6 February 2011

The Nuclear Industry’s Desperate Last Stand ?

By Marguerite Finn

As I write, Sizewell B nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast is shut down. The news that a problem at Sizewell B, causing it to shut down again after its lengthy and expensive closure last year, must add to French parent company Électricité de France’s (EDF) woes. You could be forgiven for thinking that the on-going trouble at their Finnish and Flamanville reactor sites, and the failure to secure big international contracts, were dampening France’s ardour for a nuclear future. But you would be wrong.

The French Government is furiously lobbying the European Council to replace Europe’s goal of 20% “renewable” energy by 2020 with “carbon- free” electricity instead. Sounds good, doesn’t it? After all, anything that is carbon-free must be a good thing, mustn’t it?

Not so! In nuclear speak, “carbon-free electricity” means nuclear electricity. The revised national policy statements for energy - at present being squeezed through the UK parliament without much publicity - make no bones about wanting all our electricity to be nuclear-generated by 2050. Our Government justifies this by pretending that it will be “carbon-free”.

And France is trying to persuade the European Union to ensure that all Europe’s electricity becomes nuclear too.



The picture of a gently humming nuclear reactor, effortlessly magicking electricity out of busy little atoms at no carbon cost, conveniently forgets the decades-long carbon haemorrhage that led up to that. Uranium mining, transporting, processing and enriching, plus the ten-year long station-building and pylon-erecting from remote sites, and the colossal carbon-belching nuclear office bureaucracy itself and the immense ministerial departments bulging with civil servants, not to mention the carbon that will continually be emitted in coping with the nuclear waste for thousands of years. This is what they call “carbon free”.

That is only one aspect of the lie. The fact is that benign renewable energy (which nuclear is not) is at present experiencing unprecedented growth in Europe, representing nearly 40% of new electricity generation in 2010. Meanwhile nuclear is declining precipitously; since 2004 18 nuclear reactors closed, only one became operational. Is nuclear energy worth resuscitating – with the £billions that would entail?

We know that nuclear only works if it is propped up by huge subsidies (however heavily disguised). So if the EU is tricked by this lie into scrabbling around to prop up nuclear with even more money, that will assuredly come from what is presently funding the many-pronged, resourceful and diverse benign renewables.

Because the carefully orchestrated anti-wind pack bays so loudly, we tend to forget that the renewables are not only for electricity; but also for transport, heating, air conditioning, agriculture etc. If the momentum being put into all those is spirited away, solely in order to produce nuclear electricity across Europe, what a colossal mistake our generation will have made – and what a mess we will have made for succeeding generations to grapple with!

If France wants to go on stifling its wind power and photovoltaic development by financial and legal barriers, that’s its problem. But it must not do the same across Europe, nor to us here in Britain. The ‘bottom line’ is that in its desperate attempt to save its nuclear industry, France wants to condemn the whole of Europe to a suicidal energy policy

As the French-owned Sizewell B idles on the Suffolk coast, perhaps the current down-time there could be usefully spent in checking whether there are man-made uranium emissions, accumulated over the years in the soil around the site. At Hinkley Point in Somerset, where EDF wants to build another new nuclear station (Sizewell C), an independent report by Green Audit (GA) has shown that EDF’s own data, used by EDF to claim that the site is safe from harmful deposits, are incorrect. Professor Chris Busby of GA has re-analysed EDF’s data to show that there may be 10 tonnes of enriched uranium splattered across the site, which could only have come from the neighbouring reactors, over the decades for which we have been assured they were all so safe. Raised incidences of childhood cancers downwind of Hinkley Point have long been known to GA, though hotly denied by the establishment. Uranium is not simple to check up on. If the establishment got it wrong in Somerset, they may have it wrong in Suffolk.

One last thought about the proposed Sizewell C nuclear reactor; this is a quote from Dr Colin Brown, Director of Engineering at the Institution of Mechanical Engineering on the dangers of building a nuclear power station and storing nuclear waste on a site vulnerable to climate change:

“The Sizewell B nuclear plant has been built on the Suffolk Coast, a site that has been earmarked for the construction of several more nuclear plants. However, Sizewell will certainly be affected by rising sea levels. Engineers say that they can build concrete walls that will keep out the water throughout the working lives of the new plants. But that is not enough. Nuclear plants may operate for 50 years, but it could take hundreds of years to decommission them. By that time, who knows what sea-level rises and what kinds of inundations the country will be experiencing”.

