By a narrow margin, after over 10 hours of debate (minus breaks), the Swedish parliament just made the decision to lift the 30 year old ban on giving permits for new nuclear reactors. While this is very uplifting, and certainly a big thaw in this deadlocked issue, it’s not over quite yet. We have an election coming…

Background

In the 1960′s, Sweden was dabbling in nuclear power, and also nuclear weapons. The Swedish government was keen on weapons from the moment they were revealed to the world, and a state governed program was started which would look closely at the possibility of getting dometically produced weapons by building a combined power and plutonium breeding reactor: R4, reactor #4.

The design was an incredibly complex one: a heavy water moderated, boiler reactor, capable of fuel changes during normal power operation. For several reasons, it was never completed:

• public opinion against nuclear weapons was great
• the US provided Sweden with enriched uranium cheap on the condition we didn’t use it for weapons, which knocked out the economic foundation for the combined power/weapons project
• Sweden pushed for, and signed, the Non-Proliferation Treaty
• the design was too complex and fraught with inherent safety weaknesses
• private investors went for light water reactors instead.

In the end R4 was finished but never loaded with fuel. They put an oil burner to run the turbines and generators with instead.

Twelve lightwater power reactors were projected and constructed.

The referendum

By the end of the 1970′s nuclear power in turn became a touchy issue. One government fell on it after they made a change in stance from negative to positive. Calls for a referendum were raised, but for the better part this was resisted and struck down.

Then the Three Mile Island accident happened. Support for nuclear power went into freefall, and all of the parliament parties agreed on a referendum. It was held in 1980.

The referendum was a very strange affair because the options you had to vote for were, in brief:

1. Stop using nuclear power, when suitable alternatives are available.
2. Stop using nuclear power, when suitable alternatives are available. Yes, that is the same option as 1. It was just a bit more detailed.
3. Stop using nuclear power in no later than 10 years.

The result was an even spread between the three options. Option 2 won by an extremely narrow margin. After that a parliament decision was made to ban permits for new nuclear power reactors; to ban the planning and/or design of new power reactors; to close all 12 power reactors no later than 2010, that is to say thirty 30 years. The point was very clear: in the year 2010, nuclear power will be dead in Sweden. Big bummer, but at least everyone knew the rules and the politicians breathed a sigh of relief in that the hot potato had been thrown away and needent be bothered with. For a while that is…

From “No!” to “Probably not”

In the 1990′s it was clear that the replacements for nuclear power in Sweden were not doing much progress. Sweden has always had a very strong production base of hydro power. But for environmental reasons there was/is also a ban on building new dams in the remaining untouched grand rivers of northern Sweden. Wind power wasn’t taking off at all. Solar is right out of the question at these latitudes. Energy savings were not happening to any great degree. And we still had a pretty large usage of oil for heating, especially with Sweden being deep frozen for several months each year.

It was strongly suggested that there would not be a replacement for the 50% of electricity production that nuclear provided.

Things took a turn for the worse when in 1997 the final date of 2010 was removed. But instead of giving a new end date this was replaced by a law that said nuclear power would be abandoned, but without fixed date. The government was also with “Dismantlement law” given the right to at drop the hatchet on any power reactor, at any time. This happened in 1999 and 2005 when the two reactors at the Barsebäck nuclear power plant were forced out of operation ahead of time.

Still however, the replacements failed to materialize.

Mid-naughties

At around 2005 it was dreadfully obvious that nuclear power would not be gone in Sweden by the year 2010. The deficit in production capability after Barsebäck’s 1 230 MW were removed from the grid was also getting noticable, especially during cold-spells in the winter.

However a problem had accumulated in that the remaing ten reactors were in dire need of service and upgrades. Originally scheduled to be run only until 2010, they had not been serviced and/or upgraded for operations after that. After all: what kind idiots on a nuclear company board would approve pouring billions of cash into the reactors when it had been clear it would be a total waste… at least for as long as there was a clear end date, and still pretty much so with the Damocles sword of the 1997 law hanging over each reactor ready to kill any investment poured into them.

