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Radiation Not As Hazardous As Once Believed
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Nov 26, 2007 10:06 PM
from the since-my-fallout-with-you dept.
from the since-my-fallout-with-you dept.
HeavensBlade23 sends in an article from the German site Spiegel Online about mounting evidence that nuclear radiation may not be as deadly as has been widely believed. The article cites studies by German, US, and Japanese researchers concluding, for example, that fewer than 800 deaths are attributable to the after-effects of radiation in over 86,500 survivors of the Hiroshima bombing. Other surprisingly low death rates are reported in studies of Chernobyl and of a secret Siberian town called Mayak, devoted to producing plutonium, that was abandoned after a nuclear accident in 1957.
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astroturfing at its worst (Score:5, Funny)
This article brought to you .... (Score:5, Funny)
courtesy of Burns' Atomic Power! "We light you up!" is our motto!
Smithers, pay the good Scientists for their efforts!
Let's wait for a bit (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Let's wait for a bit (Score:4, Informative)
A very important point to note is that the determination that no level of radioactive exposure is safe does not mean the same thing as low levels of radiation are extremely dangerous (which many might believe). What the doctors are literally saying is that they don't consider a 10^-20 or even a 10^-40 Curie source to be perfectly safe. One errant gamma ray from the decay of some radioactive substance might be enough to cause a fatal cancer. As there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos, PCBs, or arsenic, reasonable limits are proposed where very few people are injured by these substances. The same applies to radiation levels. If the danger due to low level radioactivity is determined to be a thousand times less dangerous than we thought it was then the exposure limits might be raised if convenient, but radioactive material will still not be considered safe, even in the smallest amounts.
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if they simply don't know better, if they are too afraid to lose face should they change their policy, or if they just want to make themself look important, but in any case their claims are just out of touch with reality. It really does pain me to know that my country country (Sweden ) could have been on the road to virtually eliminate fossil fuels, but because of this nonsense we are still left with 50% of our energy coming from fossil sources, and the "green" party here wants to shut down the reactors that remain.
What every western country with half a bit of sense ought to do is to deploy large numbers of electric trains as alternative transportation ( maglev could even compete with airplanes in speed ), and produce the electricity with nuclear. If pressent developments in battery technology hold up, we could even have electric cars affordable within a few decades. IF we can keep the electricity price down. Sadly the latter is not going to happen by pushing for renewables that have multiple times the costs of current nuclear power plants.
Now to follow is the usual nonsense about uranium running out within 60 years, nuclear waste being impossible to deal with, and another chernobyl being just about to happen. It's all nonsense, and has been for two decades at least, yet we still burn coal rather than transmuting our nuclear waste in fast reactors ( Thank you for that one Kerry ).
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Kerry. Carter. Same party. Same environmental policy. Different dumbass.
Sad thing is that Kerry's stance could be excused. Carter, as a nukeE, should have known better.
In Carter's defense, he presumably did know better -- he merely (mis)judged the proliferation risk of all nuclear-power-producing companies getting into FBRs as "worse" than the risk of relying on foreign oil. Carter was dead wrong, but at least he thought about the issue, unlike Kerry, who just pandered to the lunatic fringe of the eco-left.
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Sticking up for Jimmy (Score:4, Informative)
I agree, sorta. I'm a Republican and I can't stand Carter. He was certainly wrong about many things, and his killing of breeder reactors and fuel rod re-use was among them, however, he was also pretty darned right about promoting nuclear power.
When TMI happened, Carter went there, to illustrate that it was perfectly safe. At that moment, Republicans actually jumped the pro-nuclear boat and hopped onto the anti-nuclear bandwagon, and used the moment to show that Carter was being irresponsible, doesn't have a clue, even though Jimmy, as one of Rickover's boys, probably knew more about nuclear power than just about anyone. As a result of this moment of bipartisan acord between the loonie left and right, nuclear power was killed in America, and Reagan actually never advanced it.
