No leukaemia cluster... that’s just not true!
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Comare noted about its 1988 report that ‘the raised incidence of leukaemia at both Sellafield and Dounreay tended to support the hypothesis that some feature of these two plants led to an increased risk of leukaemia in young people living in the surrounding area’.
EARLY May saw the release of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment’s (COMARE) 14th report into leukaemia in the under-fives around nuclear plants in the UK from 1969 to 2004.
The report was produced partially in response to the German KiKK study published in 2008 on cancer in children living around nuclear power plants and research reactors. The German report found that children are more likely to contract leukaemia the closer they live to a nuclear plant.
The KiKK study and its scientific method were investigated by Germany’s Commission on Radiological Protection (SSK), and the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) published a final assessment of the SSK report about the KiKK study.
The BfS stated: “The central finding of the study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants, KiKK study, is: The risk for children under five years of age to contract leukaemia increases the closer they live to a nuclear power plant. The BfS sees these findings, even after the submission of the rationale, confirmed. The now present assessment carried out by the SSK on behalf of the Federal Ministry for the Environment confirms the KiKK study’s key findings.”
This confirmation of the study’s findings by a government body not surprisingly increased pressure on bodies like our own UK-based COMARE to look at childhood leukaemia around nuclear sites again.
The Groundhog Evolution looking for fuel particles at Thurso beach in October 2010. COMARE found that the Dounreay fuel particles are not responsible for the leukaemia cluster that existed around Dounreay.
Many people in Caithness are all too aware of COMARE’s work since it published its second report in 1988 on the incidence of leukaemia in young people living near Dounreay.
My own experience is that in the years since its publication, the 1988 report has been widely misrepresented by people (often the general public in Caithness) claiming that the report found there was “no leukaemia cluster around Dounreay” and that “if there were a leukaemia cluster in Caithness, it wasn’t anything to do with Dounreay”. Neither of these statements is true.
It is worth taking the time to read what government organisations like COMARE are actually saying because the findings are sometimes blurred, shortened or simply twisted for various reasons.
This is what COMARE says about its 1988 report: “We found evidence of an increased incidence of leukaemia in young people in the area and although the conventional dose and risk estimates suggested that radioactive discharges could not be responsible, we noted that the raised incidence of leukaemia at both Sellafield and Dounreay tended to support the hypothesis that some feature of these two plants led to an increased risk of leukaemia in young people living in the surrounding area. The report also considered other possible explanations and recommended further investigations.”
In 1999, COMARE reconsidered the health implications of radioactive particles in the environment around Dounreay, which is a different, and much narrower, topic from the aforementioned report. It found that particles, if encountered, present a real hazard to health and that the hottest particles could induce serious acute radiation effects. The committee said that while the probability of encountering a particle is small, it is not negligible.
“If individuals ingested particles with radioactivity levels at the top of the range of those already found on the Dounreay foreshore, fatalities might occur. Particles with lower activities may cause severe intestinal disorders although these might not be attributed to radiation exposure,” it said.
This report looked at particles, and not other forms of pollution, and the leukaemia cluster. COMARE concluded that radioactive particles at Sandside Bay did not provide a realistic explanation for the increased incidence of leukaemia in young people in the Dounreay area.
So the particles were ruled out as being to blame for the leukaemia cluster around Dounreay.
FOLLOWING on from my experience of the misrepresentation of COMARE’s 1988 report into the leukaemia cluster around Dounreay, I was interested to see what conclusions would be drawn about the findings of this May’s report into childhood leukaemia around nuclear plants.
COMARE’s press release on the new report starts by pointing out how rare leukaemia is, with 500 children in the UK affected every year. It goes on to say that its primary analysis of the latest British data has revealed no significant evidence of an association between risk of childhood leukaemia (in under-fives) and living near a nuclear power plant.
An air monitoring station at Murkle, pictured in 2003. This does not look for the fuel particles but does general air monitoring for certain kinds of
The plants that have been included in the study are only power reactors, not experimental or reprocessing sites such as Calder Hall, Sellafield, Winfrith, Dounreay, etc. These exclusions have dismayed anti-nuclear campaigners and sparked accusations of COMARE cherry-picking data, amongst other things.
