Energy Matters blog by
Roger Witherspoon

For the past 20 years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has used an epidemiologically invalid study to reassure the public that the continuous release of radioactive material from power plants into the surrounding regions did not contribute to increases in cancer.

To correct that unsubstantiated claim, the NRC has contracted with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a two year study of both cancer incidence and mortality around former, current, and proposed nuclear reactor sites. The $5 million study, which is expected to take a year to design and two more years to complete, would be the first, comprehensive, government study of the health implications of the continuous release of radioactive into the air and water around nuclear facilities.

It would replace the 1990 study conducted for the NRC by the National Institutes of Health – National Cancer Institute titled “Cancer in Populations Living Near Nuclear Facilities.” That study concluded that the continuous release of radioactive gas, liquids, and particles – both intentionally and accidentally – did not contribute to the cancer mortality rates in the counties surrounding the 62 reactor sites housing 107 reactors. From an epidemiological standpoint, that study was flawed in its conception and implementation, and hampered by a dearth of data.

According to an NRC statement, the NIH-NCI study involved a review of more than 900,000 cancer deaths from 1950 – 1984 using mortality records from the counties surrounding nuclear sites. The study looked at just 16 types of cancers, evaluating changes on a county-wide basis. The problem with that methodology is that cancers triggered by long term exposure to radioactive particles takes years to develop – and the nation’s nuclear plants being studied came online in the late 1970s to 1982.

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