NEI Nuclear Notes

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 ...

Yesterday, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League ( BREDL ) unveiled a study that makes some startling claims about the community that hosts the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant in Georgia: The number of people dying from cancer in Burke County is on the rise, and one group says a nuclear plant may be to blame. A new study released by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League shows the number of people dying of cancer in Burke County has shot up 25%, while the rest of country's cancer rate was on the decline. "If I lived in this county I'd want to know why these numbers are increasing," said Louis Zeller with Blue Ridge. [...] But the most startling statistic is the change in infant mortality. In Burke County the number of infant deaths increased 70% compared to the other surrounding counties in the CSRA . But even the backers of the study admit waste from other plants could be contributing to the problem. "It's like a crime being committed, but too many ...

This morning's edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a short piece reporting that the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League is moving to block the construction of a third reactor at North Anna in Virginia in the wake of the August earthquake on the East coast. Here's what the folks at Dominion Virginia Power have to say about the action: Dominion Virginia Power, owner of two nuclear reactors at the North Anna plant, said the earthquake has no bearing on the licensing of a third unit, which would be built to a seismic standard more than four times that of the existing units. "We have worked through the seismic requirements for Unit 3," utility spokesman Rick Zuercher said Thursday night. "They're stringent and would have well withstood what happened at North Anna with the existing units." While the ground vibration from the quake exceeded design limits for the two existing reactors, the utility said the plant suffered no significant damage. I c...

I've got a follow-on comment to Lisa's post below about the performance put on by some of the anti-nukes who showed up at the NRC public meeting on North Anna held last week in Louisa County. While Lisa pointed out some of the contradictions evident in the statement of the representative of Public Citizen , I'll take a look at some of the half-truths spouted by Lou Zeller of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League . The first thing he said that caught my attention was the claim that a 2003 MIT study on nuclear energy concluded that it couldn't be economically competitive with other sources of electric generation like natural gas. Indeed, that's exactly what the study concluded. However, what Zeller failed to mention was the fact that the price of natural gas today is about triple the price estimate of natural gas used in the study . Let's just say that a price increase of that magnitude renders the original conclusion, "inoperative". Later, Ze...

Our old friends at the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League have announced their opposition to Duke Power's intention to build a new nuclear power plant . But folks in North Carolina ought to watch out, because as we discovered in Virginia in 2005, BREDL has a history of playing fast and loose with the facts . We'll be watching. Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy , Nuclear Power , Environment , Energy , Health Physics , Junk Science , Duke Power

Today's edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch is running an extensive story on the reasons why Dominion Virginia Power is considering building a new nuclear reactor at the North Anna Nuclear Power Station near Richmond. In short, Virginia needs the juice to power its high-tech economy: Increases in all generation sources will be needed to meet a demand for power driven by electronics-heavy businesses, Grecheck said. For example, in Loudoun County alone, 10 to 20 proposed new data centers requiring 60 megawatts each would consume most of the output of the proposed new reactor, he said. A significant chunk of the nation's critical information infrastructure is located in Northern Virginia , and when groups like Public Citizen and BREDL mobilize anti-nuke activists to fight potential projects like North Anna, we need to be frank about what the costs would be to the state's economy if it were painted into the sort of corner that California finds itself in today . I'm ...

In reference to Kelly Taylor's earlier post , I've been passing around copies of Mangano's article , and I've been getting nothing but groans from many of my friends in the business. The following is a short excerpt from a note I got from Bill Casino, an employee of Framatome-ANP : I too attended the nuclear regulatory commissions' early site permit hearing with Kelly Taylor and I concur with everything she said . I also would like to add that I had many discussions with locals about this subject and heard nothing but positive and supporting comments from all about Entergy, the plant at Grand Gulf, and its employees. Here's Ralph Andersen, NEI's chief health physicist: 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 Flori...

As I've mentioned before, the Virginia Section of North American-Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) has been vocal in the public debate about the potential for new nuclear power plants in our state. Articles have appeared in many local newspapers and anti-nuclear activists have been writing letters attacking not only nuclear power, but NA-YGN members personally . Some of us have responded as diplomatically as possible to the misinformation and character defamation. Recently, in a letter published in Cville , a weekly newspaper in Charlottesville, one writer suspected that the nuclear industry was trying to fake a grassroots movement and that NA-YGN "reeks of deceit and corruption." In response, I wrote that NA-YGN was founded in 1999 well before anyone seriously began talking about new nuclear plants, that the Virginia section in particular was engaged in many public outreach activities years before Dominion ever submitted an Early Site Permit application, and that...

Back in June 2007, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League along with Joseph Mangano released a report on the supposed “ Health Risks of Adding New Reactors to the Vogtle Nuclear Plant .” The report analyzed the 11 counties closest to the existing Vogtle reactors for infant mortalities and cancer deaths. Based on their findings, they have concluded that the two existing reactors would cause “over 500 excess cancer deaths in Burke County” over the projected 40 year license period. The report also states that “adding two new reactors could potentially double the total.” The mortality rates the report cites comes from the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control. The website with the data can be found here . For my rebuttal, I only looked at the numbers for Burke County, GA (the county housing the Vogtle reactors). After corroborating the data for this county, I found so many incongruities in the analysis that I felt I didn’t need to look at any ot...