But finally the order was given: about face! Not only would the reactors get a life-time extension – something they were not built for in the first place – but some of them would also get a power output upgrade. The nuclear industry now had to in less than 5-10 years do what they should have been doing the past 25-30 years.

Needless to say this didn’t go well at all and when work started in 2009, the time tables were horrendously underestimated. The work dragged out well into the winter. In January 2010 four out of ten reactors were offline when the worst cold-spell in over ten years kicked in and we were nearing brown-outs. We made it through though… but only “thanks” to heavy imports and starting up the reserve oilfired plants.  

The great surprise

In January of 2009 however, the current center-right coalition government announed they had reached an agreement. The previously ardently opposing Center Party had been swayed and agreed to lift the ban on building new reactors. This caused a huge stir and the left wing red-green opposition parties – with the Green Party in particular – opposed this idea. Never the less the proposal was worked out. The final draft was this:

• The dismantlement law of 1997 would be removed
• Permits for new reactors, of any capacity, would again be allowed to be given
• Only replacements for old reactors will be allowed, once an old reactor is slated to be decommissioned
• The liability for reactor owners would be raised to european standards, which means 1.2 billion EUR must be guaranteed to be available immediately, and there will no upper limit to the liability in long terms, meaning company assets may be confiscated to make up for any cost above the 1.2 billion
• No government subsidies for building new reactors

The vote and the future

Today, June 17 2010, the parliament of Sweden finally accepted the proposal. It was by a very narrow margin with 174 votes against 172 and three not present (= 349 seats). The road getting there was a tough one and at one point it even looked as if up to four parliament members would go rogue and oppose the proposal, which would have felled it. In the end only two of those remained and so it was passed.

The debate that preceded the vote was a furious one and especially the Greens went on an all out attack. The spokesperson for energy policies for the Green Party – Mr. Per Bolund – didn’t hold back on the scare mongering while in the chair and promised new Chernobyls, terrorism, and all sorts of maladies if the proposal was accepted. He even went as far as to read a witness statement from a widow of one of the firefighters that died at Chernobyl. 

Needless to say I and the others from NPYP that were following the live debate were hopping mad at this kind of horrible propaganda. Refreshingly enough though they got some very nice bite-backs from the centre-right representatives. One of the best ones was this (quoted from memory so it is not perfectly quoted):

“If what you are saying is true Mr. Bolund, why are you and your red-green buddies not proposing an immediate shutdown of our reactors? If there is this immediate danger which you claim, why are you not saying you’ll shut them down immediately if you come into power, but instead gradually phasing them out? Do you even believe what you are saying, or is it just empty rethorics?”.

The propsal was accepted, but the story is not over just yet. In September this year there is the Swedish parliament election. This election assigns all seats in parliament (which is the sole legislative body) and also decides which party or parties will form the government for the upcoming 4 years. The red-green coalition has said that they will tear up the decision made today if they win this election.

We are looking at a new very exciting summer and early fall when it comes to the future of nuclear power in Sweden.

A common argument against nuclear power is this:

“We don’t actually need nuclear power, because we could potentially use other clean sources of energy”.

I am not going to argue against that particular statement, because it is true. We could potentially rid ourselves of nuclear power and have clean energy from other sources.

There are a few implications and practical matters that must be addressed though. So let’s take this kind of reasoning a few steps further. What other areas is this statement true for? What more could we potentially be without?

Do we actually need any of these?

Seat belts

We could potentially be without seat belts. Seat belts in cars restrict our movement and freedom. We wouldn’t need them if it wasn’t for accidents that happen. If we make sure no accidents happen we will not need seat belts. This is potentially possible to achieve, by training all drivers to drive safe and perfect, and restricting the maximum speed for car travel to 20 kph/15 mph.

Vaccines

We could potentially be without vaccines. Mankind obviously made it all the way to the 19th century without vaccines, so saying we need them to survive as a species obviously isn’t true. Now some people may say that getting sick is unacceptable and we need to prevent certain illnesses such as polio, measles, meningitis, and HIV/AIDS. But this need may potentially still be fulfilled by other means, such as restricting travel between administrative regions, using facemasks and condoms at all times, and to quarantine any person that can be suspected to be a carrier of an illness.