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:5, Insightful)
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safely stored for 30,000 years... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please. Research the term "half-life", and then get back to me when you have half an education. Anything that's going to be seriously radioactive for 30,000 years is going to be an alpha emitter. Whose highly dangerous particles need massive shielding between you and the source, like that provided by, say, a piece of paper. Rule of thumb: highly energetic equals extremely short half life.
There are two problems in the quoted fragment: The use of "we" and the use of "safely". We, because with people like you in the picture it's obvious that WE don't have a clue. Safely, because everyone who's against it defines "safe" as zero risk, when NOTHING in this world is zero risk. You're at risk from a meteorite bashing your brains out while you sleep. Are the odds against it? Yes. Is the risk zero? No.
Last time I checked, I believe it's said that in 10,000 years all of the material of which speak so alarmingly would still be radioactive. Well, at least as radioactive as the raw ore from which it came. You know, like rocks? Which we've had buried in the ground unshielded, leaking dangerous trace amounts of radioactively into our groundwater supplies for a few billion years or so. I tell you, someone should DO something!
Not to belittle this, but we've had two major, ultimately worst-case radiological events occur: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And yet, both of those sites are habitable today. Millions of people live there, work there, play there. Let's repeat that. Two atomic BOMBS.
And you want to bitch about the "dangers" of a material fused into glass, tucked behind shields, and buried in a fucking mountain?
Dude, you ought to pay LESS attention to the nonsense. You've been brainwashed by too many b-grade science-fiction movies with giant radioactively mutated spiders/scorpions/bats.
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Re:safely stored for 30,000 years... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually those alpha emitters are very poisonous. Artificial radionucleides like Neptunium, Plutonium etc can easily get into the food chain and stay there as heavy metals. The fact that they are radioactive is not a nice bonus. It's very important we know how to store them safely for extremely long periods with no access to underground water.
Natural Uranium is by nature very diluted. Plutonium essentially does not occur naturally. We are talking here about very concentrated sources produced by the nuclear industry. If you have a workable solution let's hear it.
Worst-case biological events are not necessarily bombs. The two examples you quote were very small bombs by today's standard BTW. However a blown up plant like Chernobyl releases far more nasty stuff than bombs : tons rather than kilos. I don't think the area around Chernobyl will be habitable in 50 years time.
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Re:safely stored for 30,000 years... (Score:4, Informative)
Spent fuel is stored encased in glass and concrete. The risk of leaks is very small, and because the low volumes of waste can be concentrated in a few locations, only small areas would be contaminated even if there was a leak.
The Chernobyl plant was a very poor design and nobody is pursuing similar designs any more. The RBMK design encased the fuel in flammable graphite as moderator. When the reactor overheated and the hot graphite was exposed to the air a raging fire immediatly began, tearing the reactor core apart and sending particles of spent fuel into the air in great clouds of smoke. Water moderated designs obviously don't have this problem. (The experimental pebble-bed reactors are graphite moderated, but they are much less likely to overheat.)
The bombs used in Japan were also very dirty. Modern designs consume a much larger part of their fuel. The chief danger is that setting off a nuke on the ground will mix the nuclear material with dirt, causing concentrated fallout within a few miles of ground zero, instead of dispersing it relatively harmlessly in the atmosphere like an explosion in mid-air.
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Look, it's really not that complicated: radiation increases the risk of cancer and birth defects, at any dose. The mechanisms are understood, and there have been tens of thousands of experiments confirming that. Trying to argue that this isn't the case is simply insane. And it doesn't matter what kind of radiation it is.
Now to follow is the usual nonsense about uranium running out within 60 years, nuclear waste being impossible to deal with, and another chernobyl being just about to happen. It's all nonsense, and has been for two decades at least, yet we still burn coal rather than transmuting our nuclear waste in fast reactors ( Thank you for that one Kerry ).
