contributes to our limited overall exposure.

To be honest, it’s unusual to see a report that treats radiation in medicine, food production and electricity production as part of a continuity of beneficial nuclear energy. It’s always been more convenient to yoke electricity production to weaponry because the former grew out of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative, which envisioned domestic nuclear energy as a counter to the, um, military-industrial complex (a famous but different Eisenhower locution used in a different context).

But of course, it is a more natural fit as HPS has it. These are key beneficial uses of nuclear energy, the poles of atoms for peace. The articles are genuinely interesting and written to be understood by a general audience. Here is Dr. Bernard Cohen, a long time radiation risk specialist on stowing used nuclear fuel:

Scientists know how rocks behave and there is every reason to expect this glass-rock container for high-level radioactive waste will behave similarly. All ordinary rocks contain radioactive materials, and analyses demonstrate that we can calculate the probability for an atom of these to find its way, via groundwater transport, into our food and water supplies. For rocks at the burial depth of glass-enclosed radioactive waste, this probability is about one chance in a trillion per year. From that we calculate that all the byproducts produced by America’s nuclear power plants will eventually cause less than one death per year in the U.S. population. Compare this with the many thousands of deaths per year caused by air pollution from burning coal to produce electricity.

That’s less risk than getting bitten by a snake (I think).

And here is Dr. Louis Wagner on medical radiation:

The American Cancer Society recently reported that cancer death rates in the United States have continued to decline over the past two decades (American Cancer Society 2012). The medical community will continue to refine its use of radiation in medical imaging and other nuclear medical technologies for diagnosis and treatment to improve health care and increase our life expectancy.

Increase, Cape Downwinders, not decrease.

It’s a terrific report and worth your attention if you’re interested in radiation and risk – it’s a large topic and this is a good primer. NEI has a useful page about this, too, that’s a nice supplement to the HPS report.

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The Cape Downwinders can go a little overboard in its opposition:

Entergy Corporation could be could be liable for up to $831,325,000.00 in civil penalties for polluting Cape Cod Bay at its Pilgrim nuclear reactor. According to a letter sent to the company and federal officials on October 5, 2012 by local residents, since 1996, there have been 33,253 violations of the federal Clean Water Act. Entergy could liable for a $25,000.00 civil penalty for each violation.

And Entergy could be liable for $1 billion trillion because it failed to chase away the snakes on Pilgrim’s grounds - more than once.

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Note: Only the NRC can close a nuclear plant for safety reasons and, of course, Entergy can shutter Pilgrim. Entergy may need to step up its outreach to Cape Codders to counteract the reign of fear from the downwinders, but that’s it.  Pilgrim is in no danger of closing, snakes or no snakes.

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Experts Weigh In: Joseph Mangano Study Hopelessly Flawed

For the nuclear industry, safety is the top priority, and it goes to great lengths to minimize radiation exposure to the public and employees. So exhaustive are these measures that nuclear power plants only account for .1% of the annual radiation that a typical American is exposed to. Nearly half come from medical exposures.

Yet Joseph Mangano seems intent on repeatedly and falsely stating otherwise. Most recently, Mangano published a study that suggests a correlation exists between the closing of Rancho Seco and the decline in cancer rates in the surrounding area. We responded by reminding the media to consider Mangano's lack of credibility when it comes to "scientific findings" before distributing the study to their readers. This week, local Pennsylvania experts came to the same conclusion about his bogus work. An especially compelling statement comes from the state's director of the Bureau of Radiation Protection:

David J. Allard, director of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Radiation Protection, oversees nine active nuclear power plants on five sites throughout the state. DEP also oversees licensing for medical, academic, industrial type of sources of radiation including nearly 30,000 pieces of x-ray equipment in facilities, half of which are used by dentists.

“The technical reality with these nuclear power plants is that under the federal regulations, Title 10, Part 50, in the code of federal regulations, these power plants can’t emit liquid and airborne radiation that cause greater than three millirem of radiation,” says Allard.

“We see lots of background (radiation) and it’s only when you have Chernobyl or Fukushima where you actually see material on our samples other than the natural background and some residual fallout from the 50s and 60s. We monitor this and quite honestly at those kinds of levels, it’s really, really difficult to measure.”

