Slashdot Mirror
Flying in Airplanes Exposes People To More Radiation Than Standing Next To a Nuclear Reactor (businessinsider.com)
Traveling the skies by jet lifts us far from the hustle and bustle of the world below. From a report: But many flyers don't know that soaring miles above Earth also takes us out of a vital protective cocoon -- and a little closer to a place where our cells can be pummeled by radiation from colliding stars, black holes, and more. You can't see these high-energy charged particles, but at any given moment, tens of thousands of them are soaring through space and slamming into Earth's atmosphere from all directions. Also called cosmic rays or cosmic ionizing radiation, the particles are the cores of atoms, such as iron and nickel, moving at nearly light-speed. They can travel for millions of years through space before randomly hitting Earth. These rays don't pose much of a risk to humans on Earth's surface, since the planet's atmosphere and magnetic field shield us from most of the threat.
Has its disadvantages.
Everyone knows this or should. But even so it's a strange thing to denote as if to make nuclear power plants seem safer? The issue isn't radiation from being around a well-operating nuclear plant, which should be negligible. The issue is when those plants fail, given that humans have never been able to clean up after themselves in these scenarios despite all the talk of how safe things are.
For something like this you would be better off reading the peer reviewed papers
on the subject rather than rhetoric on an Internet forum.
Then again, it might be more important to some people to scare the public with scary factoids than to provide education. That's my observation at least.
TL;DR: Airline pilots have some higher risk of skin cancer but not other cancers. Also additional lifestyle factors are difficult to filter out from sample set.
This isn't news. Flight attendants suffer increased risk of cancer. Probably because of this radiation. Astronauts have restrictions on total flight hours because of cosmic radiation.
My sig doesn't address Anons, sigs aren't visible to them.
How is this news? It's been known for decades. Or is the news supposed to be that nuclear reactors are generally well-designed pieces of equipment and not the Simpsons-style deathtraps the tree-huggers want us to believe they are?
Unless said reactor is badly built, badly run, badly mantained or was built in a country where profits come before safety. Donâ(TM)t try this at home.
These sorts of statistics have been covered by XKCD
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You think the fact that flying exposes people to more radiation than next to a nuclear reactor (or usually the comparison is chest x-ray) is actually news to nerds who populate this site?
Phew, talk about slow newsday or bored editors...
https://tinyurl.com/TF00T-RadP...
The guy linked above is a bit nose-in-the-air (and sort of an asshole to boot), but the playlist itself pretty much outlines a great deal about radiation, both manmade and naturally occurring.
He's done quite a bit of work on it, and has actually taken a geiger counter on a plane to measure exposure.
Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if some of his work was at the foundation of the article itself.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
How many Bananas equals one flight?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So, a few things.
One, when you are standing "next to" a nuclear reactor, you still have all of the shielding between you and the reactor. It's not that much radiation.
Two, the article points out how NASA monitors radiation exposure of it's astronauts, but airlines don't do any such thing for flight crews. Again, this is a false comparison. Astronauts pass outside of our atmosphere entirely, while airplanes do nothing of the sort. You may as well complain that they don't provide space suits when you fly on Jet Blue.
Three, they actually do show a little real science...and illustrate that the annual exposure of a full-time flight crew while in the air is about 3 mSv. And they state that 10 days in space gets you 4.3 mSv of exposure. So even by their own numbers, the simple fact is that this isn't a real problem. Effectively, a flight crew gets 4 times the exposure to "cosmic radiation" (as they call it in the article) as a person who is standing on the ground at sea level.
Next up: Businessinsider.com exposes the "massive" amounts of radiation that high-altitude mountain climbers receive. Not only are they really high up (like real astronauts!), they don't even have a plane around them!
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
"cosmic rays or cosmic ionizing radiation, the particles are the cores of atoms, such as iron and nickel, moving at nearly light-speed."
I especially liked that line... Sounds like something out of a comic book with evil cosmic rays that are out to get you... randomly.
What is hard to fathom is how 5 miles of tenuous atmosphere can be better than the aluminum or steel shell of aircraft. But lets not be bothered by that.
If there were substantial cancer risks due to flying, the data miners at insurance companies would have already correlated their payouts on treatments for high-frequency fliers like pilots and would be raising their premiums. Insurance companies are very much on top of cancer-causing workplaces.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
From 30 years ago.
I think it would be easier getting next to a nuclear reactor than trying to go through airport security now a days.
I know it is Christmas but hey, this is something that is:
a) Not news!
b) Seriously NOT NEWS!
c) Yikes, when will you ever learn!
Selling ads through Click Bait is probably as old as the Internet itself (imagining Vint Cerf standing with a UUCP connection to connect to that document claiming to fix the hosts-file problem) but I thought that Slashdot was above this... apparently not!
Merry Christmas to you all!
Nuclear Radiation clickbait. What is that you say? Several feed of concrete and lead will protect you from radiation better than a thin aluminum tube will? No WAY!