Photo: Sizewell A and B, Sizewell, Suffolk

21 comments:

  1. The Nuclear Industry's Last Stand?

    er, come back in a few years. I think you're confusing hope with reality.

    So no surprises there.

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  2. There are many things that can be said about the study by Busby and Collingridge. We say a few words about it here:
    http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/blog/2011/02/07/chris-busby-and-the-tall-tale-of-ten-tons-uranium-gone-missing/

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  3. The “few words” Lantzelot says about Busby and Collingridge are harsh criticisms of the uranium data. Yet the data are EDF’s. Busby and Collingridge simply analysed EDF’s data, and they didn’t think much of them either. Particularly regrettable was the absence of readings from the top 26 cm of the soil at the Hinkley Point site, which might well have made everything so much more startlingly clear. But one can only complain to EDF about that.

    One wonders why EDF have made those surface readings so elusive, and why too Lantzelot attacked the wrong people. After 60 years of this sort of mischief it would be silly for Anonymous to wait any longer for nuclear to come good.

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  4. Peter Lanyon,

    We would also be very happy to see the data for the top 26 cm of soil. But as long as we do not know anything about them, it is very dishonest of Busby and Collingridge to make all the claims they do based on data with such large statistical uncertainties. Not the least when they pretend that the statistical uncertainties do not exist. So Peter, please go ahead and work for a release of the data for the top soil. Until then, don't excuse an obvious lie from Busby because of a eventual (we don't know) cover up from EDF.

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  5. Oh dear, why is Lantzelot still attacking the wrong people? All the questions Busby and Collingridge raise seem to me to be valid. It's for EDF to clear up their inadequate data. I wouldn't wish to subsidise them.

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  6. There's far less substance in Lanzelot's attacks than he would have you believe. For a start, the headline "Leak of uranium from the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant?" is a trick. Busby and Collingridge do not claim leaks. UNSCEAR data show Hinkley Point has routinely emitted 500 million Becquerels of radioactivity in the form of particles every year, most of it from split and corroded fuel canisters. The dust must have settled somewhere, so there is no reason to doubt or deny that land so close to the A and B stations is contaminated.
    Secondly, his reanalysis of the AMEC data only shows that the data are too poor to give EdF the reassurance about existing contamination that they obviously crave (see the comments log at the back of the document Lanzelot linked to - [http://easylink.westsomerset.gov.uk:82/WAM/doc/Report-391.pdf?extension=.pdf&id=391&location=volume1&contentType=application/pdf&pageCount=1]. So all should be in agreement that the survey should be done again and done better.
    Thirdly, he has not disposed of the criticism that AMEC should not have said 330 Bq/Kg was an appropriate background level. It's way out of line with reality. And consider that AMEC claimed this assumption was "conservative"; the conservative approach would be to assume a lower than expected background value, not the highest you can find in the whole UK. One has to suspect incompetence.
    Lanzelot links to a pro-nuclear page [http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=109] where he reveals himself as the anonymous person who went armed with graphs to ambush Chris Busby at a meeting in Stockholm last year. If you read his diatribe you might be interested to see the reply [at http://www.llrc.org/epidemiology/subtopic/balticresponseletter.pdf]
    The web is alive with attacks on Busby. Many, like Lanzelot's, are libellous and almost all are anonymous, like Lanzelot's. The nukes have built this into a minor industry, for they are desperate to deny the obvious - that the current model of radiation risk is discredited and that a mountain of published evidence by many workers shows that low levels of some kinds of contaminant, including Uranium, are causing so much damage to health that nuclear power and radioactive weapons are not viable policy options. Lanzelot must know this, but he pretends not to.
    **Richard Bramhall

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  7. With all due respect, Peter Lanyon, you are mixing up things.