According to Allard, radon, chemical exposures, genetics and lifestyles may have more impact on the prevalence of cancer rates.

“The problem is that correlation does not mean causation just because people live next to a power plant,” he says. “People are moving in and out. There are other major sources of radiation exposure that the public gets that really swamp whatever little radiation does come from the nuclear plant. The big one is the medical screenings…In these studies, whether by the NRC or Mr. Mangano, you have to control for those other sources of exposure.”

If his word isn't good enough, check out our past coverage of Mangano's sloppy research (a generous phrase for his work). The fact remains that America's nuclear plants are proven to be safe and continue to operate according to rigorous and comprehensive safety standards.

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Readers are Catching on to Helen Caldicott's Alarmist Rhetoric About Nuclear Energy

Dr. Helen Caldicott

For a number of years now, we've been sure to follow the public pronouncements of anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott and how the public is beginning to push back against her radical agenda.

The latest example comes from the Sydney Morning Herald, where Caldicott's latest op-ed was greeted frostily in the comments section following the article.

Here's a sampler:

As someone who worked as a medical physicist, whose job it was to be on to of these sorts of issues. I must say this is alarmist, unbalanced and inaccurate and should be treated with a healthy degree of suspicion.,

Long on rhetoric, short on actual data.

[...]

I'm very surprised such a vague article could be published in the SMH. "Growing body of scientific evidence", "unprecedented increase" and "huge continuing" are the words used here to back up the basic premise. No numbers, emotive language and non-specifics - these are the hallmarks of spin, propaganda and a hidden agenda.

[...]

When someone writes an article without data it's always worth looking a little more. And indeed, this author should be presented as 'Helen Caldicott is a physician, author and anti-nuclear activist'. Once you know that, and consider that no facts are presented you know to take what she says with a pinch of salt.

When it comes to monitoring the potential health effects from the accident at Fukushima, I always come back to the following passage that Mike Moyer of Scientific American wrote in response to the publication of research by anti-nuclear activist Joseph Mangano:

This is not to say that the radiation from Fukushima is not dangerous (it is), nor that we shouldn’t closely monitor its potential to spread (we should). But picking only the data that suits your analysis isn’t science—it’s politics. Beware those who would confuse the latter with the former.

For a more sober assessment on Fukushima, read this piece from Dr. Robert Peter Gale that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. As for Dr. Caldicott, you might want to consult a post from our archives by David Bradish from 2005 that puts her positions on commercial nuclear energy in the proper perspective.

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A Fool for Nuclear Energy

The Motley Fool offers a list of myths about nuclear energy, with an eye, as you might expect, to investing your hard-earned money into various projects. Writer Maxx Chatsko seems to really like TerraPower, which is fine, as long as we recognize that it is one of many projects out there. But we’re smart enough to figure that out, I think. What I found interesting about this list, which is useful and well-intentioned, is that it rather oversells nuclear energy.

We should  like that, yes? Well, maybe, but it can lead to cul-de-sacs, making more complex what should be quite simple to grasp. For example:

28. Radiation exposure from abandoned medical equipment, which kills two to four people each year, is more deadly than living or working at a nuclear plant. 

But here’s the point: contracting radiation sickness at or near a nuclear power plant isn’t just rare, it hasn’t happened. That’s all you really need to say.

Accidents at American plants are occupational in nature, and nuclear facilities have a very good record on that score. So do utilities in general. Take a look at page 12 of this pdf from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and you’ll see that occupational mishaps at all utilities is very low. While almost any human activity carries risk, working at or living near a nuclear facility is not by a long shot one of the riskier ones. Heck, candles are riskier propositions. That’s a point well worth making.

25. Entrepreneur Seth Goldin recently compiled historical World Health Organization, or WHO, data to determine the global death rates for various energy sources. For every terawatt hour of electricity generation, there were 161 coal-related deaths, four natural gas-related deaths, 0.15 wind-related deaths, and 0.04 nuclear-related deaths.

