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Medical Association for Prevention of War BRIEFING PAPER Medical Association for Prevention of War BRIEFING PAPER NUCLEAR POWER AND PUBLIC HEALTH By Peter Karamoskos MBBS, FRANZCR1 May 2010 “… there is a linear dose-response relationship between exposure to ionizing radiation and the development of solid cancers in humans. It is unlikely that there is a threshold below which cancers are not induced.” – National Academy of Science, BEIR VII report, 2006 “We need to develop a very firm commitment to the elimination of nuclear power as a source of energy on the earth.” – Russell Train, former US Environmental Protection Agency administrator, 1977 “[t]he [economic] failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale.” – Forbes, 1985 1 Nuclear Radiologist; Treasurer, Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) & Treasurer, International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN); Public representative, Radiation Health Committee, Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) [For informational purposes and does not represent an endorsement by ARPANSA of this document.] Medical Association for Prevention of War Introduction without heavy tax-payer subsidies and loan The public health implications for a resurgence of guarantees. Throughout this period however, nuclear power appear to have taken a subordinate public health concerns increased on a backdrop of position to the economic and global warming reactor safety concerns and the effects of ionising arguments that the industry has advanced to radiation on the surrounding populations, with ten justify its expansion. The purpose of this essay core meltdowns in various nuclear reactors, therefore is several-fold: to review the scientific including several in nuclear power reactors, evidence for public health impacts of nuclear culminating in the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. power, to assess occupational hazards faced by The link between nuclear power and nuclear nuclear industry workers involved in the nuclear weapons however is critical in understanding the fuel cycle, to assess the evidence for nuclear context of its development and its impact on reactor safety and critically challenge the public health and safety. Nuclear power followed underlying assumptions which may be less than the development of nuclear weapons in the USA, adequate. It will also examine the public health in an attempt to garner public support for nuclear risks of spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. technology which had shown how destructive it The common thread linking these safety issues is could be and how much of a threat it posed to the risk posed to public health by ionising humanity. Public tax-payer support was critical to radiation2 and in particular the cancer risk. The facilitate further weapons development. Nuclear nuclear industry and our understanding of power was the product of the ‘Atoms for Peace’ radioactive3 health hazards, developed in tandem program in the 1950’s to achieve this end leading during the twentieth century, however, the to the export of nuclear reactor technology, as relationship to this day has always been uneasy well as bomb grade highly enriched uranium as and often in conflict. A brief historical narrative of reactor fuel to many countries. In their attempt to this joint evolution is reviewed as it is essential to highlight the ‘peaceful atom’ therefore, the understanding the context and scope of the public nuclear establishment propelled by the ‘more is health issues at the heart of the nuclear power better’ hubristic military commanders and civilian debate. nuclear boosters, inadvertently although not If we are to believe the nuclear industry, nuclear unpredictably, led to illicit weapons programs power is both safe and vital to our future, yet over around the world. half a century of nuclear power has proven both The original drivers of nuclear power therefore, contentions as false. In the last decade the nuclear were not a need for electricity, environmental power industry has undergone a ‘renaissance’ of concerns, or the need for energy security, but interest and hype, spurred along by the claim that political and military imperatives which dominated it is vital to combating global warming. Of course, and spurred its development. In this climate, the nuclear power industry has had many false safety issues were not paramount. Indeed, how starts, each time failing to live up to its promises. could they be if the science of the human effects At its inception, it sold itself as providing limitless of ionising radiation was still in its infancy, and the electricity too cheap to meter. When this was safety of nuclear reactors was unknown? If proven false, it attempted to recreate itself as the anything, safety concerns posed potential key to energy security during the oil shocks of the obstacles to its development and thus needed to 1970’s. However, it foundered again on the be managed, as they were by savvy media men. It grounds that not only was it too expensive, and was a climate of ‘electricity today, and (maybe) that