nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

DNA Mutations Discovered in The Children of Chernobyl Workers

Science Health15 February 2026, By David Nield, https://www.sciencealert.com/dna-mutations-discovered-in-the-children-of-chernobyl-workers

The DNA damage from ionizing radiation (IR) erupting from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 is showing up in the children of those originally exposed, researchers have found – the first time such a transgenerational link has been clearly established.

Previous studies have been inconclusive about whether this genetic damage could be passed from parent to child, but here the researchers – led by a team from the University of Bonn in Germany – looked for something slightly different.

Rather than picking out new DNA mutations in the next generation, they looked for what are known as clustered de novo mutations (cDNMs): two or more mutations in close proximity, found in the children but not the parents. These would be mutations resulting from breaks in the parental DNA caused by radiation exposure.

“We found a significant increase in the cDNM count in offspring of irradiated parents, and a potential association between the dose estimations and the number of cDNMs in the respective offspring,” write the researchers in their published paper.

“Despite uncertainty concerning the precise nature and quantity of the IR involved, the present study is the first to provide evidence for the existence of a transgenerational effect of prolonged paternal exposure to low-dose IR on the human genome.”

The findings are based on whole genome sequencing scans of 130 offspring of Chernobyl cleanup workers, 110 offspring of German military radar operators who were likely exposed to stray radiation, and 1,275 offspring of parents unexposed to radiation, used as controls.

On average, the researchers found 2.65 cDNMs per child in the Chernobyl group, 1.48 per child in the German radar group, and 0.88 per child in the control group. The researchers say those numbers are likely to be overestimates due to noise in the data, but even after making statistical adjustments, the difference was still significant.

What’s more, a higher radiation dose for the parent tended to mean a higher number of clusters in the child. This fits with the idea that radiation creates molecules known as reactive oxygen species, which are able to break DNA strands – breaks which can leave behind the clusters described in this study, if repaired imperfectly.

The good news is that the risk to health should be relatively small: children of exposed parents weren’t found to have any higher risk of disease. This is partly because a lot of the cDNMs likely fall in ‘non-coding’ DNA, rather than in genes that directly encode proteins.

“Given the low overall increase in cDNMs following paternal exposure to ionizing radiation and the low proportion of the genome that is protein coding, the likelihood that a disease occurring in the offspring of exposed parents is triggered by a cDNM is minimal,” the researchers write.

To put this in perspective, we know that older dads are more likely to pass on more DNA mutations to their children. The subsequent risk of disease associated with parental age at the time of conception is higher than the potential risks from radiation exposure examined here, the researchers report.

There are some limitations to note. As the initial radiation exposure happened decades ago, the researchers had to estimate people’s exposure using historical records and decades-old devices.

Participation in the study was also voluntary, which may have introduced some bias, as those who suspected they’d been exposed to radiation may have been more likely to enrol.

Even with those limitations, we now know that with prolonged exposure, ionizing radiation can leave subtle traces in the DNA of the generations to come – emphasizing the need for safety precautions and careful monitoring for those at risk.

“The potential of transmission of radiation-induced genetic alterations to the next generation is of particular concern for parents who may have been exposed to higher doses of IR and potentially for longer periods of time than considered safe,” write the researchers.

The research has been published in Scientific Reports.

February 19, 2026 Posted by | health, Reference, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Shrimp with a side of cancer? Radioactive contamination is real.

by Kimberly Roberson, opinion contributor – 01/18/26,
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5692924-fda-radioactive-shrimp-threat/

The specter of radioactivity in food just reared its head again, with another shipment of imported shrimp recalled for possible Cesium-137 contamination.  

The MAHA Commission 2025 report unfotunately ignored radioactivity as a possible cause of rising cancer and chronic illness. But even leaving aside nuclear accidents, studies show living near nuclear plants elevates cancer risk. Nuclear reactors generate radioactive waste and ionizing radiation, which get into the environment, contaminating air, water, soil and food.

Harmful isotopes like Cesium-137 aren’t natural; they’re made only in reactors, but persist in the environment and food for centuries. Decades after Chernobyl, for instance, researchers found Cesium-137 in meat from domestic and game animals in Poland, and in food and children’s bodies in Belarus, which caused pediatric cardiovascular disease.   

Cesium-137 has a 30-year half-life but remains dangerous for 300 years, especially when ingested or inhaled. It lodges in soft tissues inside the body, irradiating cells and increasing cancer risk, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even very low doses have been shown to cause cancer, renal pathology and other damage. 

This summer, the Food and Drug Administration issued multiple health hazard warnings about Cesium-137 detected in imported Indonesian shrimp, triggering massive recalls and worried coverage in mainstream outlets like “Martha Stewart Living.” Consumer Reports found evidence a wide swath of Indonesia’s land may be contaminated. 

U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-L.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) then launched an inquiry, asking grocery chains how they will keep radioactive shrimp off their shelves. Kennedy said that eating Cesium-137-laced shrimp “will kill you. Even if doesn’t turn you into the alien from ‘Alien,’ I guarantee you’ll grow another ear.” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) wrote to President Trump, calling radioactive shrimp a “significant public health threat” and asking him to pause all shrimp imports.

“Alien” shrimp penetrated public consciousness, but the radioactivity problem is much bigger. The FDA recently found radioactive cloves, and Malta customs officials found radioactive clothing, both contaminated with Cesium-137. The World Customs Organization launched “Operation Stingray” to intercept nuclear and radioactive materials, seizing 51 shipments in just three weeks. 

Such action is overdue. Long before so-called “forever chemicals” or microplastics were recognized as health threats, watchdog groups were flagging the threat of radioactivity in food, especially after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. A 2013 FDA Citizen Petition demanded tighter regulation and lower allowable radioactivity levels. My organization has collected 1,600 comments and thousands of companion signatures.

Fears about radioactive fish surged in 2023 as Fukushima resumed dumping radioactive water into the Pacific. The FDA downplayed them, claiming “Cs-137 is readily excreted and does not accumulate in seafood.” But that’s a misdirection. The point is, it accumulates in our bodies when we ingest it, even in tiny amounts, according to the International Commission on Radiological Protection. 

Health advocacy groups recently pointed this out in a joint letter, exhorting Kennedy and federal officials to “finally address the impact of radiation contamination of U.S. food on the trajectory of cancer and chronic illness by setting and enforcing much safer levels for Americans.” In its reply FDA demurred, calling it “unlikely that a fish exposed to significant levels of radionuclides near the [Fukushima] reactor could travel to U.S. waters and be caught and harvested.”   

Yet we see evidence of consumer goods contaminated with radioactivity all around us. Instead of downplaying the problem, the FDA should tighten and enforce protective standards.   

The Indonesian shrimp flagged as a health hazard had 68 becquerels of Cesium-137. The FDA’s “derived intervention level” — more of a guideline than an enforceable standard — is about 20 times higher, at 1,200 becquerels. 

No level of Cesium-137 or other harmful radioactive isotopes is safe, yet Trump’s recent executive orders raise exposure limits and depart from the longstanding linear no-threshold model of radiation safety. Advocates warned the public health consequences would be severe, with women, children and fetuses worst impacted.   

