A California activist group wants federal money to fund cancer research in communities living near power plants — an effort suggested by the National Academy of Sciences years ago but ultimately dropped by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission due to cost.
The petition is organized by the Samuel Lawrence Foundation, a Del Mar, Calif., nonprofit that’s long criticized radioactive waste-handling at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) about an hour’s drive north of San Diego.
The group is asking members of the House of Representatives to seek federal funding for research recommended by the National Academy of Sciences in a 2014 report. In 2015, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) opted out of funding the study, saying that its estimated $8 million cost was “prohibitively high.”
“The San Onofre nuclear power plant (CA 45, 48, and 49) has been discharging low-level radioactivity into the ocean and atmosphere regularly since 1968,” the Samuel Lawrence Foundation wrote in the online petition. “No one knows for sure whether these radioactive releases are a threat to the health and safety for those who live in these areas (or over 100 million Americans who also live near nuclear power plants).”
NRC spokesman Scott Burnell declined to comment on the claim.
A local news outlet first reported on the petition this week. Samuel Lawrence did not reply to a request for comment.
“The Samuel Lawrence Foundation continues to promote fear over scientific fact,” said John Dobken, a SONGS spokesperson. “Many studies have shown that radiation doses below 10,000 millirem have no measurable effect on a person’s health. Standing outside the fence at San Onofre for a full year would provide a dose of one millirem. We all receive about 620 millirem a year from natural and manmade sources (like x-rays).”
The report was published in two phases in 2012 and 2014, respectively. The second phase of the research laid out plans to conduct a multiyear study tracking the occurrence of cancer incidence and mortality in populations surrounding seven nuclear plants across the United States.
The NRC said it regularly analyzes environmental samples from near the plants, which show that when they occur, releases of radiation “are too small to cause observable increases in cancer risk near the facilities.”
Along with cost-related issues, the NRC also based its decision partly on a statement in the Phase 2 report asserting that “any data collected during the pilot study will have limited use for estimating cancer risks in populations near each of the nuclear facilities or for the seven nuclear facilities combined because of the imprecision inherent in estimates from small samples.”
The petition says the most recent research related to the issue was facilitated 29 years ago and is currently considered “heavily flawed and outdated.”
To date, no study has been facilitated since to track the occurrence of cancer in populations surrounding nuclear plants.