Then again, it might be more important to some people to scare the public with scary factoids than to provide education. That's my observation at least.
Spot on!
Reading the line "tens of thousands of them are soaring through space and slamming into Earth's atmosphere from all directions" my first reaction was:
Divide "tens of thousands" by the surface area of the atmosphere.
My next thought was to divide my own profile surface area (maybe 1 square meter?) by the surface area of the Earth's atmosphere (500 trillion, or thereabouts) and multiply that by "tens of thousands" to come up with the probability of getting hit by a cosmic ray.
Then I realized that the OP stated "at any given moment", and realized that you can't multiply by the number of "moments" in a flight.
The article is complete emotional bullshit.
What about living at high altitudes?
I for one am looking forward to the day when live in organic wooden huts with a windmill to charge the cell phone.
We won't have to fly airplanes ever again. We will stop eating meat and feast upon acorns and nuts which we gather. On holidays we can celebrate with a feast of tofu burgers.
No more plastic shopping sacks. No more cars. No more hydro, nuclear, or coal. And there will be no more sexism or racism. The Negroes will cease their criminal activity and join in our tofu lifestyle.
It can happen. We can do it. Sí, se puede
Actually I've stared in to the 'moon pool' with the the basket exposed prior to a fuel shuffle. I hardly picked up any dose at all. The water was plenty enough shield to you from the radiation of 15 year old fuel rods. The metal skin of an airliner however hardly blocks anything.
Or at least "Standing Next to a Nuclear Reactor Exposes People to Less Radiation than Flying in Airplanes" (I tried to copy the headline, but the subject field wouldn't hold it.)
When comparing relative risks, couldn't this same study show the safety of an operating power plant? Of course someone will bring up failed nuclear plants without discussing people dying in plane crashes.
Expecting super powers shortly.
-Dave
The potassium chloride you find in most supermarkets (in water softener tablets and as salt substitutes) will expose you to about as much radiation as nuclear waste. And heaven forbid you have a granite countertop in your home. The radiation detectors CBP has installed at border checkpoints are regularly triggered by mundane shipments like cat litter, granite, porcelain, bananas, nuts.
The atmosphere dosent protect earth inhabitants like the magnetic fields do. During solar storms, flights are already diverted due to risk of radios not working. A single polar flight has been shown to dose people with 12% of a years safe dose in a single one way trip. There should be monitoring of workers on routes near the magnetic poles, as we should monitor people who frequently (once a week) make these trips.
It depends on which nuclear reactor you're standing next to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem with radiation is in general not at the reactor but throughout the whole chain and to that the longevity of the radiation of both enrichment byproducts and the waste after the fuel has been used that adds to the problems with nuclear energy.
Just consider the full life cycle cost, not just the cost today, but also the cost to maintain the waste for the next 10k years.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
What every family needs is a radation suit for those times when man and/or nature goes terribly wrong.
The longer the half-life, the slower it emits radiation. Worry much about bananas or granite countertops, do you?
Did they average in the dose of Chernobyl workers working during its meltdown for four hours -- the typical length of an airplane flight?
This probably says more about reactor safety than anything else. But the article is probable click bait.
This fucking story is utterly useless.
So I'll get a lower does of radiation from standing next to a nuclear reactor than I would flying in a plane?
Almost all these "less dangerous" statistics are bullshit.
"You're more likely to be stung to death by bees than you are to be eaten by a shark."
As if that applies to the entire population. Hint: someone living in mountains isn't going to get eaten by a shark.
"Standing next to a nuclear reactor" is a meaningless situation in calculating risk - ALMOST NO ONE FUCKING DOES IT.
I've been playing with Geiger counters (and scintillation tubes) for a while. On one trip I took a small basic Geiger tube on an international flight. At cruise altitude the radiation was about 15x the level on the ground and when plotted with the altitude it correlated almost perfectly - down to the small 2000 foot altitude changes. By the way, I haven't measured it, but standing at a store with a bunch of smoke detectors stacked up should provide a significant exposure too.
Sadly, he is correct. You guys are nothing more than sheisters trying to milk the last couple dollars out of slashdot.
You have no plan or vision for the site. You just bought a corpse and hoped for the best. Hoping that slashdot would somehow become popular again. Maybe if the owners trolled the boards? Maybe that'll work.
I remember when BizX first purchased slashdot. They were all up and down the forums asking for advice and asking users what they want to see done. All that advice was a waste of time. It all fell on deaf ears. You guys don't participate with the community, you just troll post. When Taco ran slashdot at least he participated in the discussion.
Do you guys know why slashdot keeps getting sold over and over again? Because people like you who think it will just run on autopilot. You wanted a recurring income source without doing any real work. The bare minimum. After a year or two you realize it takes ACTUAL work, and slashdot goes up for sale. Rinse wash repeat.
Why not fix the bugs? Hire some real moderators or staff for Christ sakes, who actually participate in the threads. Not a bunch of trolls who are so self entitled they have a (1) by their name to make them feel special. I mean seriously. (1)? Come on man.
