The proposals for national policy statements on energy - Energy and Climate Change Contents


Annex A

10.  RESEARCH INTO HEALTH RISKS FROM BRADWELL AND OTHER NUCLEAR INSTALLATIONS

  10.  (a) There are two sides to the debate about nuclear installation health effects. The "orthodox" approach rests, primarily, upon criteria of risk drawn from short term exposure to high levels of radioactive material: Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bomb survivors, plus some experiments involving the sub-cutaneous placement of radioactive material and irradiation of non-human subjects. Statistical procedures are also applied, post hoc, to aggregate health data which often have the effect, intentionally or unintentionally, of smoothing out many apparent cancer clusters. [See: C Busby, Wolves of Water, Green Audit, 2006, pp 322-27]. Moreover, where cancer clusters have been detected around nuclear installations, their significance has been discounted through the deployment of atom bomb based criteria of risk. [see, for instance, the discussion in pp 24-6 of the 9th COMARE report, of 2004].

10.  (b) Relatively low levels of radioactive material can have a cumulative effect that could be damaging to some of its recipients, particularly during their developmental years. With an emphasis upon water borne contaminants, particularly in muddy estuaries, the unorthodox side focuses upon clusters of cancers amongst populations of settlements immediately bordering the waters adjoining nuclear installations.

  10.  (c) The emergence of the debate between orthodox and unorthodox positions led, in 2001 to the formation of an internally adversarial body—the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) to supplement the work of the existing Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE). CERRIE'S functioning between 2001 and 2004 proved to be highly acrimonious [Busby, pp 406-28: and Radioactive Times, vol 6, no 1, May 2005] but did result in a final report that highlighted many areas of continuing uncertainty. CERRIE had also planned further research into nuclear health issues around Bradwell, but this was cancelled when the committee's work was suddenly subjected to an arbitrary deadline in summer of 2004. Whatever the intrinsic merits of this action, it remains a tactical and presentational miscalculation of major proportions for a government that was eventually to commit itself to a programme of new nuclear reactors.

  10.  (d) The consequences of CERRIE's premature termination were dramatic. A vitriolic exchange of articles and letters appeared in The Guardian newspaper in the autumn of 2004. [See: C Busby, Wolves of Water, Green Audit, 2006, pp 322-27].

  10.  (e) COMARE's 9th report in October 2004 was devoted to a detailed and well-balanced response to the CERRIE final report and identified numerous areas of continuing concern and need for further research. COMARE's subsequent 10th and 11th reports continued to highlight uncertainties and further research needs. However, they also continued to emphasise both disputed statistical techniques and criteria for radiation risk drawn from exposure to atomic bomb blasts, and to focus overwhelmingly on childhood cancers, rather than cancers subsequently contracted by adults living near nuclear installations.

  10.  (f) COMARE's approach to the identification of health risks from nuclear installations is highly cautious. This is quite understandable in the light of the irresponsible alarmism over the MMR inoculation. However, the anxieties of many who live close to nuclear installations have not been quelled by its work and general faith in orthodox scientific positions has not been encouraged by the example of the determined resistance to early suggestions of a link (by Richard Lacey, in particular) between BSE and its human equivalent. This general unease, moreover, comes against a background of growing distrust for government statements and official statistics as reported by the Financial Times [report of 30 December 2009—High Levels of scepticism over data revealed"] and widespread concern at the kinds of statistical operations—"tricks"—of which staff at the climate change unit at the University of East Anglia have recently been accused.

  10.  (g) The controversy about the health effects of nuclear installations is likely to fester indefinitely unless new approaches to research are adopted. One avenue would be to undertake detailed, longitudinal studies of relatively discrete populations, such as Tollesbury in Essex, where cohorts can be identified and their development tracked with relative ease. The second, and even more powerful, possibility has just arisen with the announcement by 454 Life Sciences of the successful sequencing of cancerous tumors [See the report by EmaxHealth: "Breakthrough in DNA Sequencing for Cancer Research", http://www.emaxhealth.com/51/6413.html]. Such DNA sequencing could, eventually, provide concrete evidence about the genesis of individual tumor, thus highlighting the cause(s) of specific cancers and providing powerful ammunition for those victims who might wish to seek redress from past and future operators of nuclear installations, where low-level radioactive contamination can be proven to have been in any way culpable.

