<html>
<body>
<div align="center"><h2><b>Can nuclear power ever be 'green', 'safe' or
separated from the military's nuclear weapons obsession?<br><br>
</b></h2><h4><b>
<a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/finland-activates-its-new-olkiluoto-3-nuclear-reactor-2021-12-21/">
On the day the first European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) goes critical, or
is switched on, in Finland</a></b></h4> <br><br>
<h4><b>The same
design<a href="https://en.mercopress.com/2021/08/01/china-shuts-down-nuclear-power-reactor-for-safety-reasons">
in China was on for a year then found unsafe, had to be switched off</a>
<br><br>
Courtesy of the <a href="http://www.llrc.org">UK Low Level Radiation
Campaign</a> - George's articles are linked from this
page</b></h4><b>
<a href="https://tlio.org.uk/tlio-founder-george-monbiot-destroys-top-uk-anti-nuclear-scientist-using-his-guardian-column-then-refuses-public-debate/" eudora="autourl">
https://tlio.org.uk/tlio-founder-george-monbiot-destroys-top-uk-anti-nuclear-scientist-using-his-guardian-column-then-refuses-public-debate/<br>
<br>
</a></b></div>
<font size=1>Can nuclear power ever be 'green', 'safe' or seperated from
the banksters' nuclear weapons obsession?
<a href="https://tlio.org.uk/tlio-founder-george-monbiot-destroys-top-uk-anti-nuclear-scientist-using-his-guardian-column-then-refuses-public-debate/" eudora="autourl">
https://tlio.org.uk/tlio-founder-george-monbiot-destroys-top-uk-anti-nuclear-scientist-using-his-guardian-column-then-refuses-public-debate/<br>
</a>On the day the first European Pressurised Reacto (EPR) goes critical,
or is switched on, in Finland
<a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/finland-activates-its-new-olkiluoto-3-nuclear-reactor-2021-12-21/" eudora="autourl">
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/finland-activates-its-new-olkiluoto-3-nuclear-reactor-2021-12-21/<br>
</a>The same design in China was on for a year then found unsafe, had to
be switched off -
<a href="https://en.mercopress.com/2021/08/01/china-shuts-down-nuclear-power-reactor-for-safety-reasons" eudora="autourl">
https://en.mercopress.com/2021/08/01/china-shuts-down-nuclear-power-reactor-for-safety-reasons</a>
<br>
Courtesy of the UK Low Level Radiation Campaign - George's articles are
linked from this page<br><br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=5 color="#8E2323">George Monbiot,
<i>The Guardian</i>, and Nuclearist articles of faith <br>
</font>(page first posted 27th July 2011; updated in February 2017) <br>
</div>
<dl><dl><dl>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/monbiot.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/monbiot.html<br><br>
</a>
<dd>In May 2011 George Monbiot toured the UK "taking on all
comers". The Guardian</i> promoted these Left Hook</i> events in the
language of a boxing impressario, and puffed Monbiot as "the
Guardian</i>'s unbeaten intellectual heavyweight champion of free speech,
one of the UK's foremost thinkers and environmentalists, and polemicist
supreme". <br><br>
</dl>
</dl>
</dl><div align="center"><img src="cid:.0" width=150 height=150 alt="[]">
Shortly afterwards LLRC received a sound recording of one of the
lectures. Recorded by an independent film-maker, it had taken place in
Liverpool on May 10th 2011. George spoke about how the Fukushima disaster
has converted him to Nuclearism, the dogma that new nuclear power
stations can help to deliver us from Global Warming. <br><br>
</div>
<dl><dl><dl>
<dd>Earlier, he had argued on
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima">
a
</a>Guardian</i>
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima">
blog</a> that releases of radioactivity, even from disasters like
Chernobyl and Fukushima, have no observable impact on health. <br>
<dd>A member of the audience asked him how radioactive discharges from
Sellafield had affected wildlife in the Irish Sea. He answered with a
gratuitous and explicit attack on Professor Chris Busby although Busby's
two decades of research into the health effects of radioactive pollution
have been exclusively concerned with people, not wildlife. <br><br>
</dl>
</dl>
</dl><div align="center"><img src="cid:.1" width=152 height=162 alt="[]">
<br>
George Monbiot <br>
<hr>
<img src="cid:.2" width=152 height=171 alt="[]"> <br>
Professor Busby<br>
<hr>
After briefly dismissing the idea that Sellafield could have affected
sea-life, Monbiot said:<br>
"Now one of my greatest sources of concern and disenchantment I
suppose is that one um er er self-styled nuclear researcher in
particular, a man called Chris Busby who lives very close to where I do,
who has been writing all that stuff about the Irish Sea and about
leukaemia clusters and the rest of it for many years um , looking into
his work and looking into what scientists say about his work - work which
in the past I blithely accepted - I find that it is no better grounded
than the work of the climate change deniers such as Lord Monkton and Ian
Plimer and Christopher Booker and the rest of it that I have been
confronting for all these years. In fact um his statistical mistakes were
so profound that in order to demonstrate that there was the leukaemia
rate he said there was, which is not backed up by any medical records
anywhere, he actually had to create a negative rate for all other cancers
in Wales. In other words every year there is minus a certain number of
cancers taking place in Wales, which is a rather hard proposition to
support scientifically. I am glad you raised it because it's indicative
of of of exactly the problems we are up against. And it was a
s-s-s-s-source of sadness to me to discover that that was
happening." <br>
</div>
<dl><dl><dl>
<dd><a name="thescience"></a>This must have puzzled Monbiot's audience
but the person who sent the recording realised that he was trying to
shoot the detective in a long-running investigation into how
radioactivity in the Irish Sea migrates onto the land and causes cancer.