    I assume (please correct me if necessary) that you are not too happy about nuclear power in general, and that you are convinced that the releases from Hinkley Point are causing the claimed cancers, childhood mortality etc. If this is your standpoint, then the questions raised by Busby and Collingridge, and their claim that there are tonnes of enriched uranium released from the power plants, seems to be valid.

    From my viewpoint, regardless of what I think of nuclear power, Busby and Collingridge are entitled to raise any questions they like. What they are not entitled to do, is to use the EDF data (inadequate or not) in order to support their claims, because:
    1: They are cheating by pretending that the statistical uncertainties play no role in how to interpret the data.
    2: If they had included the uncertainties they would have found, like we did, that the data does not support any of their claims. They may as well claim that Hinkley Point is full of captured trolls and goblins, there is no support for it from the data.

    Regarding the quality of the data,they may be of low quality (again, due to the low levels, it is a difficult measurement), and obviously there are some data missing. I welcome any crusade by you, Busby or whoever in order to get the missing data released. If those data change the picture or not, we can only speculate about. Until then, Busby and Collingridge should not speculate the way they do on the existing data, that is what I attack.
    If they insist, maybe I should start a crusade for an immediate release of the trolls and goblins that are imprisoned at Hinkley Point. For the time being, until we have more data, my claim is as feasible as the one by Busby and Collingridge.

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  8. There's far less substance in Lanzelot's attacks than he would have you believe. For a start, the headline "Leak of uranium from the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant?" is a trick. Busby and Collingridge do not claim leaks. UNSCEAR data show Hinkley Point has routinely emitted 500 million Becquerels of radioactivity in the form of particles every year, most of it from split and corroded fuel canisters. The dust must have settled somewhere, so there is no reason to doubt or deny that land so close to the A and B stations is contaminated.
    Secondly, his reanalysis of the AMEC data only shows that the data are too poor to give EdF the reassurance about existing contamination that they obviously crave (see the comments log at the back of the document Lanzelot linked to - [http://easylink.westsomerset.gov.uk:82/WAM/doc/Report-391.pdf?extension=.pdf&id=391&location=volume1&contentType=application/pdf&pageCount=1]. So all should be in agreement that the survey should be done again and done better.
    Thirdly, he has not disposed of the criticism that AMEC should not have said 330 Bq/Kg was an appropriate background level. It's way out of line with reality. And consider that AMEC claimed this assumption was "conservative"; the conservative approach would be to assume a lower than expected background value, not the highest you can find in the whole UK. One has to suspect incompetence.
    Lanzelot links to a pro-nuclear page [http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=109] where he reveals himself as the anonymous person who went armed with graphs to ambush Chris Busby at a meeting in Stockholm last year. If you read his diatribe you might be interested to see the reply [at http://www.llrc.org/epidemiology/subtopic/balticresponseletter.pdf]
    The web is alive with attacks on Busby. Many, like Lanzelot's, are libellous and almost all are anonymous, like Lanzelot's. The nukes have built this into a minor industry, for they are desperate to deny the obvious - that the current model of radiation risk is discredited and that a mountain of published evidence by many workers shows that low levels of some kinds of contaminant, including Uranium, are causing so much damage to health that nuclear power and radioactive weapons are not viable policy options. Lanzelot must know this, but he pretends not to.

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  9. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Since EDF used the data to suggest that uranium levels are satisfactory at Hinkley Point, Busby and Collingridge are entitled to use the same data to question that. I'm not mixing anything up, Lantzelot.

    Peter Lanyon

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  10. I live on the coast near to Hinkley Point. Please bear in mind that the Green Audit Report forms part of the objections that have been lodged with West Somerset Council as part of the planning process. In their application EDF said the land was contaminated and supplied various reports and data to establish that it was a safe level of contamination.

    The best has been done to verify the data provided by EDF using the best free resources possible. This work was sprung on Chris Busby at very short notice in the middle of a huge piece of work he is doing on Depleted Uranium in Fallujah. He therefore had to publish it as an Occassional Paper in collaboration with Cecily Collingridge who did the very difficult job of trawling through EDF's chaotic and complex application. It is not a full blown scientific report and they received no remuneration for it.

    I think it is WSC's responsibility, as the Planning Authority, to get EDF to pay for the investigation into the Amec Report, not for private individuals to give their free time to prove whether our suspicions are correct.