But nope, all we will get is the same shit year after year. Thus is slashdot. We are used to the neglect.
The king is dead.
Long live the king.
Long live the king. ***shutters***
not sure if clickbait or fear-mongering.Go eat a banana then get tested for radiation. Bananas are an excellent natural source for Potassium, which is naturally radioactive. Radiation Dose Chart According to that chart, a banana is about the same dose as living within 50 miles of a normal reactor for a year.
You are aware that the idea of a "banana equivalent dose" has been thouroughly debunked, right? The net increase of radioactivity exposure from eating a banana is: zero
"The Potassium-40 in bananas is a particularly poor model isotope to use, Meggitt says, because the potassium content of our bodies seems to be under homeostatic control. When you eat a banana, your body's level of Potassium-40 doesn't increase. You just get rid of some excess Potassium-40. The net dose of a banana is zero."
(source: https://boingboing.net/2010/08... )
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Indeed. I remember learning this in elementary school 40 years ago. You get way more radiation by living in Colorado than by living nextdoor to a nuclear power plant.
One important difference. There is essentially zero chance of the amount of natural radiation in Colorado changing. Living next to a nuke plant carries a small-but-not-zero chance of the amount of radiation going up substantially. Just ask the folks living near Chernobyl or Fukashima. Nuclear power has a pretty good safety record but when things go wrong they can go very wrong. To pretend that nuclear accidents aren't a serious concern is foolish.
That said I'll take the risk of fission power over coal and other fossil fuels any day of the week and twice on sunday.
A boxcar full coal emits more radiation also. So what? No one has answered the key question about nuclear power - who pays to keep the waste safe for next 250,000 years? The French pioneered vitrification, which making into the waste into a ceramic state resembling obsidian. Others adopted this process, good. But some it remain literately hot (about 90 degrees C) and radioactive over geologic time. And some contains plutonium and other nasty stuff that makes a nice dirty bomb. Again, who pays to watch it? FOR THE NEXT 250,000 YEARS? Answer that, and THEN tell me that nuclear power is economical. I want a spent fuel rod made into a custom headband every for fool who got rich making this crap. Their body will end if as low level waste, but I down with that. Then maybe we stop production of this nightmarish shit.
"I'd rather live on the fucking roof of a nuclear reactor, than within 3 km radius of an equal power output coal fired plant".
As I learned about the heavy metal produced by coal fired plants, I find myself in ever more agreement with him.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Tomorrow: Water is wet
Thats a fake account, dont feed the trolls. The real account doesnt have a (1) in it sucker.
The long-term solution for radiation exposure from flight may be a race between Hyperloop and artificial magnetic fields for aircraft and space vehicles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
His conclusion was that smoking alone does more damage from ionizing radiation exposure to radiation of any other sort.
You get even more radiation ground through the TSA screening process than you do on the whole plane ride combined.
So you are saying, "Standing Next To a Nuclear Reactor Exposes People To Less Radiation Than Flying in Airplanes".
That sounds better and makes me less apt to visit their site. It also shows that the tolerances for radiation in nuclear facilities is nice and low.
On the other hand, it's kind of awkward going thru security nowadays.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Process Safety (HAZOP) comes in many flavors. It is important to many industries to get process safety right.
Process safety also needs to consider the kind of human failings that resulted in the Chernobyl meltdown.
The problem with nuclear reactors is that they are not inherently safe. If the safety system fails they totally fail and meltdown. You lose the $billions the reactor and the power plant around it cost. And then you lose $billions in the value of the land surrounding the reactor. And it cost $billions to clean up.
It's sad to see how many self-declared intellectuals here have swallowed the Banana Equivalent Dose tripe. I guess computer scientists aren't as smart as they're credited.
Could this be used as an altimeter? What's the weight/cost/speed of these kinds of sensors?
The nature of Cosmic Rays which are everywhere in the vacuum of space, are mostly converted to particle showers at ground level. The comparison of high altitude radiation to the radiation emitted from a reactor is valid only to the extent that a Gray is a measure of radiation absorbed by flesh. Counts (scintillation counter) don't tell us much about the energy of the individual particles or how they transfer energy to flesh.
Years ago I heard that they were telling pregnant women not to fly due to radiation. If it is that bad, surely pilots and cabin crews are at significant risk, being exposed 1000x more than the average passenger.
Are nuclear fission reactor firms trying to convince the public they're "safe"?
Are nuclear fission reactor firms trying to convince people we should spend 20 times as much as renewable energy to build power plants we don't need, the construction of which will be more destructive than other energy sources?
Or are they proposing we all live next to nuclear fission reactors?
The funny thing is we already have nuclear fusion reactors, they just aren't being developed for the commercial, industrial, or residential power generation needs, only for military use (kind of helps when running certain things we claim we don't have).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There's a great site where a college program puts radiation detectors on balloons and takes them on aircraft to map the rates.
http://spaceweather.com/cosmic...
