When you’re dealing with a clown-show government run by the likes of Anthony Albanese, Jim ‘Zippy the Pinhead’ Chalmers and Chris ‘Boofhead’ Bowen, you’ve got Buckley’s chance of having a mature debate on nuclear energy. Throw in a whack-job academic, anti-Semitic, former-Greens candidate GP and you’ve got a recipe for idiot soup, with a side of hyperbole.
A former Greens candidate and anti-war activist is the star of a Labor Party social media video in which she claims being near nuclear power stations can cause cancers, heart attacks and strokes.
The video features former Victorian Greens candidate Margaret Beavis who says “there are definite increases in cancer, strokes and heart attacks with nuclear power”.
“With renewable energy we have much safer alternatives and from a health perspective nuclear makes no sense,” she said.
With regard to the first claim, while one German study found such an increased risk, studies from UK, France, Spain and Finland studies did not. “Increased cancer risk near [nuclear power plants] remains in fact an open question,” concludes the US National Library of Medicine. In fact, one study found lower mortality and better health among workers at NPPs.
There are few statistically backed facts which would justify the belief that doses received by the studied cohort of workers could be a cause of cancer mortality. The average annual doses received by the workers in these studies were at a level of 2 mSv, and even in the more extreme case of Switzerland, they did not exceed 5.3 mSv/year. These doses are comparable with average global natural radiation levels.
So it appears that Dr Beavis is speaking through her arse when she claims that:
“It’s very clear from research, looking at over 300,000 workers, that there are significantly increased rates of cancer, heart attacks and strokes amongst the workforce in the nuclear industries. This research has looked at over 300,000 workers over 30 years and it’s very clear that working with radiation has no safe lower limit.”
Dr Butthead was unavailable for comment.*
But Beavis’ claim that ‘working with radiation has no safe lower limit’ especially demonstrates her essential ignorance. For people like this, ‘radiation’ is nothing more than a scare word, like shouting ‘Boogedy!’ at children. Because what these clowns don’t seem to realise is that life on Earth is constantly bathed in radiation. Every single one of us is dosed with at least 2.4 mSv of ionising radiation per year. In some places, like Kerala in India, this entirely naturally occurring radiation is 12.5 mSv.
If Dr Beavis, like so many middle-class Boomers, has a fancy granite kitchen benchtop, then there’s even more radiation she’s exposed to. Put some bananas on it and there’s even more. If, as is no doubt the case, she flies overseas at least once a year, that’s more radiation. In fact, commercial airline pilots are exposed to even more radiation than NPP workers.
Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said the release of the video by Labor “devalues our expertise as a nation and sends all the wrong signals internationally about our status and intent when it comes to next-generation technology”.
“Labor is not only keeping nuclear energy illegal in Australia but they are running scare campaigns to try and scare the Australian people,” he said.
“Labor is completely out of step with the rest of the world and should be ashamed of its low brow scare mongering.
“Absent of any intellectual argument against nuclear energy, Labor is trying to scare Australians about a technology we already use in fields beyond energy.”
Well, given they’re playing to the green-left peanut gallery, it’ll probably work on its target audience.
Normal Australians are not nearly so gullible.
It might be worth mentioning that Dr Beavis’ other extra-curricular activities include being part of a mob who falsely accused “Zionists” of burning down a prominent anti-Israel activist’s business. Beavis was also named in a parliamentary submission by the Australian Academic Alliance Against Anti-Semitism, for leaving “Jewish medical students […] confused, uncomfortable and scared.” Beavis has been the subject of multiple complaints over her alleged anti-Semitic views.
Such people the Albanese government uses to front its loony scare campaigns.
*You seriously didn’t expect me to pass up on this opportunity?
