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Barry Brooks over at Brave New Climate has created a new video that summarises the need for nuclear in 2,5 minutes. Well worth watching and spreading!
Tags: environment, global warming, nuclear, sustainable, Sustainable Energy
Barry Brooks over at Brave New Climate has created a new video that summarises the need for nuclear in 2,5 minutes. Well worth watching and spreading!
Tags: environment, global warming, nuclear, sustainable, Sustainable Energy
In the video above and in other posts on this blog there has been assertions about the comparative differences in deaths in relation to energy output between energy sources. Like a previous life cycle comparison for hydro that includes the giant accidents in China, coal mining and particles, nuclear mining and the accidents.
Is there a easy tabulated comparison between energy sources based on accidents, deaths etc. and M/TWh?
The EU-funded ExternE project is one of the most detailed attempts to quantify the environmental and health costs from different modes of energy and transport. If you want the whole package (nerd alert!), please enjoy the following link: http://www.externe.info/
Here is a summary (and some good links) for those who do not have the time to go through all details of the ExternE project (most of us...):
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
The picture shown on the following link is a good reminder for all of us where the first priority should be: http://transitionvoice.com/2011/03/nukes-are-scary-but-dont-forget-coal/
So when people say "Nuclear is not the answer", my response would be, in view of the picture: Nuclear is not the issue
But it depends on your set of priorities, of course...
It should be noted that the devil is in the details; it is always difficult to put absolute numbers on these things in a consistent way, and in some cases the set boundaries vary between different energy sources. For instance, there are some comments about the Chernobyl accident on the NextBigFuture link.
Other NPYP-members looked more closely at the ExternE study some time ago, they may have further comments.
Partly it was a misunderstanding, Brian Mays referred to a monograph and gave a link with a number of entries, where several monographs had the same title, and my eyes fell on the Russian version. Mays asked “have you looked at the monograph” (those things have 400 pages and are not easily available) and I thought it was also something in Russian (my wife actually reads Russian and I have a very rudimentary knowledge, so together we can with a big effort understand something short, but when it must be REALLY important). Probably I would have reacted somewhat different if my eyes had felt on the monograph with the same title which may be in English, but still it was a provocative question.
Mays opens his dialogue with “you blindly insist on applying a flawed model to a situation outside of its range of applicability, just to get a fictional five-fold increase in "projected radiation deaths." There are difficulties in handling discussions with persons, who declare opinions carved in stone and are not interesting in understanding the arguments.
So taking up the badly reputed book which is expected to summarize a lot of Russian work was an indication of what I thought of the idea that I should study a 400 page monograph which probably would not broaden my understanding. The Yablakov book should have summarized it. I am not a big believer in Russian epidemiological data to solve the Chernobyl puzzle.
Tondel’s thesis I have thought about and looked at and concluded that it is an acceptable thesis. What was wrong was to direct him on the wrong path, but this is really a very difficult matter of control of sciences, which I tried to raise a debate about among some professors, but was silenced. I concluded that uncontrolled confounding and statistical error are able to explain the unexpected results, but the results still support that the radioactive fall-out according to expectations from the chief scientist at our radiosecurity authority had some effect as a contributing explanation. The big problem in epideomologic studies in confounding as cancer incidence is much depending on life style factors and you cannot get “controls” with the same lifestyle. Lifestyle varies in different parishes but still the contaminated parishes are rather scattered in Tondel’s studies which turns at least part of this confounding to statistical noise. That Tondel’s collaborator Hardell has not accepted your and my comment on his professional blog does not emphasize trust in this line of research.
I focus on marginal scientists because I know them from your very entertaining descriptions. Tondel had the most relevant Swedish thesis on the matter, I first got interested because of Busby referred to him but formed an own opinion, I am not willing to subscribe to Tondel as “bad science” (although it undoubtly invites to discussions about what “good science” is). I am an amateur in much and have no obligations and do not want to spend much effort on screening thousand of studies about Chernobyl. There should be bodies (eg UNSCEAR) for that. I believe small doses can induce cancer, but I am not much helped by references. Yes I have still access to some University resources like the library services, but I do not use it often, nowadays much information is available to anyone. Concerning how often (the risk) it is depending on amalgamating very many sources and that is simply too much for me, and why should I do it?