But I remember the analysis was that up at cruising altitude (35k ft +) the dose you'd get going from the cosmic radiation penetrating the inside of the cabin in about 4 hours of flying was like getting a dental xray's dose of rads. Now there is a huge industry powerful industry that would be threatened by data like this becoming widely spread and talked about (like the Cigarette companies did for lung cancer or the fossil fuel industry did global warming & the GOP). So there will be astroturfing going on.
It all makes sense now. So when I'm at 3 San Onofre, Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima do I get "Air Mile Points?"
rack up miles, get cancer
Seriously, this isn't news. If I took my TLD on a plane Doc would lose his damn mind when the readings came back.
The main problem is we don't use the fuel we can scavenge from so called "depleted" nuclear fuel. We have reactor designs that are safe and can burn depleted fuel while producing both usable fissionable isotopes as burn byproducts and much shorter half-life isotopes as "waste" ( and heat which can be turned into energy the same as just about any other reactor, as well as the "waste" being fuel for another reactor too). But those isotopes can be "weaponized", so the answer is to just bury the used fuel after stripping out whatever usable isotopes you can from it.
Hell we have reactor chain designs that could virtually eliminate waste from the nuclear chain, leaving behind barely radioactive stuff similar to the amount of radiation mine tailings put out. Unfortunately they all depend on the first and second tier reactor designs that can produce "weapons grade" fissile material. This material has properties that make it a great choice for reactors too: it's stable in known configurations, it doesn't have much if any impurities that would cause spontaneous fission I.E. unstable fissile element isotope contamination, and it's a cleaner decay chain due to knowing exact mixes of exact isotopes - with little variations from contamination from same element undesired isotopes.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
...being shot with a 38 caliber bullet exposes one to more lead than being shot with a 22, or even a 32.
The logic of the argument with this algebra is:
Something of quantity A that may be dangerous or harmful is less dangerous than something of quantity A x (any value greater that one).
Another variation is, Yes mommy, I stole 2 cookies from the cookie jar, but Billy stole 5 cookies.
Both are attempts to downplay or excuse something harmful or wrong by pointing there is a greater wrong. With the exception of the greatest wrong, there is always a greater wrong to compare something two. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Let's take this to the absurd: Yes, so and so murdered 100 people, but look at how many people Hitler, Stalin or Mao had killed.
Going back to original premise, neither standing next to a nuclear power plant that is operated safely or flying at altitude in a normally operating plane poses much danger or ill health effects. Standing next to Fukishima or Chernobyl does. (And should either of those facilities be excluded? They were nuclear reactors.) Standing near some factories making airplanes or jet fuel poses dangers. A lot of groundwater in Southern California is contaminated with chemicals from the aerospace industry from decades ago. Living downstream from uranium mine debris fields or Hanford, Washington is not recommended. Being in or under a plane that crashes or being near a nuclear facility that leaks radiation in sufficient amounts can kill you. And so on.
The greater logical fallacy of the original statement is more subtle; it takes a complicated industry, and cherry picks one aspect--a nuclear reactor functioning normally, and makes a comparison to something else with a little bit more danger (both measured using the "teensy" scale ; ). Neither industry has much risks when the reactors or planes are acting as designed. The risks of both industries occur when the technologies fail, or somewhere else along the chain of making/mining/manufacturing/operating/disposing.
This is common knowledge, we figured this out more than 50 years ago.
Whipslash, have you completely given up on Slashdot?
I think people forget that with today's modern jet airliners capable of flying over 7,000 nautical miles easily, these long-range airline flights--especially over the higher northern latitudes--can expose passengers to quite a lot of radiation. Good examples of this: New York City to eastern Asia, Tokyo to western Europe, and continental USA to Dubai. With flight times of 10 to 16 hours, the exposure could be considerable.
there must be tens of thousands of pilots and flight attendants dying from cancers in oncological centers around the globe.
It has long been known that as you rise in the atmosphere, there's less of the atmosphere above you and thus you are obviously exposed to more radiation...
but this actually cleverly disguises and distracts from the coolr point: nuclear reactors are actually insanely safe.
People can work entire careers in nuclear power facilities with less health impact than commercial air crews.
Furthermore: Very few people have been harmed by nuclear power plants. Chernobyl, an insanely bad design lacking even a basic containment facility killed remarkably few in a full-scale worst-case meltdown. Fukushima, another crappy design that could not be properly shut down without external grid power and which was on a coast by a major fault has apparently killed none while melting down in the aftermath of bothe a massive earthquake and a tsunami which it could easily have been designed to withstand. The worst incident in the USA, Three Mile Island, harmed NOBODY.
The coal industry has killed many directly, and its combustion products have arguably killed many more. Same for oil, yet these do not routinely attract the paranoia of the masses.
And no, handwaving won't solve it.
This might:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2009/...
When pilots start wearing clothes manufactured using BNNT, you know there is a solution.
Or perhaps airplanes should just store water in their upper skin. This would have the other benefit of making low speed crashes safer (less risk of fire).