Laws

We could potentially be without laws. All we need to do is train every citizen to be a good and honest person. Since some persons go through an entire life without acting morally reprehensible it is potentially possible for all 7 billion persons of the world to do it. We don’t actually need laws, law enforcement, courts, and correctional facilities because it would be so much better if people just didn’t commit crimes.

Checks and Balances, Freedom of Speech

We could potentially do fine without checks and balances, or without freedom of speech. All we have to do is make sure that the government does everything we need without having to check up on it, or protest against it when it does something we don’t like. It would be so much better if the government was perfect to begin with.

…and so on.

The examples could go on. When looking at things bare and naked, we only actually need…

• air to breathe
• food to eat
• protection from the elements
• procreation

…to thrive as a species. Every other species on the planet gets by just fine on this. Everything else is not a need per se but instead “nice to have” features.

However…

These goals have not been reached. We are not there yet. And the fact that we could potentially get there one day does not diminish the fact that we are not there now, meaning we cannot ignore road accidents, crippling and killing illnesses, crime or government abuse of power.

When it comes to energy 85% - that is 17 parts in 20 – comes from polluting fossil fuels and similar dirty sources. The external costs for this in terms of loss of life, lowered quality of life, monetary costs and loss of production are not acceptable. There is next to universal consensus that particle pollution and gaseous emissions from the use of fossil fuels is a very bad thing. There is a clear and present need to cut down on or entirely eradicate the use of fossil fuels, because they are killing us, something which also cannot be ignored.

So until these needs have been fixed, I don’t know about you, but I feel rather keen on keeping my seat belt, vaccines, laws, cops, jails, this silly little thing called freedom of speech… and nuclear power.

If you want to tell me that we should not have any or all of these, I will not be satisfied by hearing you say what we potentially could have instead. I want to see you tell me what we will have instead, and back that statement it up with solid guarantees and a time table I can take to the bank. Because I’m not betting my life or health on potentially good things.

Credits to Mark Knopfler and Sting for this excellent song, 25 years and still going strong(er).

Everyone that has debated online has come across them: the trolls… the Phelps of forum debate… those that are living breathing proof of the Dunning-Kruger effect. And when it comes to haters of nuclear power, there certainy is alot of them!

They normally piss me off something immensely. But in two particular instances, I was inspired. I noticed that the trolls in question had lots of ads on their blogs where they did their inflammatory postings. And with that, a riff got stuck in my head.

So the next time you find yourself deadlocked against some troll that seems more impervious to logic, reasoning and science based fact than a vogon is to water, just hum this to yourself.

Enjoy.

You can find the music for listening on Spotify (requires client) or Grooveshark (web-based).

Money For Trolling (And The Clicks For Free)

Music and original lyrics: Money for Nothing – Mark Knopfler, Sting, 1984
Parody lyrics: Michael Karnerfors, 2010
License for music and original lyrics: Commercial – Vertigo Records (UK), Warner Bros. Records Inc. (US)
License for parody lyrics: Creative Commons 3.0 – Attribution, Share-Alike

I want my revenue…

Now look at them bloggers. That’s the way you do it.
You post some nonsense on the web with glee.
That ain’t working. That’s the way you do it.
Money for trolling and the clicks for free.

Now that ain’t working. That’s the way you do it.
Let me tell you. Them trolls ain’t dumb.
Maybe get a blister on your mousing finger.
Maybe get a blister on your thumb.

We got to post and do some more flaming.
Get TradeDoubler and some Google ads.
We got to click these ads and banners.
We got some mighty big trolls to feed.

That little spammer with the adverts for Viagra.
Yeah buddy that’s his own site.
That little spammer got his own web startup.
That little spammer he’s a millionaire.

We got to post and do some more flaming.
Get TradeDoubler and some Google ads.
We got to click these ads and banners.
We got some mighty big trolls to feed.

Ooh I click my…

Got to post and do some more flaming.
Get TradeDoubler and some Google ads.
We got to click these ads and banners.
Got some mighty big trolls to feed.