The quest began in 1994 when the Wales Cancer Registry (WCR) drew
attention to high levels of cancer in children. In 1995 and 1996 we
obtained two separate copies of all the detailed data held by WCR. In
fact, LLRC is now the only organisation that possesses the data since in
1996 WCR was closed down and its computers were, allegedly, wiped. <br>
<dd>Examining the data we quickly saw that the highest risks were along
the shores of the Irish Sea; all age groups were affected. <br><br>
</dl>
</dl>
</dl><div align="center">Official reports had already shown plutonium
originating from Sellafield is widespread in marine sediments across the
Irish Sea. Resuspended by wave action and carried inland on the
prevailing westerly winds, Sellafield's plutonium has been measured in
grass and sheep droppings all the way across England to the North Sea.
<img src="cid:.3" width=360 height=240 alt="[]"> <br>
Gwynedd, the Menai and Anglesey: Intertidal sediment (yellow) and
Plutonium (Becquerels/Kg) <br>
The highest levels by far are within a kilometer of the Irish Sea. So
what we saw in the WCR data supported our hypothesis that low
concentrations of some forms of radioactivity are far more dangerous than
Government officials and the nuclear industry want you to believe.
Inhalation is almost certainly the most hazardous vector.
<img src="cid:.4" width=360 height=167 alt="[]"><br>
Plutonium in sheep droppings (mBq/Kg) by distance eastward (km) from St.
Bees Head, Cumbria <br><br>
We published our findings. There was national (UK) news coverage and BBC
Wales made a TV documentary, Sea of Troubles</i>. This was Wales' own
rerun of Windscale, The Nuclear Laundry</i>, the Yorkshire TV programme
which in 1983 had revealed the existence of a 12-fold excess rate of
child leukaemia in Seascale, a village near Sellafield (as the Windscale
nuclear site was subsequently relabelled). <br>
The Welsh Assembly and Westminster governments both referred our
information to COMARE, the advisory Committee on Medical Aspects of
Radiation in the Environment, set up after the Seascale scandal.
<img src="cid:.5" width=122 height=200 alt="[]"><br>
The only school photograph of
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemma_D'Arcy">Gemma D'Arcy</a>, one
of the leukaemia victims in the Cumbrian cluster. She died before her
seventh birthday. <br><br>
<img src="cid:.6" width=150 height=192 alt="[]"> <br>
John A Steward, director of WCISU from 1997 COMARE took a kangaroo court
approach, hearing evidence from the new cancer registry, the Welsh Cancer
Intelligence and Surveillance Unit (WCISU), but not from us. WCISU's
director, Dr John A Steward, claimed that he had repeated our methods
using WCISU data. He found no extra cases on the coast and concluded that
the WCR data were corrupt. COMARE member Dr. Gerald Draper, head of the
Childhood Cancer Research Group, backed him up although in 1995 WCR had
told us Draper himself had validated the Welsh data and that the high
risks on the coast were real. But of course we weren't there to tell
COMARE this. They and Welsh Assembly officials condemned our findings and
demanded we recant. <br>
</div>
<dl><dl><dl>
<dd><a name="thescience"></a>We did not recant. Instead
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/llrc/rat/subrat/rat3215.html">we refuted
Steward's claim to have repeated our
analysis</a><a name="thescience"></a>. He had used population data from a
different census, he had diluted the high risks we found in a narrow band
next to the sea by using a wider band, and he had taken 182 of the sick
children off the WCR database and 50 off his own much more recent data.
