NEI Nuclear Notes

Researchers at the Penn State College of Medicine  recently published a study  claiming that analysis of thyroid tumors showed tissue differences, based on where the patient lived. People who lived near Three Mile Island at the time of the 1979 accident had tumors more likely to have come from radiation exposure than people who developed thyroid cancer while living elsewhere, according to the researchers. Science is advanced by experts who publish new findings, and readers who then evaluate the conclusions and how they fit into the existing body of knowledge. We welcome all contributions to knowledge. But scientific studies should be read with care, so their claims can be understood, and so we can determine how the findings fit with what was previously understood. And these findings don’t fit. Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station Despite what a reader might assume from a news headline, this paper does not assert that Three Mile Island is the cause of any canc...

Another public health department has taken a closer look at Joe Mangano's work and determined it's fatally flawed. This time it's the Public Health Department of San Luis Obispo County, Califoria . You'll recall that Mangano most recently released a study claiming all sorts of ailments arose around Diablo Canyon in the wake of its opening. From the press release  ( our emphasis in bold ): “As the Health Officer for San Luis Obispo County, I take the health of our residents very seriously, and when a claim was made that excess cancer and infant mortality was occurring in our County, I made it an immediate priority to investigate further. However, upon examination of the report issued by the World Business Academy (WBA) of Santa Barbara, it became evident that flawed methodology and selective exclusion of populations of interest were used to achieve a result not consistent with standard scientific investigation and practice ” states Dr. Penny Borenstein, Health O...

You knew it would only be a matter of time before Joe Mangano resurfaced. This time, he's brought his brand of junk science to California's Central Coast in order to make some scurrilous claims about the Diablo Canyon Power Plant . This time, a story appeared in the Santa Barbara News-Press (paywall), which is where NEI's Steve Kerekes steps into the picture: While antinuclear groups hail Mr. Mangano’s study, others argue that the science behind Mr. Mangano’s report is far from settled. “(Mr. Mangano) is a traveling roadshow of fearmongering,” said Steve Kerekes, director of media relations with the Nuclear Energy Institute. “Once to twice a year he pops up in some corner of the country,” Mr. Kerekes said. “It’s always a similar scenario: he throws a bunch of data at the wall and sees what sticks, but there’s no direct cause and effect between the data and the nuclear facility he is smearing.” Mr. Kerekes said his organization has regularly debunked Mr. Mangano’s ...

We've gotten a heads up that Joseph Mangano , the brains behind the " Tooth Fairy " project, will be holding a press conference tomorrow afternoon fronting more junk science about nuclear energy. He'll be back with the usual suspects, Robert Alvarez and Janette Sherman, this time claiming that closing the Rancho Seco nuclear plant (click here for a photo) in California "might" have coincided with a decrease in cancer deaths. 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 ...

This is the most thorough account I’ve seen yet of what happened to the workers at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 who were contaminated with radiation. From Nucnet: JAIF also confirmed that three workers were contaminated when laying cables in the turbine hall of unit 3. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the three were contract workers laying cables in the turbine hall. Two of them were found to have radioactivity on their feet and legs. JAIF said they were exposed to more than 170 millisieverts (mSv). The workers were washed in an attempt to remove radioactivity, but since there was a possibility of beta-ray burning of the skin, the two were taken to the Fukushima University Hospital for examination and then transferred to Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences for further examination. They are expected to be monitored for around four days. It is thought that the workers ignored their dosimeters’ alarms believing them to be false and cont...

Clean Energy Insight busts out the myth that nuclear power plants cause cancer : Regulations imposed on nuclear power plants ensure that both the surrounding population and the workers within plants are exposed to only low levels of radiation. The fact of the matter is that the biological effects due to low levels of radiation exposure are so small that they may not even be detectable. The exact effect, however, depends on the specific type and intensity of the radiation exposure. ... As mentioned earlier, countless studies have shown that populations in close proximity to a nuclear power plant receive negligible levels of radiation exposure relative to general population and are no more susceptible to cancer than the average person. ... The key to dispelling this myth is to acknowledge that, as demonstrated: Any increased risk of cancer around an operating nuclear power plant relies primarily on the adverse effects resulting from any small amount of radiation it might release. ...

While reading my Google Alerts today, I came across a gem of a blog entitled, Understanding the Lie Of The Nuclear Cycle . It occurs to me that there are plenty of reasons to be against just about any source of energy, be it fossil fuels (CO2), nuclear (waste), or even wind (ecological impact), solar (toxic waste), or hydro (migratory fish). But when the facts aren't sensational enough to stir up emotional opposition, the anti-(fill in the blank) need only make something up. Take cancer rates for instance. We've all heard the far-fetched claims of often-debunked pediatrician-turned-nuclear-expert Helen Caldicott before: Cancer rates are higher around nuclear facilities. But the questions she can never answer, even when asked face to face: If your claims are true, then why do medical studies, such as the one performed by Johns Hopkins University of over 30,000 nuclear workers, show no increase in cancer rates - even for the people who work closest with this radioactive materi...