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The Radiation Exposure Lie

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Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#71

Post by duskwuff »

chasil wrote: post #59
duskwuff wrote: post #48

> Chernobyl is the only accident in commercial nuclear history that has exposed people to large enough doses of radiation to poison and kill them. The Tokaimura incident (Japan, 1999) comes to mind as a counterexample. https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TOAC_web.pdf TL;DR: enriched uranium solution was poured into a tank with improper geometry and reached criticality; three workers were severely irradiate…

I remember someone from the Manhattan Project that suffered the same fate. Is that "commercial nuclear history?" This article on Douglas Crofut [died 1981] implies that there were several. "His death was the first of its kind in the United States since the 1940s, when radiation deaths occurred during the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crofut It turns out that there…

"First of its kind since the 1940s" still seems a little questionable given the Cecil Kelley incident (Los Alamos, 1958).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Kelley_criticality_accid...

Interestingly, both the Tokaimura and Kelley incidents involved a radioactive solution in an unfavorable geometry.

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#72

Post by the_af »

gurjeet wrote: post #70

> Drinking one beer a night for a year is a lot less harmful than drinking 365 beers in one go. The same applies to radiation exposure, but regulation doesn’t agree. I know I may be overreacting, but when the dentists try to convince me that the annual x-ray of my family members is the same as being outside in the sun for a whole day, I try to explain it with a similar analogy; getting exposed to small amounts of x-r…

> As I said, I may be overreacting, by I'd like to err on the side of caution when it comes to my kids' and family's long-term health.

But isn't it a trade off, like many things in life? I don't think refusing the x-ray is necessarily erring on the side of caution. You may miss a relevant diagnostic. You have to weigh the probability and impact of the x-ray doing harm vs not getting the routine x-ray and failing to discover something harmful in time.

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#73

Post by lisper »

Zigurd wrote: post #66
lisper wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that stopping nuclear activity has ancillary effects -- like increased carbon emissions -- that are potentially much more harmful than the radiation. The results of technological decisions are never independent of one another.

In theory. But in fact, attempting to build nuclear power plants results in big increases in electric rates, and the supposed benefits of nuclear power end up being delayed by many years and in many cases decades. The effect of trying and failing to build nuclear power plants on time and on budget uses up many billions in capital that could've been applied to reliable delivery of renewables. Even the supposedly effic…

> attempting to build nuclear power plants results in big increases in electric rates

Largely due to the costs of complying with draconian regulatory regimes.

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#74

Post by the_af »

wat10000 wrote: post #49
throw0101a wrote: post #19

Reminded of something that Geraldine Thomas, founder of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, wrote when the Fukushima drama was going on, "Look at the science – smoking and obesity are more harmful than radiation": * https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-... > I can assure you that none of us are in the pay of the nuclear industry. I was anti-nuclear until I worked on the after effects of the Chernobyl ac…

That doesn't even make any sense. How can you compare the harm of completely different things with completely different mechanisms and exposures? And why would nuclear winter have anything to do with it?

Surely that the West's perception (especially the popular narrative) of Chernobyl is tinted with Cold War logic is self-evident?

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#75

Post by loeg »

Schiendelman wrote: post #65
loeg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless by "viability" you're completely ignoring price, I disagree (I would argue that excessively expensive solutions aren't viable). We don't have good alternatives to gas (carbon fuel) peakers yet. Nor is winter generation a solved problem. Non-nuclear carbon-free generation needs a tremendous amount of battery storage to get to 0% carbon-emitting.

That is much, much cheaper than nuclear at today's prices.

Up to how many hours of battery capacity?

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#76

Post by kmoser »

throw0101a wrote: post #19

Reminded of something that Geraldine Thomas, founder of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, wrote when the Fukushima drama was going on, "Look at the science – smoking and obesity are more harmful than radiation": * https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-... > I can assure you that none of us are in the pay of the nuclear industry. I was anti-nuclear until I worked on the after effects of the Chernobyl ac…

Individuals have a fair degree of control over whether they smoke or overeat. They have little to no control over a nuclear accident that may subject them to an indeterminate amount of radiation.

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#77

Post by gurjeet »

the_af wrote: post #72
gurjeet wrote: post #70

> Drinking one beer a night for a year is a lot less harmful than drinking 365 beers in one go. The same applies to radiation exposure, but regulation doesn’t agree. I know I may be overreacting, but when the dentists try to convince me that the annual x-ray of my family members is the same as being outside in the sun for a whole day, I try to explain it with a similar analogy; getting exposed to small amounts of x-r…

> As I said, I may be overreacting, by I'd like to err on the side of caution when it comes to my kids' and family's long-term health. But isn't it a trade off, like many things in life? I don't think refusing the x-ray is necessarily erring on the side of caution. You may miss a relevant diagnostic. You have to weigh the probability and impact of the x-ray doing harm vs not getting the routine x-ray and failing to d…

> But isn't it a trade off, like many things in life?

It absolutely is. For example, as soon as I turned 45, I got colonoscopy done, because the benefit of getting tested outweighed the cost of getting tested.

So if the dentist says, I suspect there's some rot, or my family member has started complaining of toothache, I would have no hesitation to get the x-ray, if recommended. But it is the regular, nonchalant nature of annual dental x-ray procedures that concerns me.

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#78

Post by kmoser »

amarant wrote: post #35
antonvs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds more like they overstated the harm of cumulative small doses of radiation. Not even that, they simply didn’t know because they couldn’t measure, so they took a conservative approach. Btw you can count me in to the cabal of anti-nuclear activists. Humans simply are too greedy and incompetent to manage the technology responsibly over the long term. We’ve already irreversibly altered the biosphere with the nucl…

Your not wrong, but you seem to be missing one significant detail: we have altered the biosphere even more by not engaging in nuclear activity, instead opting for less-scary-but-worse alternatives like coal, oil and gas.

You're not wrong, but you seem to be missing one significant detail: if we had invested in renewable energy resources like solar and wind to begin with, we wouldn't have needed (as much) assistance from nuclear, coal, oil, and gas.

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#80

Post by comrade1234 »

NotGMan wrote: post #68

Only ~35% of women in the UK support nuclear power while ~65% of men do. https://spectator.com/article/why-are-women-so-anti-nuclear/ So technically, if one extrapolates the best case scenario, if women wouldn't have voting rights, we'd already have nuclear power everywhere. Though to be fair, this varies from country to country and in some countries even women are over 50%. But in many countries women are under 50%…

What are you trying to say? Women shouldn't be allowed to vote?

Women, at least in the USA, are going to college and graduating at a higher rate than guys. They have a more legitimate opinion.

To be honest, i have chud fatigue.

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