I give Brian Mays much credit for pointing out that radiation from aviation causes a larger collective dose than Nuclear power, a very useful comparison! Make a blog article on NPYP developing that idea!
I am sure the 500 deaths in Sweden from radon is a projection from assumed exposure rates. I do not know the lung cancer mortality rates in Sweden but they are highly influenced by several other factors (smoking, air polution etc.).
So what conclusion(s) could you really draw from such a statement then? Each and every house ìn Sweden needs to be surveyed for radon?
After thinking a little more after your remark, I now think the the faith of LNT-deniers is compatible with the threat of the hundred of thousands of houses where radon level is high. Radon (or rather its daughters) expose the lungs rather much and it seem now to me possible that the highest permisseable levels of radon in houses can expose the lungs of their inhabitants to well over 0.1 Sv over a 20 year period. And the increase in lung cancer frequency may be detectable. And attention to radon in houses seems worthwhile. Radon interacts strongly with smoking.
Notice the rhetorical tricks employed here. People who disagree with this person are labeled "deniers" (a not-so-thinly-veiled and shameless reference to Holocaust deniers) who act only on "faith" rather than evidence.
Yet, he or she has yet to provide any convincing scientific proof of adverse health effects due to a dose of radiation that is below 100 mSv, or any scientific evidence at all.
It has not been detected in ecological studies. Granted these studies have substantial limitations, but they have failed to detect any increase.
This is the kind of "scientific" argument put forth by DagL.
It was claimed that there are no studies detecting that radon exposure among the public in their residence cause cancer, I made some search:
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/156/6/548.short
http://www.bmj.com/content/330/7485/223.abstract
http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/2005/03000/Residential_Radon_and_Risk_of_Lung_Cancer__A.1.aspx
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3703313
http://healthworldnet.com/Articles/print/?C=8431
etc.
This shows that there exist studies detecting that residential exposure to the public of radon cause cancer.
No, nobody claimed that.
Somebody should explain to DagL the difference between an ecological study and a case-control study, before he/she/it tries to foolishly lecture us again.
The review of analysis of radon houses was made partly as ZaiMatte assumed it was a “projection”, I assumed it meant from experience from higher doses, which I myself suspected had a role, even if another comment triggered the response. It was a surprise for me, who am not THAT wellread, that the cancer incidence of “measured” doses in living quarters, thus variations in the “background”, could give such an evident signal. Why is confounding not strong enough to hide the signal? I speculate that it is very much a chance if people live in houses with a radon problem or not. People need somewhere to live and choose among few suitable options and the criteria for the choice are unlikely to be closely related to radon (the risk was not wellknown when the choices for the studied populations were made).
Absence of cancer in many cases where it was expected to find an increase, indicates the risks often are overestimated at low doses and I understand those who find it a little surprising that this is not more reflected in radiation safety rules and practices. That the authorities seem to have good scientific ground for radon houses strengthen the confidence of what they apply on radiation, e.g. what is called LNT.
The annual global number of fatal cancer caused by Radon houses seems to be higher than the death toll of the Japanese tsunami. The global death toll seems larger than one Chernobyl per year, if Grönlund’s estimate of death toll is accepted. Figures, which can be used to put Nuclear Energy in a perspective.
It was suggested I should exclusively search for “ecological” studies, thus studies e.g. comparing different countries for dose and cancer incidence (“the Gapfinder approach”). On the Wikopedia link is written the ecological approach is usually inferior to the methods of some of the studies which actually have been made and subject to the “ecological fallacy”, which corresponds to what I call confounding.
I mention one reference. It was published 2011 and is of particular interest here, as it is a study about Sweden at the people living there.
http://pubget.com/paper/21112071
The terrestrial gammaradiation in 200*200 m grids were associated to residence and cancer incidence. Thus the study can be viewed as an “ecological” study with a high resolution grid. A significant increase of cancer was found in most groups compared to the group of least exposed. Maybe this mosaic is small scaled enough to eliminate confounding, which I think is a generally severe obstacle to “see” and draw conclusions from geographic differences. The study supports that small doses (below 0.1Sv) cause cancer.
