To be concerned about Fukushima? seen some alarming FB posts that claim to be credibly sourced?

[ClifftopCafe]

Anyone have a view?

Which sorts of fish would contain the most toxins. Or is that a silly question?

I'm astounded at how seriously my comment about the sun was taken.

It was entirely tongue in cheek/rattled off by a non scientist in the most casual, non specific and vague manner and people are assuming I'm claiming to know what I'm talking about.

Honestly - did 'The sun is getting closer/hotter/whatever the latest reports say about it' not quite hit the right tone?

I genuinely have no scientific knowledge whatsoever, feel free to point that out, which was kind of my point in the first place...I don't remember what it was but pretty much think Specialsubject has summed it up.

Bigger. That was the word.

and stop calling me stupid! Please!

Very few, from what I have seen the radiation dose due to chernobyl to the general public in the west of europe was very low. In the range of a few mSv for most parts of western europe. This will not cause a noticeable increase in cancer.

The source you cite is book published in a rather odd way by some people who hold "fringe" views. "Chernboyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" is not a book which is a balenced view of the topic. It is a distortion of the truth, it is not peer reviewed and I think it is likely to do more harm than good.

Why not read a more serious work on the subject, while thyroid cancer rates did do up in the former USSR the health effects on the general public outside the former USSR were much smaller. The problem is that some of the "experts" on Chernobyl try to blame it for every case of cancer (and other ill effects) which has occured since the accident and some of what they write can be shown to be total rubbish.

For example the "Chernobyl heart" experts claims that the radioactivity has damaged people's hearts can be shown to be rubbish. I have seen work which shows that very high doses of radiation can damage a woman's heart (it was a study of women who had radiation treatment for breast cancer) but what this paper on cancer treatment showed was a moderate dose did nothing to a person's heart.

The interesting thing was that the moderate dose to some people with cancer which did not damage the heart was larger than the typical dose which the public get in the worst affected part of the former USSR.

CaroltheAncientChristmasTroll

Doesn't it cost rather a lot to do the same with nuclear energy?

Yes, when you only generate a little. The thing about nuclear is the more you generate, the more efficient and the cheaper per megawatt/hour it gets. It costs as much to generate 1MW of power in a nuclear power station as 1000.

That's why nuclear is so valuable for power. It is easily scalable, which means it can respond quickly to changes in demand (such as the increase in power around 5pm when people get home and start cooking dinner and watching TV). It can provide what's called a base load, which is a guaranteed, constant, stable source of power. Solar and wind can't.

Golddigger

Which sorts of fish would contain the most toxins. Or is that a silly question?

Predator fish further up the foodchain. Fish which eat plants will hold less than fish who eat the fish who eat the plants.

article here

I guess they can't yet, FPH BUT I do wonder how much money is being put into finding ways in which they can match the efficiency and so on of nuclear power without the associated massive risks.

carol glad it was a joke. Hard to tell with so many people blathering about 'chemicals being dangerous' and so on.

BTW 'no scientific knowledge whatsover' - that is quite shameful especially if you went to school. Please do something about this, your library will help.

I haven't got time though. I really haven't. I'd rather leave it to folk who are good at that sort of thing, which I never was despite my top 2% IQ...(which has undoubtedly diminished quantatively over the last 20 years)

Think of me as an ideas woman

Oh sorry it's me again. I have had some problems with indecision on the Christmas name change thread.

I see no credible sources or peer reviewed evidence.

IHeardMummyDissingParcelforce

I guess they can't yet, FPH BUT I do wonder how much money is being put into finding ways in which they can match the efficiency and so on of nuclear power without the associated massive risks.

hiddenhome

article here

Having read that article it seems that the claims of contamination are being made by a charity called Medact. Medact is an explicitly socialist group, with a mixture of green, anti-nuclear and pro-socialist views. Inevitably, they're based in Islington, from where class war and final socialist victory will inevitably be won.

So it's hardly surprising that they would make this claim and given that neither the Indy nor Medact have their report online I can only assume that it's a tedious puff piece with no foundation in reality.

IHeardMummyDissingParcelforce

I guess they can't yet, FPH BUT I do wonder how much money is being put into finding ways in which they can match the efficiency and so on of nuclear power without the associated massive risks.

Sorry, meant to reply to this. Lots. And lots. Look up Thorium fission online. Nuclear power without the waste.

interesting article here

Scientists at Newcastle University are bogus then?

hiddenhome

Scientists at Newcastle University are bogus then?

