George Monbiot and Nuclear Power

A series of comments re George Monbiot's recent comments on Nuclear Power.

A letter from a concerned citizen and healer: to whom it may concern r.e. George Monbiot and Nuclear Power by Damien Deveau on Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 7:09am Greetings ~

Some persons have taken the view that Monbiot has either sold out or has been threatened into submission by the nuclear lobby. I don't believe anyone, other than George himself and a few putative thugs, has enough information to decide that point, so we we shall have to leave it moot for the time being.In the debate that has ensued following George Monbiot's provocative pro-nuclear declaration on March 21.

In any event, if George has become a nuke flunky (and he did vote for the Liberal Democrats!), he's the best flunky that nuclear critics could possibly have. In the person of this British jornalist we have earned ourselves a worthy opponent, one who possesses top-notch credentials and a sensible political outlook to boot. In addition, George is no slouch as a debater. He is able to argue coolly on what seem to be reasonable and objective grounds, buttressing his opinion with relevant and accessible citations, often to the dismay of the authorities. Monbiot, moreover, is quite familiar with alternative points of view, and he writes on a regular basis for a left-leaning newspaper.

This means that if Monbiot is bested in the unfolding argument (which as much as anything else is crucial for the course of civilization), then he will have to concede defeat in the honourable tradition of high-minded debate. If he does not do so, then it will be obvious to one and all that he is betraying his own lofty principles for reasons that are unrelated to the issues at hand.

Where Monbiot occupies uncertain ground is the very place that critics must focus the argument. In my view that involves the medical data that has come out of Europe regarding the post-chernobyl mortality and morbidity rates. Did only 24 die in the aftermath of that nuclear meltdown, or was it more nearly one million? A spread like that surely begs explanation.

How can Monbiot so cavalierly dismiss the work of those Russian and Ukrainian researchers who argue the higher number, when he himself has no competence in this field? In this same connection, how can he speak so superciliously about non-radiation related diseases, when it is widely recognized that radiation compromises the immune system in general, producing a wide spectrum of pathologies beyond the tell-tale leukemias and adenocarcinomas? And why is Monbiot so faux-naive about the ability of the power elite to distort and suppress research results that are contrary to nuclear interests? There is a solid literature plus manifold personal accounts on this topic, many stemming from the 70s and 80s. As a well-informed environmental journalist Monbiot does himself a disservice by discounting the hegemonic dimensions of the struggle.

So far, the pull-and-tug of debate has brought Monbiot perilously close to claiming that radiation poisoning has been irresponsibly exaggerated by the opponents of nuclear power; that the nations of the world could already have built hundreds more nukes to save us from global warming, were it not for the stubborn and ill-informed opposition of a small minority of self-promoting environmentalists.
When and if he reaches this point, Monbiot might as well be writing for World Nuclear News or producing copy for Exelon Corporation.
Eventually, due to the strain towards consistency, to which every thinking person responds, he will have to assume a very different political stance in general, one that is more closely allied with the Conservative Party.

For me, at this point it's hard to tell whether the leopard is changing his spots, or if, finding himself backed into a corner, he is just roaring at his tamer.

Keep flicking that whip, oh tamer, and we shall soon find out.

One love

~ Doug

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(what follows are a series of articles which provide well referenced counter arguments to Monbiot's lame attmepts to greenwash the nuclear
issue.)

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Article #1 - The Greatest Coverup in Medical History

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/DDBEIRV.html

The BEIR V Report
Excerpt from Deadly Deceit, Low-Level Radiation, High-Level Coverup by Dr. Jay Gould and Benjamin A. Goldman with Kate Millpointer, 1991, published by Four Walls Eight Windows, New York.

Just before this book went to print, the National Academy of Science's Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) released a new report that bears directly on our principal findings.[215] The Committee's extensive review of the latest scientific literature, known as the BEIR V report, concludes that cancer and leukemia risks for the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been underestimated by factors of three to four, due to faulty dose estimates and insufficient follow-up study of the survivors.
Moreover, BEIR V found that risks from diagnostic X-rays may have been underestimated by an additional factor of two, because they were based on extrapolations of exposures to short bursts of high-energy gamma rays from bomb explosions, which were found to be less effective biologically than X-rays.[216] The BEIR V report cites numerous studies showing increases in leukemia and cancer rates from very low doses of fallout from weapons testing and nuclear plant accidents. As with diagnostic X-rays, these increases were far above those expected from the studies of bomb survivors, further supporting the principal findings of our book. The report suggests that, "although such studies do not provide sufficient statistical precision to contribute to the risk estimation procedure per se, they do raise legitimate questions about the validity of the currently accepted estimates [emphasis added]."[217]

The report goes on to pinpoint what we believe is the basic problem:
"the discrepancies between estimates based on high-dose studies and observations made in some low-dose studies could . . . arise from problems of extrapolation."[218] These extrapolations may have led to underestimates at low doses, because they assumed the dose-response curve was linear or quadratic, rather than supralinear (which rises rapidly at low doses and levels off at high doses).