This blog discussion seems too aggressive. I have difficulties to respond well on provocations. Therefore I take now a time out for (at least) the rest of 2011 from the blog and will not respond to more remarks.
Sorry DagL,
you can't use Tondell as a reference. It would be like using Wakefield for prooving that vaccines kill more people than they prevent.
Thank you come again.
It would be highly desirable with a trustworthy and updated comparison on "all" costs.
I agree based on existing inormation that the cost of "nuclear" (including Chernobyl and Fukushima) over the life cycle in lives or environmental is not high and no well based reason to prefer e.g. wind power instead, and that where are good health and environmental reasons to replace e.g. coal by nuclear.
A full cycle should be more complete than the analyses I have seen today. Construction of nuclear plants and power lines and the handling of electricity has other and larger "costs" than radiation related. Like other ways to produce electricity, transport or "energy". With a full cycle analyses the differences usually tend to level out.
The most "cited" calculations as reflected by the two later links supplied by Lantzelot I consider heavily biased to favor nuclear (which he alerts of).
The main reason for the bias is an IAEA press release, those friends of nuclear using it do not care about the "details". Neither other UN bodies have been interesting in correcting the misinterpretations it gave raise to. Only around 20% of the projected radiation deaths linked to Chernobyl are mentioned. I develop on http://daglindgren.blogspot.com/ .
E.g. the lack of objectivity and will to make such calculations and to present them fairly is a bad omen, and does not only decrease the chance for good and well based decisions but also decrease our chances for survival as a species.
Nonsense! Nuclear advocates have combed through the details. Meanwhile, you blindly insist on applying a flawed model to a situation outside of its range of applicability, just to get a fictional five-fold increase in "projected radiation deaths."
Tell me, what is a "projected radiation death"? Does it mean anything? Who has died? Can you give me the names of the deceased?
Have you investigated the real epidemiological data that was collected after the Chernobyl accident? For example, have you looked at the monograph published by the National Radiation and Epidemiological Registry entitled Medical radiological consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe in Russia: estimation of radiation risks? The data in this work show that the rate of cancer among the Chernobyl emergency workers was lower than the general population, the exact opposite of what your model of "projected radiation deaths" predicts.
Have you tried applying your "projected-radiation-death" model to other radiation exposures? I have. Earlier this year, I used the same model that you endorse to demonstrate that, worldwide, the airlines are killing people at an alarming rate -- 4000 people per year or about 11 a day. Why do the airlines get a free pass, when only around 0% of the projected radiation deaths linked to flying are ever mentioned?
Personally, I'd say that it is you who do not care about the "details."
The problem is that there is no way to objectively perform such calculations, because the assumptions required always include some subjective bias when it comes to what is included and what is left out. Thus, it is too easy to game this system, which makes such analyses almost completely worthless.
The most dangerous threat to making "good and well based decisions" is a lack of common sense. Insisting on additional fictional deaths is just one example.
Thank you for the link to the danger of flying. Very interesting parallell, and puts the lethal effects of radiation in a perspective. Maybe also the risks of flying and that a lethal flight accident occurs.
Why do you not believe in your own calculations? In principle I think they are correct, is there any proof against? How does the air-industry and the radiation safety authorities react to your calculations?
Yes, my argument can be seen as equivalent to Grönlund as you cite and is familiar to.
I critisized that the 4000 death toll was only for a small segment of the population but is still interpreted as the full death toll. In your link you admit 9000 (WHO calculation) for a larger segment of the population, but still only the 6 million most exposed in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
The higher estimates include most of the world and add many more years to accumulated exposure. E.g. Sweden is not included, the estimate for Sweden by the chief scientist at our radiation security authority is 300 dead, but data from an epideomologic PhD study suggest a much higher number http://daglindgren.blogspot.com/2011/04/cancer-i-sverige-efter-tjernobyl.html.