    We have also great concerns that people are working on the Hinkley C site and may be about to start moving the asbestos mound. It would surely be criminal negligence on EDF and WSC's part to allow people to do this without warning them of the concerns raised by the Green Audit Report.

    Why should we have to spend our free time and energy proving the land IS contaminated when it should be the rich and all powerful EDF who should be being cross examined and held to account to prove that it IS NOT contaminated. Whose lives are we trying to safeguard here? The people of West Somerset or EDF's shareholders.

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  11. @ Lanzelot, I assume by your use of the Royal 'we' above that you are referring to both yourself and the other commentators in this thread? If so then could you explain why it is that you feel that it is ok for yourself and other commentators here to speculate but that Dr Busby and Ms Collingridge should refrain from such speculation?

    Also as a point of fact the only trolls and goblins at Hinkley point are those that populate the military installations that masquerade as 'benign' entities 'just' generating electricity.

    The Pixies of pixies mound @ Hinkley point are, however doing very well I hear.

    I had a good look at the yes to nuclear power please website and I found it most interesting that their own analysis, whilst simultaneously trying to debunk Chris's work, they/you very quietly admit that the stations may indeed be the source of the enriched uranium, concluding that there were two possible conclusions to draw from what they call statement 1 (the following is an exerpt from their blog):

    STATEMENT 1: Any determined enrichment ratio is a lower limit
    Busby claims that the solubility of Uranium in water is higher than for Thorium in water. This is probably correct. But we have to consider the life time of the various isotopes in the decay chain. U-238 decays mainly through alpha emission to Th-234. The half life of Th-234 is about 24 days, beta decaying into Pa-234 (Protactinium). Pa-234 has a half life of only 6.7 hours before decaying into U-234, which has a half life of 245 000 years (a chart with the U-238 decay chain is given here). So, for the given case we could, naively, make two alternative assumptions:
    (1): If there is only natural uranium in the ground, then we are dealing with changes over geological time scales, where the life times of the three Uranium isotopes (U-234, U-235 and U-238) are very long (245 000 years, 704 million years and 4.5 billion years, respectively). A lower solubility of Thorium-234 then has limited importance because there is only Thorium around for about a month for each decay, to be compared with the hundreds of thousands of years (or much more!) that we have the Uranium, irrespective of which isotope.
    (2): The uranium (and Thorium) found on the site origins from the nuclear plant. What is measured then either comes from a continuous release since 1965, or from one or several larger releases after that date up to the year 2008 when the measurements were performed by AMEC. In either case, the released uranium has occurred on the order of one or more years ago, and has remained as Uranium for the vast majority of the time, save for about a month that decaying U-238 is in the Thorium state.

    They then go on to state:
    Thus the claim that the activity ratio U238/U235 will indicate a lower limit must be met with: We don't know, and Busby does not know, he is just speculating.

    I think that the scientifically correct term is hypothesising a perfectly legitimate scientific pastime, indeed hypothesising is the basis of all scientific observation and experimentation. At no point has Dr Busby made any inappropriate inferences, indeed this is supported in his recommendations where he calls for further soil testing.


    However the most significant thing in that small bit of analysis is that they are forced to concede that the contamination from the stations may well be the explanation for the data. as pointed out above.

    as a Bachelor of Sciences I have to take issue with the websites deliberate attempts to bamboozle it's prospective readers with science that the writer seems to have a poor grasp of. (I will continue my comment in another comment box as my full response is not contained within the word count of this forum)

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  12. Part 2 of my comment:

    A criticism levelled at Dr Busby is that he ignores the error in AMECS data, I would argue that he does not, and that this is borne out by the his methods and recommendations.

    The two standard deviations that AMEC use are a way of accounting for the errors i.e one ST DEV either side of the mean, which is why Dr Busby didn't need to use a scatter plot with error bars, Instead the blog makes no critism of AMECs methodolgy but critises Dr Busby for AMECS methodological problems. Given that the gamma spectroscopy isnt the most accurate way of garnering the data required and that a signinficant degree of error is involved with this methodology, it would seem highly inappropriate to expect Dr Busby to use a more accurate method to analyse data that already contains a significant degree of error. Had AMEC bothered to use Mass spectroscopy then maybe Dr Busby would have chosen a scatterchart with error bars, but that is me speculating and I'm certainly not going to put words in his mouth as the nuclear power yes please blog has done.

