Study: Nuclear Plant Shutdown May Have Led to 4,319 Fewer Cancer Cases

[madokie]

A little old but still relevant
.
Written by Brian Krans | Published on March 28, 2013


Researchers studying the incident rate of cancer for 20 years after the closing of a nuclear power plant find a noticeable drop in cancer for women, children, and Hispanics

Cancer and Nuclear Power

Closing a nuclear reactor in California has prevented an estimated 4,319 cases of cancer in the past 20 years, according to a new study released Thursday. Researchers studied the population of the state capitol of Sacramento, an area with more than 1.4 million people living within 25 miles of the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant.

Using 20 years worth of data, researchers found an overall drop in the incidence of all cancers, including six of the 16 most common types. The sharpest drop came within a decade of the plant's closing in 1989.

“These findings suggest that the closing of Rancho Seco reduced the risk to health for local residents, and provides a basis for conducting analyses on potential long-term health changes,” the study, published in the journal Biomedicine International, states.

link: http://www.healthline.com/health-news/policy-closing-nuclear-plant-prevents-thousands-of-cancer-cases-032813

I note the MAY part in the subject line. Causation between cancer and nuclear energy is hard to prove but this study shows its a tad more than chance alone.

[FreakinDJ]

1. Funny - that plant never ran

[kristopher]

4. You need to contact the NRC; they didn't get that memo.

FreakinDJ
1. Funny - that plant never ran

Rancho Seco initially went critical on September 16, 1974, and began commercial operation on April 18, 1975. In accordance with the results of a public referendum on June 6, 1989, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) decided to permanently shut down the Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station. Accordingly, on August 29, 1989, SMUD notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of its intent to seek amendments to the Rancho Seco operating license to decommission the facility. The Commission acknowledged the notification on November 27, 1989. SMUD completely defueled the Rancho Seco reactor on December 8, 1989. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an Order and license condition on May 2, 1990, that prevented SMUD from moving fuel into the Rancho Seco reactor building without prior NRC approval.

http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/power-reactor/rancho-seco-nuclear-generating-station.html

DU really needs to do something about our in-house information pollution problem

[PamW]

11. HARDLY even ran...

FreakinDJ overstates the case using the word "never" as in "never ran".

A better wording would be "hardly ever ran".

Sacramento Municipal Utility District was horrendously poor at operating Rancho Seco.

The Rancho Seco Plant is a twin to the 3 reactors at Duke Power's Oconee Nuclear Plant, which was the LEADING plant in terms of capacity factor for many years. That meant that that particular design has the potential to be up and running at full power most of the time.

Of course, that depends on the operators; and if the operator make numerous operating errors; as did SMUD; the plant will be down frequently.

Such was the case with Rancho Seco. The plant's lifetime capacity factor was only about 39%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating_Station

The plant operated from April 1975 to June 1989 but had a lifetime capacity average of only 39%;

The poor performance was one of the reasons the plant was closed by its owners; the citizens of Sacramento.

However, FreakinDJ is correct that a plant with such a poor record of operating COULDN'T POSSIBLY be responsible for the claimed health effects.

A backgrounder from the NRC on plant radiation emissions and the fraudulent "Tooth Fairy Project" of Mangano and Sherman:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tooth-fairy.html

Note that the NRC's contentions are well referenced by respected scientists as seen in the footnotes and references.

PamW

[NNadir]

13. Arguing with the selective attention squad, who hear what they want to hear, and...

...who - lacking even a fraction of a mote of a modicum of a whit of a particle of a scientific education, are pleased to repeat crap that kills people - is like arguing with a gasoline explosion.

And like many gasoiline explosions, killing people is exactly what this kind of misinformation does, since you never hear a protest from these people about the roughly six million people who die each year from air pollution, because simply put, they have no concept of epidemiology, or for that matter chemistry, physics or biology.

There is not one of them to be sure, who could pass a basic ethics course.

They spend there days searching the internet and cutting and pasting fringe crap to support what no credible scientific consensus supports is what they do. If you think this doesn't happen, one can still read mindless people running around the internet quoting Wing's study that everyone in Harrisburg PA died from Three Mile Island even though this study has been discredited oodles of times.

And then there's Ernie Steinglass, who was laughed out of the Health Physics Society for claiming in the 1960's that all of the babies in Connecticut were going to develop mouth cancer from Sr-90 in their baby teeth.

These people have concrete in their ears, concrete in their brains, but unfortunately little concrete in their mouths which flap nonsense endlessly, toxic nonsense.

