Nuclear apologists play shoot the messenger on radiation

This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald 26 April 2011

Twenty-five years after Chernobyl, many billions of dollars are at stake if the Fukushima reactor meltdowns cause the so-called "atomic renaissance'' to halt or even slow down. This is evident from the nuclear industry's vociferous attacks on its critics.

We see this especially in Australia, where the industry is conducting a whatever-it-takes propaganda campaign to ensure that nothing stands in the way of vast profits to be made from continuing to export uranium; from the plan to establish a radioactive waste dump at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory; and from the industry's desire to dot the continent with reactors.

Proponents of nuclear power - including George Monbiot, who has had a mysterious road-to-Damascus conversion to its supposedly benign effects - accuse me and others of ''cherry-picking'' data and overstating the health effects of radiation. Yet by reassuring the public that things aren't too bad, Monbiot and others misrepresent and distort the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of radiation exposure.