USA -Local nuclear power station neighbors to be studied for cancer risk

“Westerly and Charlestown would easily fall within the danger zone based on prior studies as well as the actual experience at the Fukushima nuclear disaster caused by Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. However, only the communities adjacent to the power plants will be studied.”

“Concentric circles show relative risk and identify areas where residents have little or no time to close windows or evacuate…circular vulnerability zones are entirely hypothetical.”

Two nukes within 50 miles of Charlestown to be included in study of six power plants

By Will Collette

Most Charlestown residents probably don’t know that we are downwind of two nuclear power plants that have had multiple violations in the past. One is the Millstone nuclear power plant just 20 miles due west on the other side of New London. Millstone, owned by Virginia-based Dominion Resources, is an active facility.

The other is the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee power plant in Haddam, 40 miles west northwest of Charlestown, which is now being used as a storage site for high-level radioactive waste. As I’ve reported earlier, 3.6 million pounds of high-level radioactive waste are also being stored at Millstone.

Both sites have been picked as part of a small pilot study by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to determine whether there are statistically significantly higher rates of cancer among adults and children living close to those plants. The study will be conducted by the National Academy of Sciences.

Westerly and Charlestown would easily fall within the danger zone based on prior studies as well as the actual experience at the Fukushima nuclear disaster caused by Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. However, only the communities adjacent to the power plants will be studied.

Studies outside the immediate area would only be warranted if there was a significant release of radiation at the sites. While there have been safety violationsat both sites, there have not been any reported major releases.

The Millstone reactor’s site on the coast has made it prone to weather-related problems. Last summer, Millstone had an extended shutdown when the ocean water it takes in to cool its Unit 3 reactor was too warm to safely do the job. When Sandy was about to hit the Connecticut coast, Millstone had to power down and erect storm barriers to prevent damage from the storm’s surge.

As the effects of climate change affect the operating condition at plants like Millstone, and “freak” weather becomes more commonplace, the odds of future problems at Millstone could rise unless the plant’s owners invest in more safety measures.

But don’t hold your breath. Their response to last summer’s rise in water temperature in Long Island Sound was to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to grant them more leeway to judge what temperature levels are tolerable.

http://www.progressive-charlestown.com/2012/11/local-nuclear-power-station-neighbors.html

Creating a Toxic Plume Map

Posted on April 22, 2012

From Mark Monmonier’s Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather (1999):

How to Create a Toxic Plume Map demonstrates how to construct a, “circular vulnerability zone around a potentially dangerous facility by overlaying on a large-scale topographic or street map the standard plume developed for chlorine by the National Transportation Safety Board using the US Coast Guard’s Hazards Assessment Computer System (HACS)” (102).

Model plumes can be, “‘photocopied onto a transparency sheet in a standard copy machine [and then] laid over a standard 7.5-minute community topographic (quadrant) map from the U.S. Geological Survey.’ The reader can then, ‘place the release point over the source of the chemical, and rotate the model to show a full vulnerability zone.’ Because winds vary, the coalition recommends using the distances in the model plume as a radii for circles describing the threat for all possible wind directions around the industrial plant, railway siding, grade crossing, or other plausible accident site. Concentric circles show relative risk and identify areas where residents have little or no time to close windows or evacuate…circular vulnerability zones are entirely hypothetical” (102-103).

http://radioactivemonticello.wordpress.com/page/6/

“..The study will be conducted by the National Academy of Sciences…”

Misconduct Widespread in Retracted Science Papers, Study Finds By CARL ZIMMER
Published: October 1, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/science/study-finds-fraud-is-widespread-in-retracted-scientific-papers.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121002

[Excerpted] Last year the journal Nature reported an alarming increase in the number of retractions of scientific papers — a tenfold rise in the previous decade, to more than 300 a year across the scientific literature.

Other studies have suggested that most of these retractions resulted from honest errors. But a deeper analysis of retractions, being published this week, challenges that comforting assumption.

In the new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two scientists and a medical communications consultant analyzed 2,047 retracted papers in the biomedical and life sciences. They found that misconduct was the reason for three-quarters of the retractions for which they could determine the cause.

…Dr. Casadevall and another author, Dr. Ferric C. Fang of the University of Washington, have been outspoken critics of the current culture of science. To them, the rising rate of retractions reflects perverse incentives that drive scientists to make sloppy mistakes or even knowingly publish false data….

Majia here: These researchers, and R. Grant Steen, analyzed all the retraction notices published before May 2012 by searching PubMed. They also looked at reports held by the Office of Research Integrity and the blog Retraction Watch. They found 158 papers tainted by fraud.

They found that many retractions were linked to allegations of misconduct – e.g., falsifying data. The article concludes by quoting Dr. Casadevall’s observations on the reason for this pervasive fraud:

Dr. Casadevall: “It convinces me more that we have a problem in science,” he said. While the fraudulent papers may be relatively few, he went on, their rapid increase is a sign of a winner-take-all culture in which getting a paper published in a major journal can be the difference between heading a lab and facing unemployment. “Some fraction of people are starting to cheat,” he said….“I don’t think this problem is going to go away as long as you have this disproportionate system of rewards,” he said.

http://majiasblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/science-corrupted.html