    The fact that Dr Busby has used an xy scattergraph doesn't mean he has ignored the error, indeed maybe the writers of the blog might do well in future to check with him what he means or has assumed rather than putting words into his mouth. Dr Busby himself states that gamma spectrometry can only be used with some caveats, acknowledging that mass spectometry is more accurate, why then do they point out that its's difficult to measure how much U-235 there is in environmental uranium samples by using gamma spectroscopy methods? They point out that AMEC have not used this method but (unsurprisingly) fail to question this.

    Dr Busbys report is a what is known as a desk top study that is to say a review of pre-existing primary or secondary data. This also involves using his expert knowledge to critique what he sees (another legitmate scientific pastime).

    Dr Busbys recommendations based on the conclusions of his report are set out below:

    7. Recommendations
    1. All building work and site preparation should be halted immediately.
    2. This site and others surrounding the reactors should be gridded and a sufficient
    number of samples taken from the surface and a series of depths at distances
    from the sea. These samples from GIS recorded locations should be examined
    by gamma spectroscopy and by ICPMS Mass spectrometry, preferably by an
    independent laboratory or laboratories.
    3. Gamma exposure rate measurements at 1m should be recorded for the same
    locations. According to the US NCRP Report No 84 Table 5.1 the gamma
    dose rate over well-mixed soil with Uranium at a concentration of 40Bq/kg is
    160microSieverts per annum and this already exceeds the Euratom threshold
    for a single source exposure without invoking inhaled particles. It is estimated
    from the gamma spectra that the dose rate over the proposed area will be
    significantly higher than the 40- 50microSieverts measured for the area by
    NRPB in their published gamma records for England.
    4. The normal operation of nuclear plants should be investigated with regard to
    releases of respirable enriched uranium to the environment and the possibility
    that this is one source of increased risk of leukaemia/lymphoma and cancer in
    local communities. High Volume air samplers should be located near nuclear
    plants and uranium and uranium isotope rations measured over a
    representative period.
    5.Access to the site and to sampling from the site and the beach should be given
    for independent examination and analysis of the environment.


    If you read Dr Busbys recommendations above they more than adequately take account of the degree of error in AMECS measurements, this is why he is calling for further characterisation of the site using more appropriate techniques.
    (I will continue my comment in another comment box as my full response is not contained within the word count of this forum)

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  13. Part 3 of my comment
    The nuclear power yes please site ultimately fails to keep up the facade of scientific objectivity that it portrays at the beginning of its analysis, descending into slanderous personal insults directed at Dr Busby, not very scientific.

    Maybe they would benefit from some scientific education, here they might learn about hypothesising and null hypotheses as a means of applying statistical tests to data to either accept or reject a null hypothesis at a given level of probablity (i.e. with a certain degree of confidence). Then maybe they could engage with Dr Busby's work in a more meaningful way instead of showing themselves to be the cronyies of the nuclear industry that they are, intentionally misleading lay people who don't understand the science or the statistics, but then of course the day they do that is the day they'll have to stop defending the nuclear industry isn't it?

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  14. Then maybe they could engage with Dr Busby's work in a more meaningful way instead of showing themselves to be the cronyies of the nuclear industry that they are, intentionally misleading lay people who don't understand the science or the statistics, but then of course the day they do that is the day they'll have to stop defending the nuclear industry isn't it?

    So when we convey criticism against Busby's methods and his way of interpreting data, then it's "slanderous personal insults"? But when you write that, then it's... what... objective and unshakable truth? :)

    It's not often I quote the bible but Matthew 7:5 seems very appropriate here. :D

    The point remains that even if Busby's hypothesis is correct, he cannot show it with any of the data he uses. A broken clock is right twice per day but that doesn't mean that we can rely on it!

    The null hypothesis - we are very familiar with it, thank you for asking - is not contradicted by Busby because of 1) the uncertainty of the data... we can fit any curve we want over the error bars and still get as many his as Busby and 2) the null hypothesis in this case could be almost anything because he does not know with any kind of certainty what the null hypothesis is.

