NRC Ends Cancer Study Around Nuclear Plants Due to De Minimis Exposure

[Mounder]

The Nu­clear Reg­u­la­tory Com­mis­sion an­nounced Tues­day (9/8/15) that it is stop­ping a study of can­cer risk in pop­u­la­tions that live near nu­clear power plants, cit­ing the es­ti­mated $8 mil­lion cost, the 8- to 10-year time- line for com­ple­tion of the project and ex­pected lim­ited value of any con­clu­sions that could be reached.

The NRC an­nounced in 2012 that it had com­mis­sioned the Na­tional Academy of Sciences to con­duct a pi­lot study of can­cer risk around seven of the na­tion's more than 100 op­er­at­ing and de­com­mis­sioned re­ac­tors.

Among the seven were the Mill­stone Power Sta­tion in­ Water­ford and the site of the for­mer Con­necti­cut Yan­kee plant in Had­dam.

The agency said the study was de­signed to an­swer lin­ger­ing ques­tions among the pub­lic about whether there is in­creased in­ci­dence of can­cer among those who live near nu­clear power plants, and to up­date a 1990 study that looked for a link be­tween can­cer mor­tal­ity and prox­im­ity to nu­clear re­ac­tors. That study found no cor­re­la­tion. NRC spokesman Neil Shee­han said the agency spent $1.5 mil­lion on pre­lim­i­nary phases of the study, which in­cluded anal­y­sis of the fea­si­bil­ity of the study, plan­ning for the types of data that would be needed and how they would be col­lected.

The agency said the study was de­signed to an­swer lin­ger­ing ques­tions among the pub­lic about whether there is in­creased in­ci­dence of can­cer among those who live near nu­clear power plants, and to up­date a 1990 study that looked for a link be­tween can­cer mor­tal­ity and prox­im­ity to nu­clear re­ac­tors. That study found no cor­re­la­tion. NRC spokesman Neil Shee­han said the agency spent $1.5 mil­lion on pre­lim­i­nary phases of the study, which in­cluded anal­y­sis of the fea­si­bil­ity of the study, plan­ning for the types of data that would be needed and how they would be col­lected.

"The NRC has found previously that the off-site dose to the highest exposed member of the pubic living near a U.S. nuclear power plant is gen­erally less than 1 percent of the amount of radiation the average citizen receives in a year from all background and medical sources," Sheehan said in an email message.

In re­sponse to the an­nounce­ment, Ken Holt, spokesman for Mill­stone, said plant owner Do­min­ion had no ob­jec­tion to the study.

"We were ready to sup­port the study," he said.

Lau­ren Ru­gani, spokes­woman for the Na­tional Academy of Sciences, said that in the plan­ning re­port sub­mit­ted to the NRC in De­cem­ber, it cau­tioned that the study would have sig­nif­i­cant lim­i­ta­tions.

The lim­i­ta­tions in­cluded the small sam­ple size and dif­fi­culty of ob­tain­ing data on rain, wind and other weather con­di­tions that can af­fect ra­di­a­tion ex­po­sure, any unique char­ac­ter­is­tics in com­mu­ni­ties that may con­trib­ute to can­cer risk and other fac­tors be­yond power plant ra­di­a­tion lev­els that can in­flu­ence a per­son's level of can­cer risk.

"It's not just a mat­ter of, 'Is there can­cer nearby?'" she said. "There's a lot to wade through. Some of the data is read­ily avail­able, and some is not."

The Na­tional Academy, she said, ac­cepts projects from other fed­eral agen­cies but does not make rec­om­men­da­tions on how or whether they should pro­ceed.

"But we stand ready to re­spond to fu­ture re­quests," she said.

The non­profit group Beyond Nu­clear called the NRC's de­ci­sion "out­ra­geous."

The Mary­land-based group de­scribes it­self as the lead­ing non­govern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tion con­cerned with the health, safety and en­vi­ron­men­tal dan­gers of nu­clear-power fa­cil­i­ties.

"Study af­ter study in Europe has shown a clear rise in child­hood leukemia around op­er­at­ing nu­clear power fa­cil­i­ties, yet the NRC has de­cided to hide this vi­tal in­for­ma­tion from the Amer­i­can pub­lic," Cindy Folk­ers, ra­di­a­tion and health spe­cial­ist at Beyond Nu­clear, said in a news re­lease.

"Study af­ter study in Europe has shown a clear rise in child­hood leukemia around op­er­at­ing nu­clear power fa­cil­i­ties, yet the NRC has de­cided to hide this vi­tal in­for­ma­tion from the Amer­i­can pub­lic," Cindy Folk­ers, ra­di­a­tion and health spe­cial­ist at Beyond Nu­clear, said in a news re­lease.

The re­lease ref­er­enced a study last year by Bri­tish ra­di­a­tion bi­ol­o­gist Ian Fair­lie show­ing a 37 per­cent in­crease in child­hood leukemias within 5 miles of nu­clear plants in Great Bri­tain, Ger­many, France and Switzer­land.

She called the $8 mil­lion cost of the study "a drop in the bucket for an agency with a $1 bil­lion op­er­at­ing bud­get."

Beyond Nu­clear ac­cused the NRC of bow­ing to in­dus­try in­flu­ence in can­cel­ing the study.

In an Aug. 21 re­port on the pi­lot study, how­ever, Mark Sa­to­rius, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor for op­er­a­tions at the Na­tional Academy of Sciences, cited dif­fer­ent stud­ies about can­cer risk.