Look at him, look at…

I should’ve learned to post on WordPress.
I should’ve learned Blogspot too.
Look at that mama. She’s got it stickin’ in the webcam.
Man, we can have some.

And he’s up there. What’s that? A shocker website.
He’s banging some gorilla while he’s in a tree.
Oh that ain’t working. That’s the way you do it.
Get your money for trolling and the clicks for free.

We got to post and do some more flaming.
Get TradeDoubler and some Google ads.
We got to click these ads and banners.
We got some mighty big trolls to feed.

Listen here. Now…

That ain’t workin’. That’s the way you do it.
You post some nonsense on the web with glee.
That ain’t workin’. That’s the way you do it.
Money for trolling and the clicks for free.

Money for trolling
and the clicks for free.

Get your money for trolling
and the clicks for free.

Look at that, look at that.

I want my…
I want my…
I want my revenue.

I want my…
I want my…
I want my revenue.

UPDATE: Voting is now closed. Thank you all who did vote for us. We got 49 thumbs up and 10 thumbs down. Not too shabby. Now let’s aim for COP16.

Vote for us at COP 15.

Click here to go to the voting page.

At the time of writing, world leaders are gathering in Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

YouTube, their owners Google, and the host of the conference, the Danish foreign ministry is allowing people to post questions to be voted for. On tuesday the 15′th, the most voted for questions will be asked to the world leaders.

Nuclear Power Yes Please has a question to ask too…

This is a very unsafe stairway, because it is physically impossible for you to fall over the side and hurt yourself. Uhm... what?!

(Image source)

Every now and then I come across (link in Swedish) the following argument against nuclear power:

“All the safety devices, procedures, regulation and supervision prove that nuclear power is unsafe.”

And it baffles me every time, because what that boils down to is someone saying something that means: “It’s unsafe because it’s so safe!”.

The (lack of) logic reasoning applied to something else, say a staircase, is exemplified thus:

- This staircase is unsafe, because it has a railing!

- How do you mean?

- Because if the railing wasn’t there, I could fall over the side and hurt myself.

- Yes but the railing is there to stop you from falling over the side and hurting yourself.

- Exactly, so the staircase is unsafe, because it needs the railing.

- But the railing is an integral part of the staircase now. Are you suggesting you can run right through a two inch thick stainless steel railing?

- Well if I could I’d fall over the side and hurt myself.

- So… can you make your way through stainless steel railing or not?

- That’s not the point! The point is that it needs the railing so it’s unsafe!

- Look, not only does it have the railing, but the railing is in turn stuck to a concrete wall that goes all the way up to the ceiling.

- Oh my!! Then it’s really unsafe if it has that much safety! Now I won’t got near that damned thing because I just know I’ll fall over the side and hurt myself!

…and so on.

Kafka would have a field-day with this…

“Every Swedish citizen shall be entitled to have free access to official documents, in order to encourage the free exchange of opinion and the availability of comprehensive information.”

The paragraph above is the first act of the second chapter of The Freedom of The Press act, a cornerstone of the Swedish constitution. In short chapter two, titled “On the public nature of official documents”, says that if I as a Swedish citizen wish to take part of any official document, I am entitled to have swift access to it, no questions asked.

The term “official document” is rather wide and includes pretty much any document in a publicly funded institution, exceptions being only work in progress, private non-work related messages, and documents that have explicitly been classified as non-public.

This is one of the first things they bring up in Swedish law classes. I had an introductory law course in the mid 1990′s while getting my Masters Degree in Computer Science and Engineering. With the perverse pleasure that law-wranglers find in exploring the consequences of laws, the lecturer exemplified the extent of chapter two thus:

“You are perfectly allowed to walk into any public institution and say: “Hello. I intend to cause this institution some harm. Would you be so kind as to hand over today’s mail please?”, and they are compelled by the constitution to grant your request”.

Yes, even the mail of a Swedish public institution are official documents. Pretty much any document that comes into, or comes out from such an institution is official, and as such all Swedish citizens are entitled access to them.

