Scientifically Proven: Nuclear Power is Safe and Clean

The United States has benefitted from the safe, clean and reliable generation of electricity from nuclear power for more than fifty years, with nuclear power today providing about 20 percent of our nation’s electrical supply. And in that time there have been highly-vocal, and highly-organized groups formed to shut down nuclear power plants.

One such anti-nuclear group is an organization called the Radiation and Public Health Project, led by Joseph Mangano, which claims a link between nuclear power and a statistical increase in thyroid cancer.

Mr. Mangano is no stranger to the nuclear industry or public health officials. For years the anti-nuclear activist has tried to find a link between nuclear power and negative health effects, making similar claims in earlier studies. His studies have not stood the test of peer review, however.

Dr. Joshua Lipsman, Health Commissioner for Westchester County, had this to say recently in the Journal News:

“You really have to call them conspiracy theorists,” Lipsman said of Mangano and his supporters. “You’d have to believe that federal, state, and local authorities, academic institutions, and the power plant are working together. Whenever this group’s research has been reviewed, it’s been discredited.”

Responsible, scientifically based studies, on the other hand, have been done. Experts from state and federal health departments, researchers at major universities, and organizations like the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society have not found a link between nuclear energy and adverse public health effects.

In fact, nuclear power plant workers are on average healthier than the general public, according to a 2004 study by Columbia University that examined 53,000 nuclear workers.

Radiation, which is all around us, can be placed in one of two major categories —background radiation and medical radiation. According to the National Council of Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), background radiation accounts for about half of the exposure to the general public each year. Examples of background radiation are naturallyoccurring radon and radioactive minerals from the earth and cosmic rays from the sun and space.

About half of radiation exposure is generated from medical technologies such as tomography, nuclear medicine, and conventional radiography.

The total exposure to the general public from nuclear power is much, much less—under just one percent of the total.

Mr. Mangano’s claims cannot pass a scientific review because he conveniently ignores data that does not support his conclusions. For example, he ignores background radiation data provided by the NCRP. In its March 2009 report, the NCRP noted that background radiation has increased by nearly a factor of two because of a dramatic increase in diagnostic procedures such as CAT scans. Also, Mangano apparently is unwilling to “go to the source” of data—a scientific necessity. He concludes that thyroid cancer is attributable to emissions of radioactive iodine from nuclear power plants but makes no effort to actually determine whether such emissions even occurred.

Mr. Mangano does a great disservice when he uses faulty logic and junk science and preys on people’s fears to shut down nuclear power plants.

Health professionals and academia know better. Radiation experts and workers in the nuclear industry, including Indian Point, know better. The general public deserves better.

Michael Slobodien, Director Emergency Programs for Entergy, is a Certified Health Physicist and a Diplomat of the American Academy of Health Physics. He has 38 years of professional practice in the field of radiation health including coordinating a major health study into the effects of radiation on nuclear power plant workers in the United States that was part of an International Agency for Research on cancer study.