A supralinear dose-response curve is suggested by the so-called "Petkau effect" (discussed in our methodological appendix), which involves tumor promotion from free radicals created by repeated exposures at low dose-rates. Indeed, the BEIR V report explicitly refers to the tumor-promoting effect of free radicals observed in laboratory studies of cells, and illustrates how such promoting agents can dramatically change the shape of the dose-response curves so as to increase the effect of carcinogens at the lowest doses.[219] As a result of risk estimates based on mistaken extrapolations, government standards for environmental releases of radioactivity from nuclear facilities may be 100 to 1000 times too high, especially for infants.

The BEIR V findings of greatest concern for the long run may be the effects of low radiation doses on the physical and mental development of the newborn. Detailed studies of infants who were in utero at the time of the bomb detonations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki found a much greater risk of severe mental retardation than previously believed.[220] Moreover, the new studies found that intelligence test scores and school performance of children exposed in utero were also significantly affected in relation to the degree of exposure.[221] New studies of children whose heads and necks were irradiated for therapeutic purposes in their early childhood also found behavioral impairment as well as poorer school performance. For example, a study by an Israeli group found irradiated children scored poorly on aptitude, intelligence, and psychological tests, often dropped out of school or entered mental hospitals for neuro-psychiatric diseases, and had higher rates of mental retardation.[222]...

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Article cut short - please read the entire article here (many peer reviewed medical journals referenced by this article):
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/DDBEIRV.html

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Article #2 - The Greatest Coverup in Medical History

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/CaUFtH.html
Chernobyl: An Unbelievable Failure to Help by Rosalie Bertell, MD, PhD., GNSH International Journal of Health Services 38(3), pp. 543-60

March 2008

Abstract:
The disaster at the Chernobyl power reactor near Kiev, which began on 26 April 1986, at 1:21 AM, was one of the worst industrial accidents ever suffered in the world. Yet the global community, which is usually most generous in pouring out aid to a stricken community, has been slow to understand the scope of this disaster and to reach out to the most devastated people of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. It is the purpose of this discussion to probe the causes of the confusion of perception and failure of response to the needs of these victims.
Clearly the problem is one of communication, and the true picture has not been well communicated to concerned people of all countries and faiths.

Has the International Atomic Energy Agency betrayed the victims of the Chernobyl disaster because of its plans to promote the "peaceful atom"
nuclear program in the developing world? Has the World Health Organization failed to provide clear and reliable health effect information and data on the extent of the suffering and death resulting from this disaster? Are there other historical problems or actors which are now seen to interfere with reasonable handling of the late effects of a nuclear disaster? Most importantly, what can be done to remedy this tragic situation, both assisting those most hurt by the late effects of Chernobyl, and preventing such injustice from occurring in future? At this time of global crisis over climate change, with the current promotion of nuclear energy as a "solution", it is important to revisit the Chernobyl event and to take a sober second look at the reality of the nuclear energy experiment, and the management of its hazards.

...

Article cut short - please read the entire medical journal article here (again many peer reviewed medical journals referenced by this
article): http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/CaUFtH.html

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Article #3 - The Greatest Coverup in Medical History

http://www.counterpunch.org/sherman03042011.html
Chernobyl, 25 Years Later
By Dr. Janette D. Sherman MD
Counterpunch

March 4-6, 2011

What Next for the WHO and IAEA?

April 26, 2011 will mark the 25th Annivesary of the Chernobyl catastrophe, and for more than 50 years, the World Health Organization
(WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have abided by an agreement that in essence, covers each other’s back – sometimes at the expense of public health. It’s a delicate balance between cooperation and collusion.
Signed on May 28, 1959 at the 12th World Health Assembly, the agreement states:
“Whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement,” and continues: The IAEA and the WHO “recognize that they may find it necessary to apply certain limitations for the safeguarding of confidential information furnished to them. They therefore agree that nothing in this agreement shall be construed as requiring either of them to furnish such information as would, in the judgment of the other party possessing the information to interfere wit the orderly conduct of its operation.”
The WHO mandate is to look after the health on our planet, while the IAEA is to promote nuclear energy. In light of recent industrial failures involving nuclear power plants, many prominent scientists and public health officials have criticized WHO’s non-competing relationship with IEAE that has stymied efforts to address effects and disseminate information about the 1986 Chernobyl accident, so that current harm may be documented and future harm prevented.

