No-one ever died from radiation? or ian

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24 years after the fire at Windscale which resulted in up to 1,000 times more radioactive polution than the Harrisburg incident, someone has actually worked out the probable effect on the health of local inhabitants.

Peter Taylor, of the Political Ecology Research Group estimates that between 10 and 20 people may have died as a result of the fire. The final effect may be greater when people who were foetuses at the time of the fire have had time to show ill-effects, as some cancers can take up to 30 years to appear. And yet there are still those who claim that no one has ever died from nuclear power.

Readers may remember my writing in SO 34 about • fire at Cap La Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in France resulting in "accidental" release of radison. A recent report in Environmental Pollution makes it clear that the plant normally discharges large amounts ot radioactive rubbish into the Channel. This is concentrated by seaweed up to 10,000 times (this is because seaweed takes in the radioactive metals plutonium and americium but is unable to get rid of them).

Unfortunately many food growers in the Channel Islands use the seaweed as fertiliser so the radioactive metals enter plants or become further concentrated in animal food chains.

This may be a serious problem for those who eat a lot of local produce - in other words, the Channel Islanders - and particularly the poorer ones. Things will probably get worse when the French start running the series of pressurised water reactors planned along their northern coast, pouring lowlevel waste into the sea.

President Mitterand, that. scourge of French capitalism, has suspended some nuclear projects as a sop to anti-nuclear campaigners, but these are likely to be started up again when a coalition of right wing Socialists. Gaullists and "Communists" vote on nuclear plans in the French parliament. The "Communists" are worried about the jobs to be lost from these projects but don't seem to care about the proven hazards of nuclear power.

Yet more evidence of the perils of radioactive pollution. Among the 1.5 million people living within 20 miles of the nuclear weapons plant near Denver, Colorado, there are at any time some 500 extra cases of cancer caused by escapes of mainly plutonium from the plant. For men the extra cases ot cancer ranged between 8%c and 24%c, according to how near the plant they lived, while for women the range was 4% to 10%. Cancers thus caused included leukaemia, cancers of the lung, bronchus, liver, pancreas and gonads. And that's before they let the bombs off!

What about after the bomb goes off? Doctors in Britain trying to plan for the aftermath of a nuclear war have found that much of the information they require is classified. Research has been carried out by the Army, but its results remain secret.

Meanwhile, the East Anglia Regional Health Authority has produced an analysis of post-holocaust health services. It gives a list of herbal remedies to use in the absence of conventional drugs - apparently juniper could be used to cure cystitis, hawthorn to cure angina and mistletoe could reduce high blood pressure! Protection against fall out could be afforded by a plastic bag over the head with a hole for a medical gauze to breathe through. SO readers may think it advisable to forget about the hole.

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Socialist Orgamar, Thursdas 2 Maguss, 1491 Page: