“Living next to a nuclear power plant is not a dream”declared Aymeric Caron in the Economic Affairs Committee at the National Assembly on Thursday 2 March. “It is understandable”continues the deputy Ecological revolution for the living (REV) by giving several reasons including this one: “If we read this Inserm study from 2012 which evokes a number of childhood leukemias higher than the national average within a radius of 5 km around the power stations.”
A few minutes later, a National Rally deputy comes to contradict him. Jean-Philippe Tanguy ensures that “this Inserm study says the exact opposite”. He paraphrases a repeat of the study in Release in 2012 : “No significant association was observed between the number of leukemia cases identified and the distance between the place of residence and the nuclear site.”
Proud of its fact-checking, the deputy RN finally published it on Twitter a week later, pointing out Aymeric Caron, whom he accuses of “handling” and to be “customary of anti-nuclear intox”.
I denounce the manipulations of@CaronAymericoff.
Customary of anti-nuclear poisoning, NUPES claimed that INSERM had demonstrated an increase in leukemia among children living near nuclear sites.
In fact, the study says exactly the opposite, and that’s @sdnfr the smoker! pic.twitter.com/MbK6OweMPb
— Jean-Philippe Tanguy Ⓜ️ (@JphTanguy) March 7, 2023
There radical environmentalist response did not wait. He, for his part, denounced “incompetence” of his adversary, remaining on his positions. So which of the two is true?
Since @JphTanguy wants to denounce, I denounce his incompetence.
The study I cite says exactly what I’m reporting.
“We were rather surprised to find, during the study of data for the period 2002-2007, a significant excess in the incidence of acute leukemia in… https://t.co/167yZmttRQ— Aymeric Caron (@CaronAymericoff) March 7, 2023
Twice as many children with leukemia near nuclear power plants…
In fact, the two chosen ones are right and wrong at the same time. Each focuses on a single aspect of the same study by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). They only take the part that suits them, Aymeric Caron being for the exit from nuclear power and Jean-Philippe Tanguy for its development.
The debated study is actually more nuanced than politicians claim. The researchers studied the living places of children with leukemia, they compared them, and they realized that between 2002 and 2007, 14 children with leukemia lived less than five km from a nuclear power plant, when there should have been half as many, according to their estimates. They therefore conclude, as Aymeric Caron evokes, that there is a “possible excess risk” to live near a nuclear facility.
… but the causal link is not established
However, what the member for Nupes does not say is that the study did not succeed in proving that the proximity of the power stations was responsible for these leukaemias. No causal link has been found, as Jean-Philippe Tanguy says. “The link with the very weak ionizing radiation emitted by power plants in normal operation cannot be established”said to Release Dr. Jacqueline Clavel, who had led the study, after its publication in 2012. It is a simple correlation without explanation or fault, at this stage.
However, the deputy Rassemblement national is not entirely right either, because he evacuates the latest conclusions of the study. Inserm recommended continuing the analyses, considering factors other than simple gaseous emanations and ionizing radiation from power plants, such as possible family moves, pesticides, medical histories of children or parents before these leukaemias, and also to compare data and methodologies between countries. A German study had similar conclusions in 2005, but it had been widely criticized across the Rhine, without achieving unanimity either among scientists or among commentators.
The search continues
Eleven years later, scientific knowledge is still at the same point. However, the effects of exposure to radioactivity are closely monitored. In 2021, the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) published a report on this subject, covering the years 2014 to 2019 and its observations are clear: we are much more exposed to ionizing radiation when passing an X-ray or scan than living next to a power plant.
“The dose received can vary from approximately 0.1 millisievert (mSv) for a chest X-ray to 15 mSv for an abdomino-pelvic scanner or a PET-scanner”can we read there, while “for people residing within a radius of 10 km around [d’une installation nucléaire]a dose of 1 to 10 µSv/year (i.e. 0.001 to 0.01 mSv/year) is selected depending on the site”. A simple chest X-ray is equivalent to ten years of life next to a nuclear power plant, if we take the maximum estimates (0.01 mSv/year), a lumbar X-ray is equivalent to 100 years, a chest scanner to 1,000 years.