News release: “Nuclear facilities licensed by the NRC routinely release very small amounts of radioactivity during normal operations. Even though the NRC closely monitors the plants and assures that these releases are well below regulatory limits, some community members remain concerned about potential health risks from these facilities. To address the concerns, the NRC has asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) – an independent group of experts chartered by Congress to carry out transparent, objective and detailed studies independent of the government — to examine how best to perform a state-of-the-art study on cancer risk for individuals living around NRC-licensed nuclear facilities. The NAS effort will study nuclear power plants that generate electricity and certain plants that create the nuclear fuel used in the power plants. The NRC is seeking the expertise of the NAS to update the 1990 report by the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute (NCI). This report, “Cancer in Populations Living Near Nuclear Facilities,” found that cancer mortality rates were not elevated in these populations. The NRC staff uses the NCI report as a primary resource during public discussions of cancer risk in communities that are near or around nuclear facilities.”