Nuclear Power Generation and Childhood Leukaemia - When are COMARE going to deliberate over the recent German Kikk study? They were asked by the Health Protection Agency to do this months and months ago is it perhaps because they cant give an answer the Government wants to hear?

There is considerable recent medical evidence to support increased health risks associated with nuclear power stations, including and especially childhood cancers in populations living near nuclear power stations both in Germany and the UK, significant steps in this research include:

Green Audit 2001: "Cancer Mortality and Proximity to Oldbury Nuclear Power Station in Gloucestershire 1995-1999". This found a childhood leukaemia cluster in Chepstow a statistically significant cluster similar in intensity to the notorious Seascale cluster. Chepstow is just down stream from the existing Oldbury power station.1

In 2004 the Committee Examining Radiation Risk of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) pronounced that isotopes could be ten times more harmful than hitherto expected and consideration should be given to the protection of children in particular.2

In 2005 the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) published a paper on childhood cancers near nuclear power stations.3 Although they were puzzled to find extra cancer cases near nuclear weapons factories and dockyards, they said there was no effect near civil nuclear power stations. In fact their study covered a wide 25 kilometre radius around nuclear sites which embraced large towns at the periphery of this radius. Previous studies have only shown an effect at a radius of 8 kilometres so it was surprising that COMARE should throw their net so wide and thus result in a distortion of the results.

The more recent KiKK German Government study 2008 found more than double childhood leukaemias near every nuclear power station.4 The German Government has abandonned building any new nuclear power stations as a result of this study.

All current UK research including the various Government COMARE reports are now out of date. They have effectively been superceeded by the more recent and more comprehensive German KiKK study, commissioned by the German government. Indeed COMARE have been requested by the Department of Health to undertake a full review of their recent reports on this issue in the light of the German KiKK study.5 This review is still in progress and until this has been completed and their report is made available for scrutiny, no one is in a position to confirm that there is "no evidence for unusual aggregations of childhood cancers in populations living near nuclear power stations".6 Indeed the most recent evidence suggests quite the opposite.

1 "Cluster of Childhood Leukaemia and Cancer in Chepstow similar to Seascale" see www.llrc.org/health/subtopic/chepstow.htm

2 "Dose is meaningless" see www.llrc.org/index

3 Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) 10th Report 2005, see www.comare.org.uk/documents/COMARE10thReport.pdf

4. "Epidemiological study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants "(KiKK) carried out by the German Childhood Cancer Registry in Mainz on behalf of the Bfs, the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection, see http://www.bfs.de/en/kerntechnik/kinderkrebs/kikk.html and http://www.bfs.de/en/kerntechnik/kinderkrebs/statement_kikk_en.pdf

5 COMARE KiKK report due April 2010 but to date not yet published see www.comare.org.uk/comare_work.htm

6 Statement by Horizon Nuclear Power in their recent response to public concerns raised during the consultation undertaken in Dec 2009 over their proposals to build a new 3rd generation nuclear power station at Shepperdine, Nr Oldbury see www.horizonnuclearpower.com/downloads/horizon-env-ecoping-report.pdf