In accordance with the industry-controlled Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to change the basis of its radiation protection regulations from the Linear No Threshold [LNT] model to Radiation Hormesis model ("Radiation Is Good For You, Eat More!"), the NRC last week shut down an NAS study of cancer and other health risks in populations living near 7 US nuclear facilities. Because continuing with the study (they said) is "impractical" because it'll take too much time and cost too much money ($8 million total out of the Commission's annual $1 billion budget).
Journalist Sue Sturgis at the Institute for Southern Studies reports on how this decision is going over with concerned residents around the Nuclear Fuel Services [NFS] facility in Erwin, Tennessee. These residents have long been suffering cancers and other health problems some suspect may be related to releases of radioactive contamination from NFS.
Feds cancel nuclear health study, leaving questions for Tennessee plant's ailing neighbors
Nuclear watchdogs blasted the NRC's decision, with Maryland-based Beyond Nuclear calling it "outrageous."
The facility in Erwin enriches and fabricates fuel for the US Navy's reactors and civilian power industry, and has been notorious for
dumping uranium (and we're not allowed to know what else) that ends up in the drinking water of people downstream. Some here may recall a rather exciting incident in 2004, when a couple of young (i.e., IDF-age)
Israelis in a rental truck led Madison County, North Carolina cops on a high speed chase straight out of
The Dukes of Hazard on windy mountain roads after being spotted heading that way from Erwin by the Unicoi County sheriff. It was a regular Big Deal here in WNC for a few days, the fact that they were 'retrieved' from the Asheville jail by the feds (never to be heard from again) didn't ease anybody's mind...
Anyway, the NAS study was to have focused on the populations around Erwin's NFS and six nuclear power plants - San Onofre in California, Millstone and Haddam Neck in Connecticut, Dresden in Illinois, Big Rock Point in Michigan, and Oyster Creek in New Jersey. European studies of this same variety have been reporting for a quarter of a century that rates of childhood leukemias rise with proximity to nuclear plants. In the 2008 KiKK study commissioned by the German government found a 60% increase in total cancers and 120% increase in leukemias among children under 5 living within 5 km of ALL German nuclear power plants.
Thus the sudden shutdown - by the NRC - of a similar in-the-works study in the US just as industry pressure - on the NRC - to raise exposure limits to levels that would have sent a nuclear worker on paid vacation until the end of the quarter back in my day appears to be... questionable at best.