Skip forward about 14 years and we land on October 5, 2009, when a question popped into my mind: does this include emails to university employees as well? A quick ask-around and the question was answered: yes, it does. Emails to and from publicly funded Swedish universities are subject to chapter two, and as such they are official documents.

So I posted a request to the registry office of the Royal Institute of  Technology (KTH), asking for the emails of Peter Szakalos, five years back. I knew from a private contact that KTH uses Microsoft Exchange as their email system. I further knew how easy it is to make a copy of an inbox in MS Exchange and save it to a file. I made the request unspecific in order to save them some work in that they shouldn’t have to have to sort through the email for specifics. Just grab the official part of the email and send it as an archive file. Piece of cake.

The question everyone keeps asking me at this point is “Why?”. The answer is: curiosity about the discussion that led up to the conclusion that copper corrodes in anoxic environments and that KBS-3 may fail the authority review. Who was involved? Was there any sort of pressure on Szakalos? What parties are interested in this and have they been trying to get involved? Are there “politics” and non-scientific interests trying to push the result either way? That’s why… and also partly because I figured this ought to be a unobtrusive, simple request that causes no particular disturbance to anyone.

I had no idea wat was about to happen…

The first hint that this might not be as smooth a ride as I expected was when the registry office at KTH mailed back after two days (so much for “as soon as possible” spelled out in the constitution) saying that they had received the request and intended to send the materials over… on paper.

Five years of email correspondence on paper?! I asked them: “are you sure about this? It’ll just muck things up for both parties”.

They replied and restated their intentions because “KTH’s policy is to always send paper copies when official documents are requested”.

Well “fine” I told them, I cannot ask them to break offical policy, but “isn’t it at this point prudent to ask for an exception from or an expansion of the policy”?

They didn’t email me back on that. So I waited a day… and then another day. Not a word from KTH. More days passed. Eventually I almost forgot about it. I figured maybe they were trying to find away out of sending the whole thing on paper because, in the words of Douglas Adams, “the mere idea is, quite clearly, utterly ludicrous”.

Two weeks later on October 21, a friend of mine that knew of the request for email calls up, tells me to go to the homepage of “Ny Teknik” (translates to “New Tech”), a Swedish weekly tech newspaper. He tells me to scroll down the main page. What I found first made me laugh out loud, for real. And then my mind reeled when I read further, and realized my request had turned out to be everything except unobtrusive.

There were speculations about the nuclear industry trying to sabotage and silence Peter Szakalos.

What the fuck had I done?!

To be continued…

I have had some crazy last few days, culminating with a Swedish newspaper calling me and asking me if I am a saboteur trying to wreck a scientist’s work on behalf of the nuclear industry! Whatever prompted anyone to ask something that bizarre? Well, the whole thing started over 30 years ago…

Anyone using fissionable material in Sweden is by law responsible for the safekeeping and disposal of the end-products. We’re not allowing reprocessing, and we’re not allowing the export of highly radioactive waste products, so we have to deposit any such materials.

To that end, the Swedish nuclear power companies formed the Swedish Nuclear Fuel And Waste Management Company, SKB for short for the purpose to researching a viable method to deposit spent nuclear fuel that is acceptable for the public as well as politically. Not that we didn’t know of viable methods since such methods were known since the early 70′s. But only very few of them were palatable, so we needed a bit of research of our own.  The project “KärnBränsleSäkerhet” (Nuclear fuel safety), or KBS for short, was started in 1976. In 1983 the third report of this project, KBS-3, was put forth and it proposed what is most likely a solution to the nuclear waste problem.

KBS-3 explained, click for a bigger image. © SKB

To summarize KBS-3, it describes a deep bedrock repository, 500 meters down where the fuel will be contained by three independent barriers. Tunnels will be made in the bedrock, and holes will be drilled out from the tunnels. Each hole will be lined with watertight bentonite clay, and in each of these holes a friction-welded canister made from 5 cm thick corrosion-resistant copper, with cast iron insets holding the nuclear fuel, will be placed. Slow moving water in the bedrock will wetten the bentonite  clay, which will swell to a pressure of up to 50 atmospheres, sealing all cracks and fissures, thereby preventing water movement around the canisters. When the repository is full, all tunnels will be filled with bentonite clay and the access tunnel may be filled to the surface with Portland cement. From then on, around the year 2070, it can be left there, maintenance-free for 100 000 years until the waste has decayed to a level of radioactivity that is the same as uranium ore. 