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Article cut short - please read the entire article here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/sherman03042011.html

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Article #4 - The Greatest Coverup in Medical History

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/Asleep@Wheel.html
"Asleep at the Wheel": The Special Menace of Inherited Afflictions from Ionizing Radiation by John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D., and Egan O'Connor, Executive Director, CNR.
Committee for Nuclear Responsibility

Fall 1998

Part 1. "Asleep at the Wheel" due to a "Famous Failure"

1a The topic which consumes Parts 5, 6, 7 of this article is the famous failure to detect (at a statistically significant level) any extra frequency of inherited afflictions, in the Japanese children of the Atomic Bomb Survivors.

1b The main importance of the "famous failure" has been its power to render much of the environmental and medical communities "asleep at the wheel," with respect to the menace of inherited afflictions caused by ionizing radiation. Some environmentalists even talk about "giving nuclear power a second chance." And some people in medicine are so relaxed, about low-dose radiation, that their customers have to fight in order to obtain shielding of their ovaries and testes from xray beams.

1c We suspect that hardly one-percent of environmentalists and
medical professionals know (a) that when the A-Bomb Genetics Program was initiated, it was already acknowledged that, in all probability, it would be inherently incapable of producing statistically significant results (see Para.5b), and (b) that very few inherited effects were even explored in that Program (see Part 6). One purpose of this article is to document statements (a) and (b).

1d The other purpose of this article is to set forth a scientifically credible warning that ionizing radiation is probably the single most menacing mutagen to which people everywhere are exposed --- and by itself is probably the mutagen which accounts for one-quarter or more of humanity's inherited afflictions (Para.2b).
This warning is tied to three types of relevant human evidence (Parts 9, 10, 11).

...

Article cut short - please read the entire well referenced article
here: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/Asleep@Wheel.html

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Article #5 - The Greatest Coverup in Medical History

http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/content/full/100/9/407
The recognition of childhood thyroid cancer as a consequence of the Chernobyl accident: an allegorical tale of our time?
Keith Baverstock
Department of Environmental Science, University of Kuopio, PL 1627 70211, Kuopio, Finland Email: keith.baverstock@uku.fi Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 2007, vol. 100: 407-409

INTRODUCTION

I begin with something said by the physicist Edward Lorenz: ‘let our premise be that we should believe what is true even if it hurts, rather than what is false even if that makes us happy’.1 Lorenz is often called the ‘father of chaos’, since he was the first to note that some complex dynamic systems had an exquisitely sensitive dependence on ‘initial conditions’. This meant that their evolution could not be predicted over long periods of time. The weather is one of those systems. He made the above statement in the context of discussing whether humans truly have free will, but I have found another context in which it is equally applicable: I think it a very relevant observation on how human nature is able to believe something even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In this paper I illustrate how an important truth emerged from the chaos of the Chernobyl accident over the period 1992-1998, and what factors might have influenced this process; I ask whether there are any lessons to be learnt from this experience; and finally I suggest five truths that I discern from the accident and its consequences.

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Article cut short - please read the entire well referenced medical journal here: http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/content/full/100/9/407

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Article #6 - The Greatest Coverup in Medical History

http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/24.html
Presentation
by Dr. Keith Baverstock
International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons

September 29, 2006

This presentation about DU, toxicity and politics was given at the ICBUW conference in the European Parliament in Brussels (23 June 2005). Keith Baverstock PhD is a faculty member of the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Kuopio, KUOPIO, Finland I have, during a career of some 30 years, developed expertise in evaluating risks regarding the environmental and occupational exposure to ionising radiation and radioactive materials in many different situations. I have done this in the context of employment by the UK Medical Research Council (1971 to 1991) and the European Regional Office of the World Health Organisation (1991 to 2003), both ostensibly "independent" organisations.
Between 2000 and 2002 I examined the evidence relating to risks from the mildly radioactive depleted uranium. My concern was especially raised by the specific exposure context of inhalation of the dust particles produced when a depleted uranium munition impacts a hardened target and burns, producing fine particles of DU oxide (DUO). This material has no natural analogue and does not arise in the normal refining and processing of uranium for nuclear fuel. There is, therefore, no prior experience of exposure to this material than its use in Iraq in 1991.
According to the International Commission for Radiological Protection (ICRP), inhaled DUO would pose a hazard to the lung from radiation if it were insoluble and a chemical toxicity risk to the kidney (physiological toxicity of kidney malfunction) if it were soluble.
DUO is in fact part insoluble and part sparingly soluble. Since 1998 evidence has accrued that human cells exposed in the laboratory to low concentrations of DU exhibit changes characteristic of malignant cells and indeed, when implanted into host animals, will lead to malignancy.
In these experiments it seems unlikely, given the low concentrations and the experimental conditions, that this effect is mediated by radiation, but is rather a chemically mediated genotoxicity. (See for example [1-6] the non-radioactive element, nickel, produces similar effects and is an established carcinogen) In 2001 this evidence led me to believe that inhaled DUO particles, which are capable of penetrating the deep lung (where they would be retained for long periods) posed, for a period of weeks to months, not only a radiotoxicity risk but also a chemical genotoxicity risk and potentially a synergy between the two. Thus any risk evaluated on the basis of the ICRP recommendations would be likely to underestimate the true risk.

