Professor John Robertson OBA

From Maine Public, two days ago:

A new study from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health shows that living near a nuclear power plant significantly increases a person’s risk of cancer. The study was published this month in Environmental Health. CAI’s Jennette Barnes has this interview with senior author Petros Koutrakis, professor of environmental sciences at Harvard.

JENNETTE BARNES: In your study, you used data from the Massachusetts Cancer Registry to investigate whether living near a nuclear power plant affected a person’s risk of cancer. I do want to talk about how you did it, but first tell us, what did you find?

KOUTRAKIS: In terms of the entire state, this represents between 3 and 4 percent of the total cancer incidence. But we need to understand that these disproportionately affect people who live very close. So the increases near power plants for people living within two kilometers can be … 100 percent or 50 percent or 30 percent … We expect that these effects … they are higher for people who are very close to these power plants, especially one kilometer, two kilometers.

While there no homes within 2km of Hunterston B in North Ayrshire, West Kilbride is only 3km away, Fairlie and Seamill are only 5km way, all well within the 25km risk zone. The large town of Irvine begins only 20km away.

Notably, for Scottish Labour’s claims for reduced risk in small modular reactors, this:

BARNES: What are the implications for new nuclear? There’s growing interest in using the latest technology to develop new nuclear power facilities.

KOUTRAKIS: I’m not an expert. Everybody talks about small modular reactors. … I wouldn’t call this new technology. I still think that they would use uranium mining, enrichment of uranium. They will use fission nuclear reactors the same way. They will produce the same type of waste.

Full peer-reviewed and published report, at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-025-01248-6

More on SMRs (Sarwar’s Modular Reactors): https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2025/05/26/the-higher-burn-up-and-radioactivity-of-uk-labours-preferred-small-modular-reactor-spent-fuel-make-it-more-difficult-to-handle-transport-and-store-safely/