One frequently reads LCA papers in the primary scientific literature showing that to be true, although regrettably, most note that the only thing preventing nuclear energy from saving more lives is the nebulous, and frankly appalling meme of "public acceptance."There are many hundreds of credible scientific reports that show that nuclear energy saves lives, but unfortunately, nuclear energy has been prevented from saving much of what it might have saved because of fear and ignorance.

Thus fear and ignorance have won, as the condition of the planetary atmosphere clearly demonstrates, but this is hardly the first time in human history that fear and ignorance have triumphed, even though currently the stakes are much higher than they were say, when a solution to the bubonic plague was claimed to be prayer, much as the solution for climate change is claimed, today, to be sheets of glass coated with toxic heavy metals, and massive greasy whirlygigs in the sky waiting for the wind. One thing that fear and ignorance do quite successfully is to increase human suffering, and the present case is no exception.

There is no evidence whatsoever over many years here that I've seen any evidence that any of these guys have ever opened a science book. The best I personally hope for them is that they're merely stoner waste cases, but a scarier thought is that they're not actually high and actually have jobs on which people's safety might depend.

[PamW]

14. AMEN!!

Nadir writes
These people have concrete in their ears, concrete in their brains, but unfortunately little concrete in their mouths which flap nonsense endlessly, toxic nonsense.

One frequently reads LCA papers in the primary scientific literature showing that to be true, although regrettably, most note that the only thing preventing nuclear energy from saving more lives is the nebulous, and frankly appalling meme of "public acceptance."There are many hundreds of credible scientific reports that show that nuclear energy saves lives, but unfortunately, nuclear energy has been prevented from saving much of what it might have saved because of fear and ignorance.

AMEN to that! AMEN!!

That's one of the reasons why I visit here; to help stamp out the scientific misinformation that is peddled as environmental propaganda.

Unfortunately, in order to educate people; they have to WANT the education.

Sadly, the environmentalists would prefer to wallow in the "greenie wet dreams" that can't possibly come true, since the violate the Laws of Physics.

But they'd rather have the dream; than help influence reality.

PamW

[FBaggins]

2. Sounds like yet another Mangano/Sherman cherry-pick.

Farcical to call it a "study".

[FreakinDJ]

3. Hate to say it - but ya

Here is the State wide analyses of radiated milk

http://oaspub.epa.gov/enviro/erams_query_v2.simple_output?Llocation=State&subloc=CA&media=PASTEURIZED+MILK&radi=Iodine-131&Fromyear=1978&Toyear=2011&units=Traditional


The milk in LA - 300 miles south had the same spike as the milk in Sacramento and San Francisco - 80 miles away

[kristopher]

5. Sounds like another baggy effort to 'poison the well'

[FBaggins]

6. He has a looong history of doing it.

Attaching yourself to such blatantly dishonest attempts at public manipulation only damages your own credibility.

[kristopher]

7. You're talking about yourself

[FBaggins]

8. "I know you are but what am I" ?

That's how far you've fallen?

Best to quit digging.

[kristopher]

9. That is your ONLY contribution on DU.

Anyone that reads this forum knows that your charge applies far more to you than any of the researchers you use it against. It is your standard shtick and it was already old hat 5 years ago.

[PamW]

10. Mangano/Sherman are JUNK SCIENCE FRAUDS

FBaggins,

FBaggins is CORRECT!!

Mangano / Sherman are WELL KNOWN SCIENTIFIC FRAUDS.

The scientific community has been DEBUNKING their CRAP for years.

Here's an article from Scientific American:

Are Babies Dying in the Pacific Northwest Due to Fukushima. A Look at the Numbers

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/06/21/are-babies-dying-in-the-pacific-northwest-due-to-fukushima-a-look-at-the-numbers/

This is not to say that the radiation from Fukushima is not dangerous (it is), nor that we shouldn’t closely monitor its potential to spread (we should). But picking only the data that suits your analysis isn’t science—it’s politics. Beware those who would confuse the latter with the former.

The people who cite or defend these acknowledged scientific frauds deserve our UPMOST OPPROBRIUM for they are themselves FRAUDS.

PamW

[hunter]

12. Rancho Seco... cripes. This is bullshit.

Ranch Seco was a nasty machine, but all those poor people were swimming in a sea of fossil fuel wastes, agricultural and industrial chemicals, fallout from nuclear weapons testing, and Sierra mining wastes going back to Gold Rush Days.

I've looked through this data. It's impossible to find any signal from Rancho Seco in all the noise.