FW: Power plant cancer link rejected - Toronto Star

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

> FYI, from The Toronto Star newspaper, at URL
> http://www2.thestar.com/thestar/editorial/news/20000110NEW02_CI-NUKE10.htm
> l
> 
> January 10, 2000
> Power plant cancer link rejected 
> Expert's study of increased cases won't be heard at judicial review 
> By Kate Harries 
> Toronto Star Ontario Reporter
> A 40 per cent increase in child cancer mortality rates near the Bruce and
> Pickering nuclear power plants is statistically significant and should be
> studied further, says an internationally recognized expert. 
> But the evidence of Dr. David Hoel of the Medical University of South
> Carolina will not be considered in a judicial review of the approval of a
> nuclear waste storage facility at the Bruce power plant near Kincardine. 
> Three days, starting today, have been set aside for the hearing in federal
> court in Toronto. 
> A judge last week refused a request by lawyers representing a residents'
> group that Hoel's affidavit be allowed as evidence, despite the fact that
> it had been filed late. 
> ``It's unfortunate,'' said Norm de la Chevrotiere, president of the
> Inverhuron ratepayers' association. Inverhuron is a community of about 500
> just south of the Bruce plant on Lake Huron. 
> The group says then-environment minister Christine Stewart erred last
> April when she approved the project without referring it for an
> independent environmental assessment. Ontario Hydro - now Ontario Power
> Generation - oversaw its own environmental assessment, which was deemed
> sufficient. 
> The facility is to house spent fuel bundles so toxic that ``even after
> storage for 10 years, if an unprotected person were to handle one used
> fuel bundle, they would receive a lethal radiation dose within 30 seconds
> and would die within weeks or months,'' Chevrotiere said. 
> ``You can't continually sweep these things under the carpet,'' he said of
> warnings like Hoel's that the nuclear plants may be causing sickness and
> death. 
> ``There's reasonable uncertainty and the benefit of the doubt should go to
> the public, not to the nuclear industry.'' 
> Hoel, an epidemiologist who is also an expert in the cancer effects of
> chemicals and ionizing radiation, evaluated a study undertaken in 1989 and
> 1991 by the Atomic Energy Control Board that found 36 children up to 14
> years old had died within a 25-kilometre radius of the two plants. 
> That's a 40 per cent increase over the 25.7 deaths that would have been
> expected, based on provincial rates. 
> The board dismissed the increase as a statistical anomaly. 
> ``What appears as suggestive evidence in the study is most likely due to
> chance,'' its epidemiologist, Suzana Fraser, says in an affidavit to be
> considered in the judicial review. 
> Hoel disagrees. The board failed to follow appropriate statistical methods
> for analyzing the data, he says, and ``this results in understating the
> statistical significance of the 40 per cent observed increase in childhood
> leukemia rates.'' 
> Hoel, author of 150 published papers, a former research director at the
> U.S. National Institutes of Health and a former researcher at the
> Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima, faults the board for
> not doing follow-up research. In particular, he notes that the study was
> based on data collected from 1950 to 1987. ``It is now 1999. There are
> thus several years of data to follow up on.'' 
> In her affidavit, Fraser dismisses any link between the operation of the
> Bruce power plant and elevated prostate cancer rates that have been
> observed in Bruce and Grey counties as `highly improbable.'' 
>  `We believe the study is very relevant to the storage facility. The idea
> that one could double radiation rates when the source of the increased
> leukemia rates has not been adequately studied is certainly cause for
> concern.'	
> - Rodney Northey Lawyer for ratepayers' group  	
> There have been no published accounts in the scientific literature of
> excess prostate cancer rates among populations living near power plants,
> she states. 
> But Hoel points to four British studies showing elevated rates of prostate
> cancer in nuclear workers. 
> At a hearing in Ottawa on Wednesday, Mr. Justice Denis Pelletier upheld
> the arguments put forward by lawyers for the federal environment ministry,
> the control board and Ontario Power that Hoel's evidence should be
> excluded. 
> The affidavit was filed late and ``to allow the evidence in now is to
> allow the applicant to buttress its case after the respondents have
> crafted their case to meet the case presented by the applicant,''
> Pelletier ruled. 
> Inverhuron's lawyer, Rodney Northey, said the late filing was due to the
> difficulty in tracking down an expert in both epidemiology and radiation
> to counter Fraser's evidence. 
> Pelletier, however, found that Hoel's expertise was in the public domain
> by reason of his extensive publications, and it was incumbent on the
> applicant to put its best case forward at the first opportunity. 
> Hoel's evaluation of the board's study is an important element of his
> client's case, Northey said in an interview, because Ontario Power's own
> environmental assessment predicted that emissions from the storage
> facility could double the radiation to the public. 
> ``The idea that one could double radiation rates when the source of the
> increased leukemia rates has not been adequately studied is certainly
> cause for concern.'' 
> Ontario Power Generation plans to store 740,000 highly radioactive fuel
> bundles in the new facility. Similar storage exists at the Pickering
> plant. 
> The bundles - spent fuel from nuclear reactors - are recognized as the
> most toxic of all industrial waste products. 
> The proposal calls for them to be moved into steel and concrete silos
> after first cooling for 10 years under water in large pools inside the
> plant. 
> After about 600 years, the bundles' active fission products will have
> decayed, but radioactive emissions are projected to continue for several
> hundred thousand years. 
> Ontario Power released a written statement to The Star Friday saying that,
> after an extensive environmental assessment process, Stewart had concluded
> the project is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental
> effects. 
> ``This application for judicial review invites the court to enter into a
> detailed assessment of the evidence underlying the environmental
> assessment and to second-guess the exercise of the judgment and discretion
> that . . . the minister's conclusion required,'' it says. 
> The Inverhuron group claims Stewart contravened the Canadian Environmental
> Assessment Act that requires the minister to refer a project to a mediator
> when uncertainty exists over any ``significant adverse environmental
> effects.'' 
> Uncertainty exists, the group argues in documents filed with the court,
> because of major changes since the 1997 environmental assessment. 
>  
> 
> 
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