    So... to reply to your insinuation that we at NPYP are uneducated lackeys of the nuclear industry... I will simply tell you: no, we are not. You may wish for it to be so, but that doesn't make it happen on your wish alone. Nor is Busby right just because you wishes him to be so.

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  15. Puh, plenty of things to respond to, this will take more than one evening. Let's start with Richard Bramhall.

    There's far less substance in Lanzelot's attacks than he would have you believe. For a start, the headline "Leak of uranium from the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant?" is a trick. Busby and Collingridge do not claim leaks.

    Ok, my mistake, they speak about contamination through "normal" channels, not leaks. I guess that any claim by me that English is not my mother tongue will not be a valid excuse in this case. I will add a comment about this to the NPYP blog post and forum post. Thanks for pointing this out.

    UNSCEAR data show Hinkley Point has routinely emitted 500 million Becquerels of radioactivity in the form of particles every year, most of it from split and corroded fuel canisters. The dust must have settled somewhere, so there is no reason to doubt or deny that land so close to the A and B stations is contaminated.

    Where do you get the information about split and corroded fuel canisters? I see that Busby mentions this (he refers to a Finish STUK study, but there is no reference to it). If you have any other source than Busby, please bring it up.

    Once again, my English is not perfect: by fuel canister I understand a container for transport of nuclear fuel to and from the power plant, not the fuel elements when mounted in the reactor (is fuel canister and fuel cladding the same thing?).
    In the former case I would seriously doubt it (unless there is uranium powder in the canisters), in the latter case (which does indeed happen): where are the fission products?

    I wouldn't be surprised if there is some contamination around the plant, but 10 tonnes? 500 MBq, assuming natural uranium and that all the release is only uranium, would be about 20 kg per year.
    In defence of Busby, he says that the 500 MBq (or 400...) per year does not account for the 10 tonnes.

    By the way, wouldn't you agree that a split and corroded fuel canister (whatever it is) has a leak? Maybe I should withdraw my apology above...

    Anybody interested can find the reported releases themselves from the UNSCEAR report on this link: http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/annexc.pdf

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  16. Richard Bramhall again:

    Secondly, his reanalysis of the AMEC data only shows that the data are too poor to give EdF the reassurance about existing contamination that they obviously crave [...]. So all should be in agreement that the survey should be done again and done better.

    Not necessarily, you do another survey according to standard procedures, and you will most likely end up with another set of data of similar quality. But with mass spectroscopy, yes probably you would settle the issue about enrichment or not. And as repeated before, I would also like to see the data from the top 26 cm of the soil.

    Thirdly, he has not disposed of the criticism that AMEC should not have said 330 Bq/Kg was an appropriate background level. It's way out of line with reality. And consider that AMEC claimed this assumption was "conservative"; the conservative approach would be to assume a lower than expected background value, not the highest you can find in the whole UK. One has to suspect incompetence.

    This one I partly agree with, why call it conservative when referring to the highest value? But it does not excuse the colour blindness of Busby, or his way of drawing conclusions in the other extreme end, ignoring possible local variations.

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  17. Richard Bramhall, part 3:

    Lanzelot links to a pro-nuclear page [http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=109] where he reveals himself as the anonymous person who went armed with graphs to ambush Chris Busby at a meeting in Stockholm last year. If you read his diatribe you might be interested to see the reply [at http://www.llrc.org/epidemiology/subtopic/balticresponseletter.pdf] The web is alive with attacks on Busby. Many, like Lanzelot's, are libellous and almost all are anonymous, like Lanzelot's.