The standard should be, if Cesium-137 or other isotopes of concern are detectable in food items, they ought to be pulled off shelves, or at the very least labeled with warnings so consumers can make an informed decision. Unfortunately, that’s not the system we have. The importance of humility and transparency are among the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima, but the Trump administration is ignoring them in an explosion of hubris.  

That’s nothing new; it’s deep in the nuclear culture. That 2011 International Commission on Radiological Protection report states, “There may be situations where a sustainable agricultural economy is not possible without placing contaminated food on the market. As such foods will be subject to market forces, this will necessitate an effective communication strategy to overcome the negative reactions from consumers outside the contaminated areas.” 

But a communications strategy designed to soft-pedal radioactive contamination of food won’t make America healthy. Only setting and enforcing science-based standards will. 

Kimberly Roberson is director of the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network, a project of the National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy.

February 16, 2026 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Residential proximity to nuclear power plants and cancer incidence in Massachusetts, USA (2000–2018)

18 December 2025, Springer Nature, Volume 24, article number 92, (2025)

“………………………………………. Results

Proximity to plants significantly increased cancer incidence, with risk declining by distance. At 2 km, females showed RRs of 1.52 (95% CI: 1.20–1.94) for ages 55–64, 2.00 (1.59–2.52) for 65–74, and 2.53 (1.98–3.22) for 75 + . Males showed RRs of 1.97 (1.57–2.48), 1.75 (1.42–2.16), and 1.63 (1.29–2.06), respectively. Cancer site-specific analyses showed significant associations for lung, prostate, breast, colorectal, bladder, melanoma, leukemia, thyroid, uterine, kidney, laryngeal, pancreatic, oral, esophageal, and Hodgkin lymphoma, with variation by sex and age. We estimated 10,815 female and 9,803 male cancer cases attributable to proximity, corresponding to attributable fractions of 4.1% (95% CI: 2.4–5.7%) and 3.5% (95% CI: 1.8–5.2%).

Conclusions

Residential proximity to nuclear plants in Massachusetts is associated with elevated cancer risks, particularly among older adults, underscoring the need for continued epidemiologic monitoring amid renewed interest in nuclear energy. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-025-01248-6

February 11, 2026 Posted by | radiation, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

Finland detects small amount of radioactivity, sees no health impact


 Armen Press 30th Jan 2026, original at https://armenpress.am/en/article/1240847

Small amounts of radioactive substances have been detected in air samples in Finland though there was no risk to public health, Reuters reported citing the country’s nuclear safety watchdog.

“The concentrations were very low and posed no risk to people or the environment,” the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) said in a statement, according to Reuters.

According to the report, STUK said that the radioactive substances did not originate from Finnish nuclear power plants, though it did not offer an explanation for their detection.

“In many cases, the source of the radioactive substances cannot be identified,” the agency said.

Finland, Sweden, Russia and the wider region have a number of nuclear power reactors.

February 4, 2026 Posted by | Finland, radiation | Leave a comment

The long half-life of France’s nuclear tests in Polynesia

Only in the years since the programme ended has the true impact come to light. While the French military measured radiation levels after each explosion, the data was kept secret until victims’ associations won a legal battle to have it partially declassified in 2013.

“Every family in French Polynesia has a lot of cancer. It’s just not one. Some have, as we say, cocktails of cancer,”

Thirty years ago this week, on an island in the South Pacific, France conducted its final nuclear test – ending a programme that exposed thousands of people to radiation over decades. The islands of French Polynesia are still living with the fallout. 

 31/01/2026 By:Jessica Phelan, https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20260131-the-long-half-life-of-france-s-nuclear-tests-in-polynesia

“It started with my grandmother. She had thyroid cancer during the Nineties. Then her first child, my auntie, had thyroid cancer too.” 

Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross was a child in Tahiti when France last exploded a nuclear bomb. She has few memories of the years when her home was a testing ground, but they have changed the course of her life.   

“My mum had thyroid problems… And also, my sister had thyroid problems. She has to take medication for the rest of her life. My auntie also got breast cancer a few years ago.  

“And I have had chronic myeloid leukaemia since I was 24 years old.” 

France tested nuclear weapons in Polynesia for 30 years. The explosions started in 1966, after France had already tested several bombs in the Algerian Sahara.  

After Algeria claimed independence, France moved the tests to its colony in the South Pacific. They continued until 27 January 1996 – more than three years after the United States’ final test, four since the United Kingdom’s and five since the Soviet Union’s. 

France chose two uninhabited atolls as its test sites, Moruroa and Fangataufa, which between them took the impact of 193 explosions – the biggest around 200 times more powerful than the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima.  

At least 41 took place in the open air, before tests were moved underground in 1975. Mushroom clouds drifted over the ocean, carrying radiation to populated islands – including Tahiti, more than 1,200 kilometres away. 

Only in the years since the programme ended has the true impact come to light. While the French military measured radiation levels after each explosion, the data was kept secret until victims’ associations won a legal battle to have it partially declassified in 2013.

“Around 20 boxes” of documents out of thousands were released in that first batch, according to Patrice Bouveret of the Observatoire des Armements, a Lyon-based campaign group that helped make them public. But the information was enough for journalists and researchers to map a far broader pattern of exposure than France had ever publicly acknowledged. 

One 1974 test alone exposed an estimated 110,000 people to more than the annual “safe” dose of radiation, according to a 2021 investigation led by public-interest newsroom Disclose.  

The revelations pushed French President Emmanuel Macron to order the opening of all archives – with the exception of details that might suggest how to build a nuclear device. Tens of thousands of documents have since been released and continue to lay bare the gap between what French authorities knew about the risks, and what they told those most affected. 

‘Cocktails of cancer’

“Every family in French Polynesia has a lot of cancer. It’s just not one. Some have, as we say, cocktails of cancer,” says Morgant-Cross, today a member of the French Polynesian parliament and an anti-nuclear campaigner.  

“But it’s hard for them to think that it can be related to the nuclear tests because of the decades of French propaganda saying that French nuclear tests are clean.” 

Visiting Tahiti in September 1966, president Charles de Gaulle declared that all precautions had been taken to ensure the tests would “not cause any inconvenience whatsoever to the dear people of Polynesia”.  

Nearly three decades later, president Jacques Chirac – who ordered France’s final nuclear tests in 1995-96, reversing a moratorium that had halted the programme since 1992 – was still insisting that they had “strictly no ecological consequences”. 

For years, Polynesians were told their lifestyle and eating habits were to blame for health problems, according to Morgant-Cross. She only made the connection between her family’s history of cancer and the nuclear tests, she says, when she met survivors in other countries.  

Seeing the list of diseases that research has linked to radiation exposure, she realised the thyroid cancer that afflicted her relatives, as well as her own rare form of leukaemia, were among them. 

“These aren’t illnesses that show up immediately after an explosion,” says Bouveret. “It’s not like a week later you get sick. They develop a long time afterwards.” 

