The "Tooth Fairy" Cons a Connecticut Politician

John DeStefano, the Democratic candidate for governor, called on Gov. M. Jodi Rell to fund a $25,000 study on radiation in baby teeth that she decided not to undertake six months ago.

DeStefano spoke briefly in front of Millstone Power Station on Route 156 in Waterford before a small gathering of members of the Southeastern Connecticut chapter of the National Organization for Women, a group called “Kids Against Cancer,” and the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone.

The goal is not to “demonize” nuclear power, where some of the harmful radioactive isotopes are thought to come from, but rather to “get the facts,” said DeStefano, the mayor of New Haven.

Oh really? As many of our long-time readers will remember, this is all part of Joseph Mangano's Radiation and Public Health Project, a travelling snake oil show that moves from state to state once public health officials come to the conclusion that its claims are all wet.

Here's what we wrote back in March 2005 when CNN did a piece on Mangano's claims:

NEI Executive Vice President Angie Howard was interviewed for the segment, where she explained that Sr-90, which has a half-life of 28 years, exists in the environment primarily due to aboveground nuclear weapons testing once undertaken by the U.S. and other countries. Further, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been monitoring for Sr-90 and other isotopes for years -- even before nuclear power plants began operating, in order to establish baseline data against which future radiation levels could be compared.

Consistently, the NRC has found no appreciable changes from background radiation near nuclear plants. In all, eight state departments of health have investigated Mangano's claims, and all eight states (Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan) refused to validate them.

Of those states, I think the best response came from the New Jersey Commission on Radiation Protection. Here's what they wrote in a letter to then-New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey:

The Commission is of the opinion that "Radioactive Strontium-90 in Baby Teeth of New Jersey Children and the Link with Cancer: A Special Report," is a flawed report, with substantial errors in methodology and invalid statistics. As a result, any information gathered through this project would not stand up to the scrutiny of the scientific community. There is also no evidence to support the allegation that the State of New Jersey has a problem with the release of Sr-90 into the environment from nuclear generating plants: more than 30 years of environmental monitoring data refute this.

In other words, the state of Connecticut ought to save its taxpayers some money and send Mangano and his quackery packing.

For more background on the "Tooth Fairy" Project, click here for a summary of the issue, and here for a copy of the NEI fact sheet.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics, Joseph Mangano, Health Physics

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

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