From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, yesterday:
Worldwide, regulations limiting doses from the radiation emitted by nuclear fissions and decays are based on the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model. This hypothesis posits that, irrespective of whether ionizing radiation comes in a pulse or over years, the additional risk of developing cancer as a result is proportional to the cumulative amount of energy deposited per gram of tissue, with weighting risk factors for radiation type, sex, age, and specific organs.
Since 1975, the US nuclear industry has been required to limit exposures to workers and the public to “as low as reasonably achievable” (ALARA) levels. What the ALARA level should be is determined by cost-benefit analysis in which the costs of dose reductions are compared with the benefits to workers and the public, measured in terms of reduced disease and longer life expectancy.
In May 2025, four months after taking office, the Trump administration challenged this five-decade-old regulatory approach as part of an Executive Order “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission” (NRC). The order claimed the “NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure,” which corresponds to the linear hypothesis. “Those models lack sound scientific basis,” the Executive Order added, before directing the NRC to “reconsider reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure and the ‘as low as reasonably achievable’ [ALARA] standard, which is predicated on LNT.”
What is the current UK position?
The UK Government’s Building our nuclear nation, commits it to reforms like:
- An independent expert panel (by June 2026) to examine the Tolerability of Risk framework’s application in the nuclear sector (comparing to other UK hazards) and clarify terms for proportionality.
- ONR/Environment Agency reviews of numerical guidance (Safety Assessment Principles, etc.) by December 2026.
- Legislative clarification of “grossly disproportionate” and incentives for balanced risk management.
- However, it states explicitly: “This does not mean revising the LNT model, which is the international standard… nor are we reviewing the legal dose limits that are set out in the Ionising Radiation Regulations 2017.”
The last point, again, might seem to differentiate UK plans from more risky US ones, for the moment, but the demands of the previous three intentions plus spiralling costs or stalled rollout might drive up the current proportionality push – a government-led initiative to address what the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce (2025) described as excessive risk aversion, over-conservative application of safety and environmental rules, and disproportionate costs/delays in nuclear projects.
From Anas Sarwar in 2023:
The Scottish Government’s attitude towards nuclear power has been condemned as “short-sighted” and “unambitious” by Anas Sarwar during a visit to Wick. Labour’s Scottish leader insisted nuclear energy had to be seen as part of the mix and said his party is supportive of it. https://www.iarc.who.int/news-events/leukaemia-lymphoma-and-multiple-myeloma-mortality-after-low-level-exposure-to-ionising-radiation-in-nuclear-workers-inworks/
Thyroid cancer in Scotland, upstream from Sellafield, ‘the most toxic plant in Europe’ and host to several nuclear reactors and their waste since the 1950s and 1960s, has been steadily increasing:
Thyroid cancer was three times more common in females than in males and was more common in older than younger age groups. Between 1960 and 2000, the annual EASR of thyroid cancer increased from 1.76 to 3.54 per 100,000 for females (P < 0.001) and from 0.83 to 1.25 per 100,000 in males (P < 0.001). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15670190/
Remember the onus is not upon us to prove nuclear power is dangerous but upon the industry, university researchers and politicians to prove it is not.
Can we trust them?
On 30th June 2011, the German Bundestag voted to phase out nuclear energy.
Why?
Safety was a paramount concern in the decision to phase out nuclear power: the use of nuclear energy causes highly dangerous radioactive radiation for humans and the environment and leaves behind highly toxic waste. High safety precautions must be taken throughout the entire life cycle – from the extraction of the raw material uranium to the production of the fuel, the operation of nuclear power plants and final disposal. This is the only way to reduce risks to humans and the environment, and to prevent misuse.
Yet, in the past, there have been several serious accidents that had catastrophic consequences for society and the environment affected. This is why the German society concluded that the risks of this technology exceeded the benefits, and subsequently decided to phase-out the use of nuclear energy. 1
What was the research evidence upon which they made this momentous decision?
