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We should stop running away from radiation

bbc.co.uk

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Re: We should stop running away from radiation

#101

Post by Qz »

lukeschlather wrote: post #91
veidr wrote: post #28

The idea that we have a sufficient quantity of accurate data about Chernobyl to make sweeping claims about its impact on people living there, including how many died as a result, is frankly idiotic. We do not and never will have such data. This is a pernicious meme that frequently recurs on this board. Reject it. (The Fukushima disaster, on the other hand, has occurred in the open within the context of a reasonably f…

While we can't make claims about totals, I think we can make some sweeping claims about relative harm. Namely, that taking Chernobyl in its proper context (one nuclear plant out of many) and even taking Fukishima to be an event of similar magnitude, nuclear power plants still present significant advantages over coal from a pain-and-hardship caused per watt-hour generated. No one's arguing that nuclear power is safe.…

Oops, misread your comment and downvoted. Apologies.

Re: We should stop running away from radiation

#102

Post by Natsu »

Tichy wrote: post #97
gommm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blurb at the top is not always written by the same writer as the article... But even with that said, why doesn't it make sense to compare the number of casualties and damages between different accidents? It's a way to put things into perspective. People have in general a rather faulty sense of proportion and understanding of statistics.

A billion people die of old age all the time. That doesn't imply that we shouldn't care about other causes of death. The Tsunami deaths have nothing to do with radiation. hence they don't belong into an article about radiation.

This isn't an article about radiation, it's an article about fear. Our sense of fear is not rational. If it were, people in the US would be more afraid of bananas (which count as "highly radioactive" if I apply the scales used by some newspapers evenhandedly) than Fukushima. Which shouldn't count as scary at all. I just ate one, in fact, in spite of knowing that it's choc-full of delicious, radioactive potassium.

We fear things that are easy to imagine over common but hard to see risks. The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic. So the death of tens of thousands due to the tsunami will never register the same emotional impact as the picture of one deformed child from Chernobyl.

It's the same in startup marketing, incidentally. That's why they give people testimonials (stories), help them imagine the benefits, etc. This is sort of the opposite: the media is making it easy to imagine all sorts of horrible things happening due to invisible killer radiation. A few bad things probably will happen. Oh yeah, tens of thousands of people were also buried under a 12m wall of water that crushed entire towns, but there's nothing new to say about that.

Re: We should stop running away from radiation

#103

Post by Lost_BiomedE »

DennisP wrote: post #60
callmevlad wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you happen to have a source for this? I'm finding it hard to imagine how a study like this can even take place given that there have (probably) not been many survivors among those who have received a dose of 4 Sieverts.

There's a recent book called Physics for Future Presidents, written by a physics professor at Berkeley, which has a lot of material on radiation risks. He says you can calculate your risk of cancer from radiation by dividing your exposure by 2500 rem. The level that gives you acute radiation sickness is 200 rem. This is called the "linear hypothesis" and is widely used. They use it in medicine to decide if diagnostic…

The class is available as open courseware, too. It is a no math physics course that focuses on concepts.

This is the course site, click webcast lectures on the side: http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/pffp.html

Re: We should stop running away from radiation

#104

Post by matthiasl »

HelloBeautiful wrote: post #98
daeken wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good friend's wife spent a good bit of time in Belarus recently (well, 2006-2007), primarily assisting children still affected by the Chernobyl disaster. The stories she told of kids powering through cancer would reduce most men to tears. Really amazing what's still going on over there, to this day. The incident at Chernobyl might have occurred in the Ukraine, but it was not the most affected. Sad, even if I am a h…

>> The stories she told of kids powering through cancer would reduce most men to tears. I've heard a few such stories myself recently. About children in Serbia and west Bulgaria, born around the depleted plutonium bombing.

I've heard of depleted uranium, but depleted plutonium is new to me.

