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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.
Nuclear radiation will produce sterility in men. I know this as it happened to my uncle. Who knows what other diseases might show up that don't necessarily produce immediate death.
Tell me when the actual research articles are available in a refereed journal. Until then, this is just more unreliable journalistic garbage designed to sell magazines and newspapers.
Someday perhaps scientists will finally rebel against the awful state of science journalism. Until then, it's best to just ignore it.
The photoessay that that picture comes from is interesting, but really it says nothing in particular about the effects radiation.
Most of those kids (other than the one in the picture linked by the parent poster) looked like they could be suffering from nothing more unusual than cerebral palsy or other reasonably common physical and/or mental defects. If I went into any disabled children's care facility or cancer ward in any large city in the world with a camera and knocked the kids out of their fancy western wheelchairs I could take pretty much the same pictures (barring my complete and utter lack of photographic ability).
It's sad but sometimes birth defects do just happen. The question that isn't addressed in these sorts of emotive pieces - and research into which the originally linked article is discussing - is to what extent exposure to radiation increases their liklihood in a population.
I do agree that TFA is highly skewed though.
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.
In the beginning, radiation was fantastic stuff that only had the effect of whitening your teeth. From 1970..2005, the "safe levels" have only fallen. Now some new guy says otherwise. Gee. I wonder how long his evidence will last?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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"
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.