This research from Germany published in October 2008 in Deutsches Ärzteblatt International:
An association was found between the nearness of residence to nuclear power plants and the risk of leukemia (593 cases, 1766 controls). Within the 5-km zone, the OR for the development of leukemia in children under 5 years of age was 2.19 compared to the rest of the region, and this elevation of the OR was statistically significant. The incidence of leukemia in the overall study region was the same as that in Germany as a whole (SIR=0.99; 95% confidence interval 0.92–1.07). 2
The authors held back from directly attributing the leukemia cases to radiation from the plants, as impartial researchers must, and UK Government commentary in March 2010 attempted to dismiss its findings as an outlier 3, but in Environmental Health, September 2009, a Commentary noted:
In 2008, the KiKK study in Germany reported a 1.6-fold increase in solid cancers and a 2.2-fold increase in leukemias among children living within 5 km of all German nuclear power stations. The study has triggered debates as to the cause(s) of these increased cancers. This article reports on the findings of the KiKK study; discusses past and more recent epidemiological studies of leukemias near nuclear installations around the world and outlines a possible biological mechanism to explain the increased cancers. This suggests that the observed high rates of infant leukemias may be a teratogenic effect from incorporated radionuclides. Doses from environmental emissions from nuclear reactors to embryos and fetuses in pregnant women near nuclear power stations may be larger than suspected. Hematopoietic tissues appear to be considerably more radiosensitive in embryos/fetuses than in newborn babies. 4
So, one of the most advanced nations in the world, Germany, decides to phase out nuclear power on health risk grounds after research finds higher rates of childhood leukemia near every one of their 17 nuclear power stations. The UK MSM ignore the report and the UK Labour Government of Gordon Brown, long wedded to nuclear power and weapons, funded by the GMB, commissions a report to debunk it, finding no causal link between the power plants and the disease?
The commentary in Environmental Health offers a possible mechanism to explain the clear and strong correlation for the under 5’s living 5km or less from the plants but, actually, we don’t even need that.
The onus is not upon us, to prove that the radiation around nuclear plants is safe but is upon the industry and our government to prove that it is not dangerous and to use genuinely independent researchers, not those working for government departments or in university research groups dependent on grants from government or the industry to show that it is not.
The much vaunted, by scientists, precautionary principle applies here. No potentially dangerous technology should be implemented until it is proven to be safe for all of us, from conception to the grave.
In the July 4th 2024 UK General Election, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservatives backed new nuclear power stations in Scotland.
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2696975/
3. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7e0ccd40f0b62305b80788/HPA-RPD-066_for_website2.pdf
4. https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-069X-8-43
In Scotland:
In 2021, the rate, or risk, of new cancers also increased to 644 per 100,000 [around 700 for men and 600 for women (an increase of 3.1% compared with 2019).
In England, in 2020, the rate for men was 590 and for women, 487.
These are significant differences.
There are several explanatory factors including smoking (England lowest 13%, Scotland next at 13.9%, N Ireland at 14% and Wales at 14.1%) and better NHS detection services but you have to wonder about the Sellafield reprocessing plant, the most toxic nuclear plant in Europe, seeping pollutants around our coast for 70 years now, the nuclear submarines in the Clyde and munitions on the roads and rail, the waste travelling to Sellafield, the rotting nuclear hulks in Rosyth, as well as the power stations, only recently shut down.
Sources:
Most official research into the health effects of living near Hunterston A and B has found, according to the researchers, no significant risks and, in particular no evidence of unusual levels of cancers.
