How the nuclear industry uses its bloggers network to lie to the public

[kristopher]

There is a network of "nuclear bloggers" that work with and are coordinated by the nuclear industry. There is a point person at the nuclear industry lobbying group the "Nuclear Energy Institute:" that is responsible for social media outreach and at nuclear industry conventions the bloggers are invited to attend hosted workshops (promoted and planned by employees of US Dept of Energy Labs) designed to spread the nuclear gospel.

One of those bloggers is "the next big future" where a particularly repugnant and persistent lie has been concocted and has spread in a fashion where it is accepted as a "truth" all around the internet. It purports to be a complete comparison of the rates of death associated with production by the various types of power generation. Here is the website and the chart that represents the authors handicraft::

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html

Deaths per TWh for all energy sources: Rooftop solar power is actually more dangerous than Chernobyl

Coal – USA............................................15
Oil.......................................................36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas............................................4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass.....................................12
Peat.....................................................12
Solar (rooftop).......................................0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind.....................................................0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro....................................................0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao ............1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear................................................... 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

Solar: the stats are simply fabrications; numbers made up out of whole cloth by the author of the blog.

Wind: Cumulative deaths per TWh for wind isn't 0.15/TWh. Using the same source cited by the NBF blogger it is clearly 0.07/TWh and has been for several years. The author at nextbigfuture had to go back to the year 2000 to get the 0.15 number. That is simply lying.

Readers can download the spreadsheet themselves: http://wind-works.org/articles/DeathsDatabase.xls
The per TWh tab is labeled "deaths by year". It is also worth reading the "deathsdatabase" tab to see that the nature of the deaths includes everything that could possibly be related.

Similar gimmicks are used to under-report the deaths related to nuclear power. The author's source is available at his site where it is the third graphic of 4; just click any of them for a readable close up:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html

Note that the 0.04 quoted for nuclear is strictly "occupational fatalities" even though the more comprehensive number of "public fatalities", right next to it, is 0.65. The author uses a "piublic fatalities" number for wind - that is what Gipe tracks. He also goes to extra effort to use it for coal (see below). So what possible logic can justify choosing the far lower "occupational fatalities" only for nuclear except the deliberate intent to present fraudulent data?

Also, if you go to the Externe analysis and read it you'll find that Chernobyl is excluded from the total. To make up for that the author takes the most conservative estimate available - 50 deaths - and notes it as an aside. See study below for most recent independent and authoritative analysis of the health consequences to date from Chernobyl.

The source nextbigfuture post also makes available an estimate (from Externe E which he used for nuclear) for the coal fuel chain - the range is 0.04-0.23. In order to push that up the author goes to the trouble of finding and incorporating the deaths from particulate pollution associated with coal. It is a commendable effort but it begs the question of either why such diligence wasn't applied across the board or why the direct comparison number from Externe, which was considered accurate for nuclear wasn't used coal? Obviously it is that both are rated at the low end as 0.04 deaths per TWh and that simply wasn't the impression the author was striving to communicate on behalf of the nuclear industry.

In short, this blog entry , and its continued use by nuclear industry proponents that know it is a deliberately crafted lie, is one of the reasons I turned against nuclear power in recent years. If you can't trust them on matters so easy to check, how in the hell can you trust them to promote the public welfare when they are shielded by the secrecy shrouding the technology itself?

Chernobyl study

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Volume 1181 Issue Chernobyl
Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Pages 31 - 220

Chapter II. Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe for Public Health

Alexey B. Nesterenko a , Vassily B. Nesterenko a ,† and Alexey V. Yablokov b
a
Institute of Radiation Safety (BELRAD), Minsk, Belarus b Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Address for correspondence: Alexey V. Yablokov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospect 33, Office 319, 119071 Moscow,
Russia. Voice: [phone]; fax: [phone]. [e-mail]
†Deceased


ABSTRACT

Problems complicating a full assessment of the effects from Chernobyl included official secrecy and falsification of medical records by the USSR for the first 3.5 years after the catastrophe and the lack of reliable medical statistics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Official data concerning the thousands of cleanup workers (Chernobyl liquidators) who worked to control the emissions are especially difficult to reconstruct. Using criteria demanded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) resulted in marked underestimates of the number of fatalities and the extent and degree of sickness among those exposed to radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. Data on exposures were absent or grossly inadequate, while mounting indications of adverse effects became more and more apparent. Using objective information collected by scientists in the affected areas—comparisons of morbidity and mortality in territories characterized by identical physiography, demography, and economy, which differed only in the levels and spectra of radioactive contamination—revealed significant abnormalities associated with irradiation, unrelated to age or sex (e.g., stable chromosomal aberrations), as well as other genetic and nongenetic pathologies.

<snip>

This section describes the spectrum and the scale of the nonmalignant diseases that have been found among exposed populations. Adverse effects as a result of Chernobyl irradiation have been found in every group that has been studied. Brain damage has been found in individuals directly exposed—liquidators and those living in the contaminated territories, as well as in their offspring. Premature cataracts; tooth and mouth abnormalities; and blood, lymphatic, heart, lung, gastrointestinal, urologic, bone, and skin diseases afflict and impair people, young and old alike. Endocrine dysfunction, particularly thyroid disease, is far more common than might be expected, with some 1,000 cases of thyroid dysfunction for every case of thyroid cancer, a marked increase after the catastrophe. There are genetic damage and birth defects especially in children of liquidators and in children born in areas with high levels of radioisotope contamination. Immunological abnormalities and increases in viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases are rife among individuals in the heavily contaminated areas. For more than 20 years, overall morbidity has remained high in those exposed to the irradiation released by Chernobyl. One cannot give credence to the explanation that these numbers are due solely to socioeconomic factors. The negative health consequences of the catastrophe are amply documented in this chapter and concern millions of people.

The most recent forecast by international agencies predicted there would be between 9,000 and 28,000 fatal cancers between 1986 and 2056, obviously underestimating the risk factors and the collective doses. On the basis of I-131 and Cs-137 radioisotope doses to which populations were exposed and a comparison of cancer mortality in the heavily and the less contaminated territories and pre- and post-Chernobyl cancer levels, a more realistic figure is 212,000 to 245,000 deaths in Europe and 19,000 in the rest of the world. High levels of Te-132, Ru-103, Ru-106, and Cs-134 persisted months after the Chernobyl catastrophe and the continuing radiation from Cs-137, Sr-90, Pu, and Am will generate new neoplasms for hundreds of years.

A detailed study reveals that 3.8–4.0% of all deaths in the contaminated territories of Ukraine and Russia from 1990 to 2004 were caused by the Chernobyl catastrophe. The lack of evidence of increased mortality in other affected countries is not proof of the absence of effects from the radioactive fallout. Since 1990, mortality among liquidators has exceeded the mortality rate in corresponding population groups. From 112,000 to 125,000 liquidators died before 2005—that is, some 15% of the 830,000 members of the Chernobyl cleanup teams. The calculations suggest that the Chernobyl catastrophe has already killed several hundred thousand human beings in a population of several hundred million that was unfortunate enough to live in territories affected by the fallout. The number of Chernobyl victims will continue to grow over many future generations.