[ RadSafe ] " Planned study on cancer risk faces challenges, science panel told "

[Blaine Howard]

Dear RadSafers,
  I find it hard to understand why people look for radiation effects among those residing in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor when the obvious place to look is among those working in those reactors and other nuclear facilities.  The amount of radiation exposure to workers at the reactor is probably hundreds of times what residents in the vicinity of the reactor could have received.
  Nuclear workers world wide average about 21 per cent lower cancer mortality than the general public.  They also have 22 per cent lower all cause mortality.  This information comes from a table found in “Cancer Mortality Among French Atomic Energy Commission Workers” published in The American Journal of Industrial Medicine in 2004.
  Of course those defending the LNT claim this is just a very strong “Healthy Worker Effect”.  Isn't it marvelous how those employers were able to screen out applicants who would later die from cancer?  Anyway, the Nuclear Shipyard Worker Study proved that the Healthy Worker Effect was not responsible for the lower cancer death rate.
  My point is that there is much data about health effects of radiation which eliminates any negative effects of much higher radiation doses than those received by residents in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor.  Why should we spend millions of dollars to try to dig out some effects of trivial doses?  It seems that the NRC is lacking in common sense.

Blaine N. Howard