For example, research by Aberdeen University in 1999 did find that more tumours (14%) of the nervous system were observed than expected within 25km of Hunterston but this was considered to be not statistically significant.[vii]
However, in 1987 the British Medical Journal reported on childhood leukaemia in West Berkshire and North Hampshire, within 10km of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston and the nearby Royal Ordnance factory, finding 29 cases among 0–4-year-olds when only 14.4 were expected based on national levels and 41 cases among 0–14-year-olds when only 28.6 were expected. [viii]
Then, in 1989, research by Southampton General Hospital found that the suggestion of raised cancer levels among young people around the Sellafield ‘has been supported by the findings’ [ix]. Contaminated effluent from the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria, described as ‘Europe’s most hazardous nuclear site’ [x], is carried by prevailing currents around the Ayrshire coast only a few miles away.
Much more dramatic, in 2002, the Guardian reported cancer rates in parts of Somerset, 5 miles downwind of the Hinkley Point plant, up to 6 times higher than the national average. [xi]
Then, in 2015, peer-reviewed research found breast cancer risks at up to 6 times higher than average around nuclear power stations in Wales and England. [xii]
The same researchers looked at breast cancer risk in Essex and found higher rates in disadvantaged areas than more affluent areas, near Bradwell power station.
Returning to the ‘official data’ recording levels of radioactivity in sediment, in soil or in life-forms, none can seriously doubt the accuracy of these but what we can legitimately do is question the safety of these levels of contamination. We can do this because they vary from country to country and over time so, by definition, are subjectively based, often influenced by economic priorities. The safe level for radioactivity in food in the EU is currently 370Bq/Kg for infants and for other foodstuff, it is 600. [xiii] In the UK, post Chernobyl it was 1 000 [xiv] and across the EU including Britain, post Fukushima for Japanese imports, it was 100 for general foods and 50 for infant products.[xv]
We have seen historically the scientific community fail to protect the public from the devastating effects of tobacco, asbestos, Thalidomide and, more recently, Primodos. The nuclear industry and the associated weapons development is an enormously powerful political and economic force. Scientists working in research centres and universities funded by government grants face powerful inhibitory pressures when it comes to doing any research that might undermine them. A powerful cultural predisposition against finding evidence of harm, against questioning the setting of ‘safe’ levels of exposure, overwhelms all but a very few and the latter do not last long.
The voters in Ayrshire and across Scotland needed to think about this before voting Labour. They clearly didn’t.
[i] https://www.gmb.org.uk/networks/politics/winning-for-working-people
[ii] https://www.gmb.org.uk/campaigns/voteyes/
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunterston_A_nuclear_power_station
[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunterston_B_nuclear_power_station
[v] https://www.robedwards.com/2009/09/revealed-radioactive-waste-leak-from-hunterston.html
[vi] https://www.ayradvertiser.com/news/15546135.concern-at-nuclear-waste-on-south-ayrshire-railways/
[vii] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27731111
[viii] https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:2936bac7-ec76-4120-a9af-0a1825b41a65
[ix] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2983129
[x] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-site-leak-could-pose-risk-to-public#:~:text=Sellafield%2C%20Europe’s%20most%20hazardous%20nuclear,public%2C%20the%20Guardian%20can%20reveal.
[xi] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jul/14/greenpolitics.science
[xii]https://www.academia.edu/95797729/Breast_Cancer_Mortality_in_Estuary_Wards_near_Bradwell_Nuclear_Power_Station_Essex_UK_2001_1995?uc-sb-sw=83553679
[xiii] https://measurlabs.com/blog/eu-regulations-on-food-contaminants/#:~:text=Most%20meat%20products%2C%20fats%2C%20and,3%20mg%2Fkg%20in%20supplements.
[xiv] https://www.reading.ac.uk/foodlaw/news/uk-09047.htm
[xv] https://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp/site/portal-english/en01-03.html
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Talking-up Scotland 
Sarwar’s love affair with the Nuclear industry clearly indicates that he has been exposed to a toxic substance far more deadly than radiation – money !
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We don’t need it. We don’t want it. The toxic nature of this technology should be enough to limit it’s development to strictly research purposes. Parking it on our coast is a criminal exploitation of our colonial status. (Dounreay, Faslane, Hunterston, Rosyth).Compensation is in order.
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