Study to focus on cancer risk near US nuclear plants

Thursday, 8 April 2010

A new study by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on cancer risk for people living close to nuclear power plants is likely to begin this summer, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has announced.

US National Academy of Sciences (Image: JD Talasek/NAS)

The NRC has formally asked the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine to carry out a state-of-the-art study to enable it to update 1990 work by the National Cancer Institute (known as the NCI Report) which the NRC currently relies on as a primary resource in public communications. The National Research Council and Institute of Medicine are the operating and healthcare arms of the NAS, a non-governmental organisation established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to create an independent adviser for the US government on science and technology matters.

The NAS's broad range of medical and scientific experts would provide the "best available analysis of the complex issues involved in discussing cancer risk and commercial nuclear power plants," according to Brian Sheron, director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. Administrative details will be finalised over the coming months so that the study can start in the summer, according to NRC.

The NRC wants the new study to include evaluations of cancer diagnosis rates as well as mortality, and also wants it to look at dividing study areas into smaller geographical units than the counties used in the earlier NCI report.

The NCI report, Cancer in populations living near nuclear facilities, studied more than 900,000 cancer deaths from 1950-1984 from mortality records in counties containing nuclear facilities. At the time, it was the broadest study of its type ever to be conducted. The NCI report showed no increased risk of death from cancer for residents of the 107 US counties containing or closely adjacent to 62 nuclear sites including all of the country's power reactors operational before 1982.

Jury out on clusters

Numerous studies into public health in the vicinity of nuclear facilities have been carried out all over the world over the years. In the UK, significantly elevated childhood leukaemia levels, known as clusters, have been observed near the Sellafield site as well as elsewhere in the country. No clear reasons have yet been advanced for the clusters, but nuclear sources were ruled out as a contributory factor in the Sellafield cluster in reports issued by the UK's independent Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) in 2005 and 2006.

A 2007 German epidemiological study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants, known as the KiKK (Kinderkrebs in der Umgebung von Kernkraftwerken) study, found an increased risk of cancer and especially leukaemia for children under five years old living within 5 kilometres of a nuclear power plant. The study was carried out by the German Childhood Cancer Registry on behalf of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (Bundesamt für Strahlenshutz, BfS) and looked into the occurrence of cancers - but not their causes. In fact, no causal link between the presence of the nuclear power plants and the cancers was found, despite the publicity given to the report by nuclear opponents.

As BfS itself noted in a statement released in early 2009, no scientific proof had been found to suggest that discharges from the reactors could be solely responsible for the diseases. Indeed, the BfS noted that radioactive discharges from the power stations were around a thousand times too small to account for the increase.

 
Researched and written

by World Nuclear News