In 2023, France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Inserm, used declassified military data to estimate how much radiation thyroid cancer patients had been exposed to and calculate what role it played. Researchers said nuclear tests “are most likely responsible for a small increase in the incidence of thyroid cancers in French Polynesia” – though they warned the estimated doses were probably inaccurate.  

The difficulty of proving harm to health has been a barrier to compensation. France introduced a law in 2010 allowing victims to claim reparations from the state, but the criteria to qualify – which include demonstrating exposure to a certain level of radiation – have proved hard to meet. 

Only 1,026 people had successfully claimed by the end of 2024, Bouveret says – 607 in mainland France, 417 from Polynesia and two from Algeria. “It’s ridiculous when you consider the number of people who have been impacted by these diseases.” 

A bill to reform the law is before the French parliament. It would also bind the state to cover the costs of treating illnesses caused by radiation – estimated at some €855 million, and currently borne by French Polynesian social security. 

A society upended

The broader consequences of France’s nuclear tests are even harder to quantify.  

The programme kicked off massive construction, drawing islanders to help build military bases and research stations. Many stayed to work at the new sites, concentrating the population and shifting labour away from traditional fishing and farming.  

Corals were flattened to make way for ships, which may have contributed to a dramatic rise in ciguatera – a type of food poisoning caused by eating fish sickened by toxins from plankton found on damaged reefs.

“They really poisoned our main food,” says Morgant-Cross. “We eat fish from breakfast to dinner.” Today the archipelago is largely dependent on food shipped in from elsewhere, and like other parts of overseas France, suffers from high cost of living. 

As de Gaulle promised, the nuclear programme brought economic opportunities – but they depended on jobs and money provided by the French state, binding Polynesia ever more tightly to France.  

Bouveret believes that helped stymie the archipelago’s aspirations to independence. Now, given the costs of caring for nuclear victims and containing the lingering radiation on Moruroa and Fangataufa, he says separating from France looks “extremely difficult”.  

For Morgant-Cross, the first step is to “decolonise minds” and help Polynesians fathom the damage done. While she was at school in the 1990s, she recalls, children were still taught “we should be grateful” for the nuclear tests.  

Things have changed since then, but confronting the past remains difficult – and not only for the generation who remember when speaking out could cost people their jobs or lead to arrest.  

“As a mother of two boys, I really hope that they don’t have the burden of this issue like myself,” she says.

“I felt some trauma, but without understanding where it came from. And I understood with my grandmother, when I saw the fear in her eyes… I saw how guilty she felt because of the leukaemia that I have. She felt that if she had protested more, maybe I would not be sick today. 

“It’s really traumatic for our people.” 

Listen to a version of this story on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 139.

February 3, 2026 Posted by | health, OCEANIA | Leave a comment

They poisoned us’: grappling with deadly impact of nuclear testing

January 22, 2026 , https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/they-poisoned-us-grappling-with-deadly-impact-of-nuclear-testing/news-story/47a9334cf6d82b20618d0b882b4c8408

Nuclear weapons testing has affected every single human on the planet, causing at least four million premature deaths from cancer and other diseases over time, according to a new report delving into the deadly legacy.

More than 2,400 nuclear devices were detonated in tests conducted worldwide between 1945 and 2017.

Of the nine countries known to possess nuclear weapons — Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea — only Pyongyang has conducted nuclear tests since the 1990s.

But a new report from the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) humanitarian organisation, provided exclusively to AFP, details how the effects of past tests are still being felt worldwide.

“They poisoned us,” Hinamoeura Cross, a 37-year-old Tahitian parliamentarian who was aged seven when France detonated its last nuclear explosion near her home in French Polynesia in 1996.

Seventeen years later, she was diagnosed with leukaemia, in a family where her grandmother, mother and aunt already suffered from thyroid cancer.

The explosions are known to have caused enduring and widespread harm to human health, societies and ecosystems.

But the NPA report details over 304 pages how an ongoing culture of secrecy, along with lacking international engagement and a dearth of data, have left many affected communities scrambling for answers.

“Past nuclear testing continues to kill today,” said NPA chief Raymond Johansen, voicing hope the report would “strengthen the resolve to prevent nuclear weapons from ever being tested or used again”.

– ‘Very dangerous’ –

The issue has gained fresh relevance after US President Donald Trump’s suggestion last November that Washington could resume nuclear testing, accusing Russia and China of already doing so — charges they rejected.

“This is very, very, very dangerous,” warned Ivana Hughes, a Columbia University chemistry lecturer and head of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, who contributed to the NPA report.

“The nuclear testing period shows us that the consequences are extremely long-lasting and very serious,” she told AFP.

The heaviest burden of past tests has fallen on communities living near test sites, today located in 15 different countries, including many former colonies of nuclear-armed states.

Survivors there continue to face elevated rates of illness, congenital anomalies and trauma.

The impact is also felt globally.

“Every person alive today carries radioactive isotopes from atmospheric testing in their bones,” report co-author and University of South Carolina anthropology professor Magdalena Stawkowski told AFP.

– Millions of early deaths –

Hundreds of thousands of people around the globe are known to have already died from illnesses linked to past nuclear test detonations, the report highlighted.

It pointed to strong scientific evidence connecting radiation exposure to DNA damage, cancer, cardiovascular disease and genetic effects, even at low doses.

“The risks that radiation poses are really much greater than previously thought,” report co-author Tilman Ruff told AFP.

The atmospheric tests alone, which were conducted up to 1980, are expected over time to cause at least two million excess cancer deaths, he said.

And “the same number of additional early deaths (are expected) from heart attacks and strokes”, said Ruff, a Melbourne University public health fellow and co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

Ionising radiation, or particles that can snap DNA bonds in cells and turn them cancerous, is “intensely biologically harmful”, he said.

“There is no level below which there are no effects”.

The risks are not uniform, with foetuses and young children most affected, and girls and women 52-percent more susceptible to the cancer-inducing effects of radiation than boys and men.

 Culture of secrecy –

The NPA report documented a persistent culture of secrecy among states that had tested nuclear weapons.

In Kiribati, for instance, studies by Britain and the United States on health and environmental impacts remain classified, preventing victims from learning what was done to them.

And in Algeria, the precise sites where France buried radioactive waste after its tests there remain undisclosed, the report said.

None of the nuclear-armed states has ever apologised for the tests, and even in cases where they eventually acknowledged damage, the report said compensation schemes have tended to “function more to limit liability than to help victims in good faith”. 

Local communities, meanwhile, frequently lack adequate healthcare and health screening, as well as basic risk education — leaving people unaware of the dangers or how to protect themselves.

“The harm is underestimated, it’s under-communicated, and it’s under-addressed,” Stawkowski said.

– ‘Guinea pigs’ –

When Cross was diagnosed with leukaemia aged 24, she did not immediately blame the nuclear explosions in French Polynesia decades earlier.

“France’s propaganda was very powerful,” she told AFP, adding that in school she had only learned about the tests’ positive economic impact for France’s South Pacific islands and atolls.

She was later “shocked” to discover that rather than a handful of harmless “tests”, France conducted 193 explosions in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1996.