It was Reagan that killed breeder reactors in the US (and effectively elsewhere). He claimed it was for proliferation concerns, but that makes no sense; more likely, he did it for economic reasons: nuclear fuel is big business for the US.
With breeder reactors, nuclear energy could possibly be an option. Without them, nuclear power is sheer lunacy.
So, complain to Reagan and the Republicans for the lack of responsible nuclear power in the US.
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:5, Informative)
I was referring to this bit ( quoted from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor [wikipedia.org] )
Also, I never claimed Chernobyl wasn't bad (nor did the article ), I'm claiming organisations like greenpeace are deliberately lying about it dismissing all science saying they are wrong, with the explicit intent to try to convince the public that Nuclear power is too dangerous to be used responsibly. Solar panels contain small amounts of polluting chemicals, but if I were to push pictures of solar cells next to children with birth defects, arguing that the people who promote their use are corrupt evil capitalists who don't care about hurting babies, then I'd rightly be criticised for lying in order to intentionally mislead the public. I'm saying anti-nuclear campaigners should be held to the same standards.
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) You are absolutely right about bad figures. On average, coal-fired plants produce much more exposure to radiation than nuclear plants and this is generally ignored by the anti-nuclear folks (of which I still count myself one). However, I will say that if it were a choice between coal (lots of green house gases, radioactive pollution, etc) vs nuclear (waste disposal issues, etc) I would choose the latter. In short, nuclear may be bad, but coal is definitely worse.
2) We need to understand that energy use has environmental cost. Simply throwing more power generators at a problem doesn't fix it. We need to do what we can to minimize that cost and this means a multi-level strategy. There is no magic bullet. A few nuclear power plants may be necessary but if we are smart we will pursue a number of other means first.
3) Cost per kWhr is not the only measure of energy's real cost. I think one must factor in the total environmental cost as well. This includes carbon consumption, hazardous waste disposal, environmental cost of production and disposal of generating equipment etc. We need to start at the bottom and work our way up. This means:
a) Conservation-oriented policies. Let us help try to get people to push for more energy efficiency in general so we don't need as many generators as we might otherwise.
b) methane from manure composting from dairy farms which may have close to a net zero cost. (On one hand capturing/burning the methane is *good* for the environment. On the other, the equipment still has to be manufactured and disposed of.)
c) Encouraging thermal solar energy use from areas where one would normally waste the energy is another proven area where we could come out ahead in terms of general conservation.
d) Wind power, properly done, is something I would call low-cost.
e) Any other ideas on agricultural waste, esp. the stuff that normally just gets burned?
f) fish-friendly hydroelectric dams
g) Current generation of nuclear reactors should replace coal generators.
h) More research needs to be done on renewable energy sources, and on storage and transmission systems (I think that ultracapacitors should also be seen as a green alternative to batteries in wind generators, for example).
h) More research needs to be done on fuel cycle issues and how to effectively eliminate waste (for example, by using the waste as fuel in other nuclear reactors)
I don't think it is an either/or question. I am not convinced that it is practical to use renewable energy at the current generation for current or future electrical needs, but I would think that everyone should be in favor of minimizing the role of non-renewable energy (in general) and the environmental cost of energy as a whole. Nuclear almost certainly has a part to play, but let's not make it any larger a part than it needs to be.
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It's sadly true (Score:5, Insightful)
You see this is the problem with the anti-nuclear moment. They have become so obsessed with ending everything that contains a nucleus that they see it as acceptable to dismiss any science to the contrary as "biased".
I used to do research on the biological effects of ionizing radiation and we knew decades ago that most of the commonly held views of radiation exposure stem from 1950's vintage sci-fi movies. Not helped by later movies like China Syndrome, which had all the scientific accuracy of The Matrix. The anti-nuclear movement is one actor in a parade of misinformation.
One thing that challenges even knowledgeable people was that in population dosimetry studies the low dose groups would consistently out-live the controls. A little bit of radiation exposure was frequently better than none at all.
I always thought it was funny the public idly tolerates 500 people dying on the nation's highways on the average weekend but would chain themselves to a fence to protest a nuclear power plant in their state. I'd live next door to a nuke plant, provided it wasn't down wind from one of the old Russian carbon-core reactors. Your lifetime exposure would present a lower risk than a single trip to grandma's over the holidays.
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Re:This article brought to you .... (Score:4, Insightful)
and as far as i see it, nuclear is our best option while we perfect wind/solar/geothermal/fusion/whatever. nuclear is not a permanent solution, but nothing is. even solar will only work for a few billion years and fission will work for a century or so, and even longer if we look to thorium and use integral fast reactors to burn the existing waste we have building up.
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Coal is nice, it's organic and you can hold it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear is just plan scary. It's done by little bald guys in clinical white uniforms. We don't understand nuclear.
However, don't you think renewables are better than both fossil fuels AND nuclear power?
Yes of course, but the number of windmills, etc. needed to meet our energy needs is ridiculous. Plus, everybody seems to be in favor of wind power bu nobody seems to want it in their own back yards. "They're ugly, put them somewhere else" they tell us.
The problems with clean power generation aren't technical, they're political. Keeping the status que, bad as it is, is the easy route, so that's what's happening.
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Ehhhh... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ehhhh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Still, not sure I buy this.
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Re:Ehhhh... (Score:5, Informative)
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Things worse than death (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Things worse than death (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot about this study doesn't really add up. If you're using death as the only symptom of something dangerous then your observations are definitely going to be flawed. All in all these studies don't make a whole lot of sense in there conclusions.
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Re:Things worse than death (Score:5, Insightful)
As an example, in Japan, to be tallied as a highway fatality, you must expire within 12 hours of the car accident that resulted in your death. If you die outside the 12 hour window, you fall into another category. 'heart failure - liver failure - kidney and lung failure'.
Japan is always happy to show off their annual "oh so low" highway death rates (so many per 1000 of the driving public, etc.), claiming their drivers are better trained and behaved than those from other countries. The Japanese govt. also insists that their cars/trucks and roadways are more modern, more advanced and more safe than those from other countries with higher death rates. "Look at us - WE'RE BETTER!"
I'm not at all surprised to hear that 'only' 800 died from radiation poisoning...that just means it was bad enough that it killed them before they had a chance to die from having all their skin burned off or their lungs turned to burnt toast. Or any of the other dozens of medical nightmares that are still being swept under the rug of history, even today.
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Re:Things worse than death (Score:4, Informative)
Right - as if they were actually put to the test. With routine 40km traffic jams, they don't have much opportunity to take advantage of said improvements. But hey, with all those jumbo-trons lining the expressways, at least they have something to do while they sit and idle the commute away. The govt. makes it an expensive and difficult a process as possible in order to discourage car ownership. Motorcycle? You can't imagine the process to get a license and then purchase a new 'busa.
Buying a car is quite the experience. With no room for giant car lots and showrooms, the routine method is for a sales team to come to your home or office, where they painstakingly go over every option. Once you've made your choices, and honko'd all the e-forms, the wait begins. You wait while your car is built. And before you can have your purchase approved, you must show proof of having obtained an appropriate parking space. Many times, new car owners have to wait for a parking slot to become available long before they can even think about what color interior would go best with the wife's wardrobe.
Once you have the parking spot and car buying process behind you, a new list of routine obligations must be met. Like full car inspections at intervals designated by the manufacturer and (ahem) backed by the govt. You don't take the car in and ask for this or that to be looked at or fixed...nooo. They come and get the car, and then contact you with the list of things that must be done, along with how much it will all cost. No choice - pay up. Think of the whales. At one time, there was an anti-pollution law that said a new engine had to be installed every two years. Ever wonder why all those low mileage Toyota truck engines are for sale here in North America? Ever wonder how so many foreigners found it easy to get a car in Japan? Maintenance costs can be so high, some owners simply give the car away and go out and buy a new one.