The BBC used exactly the same stupid headline for the same story, word-for-word.
Here in the UK we all pay the BBC a license fee to read this rubbish. At least this crap is free on Slashdot.
If the media want us to pay for news then start reporting real news and stop this ridiculous ignorant "journalism".
I spent five years working 70m from an operating nuclear reactor (at 3513'35.5"N 8505'25.5"W if you want to be specific). On nice days I'd take a walk around the plant to stretch my legs, close enough to hug some of the dry-cask storage containers holding spent fuel rods (at 3513'36.0"N 8505'21.9"W). Therefore I can speak with some authority on the dangers -- or lack thereof -- involved.
During my tenure I received a total exposure of 0.1 mrem. This is the equivalent of living in Denver for two days as opposed to, say, at sea level. The amount of hysteria involved when someone mentions "nuclear" or "radiation" is almost comical given how little the average person understands the physics around it.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Given the realities of climate change it is immoral to oppose nuclear power.
The Nuclear Power industry releases radio-isotopes that damage Mitochondrial DNA in Humans. I can see no higher moral reality than protecting the DNA of the Human species from damage. The decisions made in this generation will effect the human race for the rest of time and imposing our will on those future human generations by damaging their DNA with radio-isotopes isn't moral.
To be specific, low energy beta emitters from radio isotopes accumulating in fat cells cause permanent damage to the heritable Mitochondrial DNA that extends from the present back through previous generations to the beginning of the human species. To be even more specific even the radio emissions from wi-fi routers and the X-ray scanners used before boarding have enough energy in them to damage the mitachondrial DNA within the unfertilized eggs carried in girls. Energetic emissions, even from low energy beta emitters, absorbed into the body damages reproductive cells in both sexes which causes transgenic diseases that can manifest in the next generation.
Considering that any damage done to mitachondrial DNA will be passed down to *all* subsequent human generations as an increased prevalence of many kinds of inherited diseases, accumulating the more we are exposed to it, it's a difficult to claim morality whilst promoting a power source that does this kind of damage our DNA. It is undeniable that the kinds of radio isotopes used by the nuclear industry does this kind of damage to human DNA. To claim otherwise is to be willfully ignorant of the facts.
Why are anti-nuclear people disappointed to learn that nuclear power hasn't killed more people?
Why is death and cancer the only argument against Nuclear power that nuclear advocates are prepared to understand? Why don't we talk about the death caused to subsequent generations that haven't been born yet? What about the amount of failed or abnormal births caused by genetic damage? How do you count those deaths? This is a very good reason to oppose nuclear power that doesn't include death or cancer, even if you don't understand why. We were handed a carbon problem to deal with by previous generations, imposing genetic disease on subsequent generations is hardly a solution.
Every single industrial process the Nuclear industry uses, mining, enrichment, power generation and disposal leaks some volume of these radio-isotopes into the environment and a lot of the damage done to Human DNA is done by the very low energy emitters to manifest decades later with no clear way to track the effect from the cause.
These issues are regularly dismissed by nuclear advocates.
I don't see climate change as a good reason to permanently damage Human DNA as a justification to use Nuclear Power. I certainly don't think anyone who forces their will on a subsequent generation has a claim to morality for doing so.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
visit https://aquaiver.com
Says the anonymous coward.
The REAL problem with radiation is an utterly irrational approach to "it" and panicmongering groups with various vested interests which refuse to acknowledge the statistical realities. We have been treated to a kneejerk "all radiation bad" mantra for decades, or even worse "natural radiation is ok but all manmade radiation bad" mantra (there's no difference in the ionising effects at any given energy level.)
High levels of radiation die down quickly.
The vast majority of high level radiation from nuclear waste is from caesium. This has a relatively short half life, such that high level nuclear waste is safe to physically handle in about 300 years.
At that point what you have is trace levels of caesium and some strontium, plus a bit of plutonium and a lot of U238. This can be re-refined and reused (more worryingly, it is trivially stolen, because the radiation levels are low enough to be safely handleable)
Isolating for 10k years for radiation reasons is just plain silly. The chemical toxicity of plutonium and uranium are another matter, but that's essentially "forever" in any case.
Bear in mind that the entire high level waste output from a 800MWe nuclear light water-moderated reactor over its 60 year period is about enough to comfortably fit in an olympic size swimming pool - which is more or less what it's held in. The best way to treat it if you aren't reusing in a molten salt reactor is to leave it in there for 3 centuries as water is the best moderating mechanism available (modulo corrosion issues, but those can be mitigated with appropriate approaches), then tossed back into a nuclear reactor.
In the case of a light meltdown (fukushima, etc) where only a few radioactives escape, they can be detected and collected (unlike chemical toxins) and they'll break down over time, unlike many (heavy metal) chemical toxins.
