With the return of nuclear energy to the public square and serious efforts among policymakers to commercialize a new generation of reactors in the United States and Europe, familiar claims about the risks of nuclear reactors have returned as well. In a recent Bulletin article, Joseph Mangano and Robert Alvarez call for a new national cancer study focused on communities near nuclear power plants before any further expansion of nuclear power is undertaken in the United States. The authors are long-time opponents of nuclear energy ….
However, the scientific consensus on this question is clear: The United States does not need a national cancer study near nuclear reactors.
Routine reactor emissions … pose no meaningful health risk. Even if some vanishingly small effect existed, it would be statistically indistinguishable from the background cancer rate and would be lost in the noise of lifestyle, environmental, and biological risk factors.
How do we know this? Because large sample studies have tracked the health of millions of workers exposed to routine ionizing radiation and found no definite link to increased risk of cancer at low effective doses ….
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