Nuclear power: low-level radiation is not harmless
The government and the nuclear industry claim that the low level of radiation emitted by nuclear power stations during their normal operation is not harmful. Radiation also occurs naturally, they argue, and the small amount of radiation added by nuclear power stations is insignificant.
However, no dose of radiation is safe. Radiation damage is cumulative. Each dose received adds to the risk of developing cancer, or mutating genes in the reproductive cells.
The radioactive elements “routinely” emitted from nuclear power plants into the air can be inhaled, or ingested when they concentrate in the food chain – in vegetables and fruit – and are then further concentrated in various internal organs in humans. Similarly, the millions of gallons of cooling water flushed daily from a nuclear reactor into the always adjoining water source (lake, river or sea) contaminate it with radioactive materials which bio-concentrate hundreds of times in the aquatic food chain.
In 2008, a major German study found large increases in infant cancers near all German nuclear power stations. This so-called KiKK study (Childhood cancers in the vicinity of nuclear power stations) reported a 2.2-fold increase in leukaemia risks and a 1.6-fold increase in embryonal cancer risks among children under five living within five kilometers of all German nuclear power stations. The KiKK study examined all cancers at all 16 nuclear reactor locations in Germany between 1980 and 2003, and was commissioned by the German Government's Federal Office for Radiation Protection.
However, the KiKK study does not stand on its own. A 2007 study by researchers at the University of South Carolina analysing 17 research papers covering 136 nuclear sites in the UK, Canada, France, USA, Germany, Japan and Spain, also “show[ed] an increase in childhood leukaemia near nuclear facilities”. They found that death rates for children up to the age of nine were elevated by between five and 24 per cent, depending on their proximity to nuclear facilities, and by two to 18 per cent in children and young people up to the age of 25. Incidence rates were increased by 14 to 21 per cent in zero to nine-year-olds and seven to ten percent in zero to 25-year-olds.
A French survey from 2008 of 26 multi-site studies of childhood cancers near nuclear facilities came to a similar conclusion.
Although the evidence is overwhelming, pro-nuclear scientists and the government still deny that there is a link between nuclear power and cancer. Instead, they want to build new nuclear power stations, thus increasing our exposure to radiation.
More information: http://www.ippnw-europe.org/en/*nuclear-energy-and-security.html