Slashdot Mirror
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.
Apparently this is just an attempt by a Utah company to increase holiday sales. Sigh.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
courtesy of Burns' Atomic Power! "We light you up!" is our motto!
Smithers, pay the good Scientists for their efforts!
and the offspring of the survivors just happend to be looking a little bit funky....
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.
A-Bomb
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.
I've just exposed myself to 15000 REMS of radiation. It looks like these guys were right. I just feel a bit warm an
Don't mind the extra X. Alex
Ok, thousands of people were exposed at Hiroshima, and we have a breakdown of what they died of. Boy, these people are healthy. Where's the weird cancers which people die of now and then? Where's the skin cancer? Prostate? I suspect an incredible scrubbing of data. Only cancers they decide are radiation-related are listed. And they're deciding.
There might be something to this, but I smell a grossly twisted study which eliminates complexity and debatable data by wiping it away with a sweep of a pen.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"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?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
ah yes, the infamous slashdot "I can't think of a fricking joke so I'll just put something ambigious and ..." non-joke joke.
Well apparently it's working for someone, already modded funny.
New material never killed anyone you know.
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). 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
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
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.
It's only mostly deadly... mostly deadly means partially harmless!
[signature]
It couldn't have possibly been due to eating only one potato a week for years, working 20 hours a day on a collective farm, drinking wine made from radiator fluid and vodka made from brake fluid. So it must have been the radiation.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
As usual, the hyper-reactionary crowd here on Slashdot completely misses the point of the article and immediately pulls the same bullshit so often seen in discussions about other topics where a minority voice says something along the lines of "this isn't as bad as everyone seems to think", i.e. Global Warming.
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.
"Those people didn't die from radiation! They died of exposure when their skin fell off!"
or else!
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. It's not funny.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Unless you mind that third tentacle growing out of your abdomen.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
It is important to realize that the radiation deaths at Hiroshima were mostly caused by direct exposure to the radioactivity of the bomb blast itself, NOT from "fallout" as most people commonly believe. This is due to the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were airbursts of the weapons - they detonated 2000 feet or more above the surface. When this happens, the atomic blast destroys more buildings and causes more destruction over a larger area than had the bomb been dropped to ground level. This was intentional, as the goal of the bombing was to inflict as much damage as possible. But the side affect of this was that very little fallout was generated. Typically fallout is created when an atomic (or thermonuclear) weapon explodes in a ground burst. In a ground burst, the soil, rocks, building materials, etc. that are not vaporized are turned into ash that becomes radioactive due to the direct exposure. The ash is then swept up in the mushroom cloud and dispersed over a wide area. Chernobyl was far and away more dangerous with respect to fallout, because the radioactive core burned and spread really bad isotopes that would not happen to such a great degree with either a ground or airburst of a nuclear weapon. But then again, as has been pointed out, Chernobyl was an example of a bad idea gone worse - a flawed design, with no pressure dome, and human operation intentionally creating a dangerous situation not fully understood. Modern, Western nuclear reactors could never have the same kind of accident...
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
"... 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.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Coal is nice, it's organic and you can hold it in your hands and touch it.
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.
No sig today...
What you're talking about is called "radiation hormesis."
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.
-----[0_o]-----
We are not amused.
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.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Renewable fuels suffer from several severe problems the green's don't want to see. The first is that farming is mining. Yes a farmer mines his soil. The process is exceptionally environmentally damaging. A typical farm loses about 5,000 or more pounds of material to erosion every year per acre. (Hectare conversion is approximately 5600 kg/hectare) The farmed items remove another 100 or so pounds per acre every year. The best soil recovery rates are below the 100 pounds per acre line.
All energy sourcing has problems including wind power. Wind power alters weather and precipitation. NOTHING is "clean" or nice like supposed by some.
Nuclear power emits trivial amounts of nuclear pollution generally and appears to have little other problems yet it causes massive thermal pollution. There is no free lunch here. Nuclear is probably the best we have in the currently available options list. Yes even solar has problems.
There are other options coming in the future but even the Zero Point energy is not without problems. Unlimited energy is an unlimited problem unless used wisely and within the confines of the system you work.
The best example of the damage of renewable fuels in current times is the Ethanol production of the USA. This has already caused a 3:1 rise in the cost of food for the poor of the world. This is causing massive damage to the environment as well. The USA can live independent of the world and with renewable fuels. The rest of the world may not be able to live with that solution.
For the advocates of coal, there is a serious problem. The Geology of Coal has made it a virtual Nuclear Waste Dump. A typical large coal fired power plant will send up the stacks in the soot radiation equal the that of a nuclear reactor's entire content every few years. There is no "Clean Coal."
The best suggestion is where possible to reduce demand by doing our work more efficiently. The demand situation of our grids says that we must end incandescent lights. The demand situation also demands the end of CRT computer and TV devices. The situation also demands the end of many other on going losses. The end of biodegradable items is one such change that must happen. Biodegradable was developed to cause more demand for oil products. It works. The demand situation demands attention to Automated Driving to reduce human behavior induced waste. This goes on and on. There are many good suggestions.
Finally attention must be paid to the causes of human population growth. Specifically the fact that tyranny and poverty cause population growth. Nations with freedom and prosperity do not over populate.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Not Kerry. Carter. Same party. Same environmental policy. Different dumbass.
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.
This is my sig.
Actual scientists have known this for years. Unless you get massive initial doses or a relatively large continuous dose, radiation has surprisingly little effect on you. Now, if you're a guy you might want to wait a couple months before having children if you had a radiation source close to your jelly beans, but otherwise the problems are few. However, until this point there haven't been any statistical studies proving it.