Low-level-radiation-a-game-changer-for-the-nuclear-power-and-weapons-industries

Posted: 22nd February 2021

Pete Wilkinson: Low level radiation – a game changer for the nuclear
power and weapons industries? The murky world of deceit, lies and
deliberate withholding of information that characterised the race to
develop the A and H-bombs in the immediate aftermath of WW2 as former
allies became cold war enemies. The greater ‘good’ of possessing
weapons of mass destruction to deter an aggressor outweighed the need to
inform people of the unknowns surrounding the long-term effects of exposure
to radiation. “Keeping the public confused” made it possible to develop
those weapons without the encumbrance of protests. Following a Children
with Cancer UK international conference in 2018, a modest grant was awarded
to the Low Level Radiation Campaign to write a report, compiling the
evidence that supported the view that the health effects of exposure to low
doses of alpha emitting radioactive materials are woefully underestimated.
The report has been sent to every major government department, to MPs and
to regulators. The response has been totally underwhelming. The government
is unable even to consider that the industry on which it has relied since
the 1940s to provide its plutonium, its nuclear engineers, its nuclear
research facilities, much of its electricity and its medical isotopes,
might be contributing to disease and death in the population. And it
refuses to instruct its publicly funded expert body, CoMARE, to do so on
its behalf.

Yorkshire Bylines 21st Feb 2021

https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/low-level-radiation-a-game-changer-for-the-nuclear-power-and-weapons-industries/