Relative dangers of nuclear power

[AKH]

By the way, the study you linked itself admits, "...Occupational chemical exposures may contribute to this excess brain cancer risk among nuclear workers..."

...but the only apparent common factor in ten cohorts with quite diverse work environments is the potential for exposure to ionizing radiation.

The only thing that series of studies concludes, is there is an increase in brain cancers among nuclear workers.  It absolutely never once implies that any of that is due to excess radiation doses received at the plant.  And if it did, I would love to find how they linked regular doses we receive to brain cancer.  Perhaps you could find that link for me?

 

Reappraisal of brain tumor risk among U.S. nuclear workers: a 10-year review.

Alexander V, DiMarco JH.

Enviro Medicine Associates, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70808, USA.
Abstract

A review of cohort mortality studies among workers exposed to ionizing radiation in U.S. nuclear programs was published in this journal 10 years ago. The present review extends that investigation to include four new groups of workers at Fernald (Ohio), Rocketdyne/Atomics International (California), Mallinckrodt Chemical (Missouri), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico). The total number of brain tumors has doubled to nearly 300, with 3.8 million person-years of observation among 140,000 U.S. white male workers. This increased risk of brain tumor is highly consistent, persistent, and stable. The sum total of these studies dwarfs the reported experience of any other comparison group. The observed increased brain tumor risk is statistically significant and has changed little since 1991 when it was estimated at 15%. Study results from 1999 and 2000 may suggest a modest growing risk of 25-30%.

Must be just a statistical anomaly, eh?

I have family in California, a round trip flight exposes me to more radiation I receive at the plant in one year.

How are you getting there, via the ISS?

[saggs]

AKH,

I'm still curious what your answer to this is..

How come there aren't tens of thousands of Navy submariners, and carrier personnel with brain cancer then?  I mean they not only work in close proximity to a reactor, they also eat, sleep and relax around one.  In fact they can't get away from it for 6 months at a time.

If there are such nasty health threats from nuclear reactors you'd think it would have surfaced by now given the Navy has been operating them for 60 years.

As for the cited study, I've seen conflicting studies on so many topics it's crazy.

[AKH]

Tens of thousands?  How many have served on such ships?  Bear in mind the fact that there were 300 cases of brain tumours from a population of 140,000 in the civilian studies.

The usual military/government reticence to admit responsibility and liability - Agent Orange, mesothelioma and lung cancer in navy vets, Gulf War Syndrome, ...

Academic studies are thin on the ground for this group (most probably due to funding).  One study of all cancers in submariners yielded corrected standard mortality rates of 2.11 for SSBNs and 1.49 for SSNs.  There was also a study of civilian shipyard workers that showed a marked increase in cancers within the nuclear workers when compared to the non-nuclear workers.

[Silat]

Amen moot, I have seen the effects of a coal or gas plant on the surrounding population. Even if
you include Chernobyl I would imagine nuclear is magnitudes less harmful to the environment. If you
don't included it there isn't even a conversation about it.

Strip

The difference is the length of the contamination. In that regard coal cannot compare.
NO NUKES..

[Flench]

I don't know about you guy's but this hole thing has me freaked out ..does not look good .

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Studies show that people who work under high voltage power lines are in high risk for brain tumors. It's the occupational disease of electric train operators.

Nuclear powerplant contains awfully lot high voltage lines crossing the area.. just saying. 

[moot]

NO NUKES..

A good slogan is an accurate slogan.  In this case..

It is being demonized

Obscurantism is a stupid strategy by principle

because we cant deal with the waste safely

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf69.html
which could work as stopgap or at least transition to thorium fission

and we cant deal with catastrophic events like this one.

This one's not done so let's not draw any conclusions yet.  What's true whatever happens is that catastrophic events are catastrophic.  The plant is on the shoreline.  It apparently weathered the quake just fine.  IOW if it hadn't been on the shore it probably would've stayed below that critical limit where everything you get a chain reaction of failures.
There are always gonna be spills (no pun), whether acute like hot nuclear leaks or insidiously slow like fossil fuel pollution. If the world lived by greenies' standards we'd never have had early industrial revolution's appallingly toxic first gen tech, and today the third world couldn't benefit from all lessons learned from it. So far the death and intoxication toll is still way worse with fossil fuels and I haven't done even napkin math but I don't see anyone showing how pervasive modern design uranium fission would be as bad for human and ecological health.  The TWh lethality rates I posted above say as much.  Just replying it's all government conspiracy is kooky

[Gh0stFT]

I don't know about you guy's but this hole thing has me freaked out ..does not look good .

no panic, nuclear power is safe! thats what the pro-nuc saying

they are relative safe, yes, but dont mix earthquake + nuc-plant = fukushima
and they still talking and comparing how safe it is, its beyound me.

[moot]

no panic, nuclear power is safe! thats what the pro-nuc saying

Safer

they are relative safe, yes, but dont mix earthquake + nuc-plant = fukushima
and they still talking and comparing how safe it is, its beyound me.