26. A 2011 study (link opens PDF) conducted by the WHO determined that environmental noise causes enough stress each year to shorten European lifetimes 3.376 million years. In other words, as Europeans worry about doomsday nuclear scenarios, they lose, on average, three days of life each year from the noise of their car engines.  

This could go on forever – it’s a morbid game, though, with little utility. Chatsko could say that playing with kittens is more dangerous than a nuclear power plant and stay on target,  even if you play with the kittens right beside a nuclear plant. (Not sure how this works if there’s a lot of noise near the plant.)

Nuclear energy facilities are incredibly safe. No one has contracted radiation sickness at or from them. The occupational accident record is extremely good.

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Nuclear Industry’s Emergency Preparedness Programs Fully and Adequately Test Response Capabilities

The Associated Press published a misleading article in newspapers across the country last week in which it largely calls into question some of the nuclear energy industry’s emergency preparedness programs. The article suggests that new changes to federal regulations were passed behind closed doors and fail to adequately test evacuation procedures. This mischaracterization in reporting, not a far cry from its faulty four-part series that was critiqued by the Columbia Journalism Review last year, could not be further from the truth as it blatantly disregards the latest scientific evidence on how accident scenarios could potentially unfold at nuclear energy facilities and the rigorous drill cycles conducted annually at the nation’s nuclear plants.

At issue here are changes that were approved last August by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to enhance the nuclear industry’s emergency preparedness regulations. Sue Perkins-Grew, NEI’s director of emergency preparedness, provides us with a quick overview of the changes:

Nuclear plant licensees are required to enhance their drill and exercise programs by incorporating a wide range of scenario elements, including hostile action. Scenarios used in the biennial evaluated exercises must be sufficiently varied to prevent participants from “anticipating” a response. To accommodate the added scenario elements in biennial exercises, the cycle was expanded to eight years from six years.

The additional emergency drill scenarios are incorporated into the existing drill cycle. The eight-year cycle amounts to something that looks like this:

• Four biennial exercises that include the following scenario variations (new scenarios denoted in blue):
• Hostile action directed at the plant site involving the integration of offsite resources with onsite response
• An initial classification of or rapid escalation to a “Site Area Emergency” or “General Emergency”
• No radiological release or an unplanned minimal radiological release that requires the site to declare a Site Area Emergency, but does not require the declaration of a General Emergency
• Off-hours and an unannounced exercise
• Demonstration of post-plume or ingestion pathway response
• A radiological release and declaration of a General Emergency that results in protective actions for the general public
• Additional drills and table top exercises that demonstrate a licensee’s ability to perform all key safety functions within an emergency response organization.

The added regulations complement the already comprehensive set of periodic drills that are conducted at the nation’s nuclear energy facilities. Some highlights of these drill programs are listed below.

• Approximately six to eight times per year, operators are evaluated on their ability to respond to a variety of accident events presented in a plant simulator.
• Operators are also tested by NRC inspectors on a biennial basis.
• Each nuclear plant site conducts routing training and drills to help their Emergency Response Organization members develop and maintain proficiency with assigned functions.
• Many training sessions and drills that include participation by state or local officials.
• One biennial exercise integrated with offsite public safety organizations that is evaluated by NRC and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) evaluators.

Given the already rigorous drill cycle and the additional scenario elements that have been incorporated as part of the NRC’s revised emergency preparedness rule, the nuclear energy industry believes that the new requirements further enhance the industry’s emergency response capabilities.

Perkins-Grew commented on the completeness of these reviews in a letter to the editor published over the weekend:

New requirements have been added to make these important integrated exercises less predictable. The new scenarios include: terrorist attacks; fires or explosions damaging large areas of a power plant; events that require activation of emergency responders but do not yield a significant radiological release, and events that escalate within 30 minutes to the highest emergency levels.

The new requirements build on existing emergency preparedness and response capabilities to add another layer of safety that is informed by the latest science.

Bottom line: Every U.S. nuclear energy facility has a comprehensive plan to respond to a wide range of scenarios.