There is/was a big black market for selling used cars from Japan into Russia. A 'used' car being one that is between two and three years old. You'll never see a beater running around the streets of Tokyo.
I recall the time the Russian circus came to Tokyo. The circus, animals and all, was hauled into Tokyo bay on a run down Russian freighter. When the show was over and it came time to load everything back onto the ship, Japanese dock workers were surprised to see the ship leaving without the animals. Dozens of used cars had been loaded onto the ship's deck during the night, some hanging 1/2 way over the side. The animals were abandoned, sitting in their cages on the dock, staring at the dock workers wondering if they tasted good or not. It took a while to straighten that one out.
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Re:Things worse than death (Score:4, Informative)
Wow. This is gonna be modded offtopic, but it needs to be said. Some of your post is accurate, but some of it is misguided. Mainly, Tokyo is not Japan.
The right:
The stuff about license requirements is spot on. The racket surrounding license centers is annoying at best but mostly outrageous. Basically everyone pays a couple thousand bucks to a driving school to take courses for several months, after which you have as many chances to take the "test" at the driving school as you want, several times per day, and any day you want. Of course, the real test held at the government license center is harder, held only on weekday mornings if you're lucky, and the "rules" of the test bear no relation to actual driving. Don't get me started on the oogata bike test. That thing is even more of a swindle.
You are correct that the roads are not safer. In fact, almost none of the roads have reflective markers for rainy conditions. No "cat's eyes", no Botts' dots [wikipedia.org]. Drivers do not switch their headlights on in fog or rain or snow; I had three or four drivers actually flash their brights at me on Sado island for driving in a rainstorm with my headlights on last weekend! People here often stop in the middle of the road to answer a phone call, often on a blind curve. Ah, but at least they're not driving while talking on a phone... I guess their abysmally low speed limits are an attempt to make up for these deficiencies.
The road system is set up to be a big cash cow for the government. You are correct in that aspect.
The wrong:
The shaken inspections aren't mandated by the manufacturers, they're mandated by the government: after 3 years for a new car and every 2 years after that. Unlike US car inspections, they check more than just emissions: brakes, suspension, tires, transmission, all the lights, seat belts, and steering are among the things tested. The inspection itself winds up costing about 10000 yen plus any repairs, but you also pay taxes for two years at the same time, which is why it's so expensive. If you know a reputable repairman, the repairs will not cost that much. My guy gives me a loaner car while he's working on mine, no charge. Alternatively, you can do the fixes yourself and take the car in for inspection on your own time if you can get the time off work, which saves a bit of cash if you're handy. I do think this helps keep unroadworthy cars off the streets, and in that way helps safety... but it does cost an arm and a leg. You do have a choice: if it's too expensive to fix the car up to snuff, you scrap it. Part of owning a car means making sure it's not an accident waiting to happen.
Proof of parking space is only required in big cities: Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, basically any metro area. If you live outside those areas you don't need proof of parking. And there are plenty of car dealerships outside Tokyo where you can walk in, pick out and buy a car from the lot, and have it delivered to you or pick it up within a few days (after they fabricate the plates, no temporary tags here). If you haven't seen them, it's because you haven't been outside big cities.
Maximum expressway speed is 100kph outside cities on multiple lane highways. Where I live, congestion is rare because the expressways are only used for long trips. In clear dry weather most vehicles cruise between 100 and 120. If you live in Tokyo, don't get a car to drive to work every day, because you're right, the highways can't support that many people. But the only speed enforcement is fixed cameras and the rare patrol car (and there are unmarked cars as well, so be careful). Thankfully, almost everyone is courteous enough to pull over when they're not passing. I've seen a couple folks taking stretches in excess of 150kph on twisty road, and the rest of traffic just moves over to let them go. Assuming they have the space. But unfortunately the roads are not banked for the speeds their surfaces and widths support. And they are extremely overpriced.