Googling a bit, I think you mean depleted uranium, but perhaps wrote 'plutonium' because one of the problems with depleted uranium is that it is (often?) contaminated with plutonium. Just guessing.

Re: We should stop running away from radiation

#106

Post by Tichy »

Natsu wrote: post #102
Tichy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A billion people die of old age all the time. That doesn't imply that we shouldn't care about other causes of death. The Tsunami deaths have nothing to do with radiation. hence they don't belong into an article about radiation.

This isn't an article about radiation, it's an article about fear. Our sense of fear is not rational. If it were, people in the US would be more afraid of bananas (which count as "highly radioactive" if I apply the scales used by some newspapers evenhandedly) than Fukushima. Which shouldn't count as scary at all. I just ate one, in fact, in spite of knowing that it's choc-full of delicious, radioactive potassium. We…

Where I live it is a lot more rational to be worried about radiation than about Tsunamis.

I can't bring the Tsunami victims back alive. What could I possibly learn from the Tsunami story? That it could be dangerous to live too close to the sea, that's about it.

It's not my fault if the media tries to milk Fukushima for all it's worth (they live on fear). Still, the kind of answer you give doesn't help much. If the radiation is just banana level, why do the workers there wear protection suits? I didn't follow the stories too closely, so I suppose you refer to some measurement somewhere that made it into the news. That's a complete strawman.

What I heard is that radiation levels were rising in Tokyo's water supply, but not enough to be dangerous. Still I would consider it newsworthy that an accident 200km away that does not seem to be 100% under control affects the Tokyo water supply. The Tsunami probably also started just with a 1mm rise in water levels. And to be honest, I admit if I was living in Tokyo, I would probably still think twice about giving the water to my baby. Who knows how timely the official measurements arrive - maybe in the meantime the radiation levels rise some more (the real news is the movement in radiation levels, not any static data point).

And by the way, so far I have not heard a figure > 20000 for the number of the Tsunami victims, so I think you exaggerate with "tens of thousands" (it's horrible, nevertheless - but don't play the same tricks you accuse the anti nuclear media of).

Re: We should stop running away from radiation

#107

Post by Natsu »

Tichy wrote: post #106
Natsu wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an article about radiation, it's an article about fear. Our sense of fear is not rational. If it were, people in the US would be more afraid of bananas (which count as "highly radioactive" if I apply the scales used by some newspapers evenhandedly) than Fukushima. Which shouldn't count as scary at all. I just ate one, in fact, in spite of knowing that it's choc-full of delicious, radioactive potassium. We…

Where I live it is a lot more rational to be worried about radiation than about Tsunamis. I can't bring the Tsunami victims back alive. What could I possibly learn from the Tsunami story? That it could be dangerous to live too close to the sea, that's about it. It's not my fault if the media tries to milk Fukushima for all it's worth (they live on fear). Still, the kind of answer you give doesn't help much. If the ra…

> I can't bring the Tsunami victims back alive. What could I possibly learn from the Tsunami story? That it could be dangerous to live too close to the sea, that's about it.

They can improve seawalls and such, actually. And we can improve search & rescue operations.

> If the radiation is just banana level, why do the workers there wear protection suits?

Those don't protect from radiation very well, they're to prevent contamination. It takes several inches of lead to block gamma rays (you'd have to be Superman to move in a suit that heavy) and neutrons can activate otherwise non-radioactive elements. Alpha & beta radiation are relatively easy to block, though, but normal clothing is almost enough.

Also, it's just good engineering to take precautions. Also, near the plant, there actually are hazardous levels of radiation, it's just once you get further away that they're mostly harmless.

> And by the way, so far I have not heard a figure > 20000 for the number of the Tsunami victims, so I think you exaggerate with "tens of thousands" (it's horrible, nevertheless - but don't play the same tricks you accuse the anti nuclear media of).

I have, but who knows with the news? I've heard radiation figures from "100x normal" to "1,000,000x normal" (the LA Times had a much larger multiplier than the other papers I compared it to).

