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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.
Apparently this is just an attempt by a Utah company to increase holiday sales. Sigh.
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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
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.
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.
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Well, the adult human manages to go a lifetime while losing 50 carbon atoms per second from DNA due to radioactive decay of carbon-14 atoms, and the decay of 4,000 atoms of potassium-40 per second.
"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.
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.
It's only mostly deadly... mostly deadly means partially harmless!
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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.
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.
It isn't the the safe levels have fallen it is that medicine has made the determination that no level of radioactive exposure can be considered safe. Exposure limits are then made so that it is extremely unlikely that someone will have their health compromised by radioactivity.
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.
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