SKB has been performing research up ’til now to verify that KBS-3 holds. Using data from natural analogues such as Oklo, Gabon; Littleham Cove, UK; Cigar lake, Canada; along with theoretical analysis, experiments and simulations; they have been verifying that the different barriers should hold. And in late 2010/early 2011 SKB will be handing the final proposal, along with all the research, to the authorities for validation and being granted a permit to build the Swedish nuclear fuel repository.

However there is a cloud looming on the horizon. Up until now, it has been assumed that in the oxygen-depleted, reducing environment that exists in the Swedish bedrock chosen at Forsmark, copper cannot possibly corrode. But a team of scientists from Uppsala University (UU) and Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)  claim they have performed research where they have been able to make copper corrode under anoxic conditions. We have written about that before.

This has caused a bit of a stir because this research has not been independently verified yet. It has not been published in a peer reviewed manner. And SKB says that despite being given all these claims since years back, they haven’t been able to reproduce the results. Putting further spin on this is that the scientists have patented a method of coating the capsules, someting which they claim solves the supposed problem with corroding copper. So we find ourselves in a situation where SKB says “We cannot confirm this is a problem” and the scientists Szakalos and Hultqvist are saying “But it is indeed a problem!”. So in mid-November this year, there will be a workshop where Szakalos, representatives from SKB, and other researchers get together to discuss this matter in an effort to try to reach consensus.

And this is where I stepped into the picture and accidentally caused a bloody mess…

Continued in part 2…

The upshot of this is that Merkel does not have to have the nuclear hostile SPD or the Green Party on her government, which in turn means that the German moratorium on nuclear power can now be reviewed and perhaps dropped.

If this happens it means that with Sweden, the UK, Italy and Germany reconcidering their stances on nuclear power and moving in favour of this form of energy, 2009 is a year of tremendous success for European nuclear friends.

How the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives used nurses to lie to the government.

Surveys and questionnaires are a simple and effective way of gauging people’s opinions. The result can then in turn be used to influence the opinions other people hold, most often to become opinions you want people to have.  And the more supposedly trustworthy the people you survey are, the greater you can expect the compliance to be.

Let me show you an example of this. This is a TV advert from 1949.

Simple enough isn’t it? If many medical doctors like this brand of cigarette, it must be really good, right? Right! Doctors can’t be wrong. Moving along…

Surveys and questionnaires that you make yourself have a nice bonus: you can make them any way you want. The advantage of this is that if you phrase the questions just right, you can get any answer you want.

Credits to Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance

But the example above is just a comic, right? It’s irony. They wouldn’t do like this in real life. Noone would ever dream abusing the confidence and good standing that people such as medical and healthcare professionals enjoy, right?

Right?

Wrong…

[Saskatchewan] nurses oppose reactor for isotope development

Last Updated: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | 3:40 PM CT

Nurses in Saskatchewan say they appreciate the value of nuclear medicine but do not want the province to build a nuclear reactor so that it can start manufacturing medical isotopes.

The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) presented its views Tuesday to Dan Perrins, who is heading the public consultation process on uranium development on behalf of the provincial government.

Rosalee Longmore, the president of SUN, presented Perrins with a study that reviewed the medical literature on nuclear reactors. The union also released the results of an email survey of its members.

According to the union, 822 nurses responded to the two questions posed. Prior to asking the questions, the survey outlined for the nurses four examples of health concerns related to nuclear reactors.

The survey found that 61.8 per cent of nurses who replied did not support the development of a nuclear power facility.

The second question asked whether nurses were concerned about the health implications of a nuclear power plant, and 89.9 per cent of respondents said they were.