It doesn't help that there's absolute panicmongering about radioactivity. It's clear from studies at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and of areas with naturally high radiation levels (granite or altitude - many areas are naturally far more radioactive that Fukushima ever was), as well as 60 years of high altitude aircrew (who are exposed to the highest occupational radiation levels of any population - only exceeded by the radiation levels encountered by smokers), that exposure is far more complex than "no safe minimum dose" and further that there's a clear threshold dose below which things don't seem to matter at all.
Correlation is not causation.
Once upon a time there was a clearly noticeable spike in skin cancers being suffered by office workers. This was shortly after the widespread introduction of flourescent lighting and as these give off ultraviolet light and as ultraviolet light is known to cause skin cancers, these lights were blamed as the logical source for the cancers, but the odd thing that was noticed by researchers as time went on was that many skin cancers were appearing in regions of the body which were not exposed to the lighting - and more importantly the UV wavelengths of these lights don't usually trigger skin cancers of the types seen. Deeper research showed that these were the kinds of body areas exposed by sunbathing - and the actual link was that office workers were increasingly having more leisure time and more income, so were able to afford to take more holidays where they could lay about on beaches - where prolonged exposure to high energy UVB and UVC in sunlight due to inadequate sunscreen formulations turned out to be the actual culprit (there were also some cancers traced to the sunscreen compounds themselves!)
In another case, at Oxford university: Cancer clusters were noticed for staff in offices which were the former laboratories used by Rutherford and other nuclear researchers. This was worrying as they'd been deep cleaned and swept thoroughly for any radioactives before renovation. They were swept again and no radiation sources located. Even the air ducts and water pipes were checked in case it was coming from somewher
The airplane crew really gets upset if you break out a dose rate meter at cruising altitude and turn on the audible indication. Especially since you can have a dose rate meter that is a smart phone accessory that is smaller than a pen. But, the headline on this is pure click bait.
An air flight at 30,000 feet will have a higher dose rate than standing right next to the primary shielding of a SHUT DOWN light water reactor as long as you are not within ten feet of coolant piping. This would be adjacent to the drywell of a BWR or at the bioshield around he core vessel of a PWR. At power, the dose rate would be a bit more than the dose rate at 30,000 feet.
No, this is not data from a study but stating what I've seen from working many power plant outages and several times taking readings on flights. (And being told to put that damn thing away before the stewardess calls the air marshal on me for scaring fellow passengers. Actually, the passengers around me were just curious as can be about what I was doing.)
NRRPT/RCT
You mentioned wifi routers hurting dna. I was not attacking a strawman argument because I was attacking the exact argument you made.
You're attacking AN argument I made, you're ignoring the rest of it, which is how dogmatically ignorant your nuclear advocacy is. I think you thought that if you attack this one part of my argument you dismiss the entire argument.
Case in point of how ignorant, the IAEA itself produced one of the reports supporting my point, since you will require a citation to a paper you won't read. I'll point out that 2.4 Ghz is the same microwave spectrum that wi-fi routers use.
It shows how poorly prepared you are to make any arguments for unclear power because it demonstrates how poorly informed you are.
And of course if we do nothing about climate change millions will die. I want to stop that from happening. According to the world's leading scientists. nuclear power is the only viable path forward on climate change.
You're not even equipped to make an argument about the case for nuclear power, you have to use someone else's argument. I can argue your side of the argument better than you can.
The puff piece you referred me to has so many holes in it's reasoning it's like reading a slashdot post from a nuclear advocate posted 10 years ago, propagating the nuclear ideology again. They are top scientists in climate change, show me their peer reviewed work in Nuclear power systems.
Repeatedly, their arguments have been covered well before you ever posted here, let me guess, about 18 months, maybe two years ago? The same old problems that exist for nuclear power still exist and still haven't been resolved. Here is a few to start with:
and it goes on and on and on. Every time, guys like you answer with some sort of SyFy reactor technology that has *all the answers*. Any time you're ready to present some fresh argument that hasn't been heard before, please do so. As usual you are unable to answer these points, you'll call them bullshit because you are willfully ignorant.
So yes it is immoral to oppose nuclear power.
That's what you believe. You believe it because you project your idealism about nuclear power onto reality. You're an idealist and your nuclear advocacy is an ideology based in an ignorance of the facts. I know this because once you examine the facts and become educated about the Nuclear Industry you see how much effort it puts into avoiding responsibility whilst relying on the ignorance of people like you to defend it. You're one of their "useful idiots".
All you are interested in doing is push your idealism because you are arrogant enough to think you know better, you don't. Since the only thing you have left to argue with is rhetoric, you've decided to attempt to delude yourself that you are fighting a moral fight by attempting to box people into that argument. Typically, you will continue to falsify your reality to maintain your ideology when co
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
They are different. They do not use the same radioactive materials. Uranium for nuclear energy is only enriched to approximately ~1%-4%. Weapon materials needs to be enriched to ~80%+. So they are different. They also function differently. The mechanics and physics are different.
Which is completely irrelevant. The nuclear industry was built on the back of the Nuclear Weapons industry which is the reason why we use Uranium instead of thorium to power reactors.
