Leukaemia and nuclear power in Britain

Ever since the YTV programme, 'Windscale, the Nuclear Laundry' (November 1983) showed a tenfold excess of childhood leukaemia near the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant, there has been debate about the possible connection between nuclear power and leukaemia. In this chapter the authors look at the evidence published so far and give the results of an investigation into young leukaemia death rates around fourteen nuclear installations in England and Wales in the period 1963 to 1980. (author)