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Re:Complete Disregard for Life and Suffering. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, 4,000 children developing cancer is absolutely terrible, even if "only" 9 of them die. Yes "only" 800 deaths due to radiation after the blast is a tragedy. The 4,000 deaths of cleanup workers at Chernobyl is completely unexcusable. However, the point of the article wasn't to claim "there have not been tragedies"... it was to claim "the tragedies are magnitudes less horrible than is popularly believed". 800 deaths are objectively fewer than the 105,000 reported in Wikipedia. 4,000 deaths are objectively fewer than "the six-figure death counts that opponents of nuclear power once cited".
Certainly, the fact that people died at all, and many more were disabled for life and suffer from other side-effects, is a tragedy. However, this article is simply stating that these tragedies are significantly less all-encompassing and absolute than is commonly thought. The conclusion, roughly, is that each of these is on the scale of a major earthquake, not a Holocaust. While it may be insensitive to subjectively compare the "level of badness" of different tragedies, it is simply a fact that there exist objective differences between them. That's what they are doing. I don't see people debating the accuracy of the numbers they use, I see people complaining that these are evil shills who are minimizing human suffering to increase corporate profits. Grow up and RTFA people.
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Re:Complete Disregard for Life and Suffering. (Score:4, Insightful)
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But what about sterility? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But what about sterility? (Score:5, Informative)
Me? I am still alive, thanks. I cannot have children. I am also bold since I was around 25. Where do I sigh for manifestation that radiation is not hazardous?
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Re:But what about sterility? (Score:5, Funny)
Just thinking out-loud here: Have you tried </b>?
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Sources? (Score:3, Funny)
But this is slashdot so i'll never rtfa.
Let's try it! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Let's try it! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Let's try it! (Score:5, Funny)
Brother Maynard: It reads, "Here may be found the last words of Alexx K of Aramathia. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the Castle of Aaauuuggghhh..."
King Arthur: What?
Brother Maynard: "The Castle of Aaaauuuggghhhh"
Sir Bedevere: What is that?
Brother Maynard: He must have died while carving it.
King Arthur: Oh come on!
Brother Maynard: Well, that's what it says.
King Arthur: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't have bothered to carve 'Aaaauuuggghhhh'. He'd just say it.
Sir Galahad: Maybe he was dictating it.
King Arthur: Oh shut up!
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Having a Chernobyl vet in my family says otherwise (Score:5, Informative)
This reminds me of that news program where the journalist debunked 10 common myths like "underpaid teachers" and "Chernobyl was not so bad." I don't remember the name of the guy, but he runs a regular show on one of the major TV stations. I only wish I could send this report to many Chernobyl veterans and their kids who would say otherwise.
My uncle was in Chernobyl right after the crap hit the fan in 1986. He went in a young man with good health and came back on a partial disability due to radiation. No, radiation did not kill him but it rendered his eyesight useless. When my cousin was born it was found that he lacked a good immune system due to effects of radiation as well. With all this crap my family considers itself to be lucky. We did not have to watch our loved ones dying from the inside. The Soviets did a great cover-up preventing most Western media from accessing the people and the territory until things were hanky panky. What many people did not see was the kids born after the disaster and increasing cancer rates. You know things are pretty crappy when you have routine cancer checks in middle schools. How many American schools consider this to be yearly procedure? I remember a woman telling a story about her husband. She had to spent all of her savings on vodka and moonshine in order to calm her husbands pain and let him die without screaming. Oh yeah, save those jokes about drunk Russians: The guy did not drink until his muscles started to fall of the bone. Finally you may take a look at the effects of radiation on Kazakhstan. After years of being used as a Soviet nuclear testing ground, the country has plenty of polluted land. Perhaps the authors of this report want to buy some prime real estate in the land of Borat?
I don't doubt that we will find out more about radiation as we go on; however, it is silly to think that nukes (be it peaceful or military) are a joke. It is a serious business with serious side effects.
Re:Having a Chernobyl vet in my family says otherw (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if I would trust the state of NJ more than I would trust the Soviet government that was present in 1986. To be honest with you, may be in 50 years we will know 1% of the true effects. Remember how cocaine was legal in the United States?
One of my most exciting moments of my childhood was the rain of April 26th, 1986. I was walking from the hospital when it started raining and I got soaked by the time I got home. Several days later we were told to throw away the clothing used on that day and take a long shower because a chemical plant not so far away had a problem. Cool huh? As somebody who was under 10, it was "it!" I was a part of something that the government asked me to do. It felt great until my mom got a call from my grandmother: My uncle was traveling to Belaja Tserokv' (White Church) with a his chem-bat (chemical forces battalion). My grandma was a nurse and she suspected that something was going on since they tons of firefighters were shipped to the area. It was highly unusual to send that many people for a small chemical spill at a nuclear plant. I will skip you the stories about carefully re-adjusted radiation meters given to the soldiers and other tricks that were used to keep public away from the information about the real aspects of the accident. Everything was "peaches and cream" according to the top brass. My uncle delivered cement to the reactor thinking that they were putting down some important fire. Only later we were told about the nuclear disaster and its impact. During the times of Perestroika this became more public and we finally realized what has hit, but it was too freaking late.
I would like to come back and visit the ghost areas. Many areas of Belarus and the Ukraine (Belarus was hit the hardest due to the North-Western winds) became ghost towns. It is a lot like what you can find in the prominent historic parks of the U.S.: Whole towns are there, but no people want to live there for the exception of an occasional squatter. You may see a Western tourist here and there and that is about it. Whoever thinks that radiation is not damaging needs to get their head examined. Yes, a direct death from the exposure may be unlikely, but I'd rather not wait for the long term effects. Honestly, I have seen that stuff and it is not pretty. I'd take a bullet over slow death any time.
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Mixed Feelings on the report... (Score:4, Informative)
The article was refreshingly in-depth and it covered both sides of the issue - surprising, considering most ./ articles are not much more than short blog rants. I do wish it had pointed readers to an online location of the studies cited, but the reports are verifiable. I was aware of cooperative studies done after WWII by the US and Japan, among others.
My gut reaction is to accept the information presented as reliably true. I have two reasons for this. First, this was published to a German site. I trust a German site slightly more than your average dot-com because of the competing forces at play in the current US 9/11 mindset. The Bush "gubmint" wants you to cower in terror every damn day fearing random acts of violence by brown people (Appropriate thanks to George Carlin). The more peaceful side of the US continues to try to reassure the public that much of the terror threat is FUD (which it is - seriously, we've been at the Orange terror level for months, meaning "High Risk of Attack". No attacks, no highly publicized failed plots to garner support for the omnipresent Orange. I doubt the FBI/CIA/DHS is doing THAT well). I admit the US has its enemies, and that fact should not be discounted. It's true that someone may someday use a nuke (or more likely a dirty bomb) in an American metropolis. But if this was posted to an American website, I would have a harder time accepting it at face-value, rather than subtle "fear not" messages by pro-nuclear lobbyists. That said, as an American citizen in a metro area, I'm happy to see that moderate radiation may be tolerated by the body better than expected, and i am also in support of more nuclear power plants in the US. Nuclear power done right releases less radioactivity into the air per year than a coal plant...and probably less than the pack of cigarettes I'll finish tonight.
Second, the effects of short-term radiation exposure are typically exaggerated, in my non-professional opinion. A chest X-ray for example, is roughly equal to 10 days' worth of background radiation dosage; fewer if you live 5000 feet or more above sea level. Not bad considering your heart and lungs are the target of a quick 120,000 electron-volt blast (Linkage) [netdoctor.co.uk]. Cancer treatments can exceed 10 MeV. Granted, I'm talking about reasonable short-term exposure, something less than 3 or 4 Greys for a one-time worst-case scenario. I'm not going to argue that pulling a Spock and walking into a reactor for a while will leave you anywhere near healthy.