Nuclear energy is also the safest form of power including solar and wind. That is a statistical fact that the IAEA acknowledges. What a laughable claim. The IAEA was formed to promote Nuclear power, it's like saying the Tobacco industry acknowledges that cigarettes have vitamin C in them which is good for you.
4th generation reactors are even better.
Yes, they have provided quite innovative tax relief for the oil and coal industry. Quick pull out the NIMBY/greenie argument and ignore the oil and coal lobbying to change the energy laws to prevent a competitor getting a foothold in the energy market. The US had a working prototype and the program was funded for destruction.
We are not moving the goal posts. You anti-nuclear people are moving the goal posts. 5 of those example occurred before I was even born and the last two occurred with technology older then I am.
So what? The radioactivity of the radio-isotopes that were release will still be energetic and toxic long after all of us here are dead. If you are not learning about the history of Nuclear power then
Apologies, I missed the last part of the sentence:
If you are not learning about the history of Nuclear power then you're not really contributing to the debate, just polarizing it.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
This post is ridiculous. OK, so the radiation environment at 30 thousand feet is higher than standing next to a (shielded) reactor. So what? Radiation at high altitude is not even close to harmful levels and nuclear reactors are shielded for the protection of the people near it. This is not a thing that needs to be reported since it's been this way forever and everyone already knows it. That said, I have brought a small geiger counter on a commercial flight and yeah, it showed 10 to 50 times the radiation at sea level, but 10x nothing is still nothing. AFAIK, Airline pilots and flight crews do not have a higher risk of radiation related illness even though they are exposed to those levels every day.
You are responsible.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You are nuts and a hypocrite.
Yeah, predictable, all you have left is the ad-hom attack.
And after showing me pictures of dead babies, which have nothing to do with nuclear energy, I know better then to ever click one of your links again.
Those images are burned into your brain, your support of nuclear power means you are responsible. If you want Nuclear power to not be connected to that then you should start a campaign to stop the military using DU. You are being wilfully ignorant to maintain your ideology, just like a communist. You also maintain your cognitive dissonance with the hipocrisy you accuse me of. You're a nuclear idealist and your idealism will lead you to a future full of mental health issues if you don't stop now because you are arguing against truth and fact.
You've failed shill school and it's unlikely that you can present anything other than rhetoric. I doubt you have anything useful to add to this conversation that is of value.
It is immoral to oppose nuclear power.
I know you want the best for people and you really believe it, however you have been deceived by the Nuclear Industry's PR machine. You're no longer ignorant even if you are too dogmatic to understand the mechanism of how radio-isotopes are absorbed into the body. Let go of your belief system and your ideology otherwise every time you repeat this line you're going to see the image of those babies mutilated by exposure to depleted uranium oxide. It's in your head now.
You are personally responsible for this evil whenever you support nuclear power because your nuclear ideology is so immoral it is evil.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Nuclear energy did not kill any of those children.
Yes it did. Depleted Uranium is a by product of the Uranium enrichment process. There is more of that than fuel. If it was unused and stored you maybe able to claim morality however a scenario mimicking Agent Orange is not Atoms For Peace, it's sub-critical nuclear warfare using Nuclear Industry fuel by-products.
The very fact that these weapons are fired with a Nuclear Industry fuel by-product, Depleated Uranium, as ordinance for a strategic advantage, cannot be denied.
The Nuclear Industry doesn't condemn the use of DU, it's an expense they don't have to sustain to store it. It's a revenue source.
The fact that you have to blame me for those deaths in order to retake the moral high ground demonstrates your cognitive dissonance.
I don't have to re-take anything, the facts stand despite your ignorance of them. It is FACT that DU is used as a munition as a primary weapon. It is known to cause mutagenic effects when it is ingested, it's toxic. Not only is it an emitter, it's spontaneous criticality creates bursts of alpha (and gamma IIRC) radiation 10-20 times higher than its normal decay. Once it's in the environment it can't be removed. DU ash from the 3000C pyrophoric flames it produces when fired is a durable microscopic ceramic oxide and can be ingested by humans and animals as an inhalant and in water to create those mutated babies whose image glue so easily into your mind.
It is immoral to use this as a munition because of the undeniable effect it has on pregnancies and children. The secondary effects destroys entire generations more completely than landmines ever could as a consequence. How would you like an aerosol of ceramic DU dust spread around your house, your town, your city, your crops, your water and your air?
I've excoriated you however I've also given you the benefit of the doubt whilst you were ignorant of the facts. They illustrate you have no claim to any morality whilst a Nuclear industry by-product, Depleted Uranium, is used as a munition and causes horrendous birth defects when ingested.. It's completely indefensible to use this material and it is undeniably connected to the the fuel used in nuclear reactors.One tenth of the ore is fuel for the reactor. The main use of what's left over is as a munition, for which it *is* used. You say it's immoral to oppose this. If you really think that, you have a serious problem.
Let me get this straight. I am an evil mentally-ill baby-killer communist? Because I think nuclear power is the only viable path forward on climate change(a stance a super majority of scientists share)?