(click for the rest of the article)

At first glance there’s nothing wrong with this article, nor the survey. They asked a big bunch of nurses of they are worried about nuclear power having adverse effects on people’s health and many of them said “yes”. Simple enough and nothing suspicious.

That is until you read the survey. Note the highlight above: “Prior to asking the questions, the survey outlined for the nurses four examples of health concerns related to nuclear reactors”. What were these supposed “concerns”? I quote from the survey:

The purpose of this survey is to get your professional opinion about the implications of nuclear energy on population health. Please read the following examples of evidence and answer the two questions at the end.

The survey website is 100% confidential- there is no way to track your name or your e-mail address.

1. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation found that the excess relative risk of incidence of total solid cancers after exposure to radiation is 43% for males and 81% for females. The excess relative risk of mortality from total solid cancers after exposure to radiation is 34% for males and 65% for females. Clear evidence of site specific cancers associated with doses of radiation include lung cancer, breast cancer (females), thyroid cancer, salivary gland cancer, rectal cancer (females), bone cancer (males), non melanoma skin cancer, ovarian cancer, urinary bladder cancer, kidney cancer (females) and brain cancer (males).

2. The largest study to review the effects of chronic low-dose exposure of ionizing radiation on health outcomes and mortality included 407,391 nuclear power workers that were followed for an average duration of 12.8 years. All-cause mortality within nuclear industry workers had an excess relative risk of 42% and all cancer mortality had an excess relative risk of 97%. In Canada, the excess relative risk of all cancer mortality for nuclear industry workers was 665%.

3. Many papers have been written about the nuclear power plant explosion at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The World Health Organization predicts 4000 additional cancer deaths from the most exposed groups (emergency workers and evacuees). Significant increases in thyroid cancer in children were not only found in the Ukraine but also in Belarus, Russia, Czechoslovakia and as far as the United Kingdom (a 584% increase in Belarus). As well, increases in leukemia in children were found in contaminated areas across Europe including the Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Turkey, Greece and Germany (a 350% increase in Ukraine).

4. The only known health concern for people that live near nuclear power facilities is leukemia in children. A German study found that children below the age of 5 that live within 5 kilometers of a nuclear facility have a 119% increased risk of leukemia whereas children that live within 10 kilometers have a 33% increased risk.

After getting prepped with these “examples of evidence”, the nurses then answered the following two questions:

1) What is your professional opinion regarding the development of a nuclear power facility?

A. I support the development of a nuclear power facility.

B. I have conditional support for the development of a nuclear power facility providing all health concerns to residents, workers and children are addressed.

C. I do not support the development of a nuclear power facility.

2) Are you concerned about the health implications of a nuclear power plant?

A. Yes

B. No

And as quoted from CBC News above above, the majority to the responding nurses answered negatively about the prospect of a nuclear power facility.

I am not surprised. Had I not known much (or anything) about nuclear power, and someone had stuck that questionnaire under my nose while at the same time saying “Did you know that nuclear power gives children cancer?!”, I too would probably have answered in a negative manner. But is the evidence is right? Where did it come from? Is it correct? What did they tell the nurses about the origin of this “evidence”?

According to one of the commenters to the CBC News article, a nurse tried to get an answer to that, but got none:

When my mom received this email from the Union she asked for the references to the medical articles that deal with these issues but the reply did not contain any such articles. They are basically just 4 examples of health concerns that ‘everybody talks about’ so they must be true.

And when I looked at the statements, at least one old friend popped up: the German study on child cancers around nuclear power plants. You know… the one where the researchers themselves thought the result was odd because it went against what was known from other studies, and that they have no clue why they got their result, only that it was not radiation. We wrote about that before.

It turns out that this entire thing was a commission by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives (Saskatchewan office) and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses. CCPA is not exactly fond of nuclear power, which a quick search on their website reveals. As the CBC News article above mentions, in June 2009 there was a “public consultation process on uranium development on behalf of the provincial government”. In short they were asking the public what they feel about uranium development in Saskatchewan.

The CCPA and SUN set out to find a guy to dig up dirt on nuclear power. They picked Mark Lemstra, a fellow with an impressive amount of degrees (susiciously many even), and who makes a living on digging up the information you want. By outsourcing the dirt-digging, they managed to get a report which says…

There are no direct or indirect conflicts of interest to declare. This report is an independent review of the association between exposure to radiation and subsequent health outcomes. At no time was the author asked to lead the discussion of this report in one direction or another.

…and compiled these four bits of “evidence” to tilt the questionnaire. So when they went to the Government of Saskatchewan, they were able to say to them with a fairly straight face that the nurses did not like the idea of a nuclear power plant after having been presented with supposedly impartial evidence that nuclear power is bad and causes cancer.

This was of course complete bullshit because, as you have already guessed, there was nothing impartial about that report, nor the way it was used. Once you start reading through it – Exposure to Radiation and Health Outcomes – you quickly find that it is extremely negatively biased against nuclear power, and does not remain focused on radiation and health. Apart from mentioning the weak German cancer study, it goes on to make lengthy statements about for instance how nuclear power according to some report cannot save the planet from the climate crisis because it cannot be built fast enough (which is not true). Another section delves into the problems of the Olkiluoto 3 project,  which clearly has nothing to do with neither radiation nor health.

The final nail in the coffin that this was a commissioned opinon job and not at all the question of rightfully concerned nurses is perhaps when it turns out that the survey was also conducted by Lemstra. 

Not only did Mark Lemstra write the "concerns" for the CCPA and SUN, he also hosted the survey.

Apparently he gave them a package deal here, both the “evidence” to make a tilted survey, plus the survey as well. He was with the CCPA and SUN from start ’til finish and not at all some independent researcher providing impartial evidence. I’d like to see  a bank statement saying just how much Lemstra got for this little spinjob.

My perhaps favorite part of his report is the A section. It deals with how “exposure to radiation” causes death. The fact that some exposure to radiation can cause cancer or even acute radiation sickness has been known for over 60 years now. But a major factor here is the dose and during what time you got this dose. We live in constant bombardment of radiation from space; the sun; the ground; our food and even our own bodies. Small doses of radiation is a part of our lives and has been since the birth of life on this planet. So small doses matter not while big doses does.

I looked very closely at section A to find any mention of doses. There were none. So basically the entire section was as useless as if someone had written “Being exposed to water causes death”… which is true… if exposed to 5 liters of water in your lungs or if a 20 kilogram icicle falls from a roof onto your head! But that doesn’t mean I’ll quit exposing myself to water in the morning, along with some soap and shampoo.

To conclude: this is yet another one to file under the “Desperate nuclear opponents” section. The Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses join the World Wildlife Foundation and Greenpeace among those that are getting so utterly desperate in their attempts to oppose nuclear power they’ll throw everything including the kitchen sink at it.

When pressed about a specific issue where Greenpeace appeared to have exaggerated their claims, Leipold admitted they are “emotionalizing issues”, and that they do it willfully and consciously. He went on to defend this practice saying that they do not feel they gain enough sympathy for their statements if they do not “emotionalize” their messages.

We, as a pressure group, have to emotionalize issues, and we are not ashamed of emotionalizing issues.

Gerd Leipold – Executive Director of Greenpeace International, 2009

He may call it “emotionalizing”, but  that is merely a euphemism for scare-tactics, FUD and propaganda. When he calls it “emotionalizing” he is in effect green-washing the act of lying.

Greenpeace was not late to react to this and the signature “Brian” posted a blog entry lambasting BBC, saying they got it wrong about the factoid that triggered the confession. But while that blog post may be technically correct, it is insignificant because Leipold still admitted that “emotionalizing” is indeed a Greenpeace tactic.

If Greenpeace cannot argue their cases without “emotionalizing”, they are not only justifying skepticism, but rather necessitating it. This confession shows that scrutiny is long overdue. It proves it’s time we started looking at if they know what the heck they are talking about or just bilking sympathizers for money with whatever fairy stories they can come up with.

After all… we don’t exactly lack examples of  “emotionalizing” in the nuclear issue from Greenpeace…