The Radiation Exposure Lie • Hacker News Board

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#141

Post by lisper » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #138

lisper wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't blame over regulation I absolutely can. If nuclear power had not been over-regulated for 50 years the technology might be much more advanced now than it is. We will never know. It's kind of like pointing to the failure of public transportation in the U.S. and saying that this was inevitable, without taking into consideration the fact that there was a well-developed system of local rail before a criminal c…

That's a lot of would've could've should've, nevertheless we can test that idea that nuclear power would be more advanced: it wasn't over regulated in the Soviet Union, and that got us the RBMK 1000, a design with inherent flaws that make the remaining reactors in operation a high risk. Nuclear power isn't over regulated in China and their reactor designs are adapted from existing mainstream reactor designs.

You need to search for "Why China can't build jet engines." Just because China hasn't been able to do it doesn't mean it's not possible.

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#142

Post by gurjeet » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

NetMageSCW wrote: post #122

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…

The ADA says annual X-rays are not best practice - perhaps ask your dentist why they don’t follow ADA guidelines?

I didn't know that. I feel somewhat vindicated :-) I'll cite the ADA guidelines next time they insist.

edit: link to the latest ADA recommendation on x-rays. https://www.ada.org/about/press-releases/new-recommendations...

> You wouldn’t get an X-ray of another part of your body unless the doctor believed there was reason to order one after an examination. Similarly, dental X-rays should be ordered only after first examining the patient’s medical and dental histories, prior X-ray images, and current clinical exam findings.

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#143

Post by formerly_proven » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

antonvs wrote: post #139

formerly_proven wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The irrational fear-factor associated with anything nuclear is highlighted by how much attention Fukushima, the nuclear disaster, which gravely injured like a dozen people, gets relative to the earthquake and tsunami causing it, which killed 20k people and leveled a huge stretch of coast.

It leveled a huge stretch of coast, but didn't make it uninhabitable. The false equivalences here are mind-numbingly obvious to anyone actually thinking about this instead of parroting something they've read. I remember not being able to buy milk in Europe (Switzerland and Germany) in the 1980s because of Chernobyl. The increase in radioactivity in milk was orders of magnitude, due to fallout from Cesium 134 and 137…

> It leveled a huge stretch of coast, but didn't make it uninhabitable.

This is not actually true, because it deleted around 120 km² of habitable land (https://www.forbes.com/sites/oshadavidson/2011/04/29/japan-e...). Engineering just to reclaim that land continues to this day and has already cost trillions of Yen. The damage the tsunami did to other structures and people (without literally sinking the ground into the sea) were much more expensive than that.

> I remember not being able to buy milk in Europe (Switzerland and Germany) in the 1980s because of Chernobyl. The increase in radioactivity in milk was orders of magnitude, due to fallout from Cesium 134 and 137 as well as isotopes of strontium and plutonium.

Circling back to the easy to measure part, dividing most numbers by something close to zero tends to turn out big, the ratio says fairly little about whether that's dangerous (https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/accident-management/emergen... "To date, there is no evidence that the reactor accident has caused adverse health effects due to radiation in Germany"). I'm also fairly certain neither strontium nor plutonium particles (plural) made it that far.

Re: The Radiation Exposure Lie

#144

Post by MomsAVoxell » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 10:02 AM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #140

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we don't have the language because we don't have the experience. Perhaps we should tune into what the Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivors use to describe things. I seem to recall they had various phrases for different kinds of fallout ..

There actually wasn't any appreciable fallout after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Fallout is mostly generated when a bomb explodes close to the ground so that its neutrons are able to reach and transmute that ground into radioactive isotopes. The bombs dropped on Japan exploded high up to affect as large an area as possible. Many people suffered terribly from the ionizing radiation produced by those bombs,…

Right, it was radioactive rain I am remembering someone describing to me when I was in Tokyo, discussing the subject. Not strictly fallout.

I remember there was some controversy over whether folks who were exposed to the black rain were eligible for health and medical support, and what constituted 'black rain' versus 'normal rain' and all the wide spectrum between ...