COMARE’s report said it made the exclusions because: “The observation of an excess of childhood leukaemia near Sellafield was the ‘hypothesis-generating’ observation and good scientific practice proceeds by attempting to test hypotheses on independent sets of data.”
I find this reason rather bizarre but then I am not a statistician so I will let the good readers of the Groat draw their own conclusions about this.
The new report goes on: “Power generation has always been an incidental part of the activities on the Sellafield site, which have included nuclear operations (for example reprocessing) that release considerably more radioactivity into the environment than Calder Hall.
“The well-known excess of childhood leukaemia cases in the village of Seascale adjacent to the Sellafield site would have an undue influence on the overall results, and distort the findings for the group of nuclear power plants.”
COMARE is clearly on the defensive about these exclusions as it goes on to say: “It is unfortunate that some commentators have seen the exclusion of Calder Hall, and therefore of Sellafield, in previous analyses as an attempt to minimise any apparent excess found in the data.
“The reality, however, is that – had the data from this site been included – the results would certainly have yielded a higher estimate of risk, but it would have been entirely unclear what implications this had for purpose-built power-generating plants.”
COMARE also said that Sellafield and Dounreay are the subject of ongoing studies initiated by the committee as a result of a previous recommendation in the 11th report (COMARE, 2006) and are intended to form the basis of its next report.
This previous recommendation was “given the opinion... that the Sellafield and Dounreay excesses [excess cancers] are unlikely to be due to chance, we recommend that such surveillance and review processes are also carried out in the area surrounding Dounreay, where similar public concerns still exist”.
IF we go back to the new report, it goes on to give more reasons for the excluded nuclear sites. “Had Calder Hall, and therefore Sellafield, been included then it could reasonably be argued that other sites with a principal function that was not electricity generation but which possessed power reactors (for example Winfrith) should also be included. This would lead to a confused picture as far as nuclear power plants are concerned.”
So the exclusions are to avoid being confused about the higher incidence of leukaemia around reprocessing or other sites, and the levels of leukaemia around power reactors. The conspiracy theorists would say that COMARE is paving the way for new build by making power reactors appear to be totally dissociated from reprocessing sites.
But then again, it does seem reasonable to say that any new power reactor would not have the radioactive pollution you would get from reprocessing nuclear fuel.
What to include in such a study is really a matter of opinion, as you could just as well say that the committee should look at forerunners to the UK European pressurised water reactor or the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor as these may be the ones that form any new build in the UK.
And which years of data should be included? The data set should include cancers up to 2010, according to pressure group Nuclear Free Local Authorities.
But if you put the pro and anti-nuclear groups’ arguments aside, there is one very good reason why the excluded nuclear plants should be included and the sites studied as a whole – the elevated cancer data is highly relevant if new power plants are to be located at these excluded sites.
The discharges from a new power reactor at Sellafield, for example, will be cumulative in the environment with the existing discharges and pollution from reprocessing.
Nobody is, or ever was, seriously suggesting building new power reactors at Dounreay, but the exclusion of nuclear sites in Cumbria where new build is mooted seems pretty blinkered, especially when you consider that COMARE is still looking into elevated childhood leukaemia there.
This is not “joined-up thinking”, as people used to say. This is putting things in separate boxes, whether for sound scientific reasons or not; but the boxes are not separate in reality.
The whole issue of siting nuclear facilities is very thorny and the cancer statistics are just one part of it.
A former Nirex employee once said to me the only way a geological waste repository could be built with a clear conscience was if it was on a non-nuclear site far from any man-made nuclear discharges, as then Nirex could not be blamed for the health effects of polluted air and water from any nearby nuclear plant.
One very clear and simple recommendation from COMARE’s new report is that environmental monitoring of radioactive pollution and cancer should continue without any reduction. It states that the government “keeps a watching brief on the risk of childhood cancers” and it recommends that there is “no reduction in maintenance of effective surveillance regarding the environment and public health”.
At the moment, we can only guess as to what the next report on Dounreay and Sellafield will say.
Corrina Thomson can be contacted via Facebook and followed on Twitter @CorrinaThomson