He still found a higher risk near the sea but it was no longer
statistically significant. <br>
<br>
</dl>
</dl>
</dl><div align="center">In 2002 Linda Parry, a young HTV researcher from
north Wales, visited LLRC to ask about the leukaemia controversy. To show
her that there was independent confirmation of what we saw in the WCR
data we gave her a copy of a letter published in 2001 in the Daily
Post</i> - a Liverpool-based paper that covers north Wales. A family had
written to praise the staff at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool for their
treatment of cancer children. They had realised, from talking with other
parents in hospital waiting rooms, that childhood cancer incidence along
the north Wales coast was very common. Using known populations we
calculated that their figure of 10 new cancer cases a month represented
20 times the national rate. (The letter is cut to conceal personal
information. Lib Rowland-Hughes, who sent the news clipping, had made
contact with the little girl's grandfather. He told her that the child
had been cured of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma but was later diagnosed with
Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. She died in 2003, two years after this letter
was written.) <img src="cid:.7" width=269 height=500 alt="[]"> <br>
</div>
<dl><dl><dl>
<dd>Using her knowledge of north Wales, Linda eventually identified 40
children diagnosed with leukaemia and cancer between 2000 and 2003. In
the seaside towns of Caernarfon, Bangor and Colwyn Bay, where all the
population lives within a mile of the sea, rates of leukaemia in children
younger than 4 years were up to 20 times the national average. Rates of
other cancers were also elevated. We looked separately at the more
extensive rural areas nearby, where the population is not concentrated as
close to the sea as in the towns. The rural population showed an 8-fold
excess of child leukaemia, confirming the significance of the high urban
rates. HTV used this analysis for a Welsh language documentary Cancr i
Plant</i>. We reported the findings to the 2004 international conference
of the charity Children With Leukaemia</i> in London and
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/llrc/health/subtopic/menai.html">reported in
</a><a href="http://www.llrc.org/llrc/health/subtopic/menai.html">
Radioactive Times</a></i>. <br><br>
<dd>This was a problem for Dr. Steward because we had the children's
names, ages, and home addresses, so he couldn't remove any more cases
from database. It is very unlikely that Linda had located all the
possible cases, but Steward had no idea which she had found and which she
hadn't. WCISU admitted that the figures were high but they still denied
their significance. They used two arguments. They said that if the
disease were caused by radioactivity there would be a long-term trend,
and they claimed there was no such trend. In fact, validated data from
Wales Cancer Registry for 1982 to 1990 show there is</i></b> a long-term
trend. In the 1980s in the three worst affected towns, Caernarfon, Bangor
and Colwyn Bay, children younger than 4 had eight times the national
average rate of leukaemia.<br>
<dd>Second, through using wrong documentation, they overestimated
populations in north Wales. They thought the population of Bangor, for
example, was more than three times as big as it really is. Accurate
numbers for populations are essential, since they give epidemiologists
the numbers of cases of a disease can be expected normally. WCISU are
professional epidemiologists and their cock-up is barely credible
especially since, in 2001, we had already warned Steward that he'd made
exactly the same mistake in a separate study of cancer somewhere else.
This has been published in the
<a href="http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/2/177.full.pdf">
Journal of Public Health</a> and Steward has offered no defence. The
detail is in
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/llrc/health/subtopic/wcisureptfinal.pdf">
this report</a> with
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/llrc/health/subtopic/menaicoverup.html">more
discussion here</a>. <br>
<dd>Faced with our analysis, COMARE admitted that Steward had made a
mistake with the populations. Busby has discussed these matters at length
in <a href="http://www.llrc.org/llrc/wings/subtopic/wolves.html">Wolves
of Water</a></i>. The relevant part
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/llrc/wings/subtopic/wcrdatafromwolves.pdf">
is here</a>. <br><br>
<dd>So that's the real story. Monbiot could hardly have got it more
wrong.</b> We wrote to him offering to talk him through the evidence but
he was rudely defiant. <br><br>
</dl>
</dl>
</dl><hr>
<dl>
<dl>
<dd><font size=4 color="#8E2323"><a name="hayfestival"></a>A nice day out
at the Hay Festival</b> <br><br>
</dl>
</dl><div align="center"><img src="cid:.8" width=134 height=205 alt="[]">
</font>As George said at the Left Hook</i> talk in Liverpool, he
lives not far from Busby. Richard Bramhall, LLRC's Company Secretary,
also lives in mid-Wales so on 30th May it was a short trip to Hay on Wye
where George was appearing at the Hay Festival. We printed up a leaflet
telling the bare outline of how he had defamed a conscientious scientist
and how he was afraid to have a public debate. We pointed out that less
than two years earlier, when climate-change sceptic Ian Plimer was
reluctant to take part in a debate, George had labelled him a