Not only do the new NRC regulations require an increased frequency of drills on various challenging, high-risk scenarios, but they also layer in new scientific evidence that highly suggests that severe accidents at nuclear energy facilities will unfold more slowly than previously anticipated, resulting in a decreased potential for widespread dispersal of radioactive materials. The State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (SOARCA) report, released in February, offers the following preliminary findings:

• Existing resources and procedures can stop an accident, slow it down or reduce its impact before it can affect the public;
• Even if accidents proceed uncontrolled, they take much longer to happen and release much less radioactive material than earlier analyses suggested; and
• The analyzed accidents would cause essentially zero immediate deaths and only a very, very small increase in the risk of long-term cancer deaths.

Given this new scientific evidence on the likely progression of a nuclear plant accident, the new NRC requirements call on emergency planners to focus on the two-mile radius where the public would most likely be impacted, an issue that The AP disagrees with.

Taking issue with the news report, the NRC published a “For the Record” last week that defended its approach:

Extensive research shows health risks from an accident would be greatest within two miles of a plant, so guidance for the new rule focuses on that close-in population. Getting the “two-mile” people relocated first is more effective than potentially clogging evacuation routes with people further away, and can ensure resources are available for protective actions within 10 miles of the plant. Other research, announced earlier this year, provides additional insight into how successful EP [emergency preparedness] procedures, combined with the slow-developing nature of a reactor accident, can keep the public safe.

This measured approach to evacuations ensures that responders can protect the health and safety of the public most at risk first in the unlikely event of an accident, while still monitoring for radiation and informing the public within a 10-mile emergency planning zone around the nuclear energy facility. In the event of a release of radiation, state and local governments will extend radiation monitoring and sampling out to a 50-mile radius to ensure that radioactive materials do not enter the food or drinking water supply.

Aside from the years of research and planning among the industry and federal regulators in testing, developing and implementing the new federal emergency preparedness requirements, The AP also wrongly asserts that the public was not involved in this thorough process. To this point, the NRC reinforced its commitment to transparency by explaining the many opportunities for which the public could comment:

The NRC discussed the proposed changes at public conferences in 2007 and 2008, and the agency issued draft rule language in early 2008. Additional public meetings on the draft language in 2008 were followed by a proposed rule published in the Federal Register for public comment in May 2009. The NRC took public input on the proposed rule for five months, holding a dozen public meetings and gathering several hundred comments. Staff from the NRC and FEMA briefed the Commission on Dec. 8, 2009, and May 3, 2011, both of which involved a panel of external stakeholders, regarding the proposed rule.

NEI also wanted to ensure that its key audiences were given the facts when it came to the nuclear energy industry’s exhaustive emergency preparedness procedures, which is why we videotaped the interview between Tony Pietrangelo, NEI’s chief nuclear officer, and an AP TV producer.

The U.S. nuclear energy industry is trained, tested and held accountable to its emergency response procedures by one of the world’s most stringent nuclear regulators. Without a doubt, our nation’s nuclear energy facilities are prepared for the unthinkable, despite The AP’s example of selective and incomplete reporting.

For more information, see NEI’s fact sheet on emergency preparedness at nuclear energy facilities.

Photo credits: Times Free Press. Great article and video on the newspaper’s website on a recent emergency drill conducted at TVA’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant.

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How to Stand Up to Helen Caldicott

Last week, I hinted that Dr. Helen Caldicott had gotten more than she had bargained for when she visited the University of South Carolina recently. Unfortunately, I failed to follow up and link to the following post at the Nuclear Literacy Project. The author is Kallie Metzger, a graduate fellow studying nuclear engineering at the University of South Carolina, and she deserves some applause for the way she conducted herself:

Ultimately, I hoped this presentation would provide a platform for discussion —And it did, but not nearly as peaceably as I envisioned. I imagined proponents of nuclear refuting the speaker’s false statements and exaggerations (respectfully, of course), the speaker conceding to our reasoning, and the whole night ending in a campfire kumbaya session between the opposing groups. Instead, Dr. Caldicott refused questions, became increasingly hostile and arrogant, and created a strained environment for everyone.

I could quote more, but that would be unfair to the team at Nuclear Literacy. Click here to read the rest right now.