  10.  (h) The Energy and Climate Change Committee is uniquely placed to investigate further many of the continuing controversies over the health effects of the operation of UK nuclear reactors and their implications for new nuclear construction. Key questions include:

    — Are the orthodox statistical techniques appropriate, particularly: the radial analysis of areas of potential effect, that otherwise ignore topographical features; and the adoption of "Bayesian smoothing" to reduce the apparent incidence of cancer clusters. Moreover, are the criticisms directed against advocates of the unorthodox position fair, particularly the claim of "Texan sharpshooter targeting" in the identification of cancer clusters? [see: Busby, pp 322-27]

    — Is the orthodox focus upon the effects of exposure to high level radioactive material valid, or should more attention be paid to longer-term exposure to lower level radioactive materials, particularly those that are water-borne?

    — Is there not now a case for initiating longitudinal studies of relatively discrete communities to establish whether there have, or have not, been cancer clusters amongst their long-term residents? Earlier work by J F Bithell (whose work is relied upon by COMARE to counter the implications of the KiKK report) and colleagues, suggested the possible desirability of something along just such lines [J F Bithell, S J Dutton, G J Draper, N M Neary "Distribution of childhood leukaemias and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas near nuclear installations in England and Wales", BMJ, 20 August 1994]. Also, might it now be timely to encourage the application of DNA sequencing to cancers developed in the vicinities of nuclear installations?

    — Why has the existence and work of CERRIE, and attendant controversies, been excluded from the "health" sections of the NPS EN-6 and the accompanying sustainability assessment [Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6), London Stationery Office, November, 2009, eg, pp 77-9; and Appraisal of Sustainability: Site Report for Bradwell, Department for Energy and Climate Change, November 2009, pp 23-6] and the German KiKK report only been paid scant attention in the Appraisal of Sustainability. [Bradwell Appraisal Report, p 25 and for the details of the KiKK report See the summary in: http://teknorg.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/german-kikk-study-higher-cancer-risk-nex|]

    — Why, moreover, has COMARE turned the focus of its major reports away from nuclear power stations' health effects since its last report on the issue—the 11th report of July 2006, save for ad hoc responses to external stimuli like the publication of the German KiKK report? Is the government's revival of the nuclear energy option significant in this respect?

  10.  (i) In exploring these questions, the ECC committee might consider:

    — Interviewing members of CERRIE to investigate its functioning and findings, particularly its chairman Professor Dudley Goodhead, a key secretary, Dr Ian Fairlie, Dr Chris Busby of Green Audit and Richard Bramhall of the Low Level Radiation Campaign.

    — Interviewing one or more experts in statistical techniques to establish the appropriateness of the specific statistical techniques that have been employed in identifying levels of cancers (particularly childhood) in the work of COMARE and its contributors.

    — Interviewing one or more of the authors of the German KiKK study to determine their view of the reworking of UK nuclear cancer clustering by Bithell, et al, [J F Bithell, T J Keegan, M E Kroll, M F G Murphy and T J Vincent, Childhood leukaemia near British nuclear installations: methodological issues and recent results, Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 2008, 132(2)]

    — Interviewing the head of the Health Protection Agency to establish his/her view of the current state of research on the health effects of radioactive materials and exposure.

    — Recommending longitudinal studies of rates of cancer in discrete communities near nuclear reactors, like Tollesbury in Essex.

    — Interviewing the head of the Welcome Trust to review the prospective contribution of DNA sequencing to the identification of specific causes of cancers commonly found in communities adjoining nuclear reactors.

January 2010





 
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