He noted that while the pub­lic has long­stand­ing con­cerns about ra­di­a­tion from nu­clear power plants, epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies in Canada and five Euro­pean coun­tries since 2008 have shown "no as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween fa­cil­ity op­er­a­tions and in­creased can­cer risks to the pub­lic that are at­trib­ut­able to the re­leases or ra­di­a­tion ex­po­sure."

At the Nu­clear En­ergy In­sti­tute, the trade or­ga­ni­za­tion for the in­dus­try, spokesman Steve Kerekes said the NRC made "a pru­dent de­ci­sion based on where the sci­ence is."

Com­pared to nat­u­ral lev­els of ra­di­a­tion and the amounts peo­ple are ex­posed in med­i­cal pro­ce­dures, he said, nu­clear power plants re­lease a rel­a­tively small amount of ra­di­a­tion into the en­vi­ron­ment.

Com­pared to nat­u­ral lev­els of ra­di­a­tion and the amounts peo­ple are ex­posed in med­i­cal pro­ce­dures, he said, nu­clear power plants re­lease a rel­a­tively small amount of ra­di­a­tion into the en­vi­ron­ment.

"We put a lot of money and re­search into pro­tect­ing the health and safety of the men and women who work at our fa­cil­i­ties and the gen­eral pub­lic around them," he said.

De­spite can­cel­ing the study, Shee­han said, the NRC will "con­tinue to mon­i­tor all rel­e­vant health stud­ies."

He said the NRC also con­sid­ered the lower-cost op­tion of up­dat­ing the 1990 study, done by the Na­tional Cancer In­sti­tute, but also con­cluded that its value would be lim­ited.

"But if war­ranted," he said, "we can re­visit this."

In a not unexpected view, the Oyster Bay Activists responded: ""They're afraid to find out the truth. They're petrified about the results,'' said Janet Tauro, a founding member of Grandmothers, Mothers and More for Energy Safety, a New Jersey group critical of the Oyster Creek facility."  http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/15/09/08/feds-pull-plug-on-cancer-risk-study-near-nuclear-plants-including-oyster-creek/
This viewpoint ran counter to almost all other new stories on the topic.

[tolstoy]

It's impossible to show causation in these studies and eight years is simply not enough time. Per the write-up there is no way to isolate variables and washout noise from other possible causes. Even so more research is needed and should be funded. We simply don't know enough about life-cycle effects from chronic low-dose radiation and certainly don't have enough information to toss LNT out the door. The most recent and best metaresearch indicates (from a population of over 300,000 nuclear workers) a small but significant correlation between blood cancers and long term chronic low dose exposure in nuclear plant workers.  Read http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)61167-9/abstract.

[GLW]

It's impossible to show causation in these studies,....

you had me at "impossible",...

one of my favorite colleagues used to call it separating the fly droppings from the pepper (PG version),...

it's tiring, the data is typically cherry picked to support the preconceived assessment goal of the funding sponsor,...

it's as fruitless as arguing religion,...

what do you discount?!?!?!

the childhood sunburns?!?!?

the traces of non-debilitating asbestos damage in the lungs?!?!?

too many raw shellfish entrees from polluted harbor and estuary bottoms?!?!?!?

too many chemically enhanced, stabilized, emulsified and preserved all you can eat dinner buffets?!?!?!

illicit, recreational, pharmaceuticals processed & cut with everything from baby powder to gasoline?!?!?!?

riding your bicycle in the fog behind the mosquito spray truck on a hot, humid southern afternoon?!?!?




you can do more to assure good health for the most people by funding super doses of Vitamin A to third world children with those funds rather than funding a bunch of erudite ivory tower denizens to sift hoards of minuscule data, develop bell curves, and spend eight years telling us little to nothing more than we already know,...

statistically, for the eight years the erudite are amassing 40,000 pages of non-epipahanal minutiae, about 17% of the target audience will die from something regardless of the papers assessments,...

almost forgot,...(sic) for beercourt,... edited due to loss of photo location https

[tolstoy]

You've hit it on the head GLW - Science is hard. Good science is really hard. Opinions are a dime a dozen.

[Marlin]

it's tiring, the data is typically cherry picked to support the preconceived assessment goal of the funding sponsor,...

Tooth Fairy Project

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (Currently accepted but originally used to show increased cancer rate, true on a national level but when local population was used the cancer rate was lower)

[SloGlo]

Tooth Fairy Project

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (Currently accepted but originally used to show increased cancer rate, true on a national level but when local population was used the cancer rate was lower)

a c.m.u. (aye think) professor drove beaver valley nuts with that study in the 80s two.

[Bonds 25]

It's impossible to show causation in these studies and eight years is simply not enough time. Per the write-up there is no way to isolate variables and washout noise from other possible causes. Even so more research is needed and should be funded. We simply don't know enough about life-cycle effects from chronic low-dose radiation and certainly don't have enough information to toss LNT out the door. The most recent and best metaresearch indicates (from a population of over 300,000 nuclear workers) a small but significant correlation between blood cancers and long term chronic low dose exposure in nuclear plant workers.  Read http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)61167-9/abstract.

Actually there are more legit studies that show low level radiation actually has a hormesis affect than any such studies showing the realities of the ridiculous LNT model. Simply put, if low level radiation was harmful, we wouldn't be having this conversation......because we wouldn't exist. I certainly don't believe bunk, fear mongering "studies" from the 50's where extremely high levels of radiation where exposed to fruit flies to justify the cease of atomic testing......especially when it comes to low level exposure in humans.