grandstander with a broad yellow stripe</i></b>. That's why the poster
has a broad yellow stripe.<br>
(The slogan There's No Debate You're Chicken George</i> was first
deployed against George W Bush in the 1992 US Presidential election
campaign, when Bush was refusing to meet Bill Clinton in front of the
cameras.) <br>
<img src="cid:.9" width=134 height=205 alt="[]">
<font size=4 color="#8E2323"> </font>We leafletted a queue of people
waiting to hear George Monbiot (this is Richard Bramhall doing his
share).<br>
Two men angrily thrust the leaflets back. They claimed that Busby had
slandered their friend Dr. John Steward - the Director of the Welsh
Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit. <br>
One of these men is in the next two frames - the photographer didn't
catch the other. <br>
<img src="cid:.10" width=134 height=194 alt="[]">
<font size=4 color="#8E2323"> </font>They said they knew Steward
because they worked for the Welsh Assembly. Bramhall explained that
Steward had made a mistake with the leukaemia data, inflating the
populations of the study areas by 300%, thus underestimating the risk by
300%. He pointed out that this had been published
<a href="http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/2/177.full.pdf">
in the scientific literature</a> and that Steward hadn't answered. That
seemed to slow them down a bit but one still said he preferred to believe
in his friend, while the other (pictured) said there was no mechanism for
the low levels of radioactivity on the coast to cause leukaemia. <br>
<img src="cid:.11" width=134 height=166 alt="[]">
<font size=4 color="#8E2323"> </font>Bramhall said "If that's
what you think, you're relying on a concept of dose that is known to be
meaningless, so let's have the debate - my contact details are on the
leaflet." Like Monbiot, they haven't taken up the offer of a
civilised discussion. <br>
</div>
<dl><dl><hr>
<font size=4 color="#8E2323"><div align="center">
<dd><img src="cid:.12" width=144 height=205 alt="[]"> </font>Why is
George so sure he's right? Well, he's read a blog by his friends Chris
Goodall and Mark Lynas
(<a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/31/seven-double-standards/">here
he calls them
</a><a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/31/seven-double-standards/">
two environmentalists who have kept their heads in this crisis</a></i> -
that is the Fukushima crisis). Goodall and Lynas have read Radiation and
Reason: The Impact of Science on a Culture of Fear</i>, by a professor of
physics, Wade Allison. Bramhall has
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0956275613/ref=dp_db_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1">
reviewed </a>Radiation and
Reason</i>
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0956275613/ref=dp_db_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1">
on Amazon</a> showing that Allison has torpedoed his own project by
altogether ignoring microdosimetry. See
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/20/chernobyl-radiation-risk-dose-density?INTCMP=SRCH">
this short piece</a> which explains the vital importance of
microdosimetry - it means Allison has made a massive averaging error,
which is like believing that a stab in the back is no worse than a pat on
the back. <br><br>
</div>
<dd>Don't take our word for it; here are damning reviews of Radiation and
Reason</i> from two senior figures in the conventional radiation
protection community -
<a href="http://www.kbaverstock.org/Book%20review%20Final.pdf">Professor
Keith Baverstock formerly of WHO</a> and <br>
<dd>
<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0952-4746/30/2/B01/pdf">
Mike Thorne, a former Scientific Secretary to the International
Commission on Radiological Protection</a> <br>
<dd>to say nothing of avowedly anti-nuclear
<a href="http://peacenews.info/node/5133/wade-allison-radiation-and-reason-impact-science-culture-fear">
Peace News</a> <br><br>
<div align="center">
<dd>And finally, here is Malcolm Grimston who graduated from Cambridge
University in 1979 having read natural sciences, specialising in
psychology. In 1987 he went to work at the UK Atomic Energy Agency and he
is well known as a ruthless and intimidating pro-nuclear propagandist.
LLRC has met him many times and he appeared frequently on TV after
Fukushima, playing down the gravity of the disaster. <br>
<dd>So what is Malcolm doing here? Well, between leaving university and
going to UKAEA he taught chemistry at Stowe School where one of his
pupils was little George Monbiot. Funny world isn't it. <br><br>
<br>
</dl>
</dl><a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/monbiot2.html">Next,
Monbiot gets offensive in
</a><a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/monbiot2.html">The
Guardian</a></i></b> <br><br>
<br><br>
<font size=5 color="#8E2323">George Monbiot goes on the offensive in
print: <br>
<i>The Guardian</i>, November 2011 <br>
</font></div>
<dl><dl><dl>
<dd><img src="cid:.13" width=150 height=150 alt="[]"> In November
2011 The Guardian</i> published two articles in which Monbiot repeated
what he had said about childhood leukaemia during his Left Hook</i>
lecture tour earlier in the year. He also launched a fresh attack on
Professor Chris Busby and the advice he was giving to people in Japan to
protect themselves from radioactive discharges from Fukushima. He accused
Busby of exploiting people's fears for personal profit.