Beyond you that it wasn't the quake but the flooding?

And again the lack of distinction between all things "nuclear" is just the kind of FUD the world doesn't need. EG what the world's economy would look like if its reliance on fossil fuel was more mitigated with uranium if not thorium fission.

I read AKH's nuclear power studies/editorials.  I wouldn't bet that a majority of the "anti-nuke" posters here clicked on the thorium redux video.  Why?  Because they don't want to know and don't care about anything more that's "nuclear".  Why?  Because of uncomprehensive slogans like

NO NUKES..

 

[Yossarian]

new groups of workers at Fernald (Ohio), Rocketdyne/Atomics International (California), Mallinckrodt Chemical (Missouri), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico).

Ok...let's see:

Rocketdyne/Atomics international: I don't see anything about civil nuclear power in here
Mallinckrodt Chemical - helps process uranium
Los Alamos National Lab - last time I went to their museum, they were doing stuff like preserving and checking America's nuclear arsenal without actually setting off any nukes.

None of these seem particularly relevant to civil nuclear power, which is what is being discussed here.

The difference is the length of the contamination. In that regard coal cannot compare.
NO NUKES..

Yeah, it can.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoil_tip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_coal
All those by-products aren't just going to vanish...

they are relative safe, yes, but dont mix earthquake + nuc-plant = fukushima
and they still talking and comparing how safe it is, its beyound me.

Actually I'm quite impressed with the Japanese nuclear reactor.  It's been earthquaked, tsunami'd, had an explosion go off on top of the containment chamber...and it's still in one piece!  And this is a 40-year old design which was going to be retired in the very near future anyway.

Have you considered what would happen if a tsunami hit a coal power plant instead?  It wouldn't surprise me if the water magically found its way to some toxic pile of ashes, and then spread the stuff all around the surrounding countryside.  Ah, yes - coal power is so nice, and safe, and clean!

edit: maybe I'll be shown to be wrong on this last bit.  If so, I'll eat my proverbial hat.  But even if there are significant consequences, I'd like to point out that earthquakes of 9.0 on the richter scale and tsunamis are not exactly everyday occurrences - I'd consider them to be rather exceptional.

[Dadsguns]

Either way you look at it between, the world playing with Nuclear stuff or dealing with toxic ash from power plants is like standing on the traffic line of a freeway, eventually there will be a shift in traffic or a lane change and you will get hit by a Bus or a Semi traveling at 80mph, results will be the same by either one.  


Either way, we are doing nothing about the long term and only thinking about the short term.  The HAZWASTE generated by either of these is what will kill us if nothing else in the long run.

[AKH]

Ok...let's see:

Rocketdyne/Atomics international: I don't see anything about civil nuclear power in here
Mallinckrodt Chemical - helps process uranium
Los Alamos National Lab - last time I went to their museum, they were doing stuff like preserving and checking America's nuclear arsenal without actually setting off any nukes.

None of these seem particularly relevant to civil nuclear power, which is what is being discussed here.

Nuclear power is what is being discussed here: "Relative dangers of nuclear power".  I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to move the goalposts after we've started.

Atomics International undertook the development of nuclear reactors soon after being established: a series of commercial nuclear power reactors beginning with the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) and a range of compact nuclear reactors culminating with the Systems for Auxiliary Nuclear Power SNAP-10A system. Both efforts were successful, despite nuclear accidents at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, but overall interest in nuclear power steadily declined. The division transitioned to non-nuclear energy-related projects such as coal gasification and gradually ceased designing and testing nuclear reactors. Atomics International was eventually merged with another division of the same parent company. As of 2010, All of the Atomics International facilities, except for the few remaining facilities located in the Area IV test area at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), have been demolished, cleaned and reused, or awaiting final cleanup.

Uranium processing is not part of the uranium cycle?  Does this mean we should also disregard all the health effects from fuel extraction and processing of other forms of power generation?

Are you saying there have never been any nuclear reactors or fuel and waste processing facilities on the Los Alamos site?

[warhed]

We need to ban Xrays, bananas, sun exposure, airlines, granite, computers, TVs, microwaves, cell phones, cars, coal plants, and millions of other radioactive items, because radiation is evil.  I mean, radiation, it just sounds evil.

By the way Lew, not only do I, but the majority of the people I worked with live smack dab near our nuclear power plant.  

How many people in the Tenesee fly ash spill who's homes and lives were ruined were workers at the coal plant?

Radiation from nuclear power does not kill or harm its workers, or citizens in proximity.  And we will either build new nukes to keep up with demand, or coal plants that pollute, devastate, and kill in their operation.    

[Motherland]

It's kind of funny seeing all of this paranoia about nuclear power when you see the steam pillars from the cooling towers of Three Mile Island on a daily basis and you feel completely safe.

[moot]

http://www.ieahydro.org/reports/ST3-020613b.pdf