The UNSCEAR collective doses has been used, and its a recent update, some minor discrepencies compared to earlier death toll estimates occur because of that.
There are populations of humans exposed to rather high natural background. For many of those cases no increased cancer incidence has been found. In the link above I mention a study in Sweden, where such natural higher exposure is linked to higher cancer incidence.
As you write for flights the induced cancer cases are not possible to distinguish individually from those with other causes. There will not occur a list of people dead from Chernobyl either and many of them has not died yet.
I use the approximate figure 20 Sv = 1 dead even at low doses. You may consider it flawed, but it is what is currenlty used by e.g. the Swedish and Japanese authorities, and also ICRP which is the international body for such consideration uses it. Its not only BEIR7. UNsCEAR does not give a figure but do not object to the figure. It is not stricly linear (LNT) but accepts a somewhat smaller effect of low doses. I would love to use a lower exchage course for collective dose and death toll, but first the most authorative bodies must do it. It is not only authorities but also some scientists e.g. the conclusion of a big recently finnished EU project to find out the answer.
It is applied currently for forced evacuation of people from their homes, the Japanese and IAEA seem unaware of what you chacterize as flawed and nonsense. It causes much suffering with forced evacuation.
I gave one variant of why I believe small doses have an effect in a recent comment on this blogg
http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/blog/2011/06/19/more-bullshit-from-joseph-mangano-take-2/#comment-233103293
I agree that it is impossible to make exact calculations of this nature, but what create a bias is to spread the impression that the danger is lower than the calculations indicate without informing about the strict constraints. One must be as objective as possible.
Because they are ridiculous! Here, let me provide an analogy.
Let's say that I observe that roughly 50% of people who fall 4.5 meters survive the fall, and let's say that I also note that almost nobody survives a fall of over 9 meters. I can draw a line through that and conclude that if 10,000 people fall 0.005 meters, I will get 5 projected falling deaths. Do these projected deaths make any sense? Of course not! Nobody would expect five people to die from falling half a centimeter.
Yet, this is the range of numbers that are used in calculating a collective dose for frequent fliers, and it is the range of numbers that have been used for calculating projected deaths from Chernobyl for somebody on the other side of Europe.
Furthermore, we know that the airline numbers are nonsense, since epidemiological studies have been carried out on people who work in the aviation industry. Flight crews receive a yearly dose that's 100 times that of a typical airline passenger, yet the evidence from the studies that have been done on them is inconclusive. Some studies have claimed to observe a slight increase in risk for cancer (although often not a statistically significant increase in risk); other studies have reported no increase in risk at all. There is no way that anyone who has any respect for scientific evidence (or any common sense) could believe the numbers that I calculated for airline passengers.
Forget objectivity. This isn't a game or a trial where fairness is the most important factor. This isn't a sport. In science, one must be as honest as possible, and that means not making statements that one cannot back up with scientific evidence.
The idea of Collective Dose has never been adequately justified scientifically. There is virtually no evidence to provide even direct support for this concept. There is no good scientific evidence that demonstrates risks of health effects for exposure to a dose (above background) of less than 100 mSv.
If one is honest, then all one can say is that we don't know. Any health effects could be much smaller than what the model predicts or they might not exist at all.
If you misapply a naive linear model to a large population that has been exposed to vanishingly small doses of radiation, then you have calculated a number. That doesn't mean that the number you have calculated means anything.
You adviced a book and I should comment on that
Ivanov V.K., Tsyb A.F. Medical radiological consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe in Russia: estimation of radiation risks. Moscow, Medicine, 2002- 392 p In RussianIt is published already 2002 so I am sure the relevant bodies have amalgamated the information to the Chernobyl legacy. UNSCEAR, WHO and other complains about the shape of the Russian health statistics and do not find it reliable. It is only for Russia but the mergency workers were recruited from all over the earlier Soviet Union, mainly soldiers, thus Russians are a rather small segment. The latency period for cancer is long, whatever the results they are a bit early. They do not mention the result in the public summary, so the result cannot be that important or safe. It is a monograph, thus only give one opinion. It is in Russian, so it would be very difficult for me to understand. Are you sure that you really advice the most suitable reading on the matter?