What does climate change matter if we mutilate our own DNA permanently? I'm not saying we should'nt effect rapid action on resolving the carbon legacy we been given (clean up all the externalities), but not at the expense of genetically damaging the entire human race by spreading radioactive isotopes that destroy our DNA. You're basically saying we're too stupid to fix the problems we were handed from the industrial age and that we should hand a radio isotope legacy down to the next generation that can wipe humanity out within a few generations. You're so blinded by your ideology that you can not or will not examine the facts.
It would make you worse than a mentally-ill baby killing communist to possess that knowledge now and still say it's ok. The choice to do so would make you a psychopath as well because your idealism has been confronted and you won't even acknowledge the effect on the human race regardless of race or politics and you're trying to justify distributing doses of birth defects with rhetoric. Most sane people wouldn't try to justify something so he
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Remember you are the one who thinks wifi is dangerous.
Damage to mitochondrial DNA in the eggs of girls, who are born with their entire inventory of eggs, occurs as low as 10 Gy according to some of the papers. You can be a moron or you can be pragmatic about what that means, that wifi affects children more because they have a lower body mass than adults, that they need to keep their distance from wifi because they have less water, muscle and bone to shield their reproductive system, that schools should be cabled with fibre optic and ethernet instead of trying to scrimp installation costs with wi-fi.
As if we don't have enough (4000+) genetic defects already somehow, this paltry expense is a really big stretch for you to mentally incur to avoid introducing genetic damage into the germline of the entire human race's DNA for the rest of time.
Try to marginalise me the facts because you're too dogmatic to even examine them just makes your empty rhetoric look stupid and uninformed.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It is immoral to oppose nuclear power.
Well you just go on believing that. Nuclear idealists, such as yourself are usually too busy trying not to look stupid or embarrassed because you argue on the basis of a belief system, not fact or truth. You're trying to justify imposing birth defects on a population so you can have your nuclear fuel, a new low for immorality. Your belief system is the sign of an afflicted mind, and because your subconscious knows Nuclear ideology is immoral it will continue to unbalance your psyche. Which is bad because if you actually took the time to examine the facts you may have something worthwhile to offer instead of being just another robot fanboi.
As I said, I can make your side of the argument better than you can and this is how. In reality the technological development of the Nuclear Industry was stifled by the Oil and Coal Industry over many decades. Excellent reactor technology called IFR, built in fuel re-processing, high burnup rate, thermally controlled criticality. It still needed work with materials technology and to replace the sodium coolant with lead. From weapons grade, DU and spent fuel it's full design produced enough electricity, hydrogen and medical isotopes directly replacing coal on the grid and providing fuel for existing vehicle fleets to replace oil for the next 5000 years. The oil and coal industry crushed this technology with lobbying for its defunding, decommissioning and its demolition. You can see the latest evidence enacted into law in the 2005 US Energy Policy Act, SEC 600 onwards.
You could argue that it was immoral for the Oil and Coal industry to undermine this technology because it used DU and weapons grade material for fuel. More-over that it used spent fuel from the previous BWR/PWR reactor technology as fuel to solve the waste problem. Designed to answer the concerns of using Nuclear Power. Prototyped, tested - so there was reactor experience as well. So you see, the replacement technology you are looking for to make your argument exists, however it is the Oil and Coal industry that is destroying it grasshoper.
You could argue that the Oil and Coal industry are immoral for blocking and, their ongoing effort destroying this technology however most of you Nuclear ideologists are so binary because of how well the politics of oil and coal played you that can't even organize enough effort to save the one nuclear technology that it really would be immoral to oppose. The Oil and Coal industry manipulated nuclear supporters to go up against their opponents, the greenies that opposed Coal and Oil, while they undermined nuclear power. That's how useless your nuclear ideology is, how much it has betrayed you.
To further drive my point home you can't make that argument about current reactor technology because it DOES create DU used as weapons and it hasn't solved its spent fuel issues. You can't even make that argument with thorium because it creates a new waste stream and does nothing about the extant one. So the argument is far more complex than how you represent it with your useless blind binary nuclear ideology. It is completely moral to oppose *this* nuclear industry on the DU issue alone, even before you start to consider other factors like, spent fuel, mine tailings, reactor disposal and so many issues *this* nuclear industry does have. It's immoral arguing against resolving these problems, yet Nuclear ideologist have no answer for it so you just ignore them. At least I've researched the Nuclear industry enough to articulate an argument, all you have is trite mindless rhetoric.
So you can either explore the facts for yourself or you can cling to the nuclear ideology like a fool. You can take responsibility for the flaws the nuclear industry has and then try to figure out how to improve it, solve them and make it work properly but to do that you have to completely shatter the belief system of your nuclear ideology that it is perfect. You can attempt to understand the forces that shape it, the risks we take using it. It's the only moral way to support nuclear power amongst a sea of moral reasons to oppose it.
That's why your Nuclear Idealism is evil.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.