Canadian regulators have completed a study spanning several years that found the risk of cancer among people living near nuclear plants is no greater than that of the wider population.
On Friday, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission announced completion of the Radiation and Incidence of Cancer around Ontario Nuclear Power Plants study, also known as RADICON. It evaluated radiation doses of people living within 25 kilometers of three commercial nuclear plants between 1990 and 2008. Using census and cancer registry data, it also compared the cancer incidence among those people to that of the general population of Ontario.
The study did not find consistent patterns of childhood leukemia or other cancers among the areas surrounding the three plants. According to the study, the rates of different types of cancer in the study areas did not vary more than they do in the wider population.
The study also found that the public's radiation doses attributable to the plants were some 100 times to 1,000 times lower than Canada's average background radiation of 1.8 millisieverts per year.