Nuclear power: A public health threat

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Nastya, from Belarus was only three years old when she was diagnosed
with cancer of the uterus and lungs. According to local doctors the
region has seen a huge increase in childhood cancer cases since the
Chernobyl disaster.

Nastya of Belarus was diagnosed with uterus and lung cancer at age three, in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster which is expected to cause about 270,000 cancers.

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The nuclear industry has tried hard to clean up its deadly image and convince the public it could be a solution to climate change. Yet beneath the hype, nuclear power is still the same dirty, dangerous and cancer-causing industry. Women and children are most vulnerable to the effects of nuclear radiation.

How radiation affects you

When ionizing radiation transfers its energy to a person’s body, it can destroy or harm molecules and kill cells.

Severe exposure: At very high doses, this radiation can quickly make a person sick, or even kill them. This took place in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster for those most severely affected.

Lower-level exposure: At lower doses, radiation can still damage your cells’ genetic material. A mutation may result, which can turn into a cancer years on. If the genetic material of sperm or ova (eggs cells) is damaged, these genetic changes can be passed onto a person’s children. Women are more sensitive to radiation than men, children more sensitive than adults.

“… more infants die when the existing Clinton [nuclear] reactor is running, and fewer die when it is not. The same pattern has occurred near other US nuclear plants. So adding one or more reactors would place local babies at even greater risk.”

Scientist Joseph Mangano and medical doctor Samuel Epstein
Radiation and Public Health Project

Because cancer can be caused by damage to just one single cell’s nucleus, scientists now generally agree there is no level at which radiation is completely safe. Ever-increasing knowledge of dangers posed by radiation explains why recommended exposure limits have been consistently lowered ever since they were first set in 1928.

Chernobyl’s deadly legacy

In the long list of nuclear power industry accidents, the most infamous is the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine.

Victims of the disaster have experienced damaged immune and endocrine systems, accelerated ageing, cardiovascular and blood illness, psychological illness, chromosomal aberrations and an increase of deformities in foetuses and children.

Read "The Chernobyl catastrophe: Consequences on human health

Great controversy surrounds Chernobyl’s true human toll. However, Greenpeace incorporated input from 52 scientists from around the world in a 2006 report that predicts more than a quarter of a million cancers and nearly 100,000 deaths will be the ultimate toll.

Analysis by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Society for Radiation Protection finds that 10,000 of those mostly severely exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl disaster have died as a result, while several hundred thousand more have become sick. At least ten thousand cases of thyroid cancer have occurred in Belarus alone, and in future more than 50,000 children will suffer from thyroid cancer. In Europe, they attribute at least 5,000 infant mortalities to Chernobyl. They call these numbers “conservative.”

IAEA figures criticised: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has put forth a figure of 4,000 fatal cancers. However, this figure has been criticised by doctors’ groups, because it only looks at the 600,000 people exposed to the highest levels of radiation. In fact, at least two billion people have been exposed to Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout. Among other oversights, the IAEA figure excludes people outside the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, and those born since 1986.

Routinely hazardous

Childhood cancer: Research from the US strongly suggests a link between routine nuclear power plant operation to increased rates of cancer and other immune disorders in young children since the early 1980s.

Radioactive strontium-90 and other dangerous radioactive products of nuclear fission (including cesium-137 and iodine-131) are released in small quantities into the air and water by normal operation of nuclear reactors. When these chemicals are taken up by eating, drinking or breathing, they increase risk of leukemia and cancers. Strontium-90 behaves like calcium and is deposited in teeth and bones.

From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, cancer incidence in children under age 10 rose 35.2 per cent in the five Florida counties closest to two nuclear reactors. The strontium-90 levels in baby teeth from the counties closest to the reactors were 44 per cent higher than other counties in Florida. High strontium-90 levels have also been shown in areas close to reactors in other US states. As you might expect, strontium-90 levels were found to be higher in the teeth of children who developed cancer.

Breast cancer: Research in the US has also linked proximity to nuclear reactors to higher breast cancer and prostate cancer rates. For example, it was shown that women living within 100 miles of a reactor were at the greatest risk of dying of breast cancer.

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