The biggest was around 200 times more powerful than the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

“These weren’t just tests. They were real bombs,” she said, charging that her people had been treated as “guinea pigs” for decades.

– ‘Trauma’ –

Other communities near test sites have also borne a heavy burden.

Hughes pointed to the impact of the United States’ 15-megaton Bravo test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954 — “equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs — an absolute monstrosity”. 

It vaporised one island and exposed thousands nearby to radioactive fallout.

Rongelap, about 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Bikini, saw “vaporised coral atoll mixed in with radioactive isotopes falling onto the island from the sky, with the children thinking it was snow”, Hughes said.

The report criticised the “minimal” international response to the problem.

It especially highlighted the nuclear-armed states’ responsibility to scale up efforts to assess needs, assist victims and clean up contaminated environments.

“We want to understand what happened to us,” Cross said.

“We want to heal from this trauma.” 

January 26, 2026 Posted by | health, weapons and war | Leave a comment

President Trump’s radical attack on radiation safety.

By Daniel Hirsch, Haakon Williams, Cameron Kuta | October 15, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/10/president-trumps-radical-attack-on-radiation-safety/?variant=B&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Trump%20s%20attack%20on%20radiation%20safety&utm_campaign=20251009%20Thursday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29

In May, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders that, in part, require the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to consider dramatically weakening its radiation protection standard. If federal radiation limits are gutted in the manner urged by the president, the new standard could allow four out of five people exposed over a 70-year lifetime to develop a cancer they would not otherwise get.

Contesting the scientific consensus. Section 5(b) of the executive order—formally titled “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”—directs the NRC to issue a proposed “wholesale revision of its regulations and guidance documents,” including reconsideration of the agency’s “reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure.” The LNT model maintains that risk from radiation exposure is proportional to the dose: Even a tiny amount of radiation causes some small but real increased risk of cancer, and that risk goes up linearly as the dose increases.

While most Americans have doubtless never heard of the LNT model, it has been the bedrock of radiation exposure risk analysis for decades and forms the basis of public health protection from radiation. The LNT model is scientifically robust, supported by the longstanding and repeatedly affirmed determinations on low-dose radiation by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, virtually all international scientific bodies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the NRC itself.

Despite the LNT model’s long track record and the well-established body of scientific evidence upon which it is built, President Trump has unilaterally issued a presidential finding that this scientific consensus is wrong. His order could lead to LNT’s complete abandonment in a matter of months, posing a serious increase in the amount of radiation that industries and government agencies would be allowed to inflict upon the public.

If the NRC goes along with Trump’s assertion, the weakening of radiation protection standards would likely be extreme. Advocates of abandoning LNT have often asserted that low-dose radiation is harmless or even beneficial, and therefore, that the public health radiation limits should be hugely increased. In 2015, three petitions for rulemaking to the NRC proposed doing away with the LNT model and increasing allowable radiation exposures for everyone—including children and pregnant women—to 10 rem. (The Roentgen equivalent man (rem) is a unit of effective absorbed radiation in human tissue, equivalent to one roentgen of X-rays. One rem is equal to 0.01 Sievert in the international system of units.)

One petition to the NRC went so far as to ask, “Why deprive the public of the benefits of low-dose radiation?” The NRC strongly rejected the petitions in 2021, citing the conclusions of numerous scientific bodies that “[c]onvincing evidence has not yet demonstrated the existence of a threshold.

Low-level, or “low-dose,” radiation is generally defined as a dose range of 10 rem and below. However, “low dose” is something of a misnomer, as 10 rem is still relatively high. Even when doses are low, they nonetheless cause substantial harm when spread across a large population over time, especially for sensitive groups like children.

Raising radiation exposure limits. If President Trump’s executive order results in a new public radiation exposure limit of around 10 rem—the level LNT opponents often advocate—the increased health risks would be extraordinary. Longstanding radiation protection limits for members of the public are in the range of 10 to 100 millirem (0.01 to 0.1 rem) per year. A 10-rem limit would increase allowed exposures to radiation by factors of 100 to 1000—and so would increase the risk of cancer.

A single chest X-ray is about 2 millirem (0.002 rem) of radiation exposure. An annual limit of 10 rem would correspond to a person receiving a dose equivalent to 5,000 chest X-rays each year, from conception to death. Current official radiation risk estimates—adopted by EPA from the National Academies’ BEIR VII study on the health risks from exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation—indicate that receiving 10 rem per year over a 70-year lifetime would result in about four out of every five people exposed getting a cancer they would not get otherwise.

Despite what opponents of the LNT model claim, there is no threshold at 10 rem below which there is no measurable health harm. A substantial body of scientific work has demonstrated significant negative health impacts well below 10 rem. Beginning in the 1950s, pioneering Oxford researcher Alice Stewart demonstrated that a single fetal X-ray with a dose of 200 millirem (0.2 rem) was associated with a measurable increase in the risk of that child dying of cancer. The radiation establishment fought Stewart’s findings vigorously, but her research has long since been vindicated.

More recently, a major study covering an international cohort of over 300,000 nuclear facility workers has found that annual doses well below 1 rem create measurable increases in the risk of developing a variety of cancers, and that, as NRC put it, “even tiny doses slightly boost the risk of leukemia.” A second massive study of nearly one million European children found that those who received a CT scan, at an average dose of 800 millirem (0.8 rem), suffered a measurable increase in their risk of getting cancer.

Standards already weak. Radiation protection standards should be tightened, not weakened. The US government has a long history of underestimating radiation risks. The more scientists have learned about low-dose radiation, the more their estimates of the risk per unit dose have tended to increase. Yet the NRC has not updated in step with the science.

The NRC protection limit for workers of 5 rem per year was set in the early 1960s and has not changed since, despite decades of increasing official estimates of radiation risk. The current best estimate, from the National Academies’ BEIR VII, indicates that one out of every five workers receiving the NRC’s allowable dose each year from ages 18 to 65 would develop a cancer.

NRC’s radiation exposure limits for the public have not been updated in 35 years. Despite a requirement to employ EPA’s more conservative radiation risk standards, the NRC has long ignored it and instead continues to use 100 millirem per year—100 times lower than what Trump’s executive order could lead to. Current risk figures from the National Academies and the EPA indicate that 70 years of exposure at that level would result in nearly one in 100 people getting cancer from that exposure. That is 100 to 10,000 times higher than the EPA’s acceptable risk range. As the former director of EPA’s Office of Radiation and Indoor Air said years ago, “To put it bluntly, radiation should not be treated as a privileged pollutant. You and I should not be exposed to higher risks from radiation sites than we should be from sites which had contained any other environmental pollutant.”

The NRC held a webinar in July to gather public feedback on implementing President Trump’s executive order on abolishing the LNT model. Many presenters—including representatives from the National Council on Radiation Protection and the Union of Concerned Scientists—gave a vigorous defense of the LNT model, as did many of the comments from the public. Yet the NRC, despite itself having strongly reaffirmed this standard only 4 years ago, seemed to minimize low-dose radiation risks and suggested that all radiation cancer risk models be treated equally (including the long-discredited view that low-dose radiation has health benefits). More concerning, the NRC has put its thumb on the scale, giving special treatment to LNT opposition by posting among the general meeting materials a link to one presenter’s paper, which suggests that an annual dose of 10 rem is acceptably safe.