most electricity did not rely on imported oil, safety’ tomorrow. but that it was so economically unattractive that financing was virtually impossible to come by So the lingering questions are: what is different now? Is nuclear power now safe? 2 Ionising radiation: radiated energy which has the potential to cause electrical charges in living tissue 3 The form of ionising radiation produced from nuclear decay. Medical Association for Prevention of War The history of human health and the safety of Two types of IR health effects are recognised. The nuclear power is also inexorably intertwined with severity of deterministic effects is directly the evolving history of the health effects of proportional to the absorbed radiation dose. ionising radiation (IR). Whereas the science These include skin damage and blood disorders. underpinning the generation of electricity from The higher the dose, the worse, for example is the nuclear power is well established, the health skin radiation burn. These have a threshold below effects on humans of ionising radiation (IR) is still which they do not occur, although this may vary evolving. This is not to undermine the voluminous between individuals. This threshold is around research and findings clearly documenting the 100mSv at which blood production begins to be adverse effects of ionising radiation on human impaired.4 Stochastic effects are ‘probabilistic’ in beings. That much is well documented and nature. In other words, the higher the dose the understood. The uncertainties lie in precisely greater the chance of them occurring, however, quantifying the effects of IR including defining with one they occur their severity is the same greater precision the risks at ever decreasing irrespective of the original dose. The main doses. This is key in attempting to understand the stochastic effect is cancer. The lower the dose of direct adverse health effects of nuclear power on IR, the lower the chance of contracting cancer, two groups; nuclear industry workers, and however, the type and eventual outcome of the populations in the vicinity of nuclear reactors and cancer is independent of the dose. It can thus be subject to their radioactive emissions. seen that the high dose deterministic effects of IR were readily observable early after the discovery Ionising radiation and public of radioactivity, however, the concept of a health stochastic effect as a mechanism for the Ionising radiation arises from many sources. development of cancer, took several decades to be Nuclear fission which powers nuclear reactors is understood. The quantification of stochastic one. It is postulated ionising radiation imparts its effects has occupied scientific debate throughout deleterious health effects through two most of the twentieth century and is still being mechanisms: transference of its energy to atoms played out. The distinction is critical to 5 in biological tissue which then becomes electrically understanding the health impacts of low-dose charged leading to the formation of free radicals radiation, particularly with nuclear power and which then damage the cell’s genetic blueprint radiation doses to workers and the general (DNA) leading to genetic mutations; and direct population are below deterministic levels, and why DNA disruption along the track the ionising there is considerable controversy over its radiation traverses through the cell’s nucleus. The significance. most mutagenic (causing genetic mutations) of these are double stranded breaks (DSB) where A brief history of radiation safety both strands of the double helix DNA molecule are and the nuclear industryi simultaneously disrupted resulting in a high The hazards of IR were inadvertently likelihood of mutations. This then predisposes to demonstrated by the pioneering researcher Marie the initiation of cancer when the regulatory Curie who identified the radioactive element mechanisms of the cell fail. Cancer may not appear radium three years after Wilhelm Roentgen for 10-40 years (latency), although can be as short discovered x-rays, another form of IR, with Curie as 5 years for leukaemia. Ionising radiation is subsequently dying of leukaemia, and Roentgen of classified as a Class 1 carcinogen by the cancer. Many more workers over the ensuing International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC) years experienced skin burns and deep tissue of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the trauma, blood diseases and cancers, most highest classification consistent with certainty of its carcinogenicity. 4 Compared with a current per capita average of approximately 2mSv from natural background radiation. 5 Low-dose is defined as less than 100mSv for the purposes of this paper in keeping with the BEIR VII report (2006), National Academy of Sciences. Medical Association for Prevention of War famously the radium dial workers.6 Carcinogenicity unknowingly were administered plutonium and was observed as early as 1902. Still, it was not until uranium without awareness of the nature of the 1925 that the first protective limits were experiment or with informed consent.
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