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Challenging Helen Caldicott

Yesterday, we made sure to note that Dr. Helen Caldicott was set to appear at the University of South Carolina to talk about the health effects of the incident at Fukushima -- all in an effort to point folks to more reliable sources of information on radiation and public health.

In today's edition of The State, there's a profile of Caldicott based on an interview that was done before last night's event. Curiously, the reporter didn't attend the lecture in person, but rather interviewed a local anti-nuclear activist about the event after the fact. And there I found an interesting morsel of information that was found encouraging.

About 50 people, mostly students, attended the talk, said Clements, a long-time anti-nuclear activist who is now with the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. One student challenged some of Caldicott’s assertions, he said.

Indeed. In fact, we're hearing that there were some rather tense moments last night, details of which will be revealed elsewhere later in the week. Good to see that Caldicott's assertions aren't going unchallenged. Please stand by.

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A Reminder Ahead of Helen Caldicott's Apperance Tonight at the University of South Carolina

Over the weekend, I got a note from a friend that Dr. Helen Caldicott is scheduled to give a lecture tonight at the University of South Carolina on the medical implications of Fukushima. A little less than a month ago, Caldicott made a similar appearance in Santa Barbara. At the time, I posted the following information, and given tonight's event, it seemed prudent to reprint it in its entirety.
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A couple of days ago, a friend of mine passed some news onto me that Dr. Helen Caldicott is hitting the lecture circuit again, this time to talk about the health implications of the incident at Fukushima Daiichi. Her next event will take place tonight in Santa Barbara and will be sponsored by the Nuclear Peace Age Foundation.

Obviously, this blog has a long history debunking Dr. Caldicott's claims about commercial nuclear energy -- one that extends all the way back to 2005 when we disputed her claims about a USEC uranium enrichment facility in Kentucky.

We don't know what Dr. Caldicott will say tonight. However, when it comes to good science about the health effects of radiation, you'd probably be better off watching some video that was shot earlier this month by the Health Physics Society when they hosted a forum on Fukushima. Click here to watch those videos on our SafetyFirst microsite.

One of the individuals you'll see in the videos is Dr. Robert Peter Gale of Imperial College, London. He's worked as a consultant in the aftermath of both Chernobyl and Fukushima. Earlier this month in the LA Times, Dr. Gale wrote the following about the radiation releases at Fukushima and what they mean for the TEPCO employees at the plant as well as the Japanese public:

The kind of radiation was similar to Chernobyl, but about four to 10 times less was released. And there are other important differences. Most of the radiation released (about 80%) was blown offshore by winds, where it was diluted by air and sea. Consequently, exposures received by Fukushima workers and the public are quite low, including among the 20,000 or more workers decommissioning the facility and the approximately 100,000 evacuees. This doesn't mean there will be no future radiation-caused cancers, as some claim. But because there may be so few cancers, it is unlikely any epidemiological investigations will detect an increase in Japan or elsewhere that can be directly attributed to Fukushima.

What do the Fukushima exposures really mean? A rough estimate is that for a 50-year-old male working at the Fukushima nuclear facility, his lifetime risk of cancer might increase from 42% to 42.2%. The magnitude of this increased risk is comparable to the added risk of living in Denver (where background radiation is higher because of the altitude and radionuclides in the Rocky Mountains) versus New York City for 10 to 15 years, or smoking one pack of cigarettes a day for one to two years. The Japanese public will, of course, get far less radiation.

For more from Dr. Gale, click here.

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Better Sources on Fukushima than Helen Caldicott

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine passed some news onto me that Dr. Helen Caldicott is hitting the lecture circuit again, this time to talk about the health implications of the incident at Fukushima Daiichi. Her next event will take place tonight in Santa Barbara and will be sponsored by the Nuclear Peace Age Foundation.

Obviously, this blog has a long history debunking Dr. Caldicott's claims about commercial nuclear energy -- one that extends all the way back to 2005 when we disputed her claims about a USEC uranium enrichment facility in Kentucky.

We don't know what Dr. Caldicott will say tonight. However, when it comes to good science about the health effects of radiation, you'd probably be better off watching some video that was shot earlier this month by the Health Physics Society when they hosted a forum on Fukushima. Click here to watch those videos on our SafetyFirst microsite.