At a time when radiation protection should be strengthened, President Trump has directed action to weaken it markedly. If the NRC implements the executive order, the potential outcome would be a new, deeply flawed radiation standard as much as a thousand times weaker than the current standard, resulting in a massive increase in radiation-related health hazards across the American population.

January 25, 2026 Posted by | radiation, Reference, Reference archives | Leave a comment

Loosening radiation exposure rules won’t speed up nuclear energy production.

Relaxing radiation safety standards could place women and children at higher risks of health issues

By Katy Huff, 24 Jan 26, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weaker-radiation-limits-will-not-help-nuclear-energy/

Get an x-ray, and you get a small dose of radiation to visualize your bones and body structures to help you medically. Buy a smoke detector, you’re inviting a tiny source of radiation, americium-241, into your home to keep you safe. But we don’t just take on that radiation heedlessly. Until perhaps now.

The U.S. regulates the amount of radiation people are exposed to using something called the linear no-threshold model, which says that every additional dose of ionizing radiation, however small, adds a small risk to health. It’s a simple equation that describes the relationship between dose and risk. For decades it has anchored radiation dose limits for both the public and radiation workers. But by February 23, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is expected to overhaul its regulations, potentially retiring this risk model, per a May executive order by President Donald Trump.

Why loosen this protection? Supposedly to spur nuclear energy production. The administration says that this risk model is too cautious, leading to costly conservatism in reactor design, staffing redundancies and stringency in licensing. The executive order promises that lifting it will accelerate nuclear reactor licensing while lowering the costs of providing nuclear energy to the grid.

As a nuclear energy advocate and former Department of Energy official, I want to see more nuclear energy on the grid soon. But loosening the protections of the linear no-threshold (LNT) model is not supported by current research. Some experts warn that relaxing it could especially place women and children at higher risk of damage from radiation.

The LNT model is based on the idea that exposure to any amount of radiation proportionally increases health risks, including the risk of cancer. From data on high radiation exposures, scientists extrapolate, or predict, what might happen if people are exposed to lower levels of radiation. At low doses, however, it becomes difficult to distinguish the health effects of radiation from the other environmental and lifestyle factors that can affect health. That uncertainty is why regulators rely on a cautious approach like the LNT model, and also why some people question its use.

People are willing to accept the radiation risks inherent in medicine, industry and energy because they trust that standards have been set by credible experts relying on evidence who err on the side of caution and protecting human health. Weakening regulations without new evidence would do the opposite. The last time the question of raising the public dose limit came up, the NRC said no—there wasn’t enough evidence. We must urge the NRC’s current commissioners to demand evidence and heed science over political agenda.

January 24, 2026 Posted by | radiation | Leave a comment

HIGH LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE REMAINS UNAPPROACHABLE AND EXTREMELY TOXIC FOR HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS

Gordon Edwards, 20 Jan 26

Q: When is irradiated nuclear fuel less radioactive than uranium ore?

A: Never!

Mark Twain once wrote, “There are three kinds of lies:  lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  I would add to that short list many of the reassurances promulgated by nuclear enthusiasts. Take high-level nuclear waste for example.

Nuclear proponents often reassure the public and decision-makers that, after 10 million years or so, the high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors is more-or-less on a par with the original uranium ore found in nature from which the uranium fuel was extracted. Sounds reassuring, no doubt, but it is not true. 

First of all, the language itself can be misleading. Many people may not realize that uranium ore is much more dangerously radioactive than uranium itself. 

That’s because the ore is a mélange of uranium and its two dozen radioactive progeny, including isotopes of radium, polonium, and radon, as well as radioactive varieties of bismuth and lead. See www.ccnr.org/U-238_decay_chain.png & www.ccnr.org/U-235_decay_chain.png 

Each one of these byproducts of uranium is much more radiotoxic (i.e.following ingestion or inhalation) than uranium itself. Indeed these pernicious radioactive poisons have already killed countless hundreds of thousands of humans exposed to them in one way or another. 

Due to the presence of the radioactive progeny, uranium ore gives off a lot of highly penetrating gamma radiation (the principal cause of external whole-body irradiation) – far more than uranium itself. Pure uranium gives off very little gamma radiation. 

Secondly, not all uranium ore is the same. Some ores are a lot more dangerous than others.

The potential health hazard of uranium ore depends on the “grade” of the ore. The grade is the concentration of uranium per gram of ore. The grade dictates the concentration of all of the radioactive progeny as well. So, the higher the grade, the more radioactive and the more radiotoxic the ore is. 

At Cigar Lake in Northern Saskatchewan, for example, we have “high-grade” ore averaging about 17 percent uranium, which makes that ore more than 150 times more radioactive (and radiotoxic) than uranium ore from Elliot Lake Ontario (having a grade of about 0.1 percent). 

The Cigar Lake ore is the richest (i.e. the highest grade) ever found. The ore is so radioactive that it cannot be safely mined by human beings, but must be mined using robotic equipment. See https://saskpolytech.ca/news/posts/2021/Cigar-Lake-project-collaboration-a-high-tech-home-grown-win.aspx .

But hold on a minute. Even after ten million years, the concentration of uranium left in spent fuel is about 98.5 percent. That is a MUCH higher grade than any ore ever found in nature. 

So even after ten million years, used nuclear fuel is about 480 percent MORE radioactive and radiotoxic than the uranium ore at Cigar Lake – which is in turn more than 100 times more radioactive and radiotoxic than most other uranium deposits that have been mined in other countries. And that estimate is based ONLY on the uranium progeny mentioned above.

But that’s not all. In addition to uranium and its progeny, the ten-million-year-old CANDU used fuel bundles contain other radioactive poisons not found in uranium ore at all, such as caesium-135 (half-life 2.3 million years), iodine-129 (half-life 16 million years), palladium-107 (half-life 6.5 million years), and zirconium-93 (half-life 1.6 million years).

So when Canadian nuclear establishment people tell you that after 10 million years CANDU spent fuel is about as dangerous as naturally-occurring uranium ore, they are bending the truth by a significant amount. They are also misleading people by not explaining the difference between uranium ore and uranium in a refined form.

Incidentally, the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning (commonly called the Porter Commission) published a graph in their 1978 Report “A Race Against Time” showing that the overall radiotoxicity of used CANDU fuel (the blue line in the graph) decreases for the first 50,000 years or so, and then increases to a higher level as the result of inbreeding of uranium progeny. Although it is not stated in the report, the radiotoxicity level of used nuclear fuel after ten million years does not change for a very long time – it remains relatively constant for the next several hundred millions of years.

See www.ccnr.org/hlw_graph.html

January 21, 2026 Posted by | Canada, radiation | Leave a comment

Canada’s double standard on tritium emissions

Frank Greening, 24 Dec 25

Here is an example of how Canada allows all kinds of tritium emissions while other nations are criticized for almost trivial releases.