Did I write that? Of course I didn't. I wrote that the charity is an anti-nuclear charity and so the fact that it has published a press release picked up by the Independent means just that, and nothing more.

And have you read the research? I can't find it online.

I have found a later study from the same university which puts the OMG CANCER DEATH CHERNOBYL headline in perspective. They report on a total of 95 cases of 'primary thyroid carcinoma' from 1966 to 2005.

95. In 40 years.

Now the research indicates that the risk of this cancer increased threefold after Chernobyl which sounds terrifying until you look at the actual stats. Pre-Chernobyl the rate of cancer was 0.6 per million person years.

That means for every million years people live, 0.6 of them will get cancer. Or, more usefully, that about 1 in 20,000 people will get it during their average lifespan of 70 years.

Post Chernobyl the risk is more like 3 in 20,000.

So it doesn't justify the headline or the article.

White bread has killed far more people than all the nuclear power accidents in the world put together.

Nuclear power is very safe, and much safer than coal powered stations.

And that means that there is no radiation? And that it doesnt have the potential to harm however many people?
And it is not going to harm anything? And you know that because...
Nothing whatsoever to do with white bread.

There is radiation and it can harm people.

About the university of Newcastle research about thyroid cancer in the north of England, in 1968 to 1986 a total of 54 cases were diagnosed, so the ESD based on the number of cases is 7.35, so the error (ESD) on the pre 1986 data is 13.6 %.

After 1987 to 2005 there were 60 cases (ESD is 7.45), so the percentage error on the data after Chernobyl is 12.9 %.

The incidence on average per year before Chernobyl was 3 (ESD = 0.408 ) cases a year, while after Chernobyl it was 3.33 (0.430) per year, this is a difference in the cancer rate (0.3333 cases per year) which is far smaller than the sum of the ESDs. Thus I think no difference between before and after Chernobyl exists in the data presented in this paper.

(www.ejcancer.com/article/S0959-8049(08)01054-X/abstract)

I have not examined the data for the men and women on their own, but I suspect that if all the data pooled together does not show a significant difference then the female data alone will not show an difference which is more than just that caused by chance.

Dear TechnoDad,

Radiation is not as bad as you think, in many studies it has been impossible to show that low to moderate amounts of radiation cause cancer or other harm in humans or animals.

For example L.E. Holm has been unable to find any excess in thyroid cancer in the population of Swedish people exposed to radioactive iodine as part of a thyroid scan.

While radiation protection calculations are made using a very conservative model (designed to keep people safe) which is called the LNT model. Linear no threshold model, it has been often difficult or impossible to find an excess of cancer for populations given small doses of radiation. The model extrapolates the data obtained at high doses (people who were near to the atomic bombs in japan and some other populations exposed to large doses) down to low doses. While for high doses a relationship between dose and rate of cancer is clear, at low doses it is not.

It might even be possible that a small dose of radiation is good for you, but it is often impossible to prove if radiation is good or bad for you at small doses.

However, when you consider that there were likely somewhere in the region of 4000 premature deaths in the aftermath (40 years) following Chernobyl, that is nothing in comparison to other forms of power generation.

For example - www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/12/china-coal-emissions-smog-deaths

Even if the estimated deaths from Chernobyl and the recent Fukushima accident combines are underestimated by an order of magnitude, over the course of 60 years the number of premature deaths caused by nuclear power still don't even come close to the smog deaths in one country in one year.

So, people are being unreasonable to be scared of nuclear power and need to get a grip. If you want to be able to charge your iPhone and laptop, and have lights at the flick of the switch, then you can't live risk free. You can choose the lowest risk solution though and Nuclear power is up there with the best (in terms of the number or deaths vs amount of power produced).

The irrational thing is, that people can see smog, and the effect that poor air quality has on people (increased asthma cases etc), but ignore it. But they can't see radiation (or the lack of it) and it scares them!

The world will be a far safer place when we all eat brown bread and have nuclear power stations instead of coal fired power stations and poisonous white bread.

Dr Snowman

I agree.

There's stuff like this still available on YT

This comes in a few parts

My point really was the general point I have on mumsnet and elsewhere. That saying a is less harmful than b, doesnt mean that a is not harmful and shouldnt be helped to be stopped.
It is like saying that not to be concerned about heart attacks as they kill less people than cancer.