The US’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission just cancelled its study into cancer near nuclear plants citing the ‘excessive cost’ of $8 million, writes Chris Busby. Of course that’s rubbish – similar studies in the UK have been carried out for as little as £600 per site, and in any case $8 million is small change for the NRC. The real reason is to suppress the unavoidable conclusion: nuclear power kills.
After spending some $1.5 million and more than five years on developing strategies to answer the question of increases of cancer near nuclear facilities, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last week reported that they would not continue with the process. They would knock it on the head [1].
This poisoned chalice has been passed between the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the NRC since 2009 when public and political pressure was brought to bear on the USNRC to update a 1990 study of the issue, a study which was widely seen by the public to be a whitewash.
The NCR quickly passed the unwelcome task up to the NAS. It requested that the NAS provide an assessment of cancer risks in populations living ‘near’ the NRC-licenced nuclear facilities that utilize and process Uranium. This included 104 operating nuclear reactors in 31 States and 13 fuel cycle facilities in operation in 10 States.
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If you don’t like the truth … suppress it
The committee sat for three years thinking about this during which time more and more evidence emerged that if it actually carried out the pilot study, it would find something bad. It had to escape. It did. It cancelled it. The reason given was that it would cost $8 million just to do the pilot study of cancer near the seven sites NAS had selected in its 600 page Phase 1 report. [2]
So despite the truly enormous amount of information that has emerged about the adverse health effects of releases of radioactivity since 1990, no official investigation will be carried out. The nuclear industry is now in a corner.
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On the NAS website the members of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board NRSB are listed. Normally there is linked a biography page. When you look for the NRSB biography page you get Missing Content: bios page is not available for board: nrsb [13]
Here is why. There is one epidemiologist Martha Linet, but she is a member of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) Epidemiology committee and also the NCRP full committee. Seven board members are mathematical statisticians and physicists, two are waste management engineers, there is a woman professor of cancer care, and two mineralogists.
Four work directly for the nuclear industry. One of the mathematical physicists is Fred Mettler Jr, also on the ICRP and the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA. He also makes a living as an expert witness in radiation cases as I know having been up against him in New Orleans. No conflict of interest there then.
The only good guy on this committee is David Brenner of Columbia, an Englishman from Liverpool, but again a physicist and radiobiologist.
The plain fact is that this is an issue in epidemiology. The committee should have comprised medical and environmental epidemiologists. What possible need is there for mathematical physicists and engineers?
Read more at Nuclear power kills! The real reason the NRC cancelled its nuclear site cancer study
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