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Article cut short - please read the entire well referenced article
here: http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/24.html

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Article #7 - The Greatest Coverup in Medical History

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/26-10
Nuclear Disasters Should Be Met with Scientific Inquiry, Not Silence by Ralph Nader Common Dreams April 26, 2011

Remarks on the 25th anniversary of the Nuclear Meltdown at Chernobyl, Ukraine.
The disaster at Chernobyl’s reactor on April 26, 1986 continues to expose humans, flora and fauna to radioactive lethality especially in, but not restricted to, Ukraine and Belarus. Western countries continue to reflect an under-estimation of casualties by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
IAEA’s figures top off at 4000 fatalities since 1986 that is highly questionable given IAEA’s conflict of interest between its role of promoting nuclear power and monitoring its safety. An agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization (WHO) provides for WHO’s deference to IAEA’s casualty figures which has compromised WHO’s priority of advancing health in the world. The United Nations naturally adopts the IAEA figures and the West’s nuclear regulatory agencies, similarly committed to promotional functions, ditto these under-estimations.

The position that the level of mortality and morbidity from Chernobyl over the past quarter century is much larger comes from a compendious of 5000 scientific studies, mostly in the Slavic languages edited by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko titled
Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. (Read it online at http://books.google.com/books?id=g34tNlYOB3AC&lpg=PP1&ots=O15WjRWXc8&dq=...).
Dr. Yablokov, a biologist, is a member of the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. The translated edition was published under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences.

At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
on March 25, 2011, attended by C-SPAN, CNN and independent media, but not the mainstream media, Dr. Yablokov summarized these studies and estimated the death toll over nearly twenty five years at about one million and mounting.

Because of the mainstream media, including the major newspapers, blackout on the Yablokov report since its translated edition came out in 2009, I asked Dr. Yablokov this question at the news conference:

“Dr. Yablokov, you are a distinguished scientist in your country, as reflected in your membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences, what has been the response to your report by corporate scientists, regulatory agency scientists and academic scientists in the West? Did they openly agree in whole or in part or did they disagree in whole or in part or were they just silent?”

Academician Yablokov replied that the compilation of these many reports has been met with silence. He added that science means critical engagement with the data and implied that silence was not an appropriate response from the scientific community.

Silence, of course, is not without its purpose. For to engage, whether to rebut, doubt or affirm, would give visibility to this compendium of scientific studies that upsets the fantasy modeling by the nuclear industry and its apologists regarding the worse case scenario damage of a level 7 or worse meltdown. It would require, for example, more epidemiological studies ranging into Western Europe, such as the current review of 330 hill farms in Wales. It would insistently invite more studies of the current health and casualty data involving the 800,000 liquidators—workers passing through since 1986 who have been exposed in and around the continuing emergency efforts at the very hot disabled Chernobyl reactor. And much more.

Public silence has not excluded a sub silentio oral campaign to delegitimize the Yablokov compendium. A quiet grapevine of general dismissals—unavailable for public comment or rebuttal—has cooled members of the press and other potential disseminators of its contents, including the National Academy of Sciences, the science advisers to the President and any other thinking scientists who decide that there isn’t enough time or invulnerability to justify getting into a contentious interaction over the Yablokov report.

The ability of corporate science and its regulatory apologists to inflict sanctions on dissenters is legion. There is a long history of censorship leading to self-censorship by those who otherwise might have applied Alfred North Whitehead’s characterization of science as “keeping open options for revision” to the ideology of atomic power.

I call for an open rigorous public scientific-medical debate on the findings and casualty estimates of the Yablokov report, to determine its usefulness for necessary programs of compensation, quarantine, accelerated protective entombment of the still dangerous reactor, and expanded studies of the past and continuing ravages issuing from this catastrophe and its recycling of radioactivity through the soil, air, water and food of the exposed regions. Such a public review is what the science adviser to the President and the National Academy of Sciences should have done already and should do now. The continuing expansion of the Fukishima disaster in Japan provides additional urgency for this open scientific review.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us.
His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.

Article #7 was reprinted in entirety. Original can be found here:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/26-10
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