<dd>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/21/christopher-busby-radiation-pills-fukushima">
Guardian</a></i>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/21/christopher-busby-radiation-pills-fukushima">
21st November</a>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/nov/22/christopher-busby-nuclear-green-party">
Guardian</a></i>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/nov/22/christopher-busby-nuclear-green-party">
22nd November</a>. <br>
<dd>In preparing these articles he bullied Busby and ignored information
supplied by LLRC, as Richard Bramhall
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/monbiotbully.html">reports
here</a>. <br>
<dd><img src="cid:.14" width=150 height=200 alt="[]">
<font size=4 color="#8E2323"> <br><br>
</font>
<dd>Monbiot was mentored by nuclear enthusiast Professor Geraldine Thomas
of Imperial College, London (pictured left). She criticised Busby's
advice on precautions against radioactivity from Fukushima, saying:
<dd>radioactive elements do not bind to DNA</i> which shows how little
[Professor Busby] understands about basic radiobiology</i>
<dd>Professor Busby's assertion that Caesium causes heart disease was
ludicrous</i>
<dd>administering stable Calcium and Strontium is useless</i> (in fact
it's standard medical advice). <br>
<dd>Wrong, wrong and wrong.
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/monbiot22nov2011.html">See
here for the science</a> and
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4Kkuo-IK-A">watch why low
levels of radio-Caesium damage children's hearts</a>. <br><br>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/thomasguardcomments22112011amendfeb2017.pdf">
We wrote to Professor Thomas</a>. She replied I stand by the comments I
made to George Monbiot during his research for this article</i>. <br>
<dd><a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/thomasmenace.html">More
bizarre views from Professor Thomas -- on Chernobyl, Fukushima, and
</a>stable
Uranium</i>
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/thomasmenace.html">.
</a><br>
<dd><img src="cid:.15" width=150 height=200 alt="[]">
<font size=4 color="#8E2323"> <br><br>
</font>
<dd>In
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/nov/22/christopher-busby-nuclear-green-party">
the same article</a> Monbiot suggested that Professor Busby was seeking
to profit financially from the distress of people in Japan by selling
goods and services at inflated prices. This is far from the truth. No
payments had been made to the bank account Monbiot referred to. The
Foundation was quickly blocked by legal moves in Japan and imports of the
products were banned, so there were no sales. Even if these obstacles had
not been created, the formal non-profit</i> agreement between Busby and
the businessman who wanted to create the Foundation was that any profits
would be ploughed back into further research.
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/monbiot21nov2011.html">
Rebuttal from Professor Busby</a>. <br>
<dd><img src="cid:.16" width=150 height=100 alt="[]">
<font size=4 color="#8E2323"> <br><br>
</font>
<dd>In the same article (21 Nov.'11) Monbiot expressed his faith in the
effectiveness of the Japanese government's precautions at Fukushima.
People in Japan criticised him in an email to The Guardian</i>.
<a href="http://www.llrc.org/pronuke/monbiot/monbiot24nov2011.html">Here
is their message, which they copied to LLRC</a>. <br>
<dd><img src="cid:.17" width=222 height=136 alt="[]">
<font size=4 color="#8E2323"> <br><br>
<dd><img src="cid:.18" width=222 height=140 alt="[]"> <br><br>
</font>
<dd>The Lord Mayor of Oxford invited Busby and Monbiot to debate the
science in a public meeting in Oxford Town Hall on 3rd November 2011 (in
the hall pictured, left). Monbiot declined. The meeting went ahead
without him. See the video
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjTHpq54mz8">here, part 1</a>
and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oX1w2xv110">part 2
here</a>. <br><br>
<dd> <br>
<dd>Monbiot repeated his opinions in the
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-energy-solution">
Guardian</a></i>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-energy-solution">
on 5th December</a>. <br><br>
<dd>Alan Rusbridger - Editor in Chief at the Guardian until 2015
(pictured left) - never allowed Busby space to respond. So much for the
paper's stance as a champion of liberal values. <br><br>
<div align="right">
<dd><font size=2><a name="oxford"></a>Richard Bramhall: 27th November
2011. Updated February 2017 <br><br>
<br>
</font>
</dl>
</dl>
</dl></div>
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