One of the individuals you'll see in the videos is Dr. Robert Peter Gale of Imperial College, London. He's worked as a consultant in the aftermath of both Chernobyl and Fukushima. Earlier this month in the LA Times, Dr. Gale wrote the following about the radiation releases at Fukushima and what they mean for the TEPCO employees at the plant as well as the Japanese public:

The kind of radiation was similar to Chernobyl, but about four to 10 times less was released. And there are other important differences. Most of the radiation released (about 80%) was blown offshore by winds, where it was diluted by air and sea. Consequently, exposures received by Fukushima workers and the public are quite low, including among the 20,000 or more workers decommissioning the facility and the approximately 100,000 evacuees. This doesn't mean there will be no future radiation-caused cancers, as some claim. But because there may be so few cancers, it is unlikely any epidemiological investigations will detect an increase in Japan or elsewhere that can be directly attributed to Fukushima.

What do the Fukushima exposures really mean? A rough estimate is that for a 50-year-old male working at the Fukushima nuclear facility, his lifetime risk of cancer might increase from 42% to 42.2%. The magnitude of this increased risk is comparable to the added risk of living in Denver (where background radiation is higher because of the altitude and radionuclides in the Rocky Mountains) versus New York City for 10 to 15 years, or smoking one pack of cigarettes a day for one to two years. The Japanese public will, of course, get far less radiation.

For more from Dr. Gale, click here.

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SOARCA and the Decreasing Risk of Death

How likely is it that a major accident at a nuclear energy facility would kill you? Japan just had such a major accident and no one died due to radiological exposure – there were industrial accidents at Fukushima that led to worker death but those were specific to occurring at a physical plant. The general public, while suffering displacement and its attendants stresses – not to mention those caused by the earthquake and tsunami that precipitated the accident – has been fatality free.

The NRC has been investigating the risk of death from a nuclear facility accident and has an answer: your risk is vanishingly small.

The study found there was "essentially zero risk" to the public of early fatalities due to radiation exposure following a severe accident. The long-term risk of dying from cancer due to radiation exposure after an accident was less than one in a billion and less than the U.S. average risk of dying from other causes of cancer, which is about two in one thousand.

Another conclusion: severe accidents at nuclear energy facilities would unfold more slowly and potential releases of radioactive material would be much smaller than earlier studies indicated.

The NRC looked at Surry and Peach Bottom for the study because they are different kinds of reactors.

If core cooling is not restored [following an accident], the NRC said containment failure and radiological release could begin at about 8 hours for Peach Bottom and at 25 hours for Surry.

That’s the worst case scenario, of course, with safety systems intended to prevent its occurrence at multiple points. (Remember, though, that this report assumes that all these systems fail and radiation is released – that eventuality is what it wants to model)

The story doesn’t go into evacuation, but the report does:

For the purposes of evaluating accident consequences in the SOARCA project, the most evident part of a plant's emergency response plan is the evacuation of the public in the 10-mile (16-km) plume exposure pathway Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ). Actions in this EPZ could be expanded if the plume projections suggest that the population in a wider area need to take protective actions. Thus, the project team assessed additional aspects of emergency response, including relocation from areas of relatively high potential for exposure, as well as variations of evacuation and sheltering of population groups outside the 10-mile EPZ to a distance of 20 miles from the plant.

The plume is what many think of as a cloud of radiation.

The report also says that existing safety measures—including those put in place after 9/11—would be highly effective in protecting the public. Moreover, even if mitigating measures fail or are not used, “the analyzed accidents would cause essentially zero immediate deaths and only a very, very small increase in the long-term cancer deaths.”

Any industry – from chemical and gas plants to paper mills to refineries – has to know the worst possible event that can happen and figure out how to keep people alive though it and get them out of the way should it occur. These are the risks of an industrialized society and not specific to the nuclear energy industry.

But it does suggest the responsibility industry and government regulators have to know the risks and how to mitigate them. This report, State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (or SOARCA, in Washington-acronym speak), provides a careful analysis and concludes that the risk is present, and must be acknowledged, but it is very, very small.

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