Also, remember the tsunami in the Indian ocean? Last I heard, the deaths there were on the order of 100k, if memory serves. Japan did what? 1/10th or so of that (again, depending on which numbers you believe).

I do not and cannot blame you for the media's hysteria, I'm just trying to help you not get caught up in it and to understand the real dangers that people are underestimating. Granted, you may not live in a coastal area, so you may not even have heard of seawalls before, but non-newsworthy things like improving them can save a lot of people.

But those kinds of projects will get starved for funding. So we'll end up with a lot of panicked people in California who shoot down new nuke plants in favor of coal/natural gas (the coal miners who die are in China, so there are no political consequences) and underestimate things like seawalls. California is said to be overdue for a big quake, but I hope they're wrong about that.

Re: We should stop running away from radiation

#108

Post by Derbasti »

cperciva wrote: post #34
Derbasti wrote: post #19

How about all those people dying from cancer years later all over Russia and Central Europe? Radiation does not kill instantly, it causes cancer, which kills years later. Stop spreading such nonsense articles, please! Just because the immediate impact is comparatively low, that doesn't mean it's harmless.

Radiation does not kill instantly, it causes cancer, which kills years later. Radiation is a carcinogen, yes. But it turns out that radiation is a really puny carcinogen. A radiation dosage which will probably kill you if delivered rapidly -- 4 Sieverts -- has only a small chance of causing cancer -- about 10% (and an even lower chance of causing lethal cancer).

Do you realize that official estimates in Europe hold chernobyl responsible for about 500000 deaths caused by secondary radiation effects? Do NOT play this down. Radiation kills!

Re: We should stop running away from radiation

#109

Post by code_duck »

cperciva wrote: post #55
code_duck wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 10% chance of getting cancer is not small at all. It's pretty significant - thousands of products and substances have been banned for much less. The chance of getting cancer for current smokers, for instance, is said to be 10-15%. Do you think that tobacco smoke is a really puny carcinogen?

No, I don't think tobacco smoke is a puny carcinogen. Dosage matters. To get that 10% chance of cancer, you need to have what would be an almost certainly lethal dose of acute radiation. It's easy to get cancer by smoking. It's really really hard to get cancer from radiation without giving yourself a lethal acute dose of radiation in the process.

Unfortunately that doesn't correspond to any reading I've done on this topic. I'm pretty sure that chronic, sublethal exposure to radiation significantly increases your chance of various types of cancer.

Re: We should stop running away from radiation

#110

Post by Tichy »

Natsu wrote: post #107
Tichy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live it is a lot more rational to be worried about radiation than about Tsunamis. I can't bring the Tsunami victims back alive. What could I possibly learn from the Tsunami story? That it could be dangerous to live too close to the sea, that's about it. It's not my fault if the media tries to milk Fukushima for all it's worth (they live on fear). Still, the kind of answer you give doesn't help much. If the ra…

> I can't bring the Tsunami victims back alive. What could I possibly learn from the Tsunami story? That it could be dangerous to live too close to the sea, that's about it. They can improve seawalls and such, actually. And we can improve search & rescue operations. > If the radiation is just banana level, why do the workers there wear protection suits? Those don't protect from radiation very well, they're to prevent…

Nonsense, Japan already has invested a lot in Tsunami protection, they will not starve funding for that. Who says it is an "either invest in anti-Tsunami or anti-nuclear-power measures" kind of thing? And no, I don't live in a coastal area, so enhancing seawalls is not my interest or priority.

As for protection suit: contamination, why should it matter if it is only as bad as eating a banana? Your banana argument really makes no sense.

I have little hopes for nuclear power to go away, nor fossile fuel plants. I think it would be possible, but lifestyles would have to change too much (for the better in my opinion, but many people would disagree). We certainly could save a lot of power, so it would not have to be necessary to replace nuclear power plants with fossile fuel plants.

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