Thus, it was reported today that the Japanese reactor at Fugen had a leak that spilled tritiated water. The amount released? A staggering 20 ml:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/radioactive-leak-at-nuclear-plant-in-japan/ar-AA1STz9p?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=694b0a7c4e6f4035800f6658f238a437&ei=131

By comparison a CANDU reactor at Bruce NGS suffered a steam generator release back in 2007. Steam generator tube leaks involve the escape of primary heat transport heavy water contaminated with tritium. In the case of Bruce Unit 8, a steam generator leak was detected in June 2007 but was allowed to continue until the first week of November. The monthly heavy water losses associated with this leak were as follows:

  June 2007:      484   kg

  July 2007:      2157 kg

  Aug 2007:      2832 kg

  Sept 2007:      4339 kg

  Oct 2007:       5036 kg

  Nov 2007:      1115 kg

Thus, in total, 15,963 kg of tritiated heavy water was lost to Lake Huron over a six-month period in 2007. This leak created a giant plume of tritiated water that was carried northwards by the prevailing currents towards the townships of Saugeen Shores, Port Elgin and Southampton. By September 2007, the concentration of tritium in the water intake of the Port Elgin Water Treatment Plant, 17 km north of the Bruce site, had increased by more than a factor of three compared to the normal levels of tritium in lake water at this location.

But remarkably this increase in the tritium concentration in the drinking water supply to residents to the north of the Bruce site was not the reason that the Unit 8 steam generator leak was finally fixed. On the contrary, the leak was plugged to prevent further loss of a valuable commodity – heavy water – which at $300/kg had already cost Bruce Power almost $5 million. And besides, thanks to the CNSC’s lax tritium emission standards, Bruce B’s waterborne emission action level for tritium is a staggering 130,000 Ci per month; thus the station was well below its regulatory limit in this regard. Nevertheless, one has to wonder how such a liberal action level is permitted when it allows a station to discharge tritiated water that is 5000 times higher than the Ontario Drinking Water Objective.

December 27, 2025 Posted by | Canada, radiation | Leave a comment

Fukushima Now (29) – Part 1: What Constitutes Responsibility?

by Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center · December 21, 2025, By Yamaguchi Yukio, https://cnic.jp/english/?p=8747

n the 14 and a half years that have passed since March 2011, the cesium-137 that was released has finally made it to the halfway point of its half-life. After 90 years, its radioactive concentration will have diminished to one-eighth its initial level, and after 300 years, one-thousandth. According to the current medium-to-long-term roadmap, decommissioning measures should be completed around 2041 to 2051. Even by then, however, the radioactivity will have decreased only by a little more than half. Not even what these “decommissioning measures” are supposed to include has been decided on yet.

In places with serious radioactive contamination, nobody will be able to live there for another century. The area thus affected is said to exceed 300 square kilometers. The first sample of fuel debris taken from the Unit 2 reactor weighed 0.7 grams, and the second, 0.2 grams. The information gained from their analysis is just as miniscule. Meanwhile, the total amount of fuel debris in the Unit 1-3 reactors is estimated at 880 tons. Whether it will be necessary to retrieve all of it to begin with is a matter of great contention.

 Idogawa Katsutaka, who was mayor of Futaba Town at the time of the accident, evacuated the entire town to protect everyone there from radioactive exposure, leading many of them as far as 250 kilometers away to Kazo City, Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo, where they took refuge in a gymnasium that had belonged to the town’s former Kisai High School. This was just one of the municipalities that evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture to escape radioactivity. The town’s population totaled 6,971 people overall, of whom 187 took refuge at the former Kisai High School (as of September 18, 2012). Details of their evacuation were relayed widely around the world by the 2012 film “Nuclear Nation” (Japanese: “Futaba kara Toku Hanarete,” directed by Funahashi Atsushi, music by Sakamoto Ryuichi).

As of 1 August 2025, the registered population of Futaba Town had dwindled to 5,157 in all, of whom 59 percent were living within Fukushima Prefecture and 41 percent were still evacuees elsewhere among 43 of Japan’s 47 prefectures. Idogawa’s hope is, “We want somehow to go home, all of us, together, to a safe hometown.” The number of returnees so far, however, is a mere 87 people (as of August 2025).

■ Idogawa filed suit in May 2015 against the government of Japan and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), seeking 755 million yen in damages. A decision on the case was rendered on 30 July 2025 in Tokyo District Court, finding no responsibility on the part of the government, but ordering TEPCO to pay compensation of about 100 million yen for damages to real estate and compensation for the evacuations.

The reasoning behind this decision was that even if the government had required TEPCO to take measures against a possible tsunami, there was a good likelihood that a similar accident could have occurred anyway, so the government bore no responsibility for it. This followed the precedent of a Supreme Court’s ruling on 17 June 2022 denying the government’s responsibility.

Nor did they recognize Idogawa’s claim that his health had been damaged by his exposure in the course of evacuating. This angered Idogawa, who called it a terrible decision against a person who had faithfully fallen in line with Japan’s atomic energy administration.

I think what caused this tragic nuclear accident, unprecedented in scale, was Japan’s fundamentally flawed nuclear power system, adopted by the government in the name of “peaceful use of the atom.” It can only be called a huge transgression by the politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, and business leaders of that time on account of their lackadaisical inattention to safety.

The theory of plate tectonics teaches us not to expect to see broad regions of stability, free from concerns about earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanic activity in the Japanese archipelago. We are only part way toward clarifying the causes and circumstances of the Fukushima nuclear accident. Despite this, the government is ignoring the lessons of history and clearly announcing a “nuclear renaissance” in its 7th Strategic Energy Plan. Even if it intends to “put safety first” as a condition, it cannot create safety measures if it has yet to elucidate the causes of the accident. This is no way to ensure “safety first.” It’s a contradiction.

Establishing nuclear power plants in the Japanese archipelago in itself is a mistake. The first chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority publicly stated that even if the new safety standards created in 2012 were fulfilled, it would not guarantee safety. Even now, the phrase “safety first” commonly uttered by nuclear proponents is a fiction and can only be called irresponsible.

December 23, 2025 Posted by | health, Japan, Legal | Leave a comment

Exposure to protracted low-dose ionizing radiation and incident dementia in a cohort of Ontario nuclear power plant workers.

Brianna Frangione 1, Ian Colman, Franco Momoli, Estelle Davesne, Robert Talarico, Chengchun Yu, Paul J Villeneuve

Scand J Work Environ Health

Abstract

Objectives: Emerging evidence suggests that low-dose ionizing radiation increases the risk of neurodegenerative diseases. Past studies have relied on death data to identify dementia, and these are prone to under-ascertainment and complicate the estimation of health risks as individuals tend to live with dementia for many years following onset. We present findings from the first occupational cohort to investigate dementia risk from low-dose radiation using incident outcomes.

