No cancer link to nuclear power, inquiry finds

An official investigation in Britain has failed to establish any link between radioactive discharges and levels of childhood cancer.

However the study has confirmed three known childhood cancer clusters around other nuclear installations, although it found no evidence that these have resulted from radioactive discharges.

The findings are described as the most definitive research conducted anywhere in the world that has tried to find links between nuclear installations and cancers in local children.

Independent scientists analysed more than 32,000 cases of childhood cancer diagnosed between 1969 and 1993 to see if there was a higher-than-expected incidence within 25km of every licensed nuclear installation in Britain.

They looked at childhood cancers of the blood, namely 12,415 cases of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as well as 19,908 cases of solid tumours - both have been linked with nuclear installations by other researchers.

In terms of Britain's 13 nuclear power stations, the scientists failed to find any evidence for an increase in the risk of any childhood cancer despite using five different statistical techniques.

However, when the Committee on the Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (Comare) looked at the other 14 non-power nuclear installations, which handle radioactive material, they found three clusters which had already been established in previous studies.

These occurred around the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria, the Dounreay site in Scotland and the Burghfield and Aldermaston atomic weapons establishments in south Oxfordshire.

The scientists also found an anomaly around the Rosyth dockyard where nuclear-powered submarines are maintained.

Although this was not an excess, the scientists did find that there was a slightly elevated risk of childhood cancer nearer to the dockyard than at the 25km boundary.

Professor Bryn Bridges, the outgoing chairman of Comare, said that the Rosyth findings are difficult to interpret and he has ordered further research to discover whether it is a real effect.

"There is no excess there to explain away. It's a question of where the cases are distributed within the 25km circle," Professor Bridges said.

Childhood cancers are important because children are more sensitive to radiation than adults and if the low-level effects of radiation cannot be detected in the childhood population then it would be difficult to find them in adults, he said.

The overall conclusion of the report is that there are no cancer clusters around nuclear power stations and that there are just three known clusters around non-power nuclear installations, but that radioactive discharges are too low to account for this increased incidence, Professor Bridges said.

"For power stations the results are unambiguous and, as might be expected from the very low discharges, there is no indication of any effect on the incidence of leukaemia and non-Hodgkins lymphoma," he said.

"We think this is as definitive as study as you can do. It's taken many years to do it. There is no evidence from this very large study that living within 25 kilometres of a nuclear-generating site within Britain is associated with an increase risk of childhood cancer."

"We examined the incidence of childhood cancer in the vicinity of all nuclear power stations in Britain and found no evidence of an excess of cases in any local 25km areas."

The next report of the Comare committee will study whether childhood cancer across Britain is evenly spread in a random manner or whether there are statistical clusters elsewhere in the country.

"There does seem to be a small, non-random effect. It is a very small proportion, most of it, some 95 per cent of childhood cancer cases, appear to be random throughout the country," Professor Bridges said.

"There does seem to be a certain amount of clustering but it is a small effect. The next report will go into this in a lot more detail," he said.

- INDEPENDENT