    Oh, I haven't seen this one, great! A few clarifications seems to be in place, since we now are entering the stage of pointing fingers at each other:
    1. I was not anonymous at the BSRRW meeting, and I did introduce myself to Busby at least once. Besides, I signed up for participation at the meeting, so the organizers, who Busby knows very well, have my contact details.
    2. The Swedish version of my report from the BSRRW meeting has my full name (I forgot to "sign" it in the English translation), as does the study about Hinkley Point, and the associated blog post. But I guess you never got that far, it seems to be more important to put a label on me.
    3. I took an extra holiday from my job in order to go to that meeting. Nobody payed me for it, I was upset about the stack of lies, or correct things taken out of context, packed into a single event. And I had read some articles about Busby where he makes some very remarkable claims, so I wanted to see him in action for myself. Busby's presentation (they toured 8 countries with this, though I am not sure if he participated the whole time) was available on the BSRRW website, so when I realized that he was mistreating official statistics I decided to make a comparison for myself and bring it to the meeting.
    4. Busby's letter to Dr. Eckerman (who I have the highest respect for) is interesting. It was written a few days after the BSRRW meeting in Stockholm, and he tries to justify his reasoning with a reanalysis. Anybody is welcome to compare them with the two tables I show in my report from the meeting (Busby's version and my version), and the pdfs with the plots. Busby's reanalysis shows nothing new (there is a roughly constant increase of the breast cancer incidence in the data from 1970 and onwards, so of course his reanalysis gives an increase) except that once again he avoids the counties (inland or coastal) that disproves his theory. Let us assume that Busby really did not know about them, and that it is an honest mistake. Then he shouldn't make such strong statements about the results, when his study is so badly performed. The statements he made in the press release are quite remarkable in the light of this, and clearly shows that he is not serious in his research. In my humble opinion, the Hinkley Point study follows the same pattern.
    5. Nuclear Power Yes Please is a network of people, including myself, who are positive towards nuclear power, but our opinions are not cast in stone. Criticism of nuclear power, and the nuclear industry, is surely needed, but I do not see how the two studies by Busby that I have looked into brings us any closer to the truth.

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  18. Richard Bramhall part 4:

    You say that I ambushed Busby. I say that he tried to ambush and scare the population of Sweden with a very bad study. He deserves all the criticism he can get for that. And now he is playing a similar game with the population near Hinkley Point.

    I wouldn't mind his study if he would:
    * Display the statistical uncertainties, and show clearly that they have been taken into account properly. Also declare the zero hypotheses and the procedures used, what is shown is very doubtful.
    * Considering the low quality of the original data, which we can agree on, Busby should not use phrases as:
    "Evidence of significant...",
    "There is no doubt that the predominant contamination is from enriched uranium.",
    "There is also the significant trend in these
    data with the distance from the sea coast...",
    "This is a very significant discovery." and so on.
    You will find more interesting statements from the press releases and the llrc web page.

    Finally, you say that my statements are libellous. I understand that the British libel laws are a bit peculiar, so please indicate for me where anything that I have written would fall under this legislation, I am curious.

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  19. There is a difference between what Busby claims and the EDF conclusion. We can debate whether Busby is right or wrong but the EDF data is a legal document showing that there is not contamination. The Ac228/ Tl208 activity ratios which they claim to be 1 are in fact 3.37, 3.4, 3.3, 3.11, 3.14, 3.14, 0, 0, 2.98, 3.04, 0, 3.5, 3.31, 2.63, 3.6, 2.88, 2.81, 3.24, 3.31, 3.26, 3.46, 3.23, 3.45, 2.57, 3.18, 2.98, 0, 3.39, 3.06.
    When did 3 = 1? They lied so the question is what other safety data are they lying about.
    Why was their blatant lies not picked up by NII or the environment agency who are meant to oversea such things.

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  20. P.S. I have the data Ac228/ Tl208, Th234/Pb210, Th234/U235,U238/U235 (calc),Ra226 / Pb210, Ra226/ U235 in Excel format if anyone wants them (saves a lot of typing) email plunk@hushmail.com

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  21. plunk:

    It may be helpful to know that the branching ratio for the decay of Bi212 is 64% of beta decay to Po212 and 36% of alpha decay to Tl208. Thus we have 3*0.36 = 1.08, which is pretty much what we see from your calculations.

    It is very nice to see that more people are checking the data for themselves instead of trusting Busby's conclusions. Maybe we will even see people who are asking themselves "Is the report by Busby and Collingridge making any sense?" instead of "How do I ignore the parts that do not fit with my already decided view on how things should be?"

    So please try again before you start using words like "blatant lies".

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