Methods: This is a retrospective cohort of 60 874 Ontario Nuclear Power Plant workers from the Canadian National Dose Registry. Personal identifiers were linked to Ontario population-based administrative health data. Incident dementias between 1996 and 2022 were identified using a validated algorithm based on physician, hospital, and prescription drug data. Individual-level annual estimates of whole-body external ionizing radiation were derived from personal workplace monitoring. The incidence of dementia among these workers was compared to a random sample of Ontario residents matched by sex, age, and residential area. Internal cohort analysis using Poisson and linear excess relative risk (ERR) models, adjusted for sex, attained age, calendar period, and neighborhood income quintile, were used to characterize the shape of the exposure-response curve between low-dose cumulative radiation (lagged 10 years) and incident dementia.

Results: There were 476 incident dementias and 867 028 person-years of follow-up. The mean whole-body lifetime accumulated exposure at the end of follow-up was 11.7 millisieverts (mSv). Workers with cumulative exposure between 50-100 mSv had an increased risk of dementia [RR 1.50, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.99-2.28] compared to those unexposed. Spline analysis suggested that the dose-response relationship was non-linear. The linear ERR per 100 mSv increase in exposure was 0.704 (95% CI 0.018-1.390).

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that low-dose exposure to ionizing radiation increases the risk of incident dementia.

December 22, 2025 Posted by | Canada, radiation | Leave a comment

Cancer risk may increase with proximity to nuclear power plants.

By Maya Brownstein, December 18, 2025, https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/cancer-risk-may-increase-with-proximity-to-nuclear-power-plants/

In Massachusetts, residential proximity to a nuclear power plant (NPP) was associated with significantly increased cancer incidence, with risk declining by distance, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The study was published Dec. 17 in Environmental Health. It was conducted by researchers in the Department of Environmental Health, including corresponding author Yazan Alwadi, PhD student, and senior author Petros Koutrakis, professor of environmental sciences.

Despite widespread—and potentially expanding—reliance on nuclear power in the U.S., epidemiologic research investigating the health impacts of NPPs remains limited. Meanwhile, the results of studies conducted internationally vary significantly. To broaden the evidence base, the researchers assessed proximity of Massachusetts zip codes to nuclear power plants and 2000-2018 cancer incidence data collected by the Massachusetts Cancer Registry. They controlled for confounders such as air pollution and sociodemographic factors.

The researchers estimated that about 20,600 cancer cases in the state—roughly 3.3% of all the cases included in the study—were attributable to living near an NPP, with risk declining sharply beyond roughly 30 kilometers from a facility. The risk of developing cancer attributable to living near an NPP generally increased with age.

According to the researchers, the findings highlight the importance of acknowledging and addressing nuclear energy’s health impacts, particularly at a time when its expansion is being promoted as a solution to climate change.

Read the study:

Residential proximity to nuclear power plants and cancer incidence in Massachusetts, USA (2000–2018)

December 21, 2025 Posted by | health | Leave a comment

Radioactive fertilizer and the nuclear industry

Gordon Edwards. 14 Dec 25

CORRECTION

 I wrote that 

“…selling raffinate as fertilizer goes on all the time from the world’s largest uranium refinery owned by Cameco, situated at Blind River on the north shore of Georgian Bay.”

This sentence is incorrect. Raffinate from Blind River is not used as fertilizer. I apologize for the error. 

Radioactive fertilizer from the Canadian uranium industry does not come from the Cameco Blind River refinery but from two other sources – the Cameco Key Lake uranium mill in Northern Saskatchewan, and the Cameo uranium dioxide conversion facility at Port Hope Ontario. 

Moreover, the material that is being used in radioactive fertilizer is not raffinate (i.e. refinery waste). It is ammonium sulphate that is recovered from the Key Lake uranium processing circuits and sold as fertilizer, together with a liquid by-product of Cameco’s Port Hope uranium dioxide conversion plant – an ammonium nitrate solution – that is sold to a local agricultural supply company for use in fertilizer production.

 The use of similar waste solutions from nuclear fuel facilities as fertilizer has been a concern in other jurisdictions as well. So at the present time, it is not raffinate but ammonium compounds that have been used in uranium processing that ends up in fertilizer. I apologize for not checking the facts much more carefully..

About radioactive fertilizer and the nuclear industry.

A lot of the  phosphate used for fertilizer comes from Florida where the phosphate ore is mined. That ore is contaminated with uranium and its decay products, especially radium. Radium disintegrates to produce radon gas Radon-222) and this builds up in an enclosed space, without adequate ventiliation, reaching an “equilibrium” in about one month. 

That’s why Florida was the first “hot spot” that alerted the US government to the major public health hazard posed by radon, which is estimated to kill about 20-30 thousand Americans every year. Every atom of radon comes from the disintegration of a radium atom, and in turn, every atom of radium started out as an atom of uranium.

Radioactive quilibrium means #becquerels of radium = #becquerels of radon.  One becquerel being one disintegration per second. In a simiar way, if pure radon gas is in an enclosed container, it will reach equilibrium with its four short-lived decay products in a couple of hours – so the radioactivity in the container is about five times greater than it was originally, as all the short-lived decay products have attained roughly the same level of radioactivity as the radon. 

When this radioactive fertilizer is used on tobacco crops, the radon from the soil and the fertilizer builds up under the thick canopy of tobacco leaves and hangs there for a time (radon being 7-8 times heavier than air). The radon atoms disintegrate to produce four airborne solid short lived decay products – polonium-218, bismuth-214, lead-214, polonium-214, all of which decay into lead-210 and polonium-210. [Note: the last two nuclides never reach equilibrium, unlike the first four.]

These radon decay products stick to the resinous (sticky) hairs on the undersides of the tobacco leaves and when the tobacco is harvested these radioactive materials are harvested along with the tobacco. By the time the tobacco is cured, rolled, and packaged, small quantities of lead-210 (22-year half-life) and its immediate successor polonium-210 are left in the tobacco/cigarettes for the unwitting smoker (or second-hand-smoke inhaler) to encounter.

When the cigarette is lit and the smoker draws on it, the temperature at the tip increases dramatically and it vaporizes the lead-210 and polonium-210 which is inhaled deep into the lungs, where polonium-210 sticks to and attacks the sensitive lung tissue with its very energetic alpha particles. 

Polonium-210 is a very damaging radionuclide which Los Alamos Labs reckons is about 250 billion time more toxic than hydrogen cyanide. (It’s what was used to murder Alexander Litvenenko in London at the “request” of Putin who was openly criticized by Litvenenko). 

Polonium-210 adds greatly to the cancer-causing characteristic of the tobacco residues lodged in the lung, making cigarettes smoke significantly more carcinogenic than it would otherwise be. (When the smoker is not inhaling, the lead-210/polonium-210 is wafted into the second-hand cigarette smoke as a respirable aerosol to endanger the health of those within sniffing distance,)

Inside the lung, some of the inhaled polonium-210 crosses the blood-air barrier end enters the bloodstream. Being solid, it attaches to pre-existing plaque build-up in the arteries of the smoker, usually near the arterial valves, where the alpha particle bombardment causes fibrosis of the arterial wall and valve, thus exacerbating the plaque build-up and increasing the restriction of blood flow, thereby contributing substantially to the incidence of heart attacks and strokes among smokers because of the alpha emitting polonium-210 in the plaque.

What you may not have heard is that voluminous sand-like radioactive waste from the uranium industry, called “raffinate” (leftovers from uranium refining), is also sold as fertilizer on the open market without any warnings about the radioactive content. The justification for this nefarious practice seems to be, that since “natural” phosphate from Florids is used to make fertilizer, and it is clearly radioactive (due to the radium-radon chain), and since raffinate from a uranium refinery is not much higher in radioactive content, then what the heck, we (the uranium industry) may as well turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse by selling the radioactive raffinate waste as fertilizer.

Extensive radioactive contamination – involving uranium raffinate – of the homes, schools, roadways, ravines, and the public beach in the town of Port Hope  (prior to 1985) – has led to a $2.6 billion radioactive environmental cleanup of the town (by the federal government) resulting in over a million cubic metres (about a million tonnes) of radioactibve waste to be stored for 500 years in a gigantic earthen mound just north of the town. The subsequent fate of the still-radioactive waste will be decided at that time. 

This practice of selling raddinate as fertilizer goes on all the time from the world’s largest uranium refinery owned by Cameco, situated at Blind River on the north shore of Georgian Bay. The Blind RIver plant turns uranium mill concentrates from Saskatchewan, Australia and South Africa, called “yellowcake” (mostly U3O8), into a product called “uranium trioxide” UO3. At that point the raffinate is the waste product, contaminated with radium. That’s what’s sold for fertilizer. 

The trioxide then goes to Port Hope Ontario, where it is chemically converted into UO2 (uranium dioxide) for domestic use, about 15% of the total, and into UF6 (uranium hexafluoride or “hex”) for export to enrichment plants outside of Canada where the concentration of U-235 is increased to the level required by the customer.

At the enrichment plant, the “hex” is turned into a gas at a fairly low temperature so that the heavier U-238 atoms can be separated from the lighter U-235 atoms, resulting in an enriched uranium product that goes out the front door while the voluminous discarded U-238 (called depleted uranium or “DU”) goes out the back door. 

For low enrichment in light water nuclear power plants, about 85% of the refined uranium is discarded as depleted uranium. The DU has important military uses, and a few civilian uses, but for the most part DU is part of the radioactive legacy of the nuclear age wth a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

Besides using DU in conventional bullets, shells, missiles, tanks, et cetera, used in the former Yugoslavia and in other conflicts, resulting in a battlefield litters with radioactive waste, the military also uses DU as “target rods” in plutonium production reactors to breed plutonium for nuclear warheads. In addition, the military uses DU metal in almost all nuclear warheads as a way of significantly multiplying the explosive power of the warhead by a sizable factor. These weapons are called “fission-fusion-fission” weapons, 

The first fission is from a small ball of plutonium (usually with a tritium “spark-plug” inside) whose sole purpose is to ignite the fusion reaction by raising it to a temperature of about 100 million degrees. When fusion occurs, extremely energetic neutrons are goven off which fission the U-238 that has been used for that exact purpose in the construction of the warhead. That third stage, the fission of U-238, provides the bulk of the explosive power and the lion’s share of the radioactive fallout.

It is a sad story from beginning to end.

And, to add to this tale of woe, Canada currently has about 220 million tonnes of radioactive waste (tailings) stored at or near the surface from uranium milling (the operation that produces yellowcake) along with about 167 million tonnes of radioactive “waste rock”. Yet the Canadian authorities and others routinely and unabashedly declare that nuclear power is a “clean” source of energy and for the most part, Canadian academic scientists and sientific bodies say not a peep to the contrary.

December 16, 2025 Posted by | Canada, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

Nuclear Kills Kids

most significant of all there is now solid evidence of increased rates of leukaemia in children living close to nuclear power plants.

 Tony Webb | April 28, 2025, https://www.fabians.org.au/nuclear_kills_kids

One moment from my work in the USA in the early 1980s stands out in my memory.  I’d driven from Chicago to Cleveland at the invitation of the Health and Safety Officer of the US Boilermakers Union. The purpose was to speak to the members meeting held on the night ahead of the recruitment of members for work on the annual ‘clean-up’ of the local Nuclear Power plant.  The hired workers would be ‘radiation sponges’ – short-term casuals recruited for the ‘dirty jobs’ that would result in significant radiation exposures sometimes up to the permitted annual exposure limit and ‘let go’ if they reached that limit.  The practice offered some protection to the company’s full -time employees whose skills would be needed on an ongoing basis and whose exposures needed to be kept below the limit.   The meeting was well attended , rowdy, with a lot of questions and discussion which spilled over into the carpark after the meeting closed.  I noticed one man hanging back from the circle and invited him to join and share his thoughts.  As I recall them the essence was:

“I will be going in to apply for work tomorrow.  I understand what you shared about the risks . . . no safe level of exposure and chance of getting cancer perhaps 20 years from now . . .  It will put a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table . . . BUT my wife and I have had all the family we want.  If we hadn’t, what you shared about the genetic risks, the damage to our children and future generations . . . no I wouldn’t be going . . . “

It is a sad fact that workers, both men and women will choose, often from necessity, to put their health at risk from the work environment.  What is however consistent in my experience of working on radiation and other occupational health and safety issues is that they are far more concerned, cautious and likely to prioritise safety when it comes to risks to their children.

We now have solid evidence(1) that workers in nuclear power plants routinely exposed to radiation face significantly increased cancer risks, risks of cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and strokes, dementia and potentially other health effects. There is also an increased risk of genetic damage that can be passed on to their children and future generations. But perhaps most significant of all there is now solid evidence of increased rates of leukaemia in children living close to nuclear power plants.

To put it simply and in language that will resonate with workers and their families in the communities around the seven nuclear power plant sites the federal Liberal-National Coalition proposes to build if elected to government, nuclear kills kids.  It matters little whether or not these nuclear plants can be built on time, within budget, make a contribution to climate change, reduce electricity prices, or secure a long-term energy future; these nuclear power plants will likely kill kids who live close by. They cannot operate without routine releases of radioactive material into the environment and our young will be exposed and are particularly susceptible to any exposure that results.  

Now add to that if you care that women are more susceptible than men; that workers in these plants face greater exposure and health risks than adults in the community; that nuclear plants have and will continue to have both major accidents and less major ‘incidents’ resulting in radiation releases, community exposures and health damage. Add also that quite apart from the workers and others exposed when these plants need to be decommissioned, the radioactive wastes resulting from perhaps 30-50 years life will need to be safely stored and kept isolated from human contact for many thousands of years longer than our recorded human history.    And, again if you care, also add in the concerns around proliferation of nuclear weapons which historically has occurred on the back of, enabled by and sometimes concealed by countries’ developing so called peaceful nuclear power.

All these arguments add weight to the absurdity of Australia starting and the world continuing down this nuclear power path.  But if we want a single issue that strikes at the heart of human concerns it is this – and forgive me saying it again, it needs to be repeated many times until the electorate in Australia hears it loud and clear – Nuclear Kills Kids. 

SOURCES……………………………………………………………………………………………………

December 12, 2025 Posted by | health | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries