Radiation Not As Hazardous As Once Believed

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.

Comments

Things worse than death

[Bombula]

It says 'only' 800 deaths resulted, but last time I checked there were plenty of fates worse than death, and severe radiation sickness is probably one of them.

Re:Things worse than death

[djupedal]

There is something you need to understand about how the Japanese use statistics.

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.

Re:Sensors Detect Bullshit, Captain...

[JBMcB]

"Is this some kind of oblique FUD to attempt to build a stronger case for a nuclear power build-out in the US?"

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?

Re:This article brought to you ....

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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 ).

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.

safely stored for 30,000 years...

[shmlco]

"... and we just don't know where it can be safely stored for 30,000 years."

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.