I think long-term radiation exposure is where we need to concern ourselves. For example, Marie Curie handled radioactive material with little to no protection for nearly 40 years, before dying of anemia in 1934. This can be partly attributed to the fact that much of the radiation she was exposed to was alpha radiation. However, long-term exposure to radium (which is over a million times more radioactive than uranium) and its byproducts, including radon gas and ionizing beta particles most likely led to her death. Gamma radiation is much more harmful, with the ability to knock base pairs out of DNA. Even the most loved radiation of all, UV, that elixir of youthful bronzed skin, has been shown to cause harm. But no one gets carcinoma from a single sunburn, or a single tan. The most deleterious effects add up over time, but are not caused by forgetting to slide the lead suit over the family jewels during an X-ray at the dentist.
Saying that only 800 or so out of 86,000 survivors died of radiation-related illness is not enough for me. How many showed non-fatal illness extending beyond 1 year of exposure to the bomb? What was the change in infant and child mortality 5/10/20 years after? How did the population histogram change over time - were elderly affected more than children or vice versa? How much radiation WAS deposited to the environment after the detonation of Fat Man/Little Boy -- accident at Chernobyl -- accident at Three
Miracle Max sez: (Score:5, Funny)
It's only mostly deadly... mostly deadly means partially harmless!
The real story... (Score:4, Funny)
Airburst At Hiroshima (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hiroshima (Score:5, Interesting)
Someday perhaps scientists will finally rebel against the awful state of science journalism. Until then, it's best to just ignore it.
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Re:Sensors Detect Bullshit, Captain... (Score:5, Insightful)
FUD towards what? Saying coal or oil powered plants are dangerous would be FUD. Saying nuclear disasters are somewhat less fatal than previously thought is not.
"what a stunning coincidence that this oh-so-new interpretation of the data should come out right about the time the country is considering shifting to nuclear"
This article is from a German magazine, and the research was done by the GSF under the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft foundation, Germany's version of the NSF. Are you referring to Germany as "the country?"
The article ends with "Still, there is no doubt that radiation poisoning remains ominous and highly dangerous."
Wow, that's some powerful FUD being thrown around right there. (Ominous is an odd translation of a German word, which means something close to ominous/foreboding/nasty/etc...)
Do you have any data or analysis countering their claims, or are you just making spurious arguments against their research?
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Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Funny)
How about:
radiation protects you.
YOU shield the reactor.
radiation shields you.
you contaminate plutonium.
And so on and so forth in the callous manner of the article [slashdot.org]. It's not funny.
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It's not that bad (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:It's not that bad (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:It's not that bad (Score:5, Funny)
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Radiation hormesis (Score:4, Informative)
We have more or less only one good epidemiological set of data for various-dose radiation--atomic bomb survivors. Those data are extrapolated to low doses, and that's a large part of the data set from which the current "radiation damage" model (the LNT or "linear-no-threshold" model) is derived (actual survival of cells is predicted by a different model--the LNT model is for radiation effects on a person). Since the LNT model is the most widely-accepted standard in the field as far as I've seen (medical physics student), the hormesis promoters have the burden of proving the protective effect.
The parent is right in that we don't have a good understanding of what goes on at low doses of radiation, and we don't have a model backed by strong empirical observation either. Radiation protection, however, is founded on the principle of keeping doses as small as is reasonably possible, and it's irresponsible to try to wave around that small doses MIGHT not be as harmful as people currently think. I would say that radiation science still basically wants to say that there is no lower threshold for radiation damage, and thus that there is probably not a hormesic (hormestic? I don't know the adjectival form of hormesis) effect. It doesn't really need to be stated that we don't know a lot about low-dose radiation--you start from the assumption that you don't know a lot about it until you can prove that you do. Right now, all we can prove is that it's pretty likely that if damage is linear, then low-doses are bad too.
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