Cancer Risks from Nuclear Too Expensive To Study

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has canceled a pilot study of the cancer risks associated with living near seven nuclear sites across the country due to budgetary constraints and lack of need. Facilities are monitored and any releases of radiation “are too small to cause observable increases in cancer risk near the facilities,” the agency stated.

But residents living near one of the sites, Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tenn., are concerned, particularly because details surrounding a uranium spill in 2006 were withheld from the public.

Uranium contamination was found downstream from the plant in 2010, and as Barbara O’Neal, a member of the Erwin Citizens Awareness Network, told Public News Service, “The thing with nuclear material is it never goes away.”
— By Elizabeth E. Payne