[ RadSafe ] Article: "Anti-nuke study instantly bombs" -- was Mangano's New Study

[Jim Hardeman]

Colleagues --
 
The following article appeared on the front page of today's Atlanta
Journal-Constitution (AJC).
 
URL =
http://www.ajc.com/search/content/business/stories/2007/07/06/biznuke0706a.html

 
Jim Hardeman
Jim_Hardeman at dnr.state.ga.us 
 
======================
 


ajc.com ( http://www.ajc.com/ )> Business (
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/index.html )
Anti-nuke study instantly bombs

By Margaret Newkirk (
http://www.ajc.com/search/content/business/stories/2007/07/06/mailto:mnewkirk@ajc.com
)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/06/07 
The figures were chilling.
Cancer death rates for children and teens up 58 percent in the region
around Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle since the nuclear facility went on
line. Cancer death rates up 25 percent in Burke County, where the plant
sits. Hundreds to die if two new reactors get built, as Georgia Power
plans.
The figures came from a report called "Health Risks of Adding New
Reactors to the Vogtle Nuclear Plant."
Commissioned by a North Carolina-based group opposing Georgia Power's
pending nuclear expansion and championed by other, Georgia-based
opponents, the report was intended as a damaging shot at Georgia Power's
nuclear ambitions.
It didn't turn out that way, in what may be a sign of things to come as
the nuclear industry and its foes battle for hearts and minds during the
country's first nuclear resurgence since Three Mile Island.
It took Georgia Power approximately a nanosecond to bloody the health
study beyond recognition, with an assist from the well-organized and
well-funded nuclear industry, the speed of the Internet and *-
unfortunately for its sponsors *- the report itself.
Nuclear opponents may be a little rusty. It's been decades since they
had a new nuke to oppose. And other issues *- like where to store
radioactive waste *- have a higher profile than the question of whether
reactors harm their neighbors.
The industry says that question has been long answered in the negative.
Opponents say the question hasn't been studied enough to say that *-
which is why they commissioned their own report.
But even some of that report's disseminators, like the Southern
Alliance for Clean Energy, backed away from some of its more startling
claims, including the clear implication that Vogtle had killed people
and would kill more.
"We're not saying that Vogtle is responsible" for the cancer deaths in
the region, said SACE's Sara Barczak *- although the report's title
suggests just that. "We're just saying that something is going on here.
Shouldn't we be more cautious about putting in a facility that could
exacerbate what is already happening?"
The industry's much louder message was that the report's author, Joe
Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project, was a well-known
crank known for issuing scary scientific junk.
The study "is an old scare tactic that has been disproved and rejected
many times," Georgia Power spokesman John Sell said.
The company then listed eight state health departments that had
reviewed and rejected similar Mangano health findings *- a list provided
by the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, which is the industry's
lobbying arm and think tank and has been busily discrediting Mangano for
years.
NEI has a blog full of disdainful posts about Mangano, has tracked him
from state to state and had a health expert at the ready to talk about
it.
NEI chief health physicist Ralph Andersen said he hadn't seen the
Vogtle study but would look at it "as a matter of course. But so far,
the story has tracked the same. He crunches the numbers, alarms people
and moves on. There is a pattern of selecting data and disregarding data
to support conclusions."
Warnings about Radiation and Public Health Project studies also are on
the Web site for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The NRC lists typical flaws, some of which even the study's circulators
concede exist in the Vogtle study.
The study had scary data but didn't connect the data to Plant Vogtle in
a way that would pass scientific muster. It didn't use scientifically
accepted controls, didn't consider other explanations for cancer deaths
and drew overreaching conclusions.
"The report has flaws," said Frank Bove, an epidemiologist and a member
of Eco Action, which helped circulate the report. But he said it did
show health problems in the area already overburdened with heavy
industrial sites: "Our point is this: Why pile on?"
Mangano, the study's author, wasn't surprised that the industry had
taken him on: "Ho-hum," he said. "I'm very used to this."
He said his studies have been published in 22 peer-reviewed
publications, despite the opinions of state health departments which
"aren't subject to peer reviews."
He also said his study *- even if subject to challenge *- is filling a
void. The nation's policy, he said, is to set limits on emissions and
look no further if a reactor operator is below those limits. If the
limits are met, "they say no one is being harmed without doing any of
their own studies. We believe this is presumptive. You must do the
studies."
Is a flawed study better than no study?
Not according to Richard Clapp, professor of environmental health at
Boston University's School of Public Health and a well-known cancer
expert. Clapp said he also has concerns about the coming nuclear
resurgence *- although he said the real health danger will likely fall
on those who mine and process nuclear fuel.
Given the high-speed world of Internet debunking, the groups that
circulated the Vogtle study handed Georgia Power a hammer, he said.
"Their hearts are right and their instincts are right," Clapp said.
"But this is not the way to prove it."