Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
to be as much as 70 percent higher than in other parts of the country.
A 2007 study in Germany documented a childhood leukemia cluster
surrounding two nuclear establishments near Hamburg.
Sealing the lid on the positive relationship between radiation from the
operation of nuclear power plants and cancer in children is a report
published in 2002 in the
Archives of Environmental Health
.
21
The
researchers found that local infant deaths and childhood cancer rates
dropped dramatically following the closure of eight U.S. nuclear plants.
Infant mortality fell 17.4 percent in counties lying up to forty miles
downwind of nuclear reactors in the two years following the closure of
the reactors. Over the same period, the national decline was only 6.4
percent.
22
There have been studies of the rate of cancers among workers in
nuclear power plants in the United Kingdom and at nuclear weapons
facilities across the United States.
23
Workers at the Sellafi eld nuclear
plant in the United Kingdom and their children were found to have twice
the normal risk of leukemia and lymphoma than others in the region.
Among the children, the incidence of these cancers was fi fteen times
greater in a small village next to the nuclear plant. The risk for the chil-
dren rose in line with the radiation dose received by their fathers. The
U.S. government study found a high incidence of twenty-two different
types of cancer at fourteen nuclear weapons facilities. And there is evi-
dence that working in such plants affects both the body cells and sperm
of male employees.
Some studies have failed to fi nd increases in cancers in those living
near nuclear plants. There is no known explanation for these results. The
Nuclear Energy Institute, which promotes the use of nuclear energy to
generate electricity, says, “Even if you lived right next door to a nuclear
power plant, you would receive less radiation each year than you would
receive in just one round-trip fl ight from New York to Los Angeles. You
would have to live near a nuclear power plant for over 2,000 years to
get the same amount of radiation exposure that you get from a single
diagnostic medical X-ray.”
24
The institute has not commented on the
radiation-induced cancers I have described.
Fanatical Terrorists and Nuclear Power
Safety and security are interconnected because the systems, processes,
and procedures that protect a plant and the public from accidents during
normal operations are the same ones that are used to prevent a release