There was a translated compilation based on a large number of Russian studies issued by New York Academy of Sciences 2009 edited by an American scientist and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences as main author.
http://www.nyas.org/Publications/Annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1This book must have absorbed the information from Russia from which your suggestion is only a small share and to some degree almagated the information.If I am not badly informed it arrived to an estimate above 200 000 dead by cancer (and above that dead for many other reasons), so the limited data on emergency workers you had collected must be a very small and insignificant part in the bigger picture.
It is published already 2002 so I am sure the relevant bodies have amalgamated the information to the Chernobyl legacy. UNSCEAR, WHO and other complains about the shape of the Russian health statistics and do not find it reliable. It is only for Russia but the mergency workers were recruited from all over the earlier Soviet Union, mainly soldiers, thus Russians are a rather small segment. The latency period for cancer is long, whatever the results they are a bit early. They do not mention the result in the public summary, so the result cannot be that important or safe. It is a monograph, thus only give one opinion. It is in Russian, so it would be very difficult for me to understand. Are you sure that you really advice the most suitable reading on the matter?
There was a translated compilation based on a large number of Russian studies issued by New York Academy of Sciences 2009 edited by an American scientist and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences as main author.http://www.nyas.org/Publications/Annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1
This book must have absorbed the information from Russia from which your suggestion is only a small share and to some degree almagated the information.
If I am not badly informed it arrived to an estimate above 200 000 dead by cancer (and above that dead for many other reasons), so the limited data on emergency workers you had collected must be a very small and insignificant part in the bigger picture.
My opinion is as you now that too little information is objective and in spite of the blessings by the American scientific system for this source, I do not regard the book as a reliable source, but prefer to believe in the Grönlund estimate a factor 7 less.
I just wanted to comment on your suggestion of a study demonstrating that Chernobyl had no death toll of exposed.
The NRER Monograph (Ivanov et al. 2004) was referenced by the Chernobyl Forum and was discussed in its reports. The quality of the follow-up data on those possibly affected by the accident is lamentably poorer than one would hope, but unfortunately, they are the only real data that we have to go on. If you don't like it, then blame the closed, secretive communist governments in power during and directly after the accident, not nuclear advocates.
The New York Academy of Sciences publication is fine example of junk science. There is no other way to put it. It was never peer-reviewed or put to any other kind of independent vetting process. It is simply a bizarre collection of essays written by a small group of eccentric crackpots, which is filled with such things as rants against "Western scientific protocols" and serious attempts to pass off anecdotes as scientific evidence. It was not edited by an "American scientist," but rather by a physician with a long history of anti-nuclear activism, who has been involved with fringe groups that are still trying to pass off the most blatant kind of pseudoscience as real research.
Dag,
For your information, the American Scientist who edited the NYAS book on Chernobyl, happens to be Janette Sherman, the very same person who is behind the recent claim about 35% increase in infant mortality in the northwest USA, I assume that you are aware of it.
I find the discussion between you and Brian Mays to be very interesting, and important. Personally I tend to sympathise with your approach, and I feel that "radiation protection agencies" are failing with their pedagogy in explaining to the public how estimates have been done. This leaves room for too much speculation, and fringe groups to speculate wildly and make bold claims about cover up, extreme effects and so on.
Brian's no-nonsense approach is refreshing and quite clear. We need more people who can explain these things in a straight forward way, not the least in order to get rid of all rumours. But I share your feeling that there is an ambiguity here: Why do we have risk estimates, ALARA principles and recommended annual dose limits, but then the same principles are not used to give estimates for actual accidents?
Go to a web site for any random anti-nuclear group and it is clear that the failure of explaining these things is the reason for a substantial fraction of the fear that draws many of the members. There is plenty of work to do here, and I appreciate your attempts to bring this up for discussion. If we can put a number to estimated number of deaths due to air pollution from fossil fuels and other sources, why not for nuclear? What makes the estimates for fossil fuels more reliable than any guesstimate (based on LNT or other more or less reasonable approach) for nuclear accidents? (Brian, feel free to comment on this)
But I do not understand why you repeatedly refer to researchers on the fringe even after they have been shown to have no decency in their way of performing research. What is your purpose of writing "edited by an American scientist" when you mean Janette Sherman, who by now should have a serious charlatan-alert connected with her name? Ok, the articles that the NYAS Chernobyl book is based on are not written by her, she has "only" edited it. But with the way you write it, to me it seems as you want to emphasize some sort of credibility to the report because it was an "American scientist" who did the editing. You have obviously read my posts about the Sherman-Mangano hoax (because you have commented on some of them), so why do you phrase it the way that you do? Sherman's recent failure does not necessarily imply that her earlier work is flawed, but considering the nature of her failure (not the least the alarmistic tone of it) I would personally put all her earlier work on probation (and close scrutiny) before referring to any of it.
I see a similar pattern in how you refer to ECRR/Busby and Martin Tondel. We have seen Busby handle data in a very careless way. Martin Tondel's PhD thesis (and defense) was surrounded by several serious question marks. In Tondel's latest work (which you mention above) he draws different conclusions when he changes the binning (in spite of this he claims to have a method that should be pursued further, to me it is a big warning flag that maybe he has nothing at all to show), and the cancer rate goes down for the group with the highest background radiation (you do not mention this, why?).
There are probably thousands of studies on health effects after Chernobyl, published in a number of peer reviewed journals. I tend to bump in to many of them by accident when I search for other things, and besides my surprise over how many different kind of studies there are, I notice that there are deviating conclusions in some of them from the general "dogma" (if they dare to draw any conclusions at all, "more research is needed" is quite common). With your partial research background in this field, and apparent interest in spending time on these issues, why are so many of the studies you refer to from the fringe groups that we know sometimes cheat with data, instead of from the peer reviewed research? I assume (maybe incorrectly) that you still have access to these resources through your university.
Lantzelot - I don't know that they are any more reliable, or rather, it is my opinion that they are often overstated.
Probably the most quoted figure for fossil fuels is the 30,000 deaths a year from fine particle air pollution in the US that is taken from a study done by Abt Associates. Unlike most people who quote this number, I have actually read this study. The first thing that struck me was the paucity of data that is used to develop such estimates. The base data that is the cornerstone of these calculations comes from a surprisingly small number of studies. In this case, most of it is based on results from a multi-city study that was kind of a landmark paper in the field.
The (somewhat limited) set of data is used to develop a model to estimate health effects nationwide, in this case a linear no-threshold (LNT) model. Interestingly, the Abt Associates report actually spends some space discussing the possibility of a threshold below which no health effects would be expected to be observed -- including justifications for such an assumption and ways to incorporate it into the model. Nevertheless, it then proceeds to produce all of its results with the LNT assumption.
Certainly, fine particle air pollution is a real public health problem, with well-known historical examples of how bad it can become in places like London, New York, etc. However, it is my opinion, based on the methodology that was used, that the 30,000 number is an overestimate of the effects of this type of pollution today.
The full lifecycle cost of nuclear energy is currently on par with hydro (moneywise), total carbondioxide emissions are 6-12 g/kWh (similar or lower than wind).
Windpower consumes more than a magnitudes more of natural resources in order to produce the equvalent amount of energy compared to nuclear. Yes, windpower pylons can be recycled, but so can the majority of materials used in a modern nuclear powerstation.
The "handling" of electricity is an interesting question, but actually, a distributed electricity grid (based on renewables) will consume more natural resources to build and maintain than the type prevalent in the developed world today. Add storage of energy from intermittent sources and you are playing another game altogether. I don't need a scientific study to come to that conclusion, common sense is enough for me, could possibly write one though...
Full life cycle analysis have been performed for most energy sources, not sure if all of them are publicly available.
Yes there is: (deaths/TWh)
Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)Coal – China 278Coal – USA 15Oil 36 (36% of world energy)Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)Biofuel/Biomass 12Peat 12Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)[WHO, Externe]
There are similar comparisons made between coal fuel chain and nuclear fuel chain but I can't find them at the moment, bottom line was a difference of several magnitudes.