Low dose ionising radiation IS harmful to health

War of the agendas.

So pointing to medical research like the peer reviewed National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation or the international research collated from physicians actually treating those affected by Chernobyl documented in this report,
http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf

is ‘bias’ and ‘hysteria’. Oh there is cancer, leukemia, early dementia, cardiac arrest, and countless conditions for which science hadn’t developed a name for because they don’t originate from organic diseases but are instead the result of irradiation. The medically devastating effects of Chernobyl are alive and well today but you pretend they don’t exist and claim anyone acknowledging what science and medicine knows about radiation is ‘hysteria’. And that doesn’t strike you as biased? Right.

My science background prepared me for the task of evaluating opinion and data, reading through documents like John Gofman’s radiation studies, the international report compiled of physicians data for the Chernobyl region: http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf
and the National Academy of Sciences BEIR VII report as well as the competing documentation put out by the nuke industry to confuse and distort the issues.

YOu say that “I agree that people need to be better educated on radiation and nuclear power and not dismiss it on raw fear.” but you are the one who displayed absolute ignorance of science by employing the old nuke industry talking points in your posts upthread leaving, sadly, bananas out of it for some reason.

You then say “Liberals tend to lock on one idea and get angry when others do not agree with them. Name calling usually occurs when they lose the discussion. “ as if you didn’t name-call me a ‘liberal’ for disagreeing with you. Anyone wishing to refer to actual documentation can read through my posts on FR and conclude that I am not a liberal.

Lastly you say “Just because radiation can be dangerous does not mean it should be feared.” It isn’t radiation I fear, it’s the lies, incompetence, arrogance, manipulation, and excessive power of the nuclear industry propped up by the government.

"Fukushima reactor cores are still releasing radiation into the environment and will continue to do so for the forseeable future because no one knows how to stop it. That and tremendous amounts of fuel in spent fuel pools, some of which are located in destroyed buildings, one of which has a sagging wall or two, mean that the disaster is ongoing."

I guess you mean the "disaster" that has yet to kill a single person...as opposed to the earthquake and tsunami that killed nearly 16,000.

I'm sure you're aware that the largest single hydropower disaster in history killed over 170,000 people. Also that the best estimate for fossil fuel electricity generation pollution deaths per year is around 200,000 worldwide.

So, my first point is that no human activity is completely "safe", and power generation in particular has issues. Solar and wind are no panacea, btw, although I do think PV solar roof panels will be worthwhile once a process is discovered that's efficient, cost effective and doesn't involve rare earth elements.

Now, on to the radiation exposure discussion in particular. The first data point is that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors have, on average, longer life expectancies than the population at large. That's quite hard to square with radiation being a huge risk, given that many of them were exposed at high dosages.

That brings me to the next point - the x axis of the graphs in the article are in units of Sieverts of radiation. One Sievert is a large dose - four Sieverts will cause radiation poisoning. The maximum dose received by a plant worker was 0.180 Sievert (180 millisieverts). No member of the public has received a dose remotely approaching that, by all indications.

I refer you to the excellent xkcd radiation chart which shows graphically the various radiation doses from different types of exposure. For instance, the average personal yearly dose is about four millisieverts, 85% of which is from natural (non-medical) sources.

It's also worth remembering that between 1945 and 1963, hundreds of nuclear weapons were detonated above ground. The total worldwide was about 500 megatons of TNT equivalent. Compared with that, nuclear releases related to power generation have been absolutely minuscule - most certainly including Fukushima.

Finally, I will state that I'm unabashedly pro-nuclear as far as power generation goes. There are readily achievable methods to handle nuclear waste, and thorium reactors greatly limit this problem regardless. Nuclear is the best solution for meeting our power needs going forward with minimal environmental impact. Wind power generation is a joke, not only is it area-intensive, but the dirty secret is that for every megawatt of wind generation, you must build a megawatt of conventional power generation as backup.

I guess you mean the “disaster” that has yet to kill a single person...as opposed to the earthquake and tsunami that killed nearly 16,000.
_______________________________________________________

I remember how the Soviets attempted to make the most of the fact that irradiation doesn’t necessarily kill the moment you are exposed but can take years before illnesse kill or maim. They claimed the death count was approximately 40 persons because that was the sum of the firemen on the scene of the explosion and the scientists irradiated in the control room. For many years they refused to count the pilot filmed flying a helicopter over the reactor and, being overcome with intense radiation, crashed his helicopter into it, killing everyone aboard. SEE?? SEE? He didn’t get cancer did he. Oh and the UN’s IAEA supported the Soviet’s assertions and even went to far to underreport the radiation released by a factor of 10 (Hans Blix is on tape explaining why he ‘elected’ to only report one tenth of the radiation reported by the Soviets) The Soviets also made it illegal for a physician to report a death from radiation for the first 3 years following the disaster - that REALLY held the death toll down! But eventually the physicians of the most affected regions pooled their data and researchers helped compile it into a report and were able to track rapid increases in infant mortality. Combining significant increases in illnesses far and wide (downwind, having received detectable amounts of radiation) and worldwide calculations indicate 1,000,000 people will killed and another 8million suffered severe debility. The area is still heavily radioactive and causing cancer, leukemia etc. - still taking human lives or just the health of survivors and will do so for many many generations - it’s not over yet. Say - do you think there’s any reason why the Japanese government forbids physicians from examining patients from Fukushima without permission from the government? Do you think that Japan would allow increased infant mortality rates to be reported or would they suppress it to avoid ‘public panic’ - the old touchstone of the nuke industry. How about the diseases like cancer and leukemia which take a few years to form? Will those be excluded from the actual body count because they didn’t occur on the day the reactors were destroyed? Generations of birth defects? Or are the people of Japan just magically going to avoid the illnesses and infant mortality rates experienced by other human populations that were irradiate? Doesn’t matter - the nuke industry has already started the long laborious process of denying all knowledge and responsibility. Let the medical proof come - the nuke industry will simply deny it.
______________________________________________________

I’m sure you’re aware that the largest single hydropower disaster in history killed over 170,000 people. Also that the best estimate for fossil fuel electricity generation pollution deaths per year is around 200,000 worldwide.
______________________________________________________

How many people is that single hydropower disaster killing today and for the next hundreds or thousands of years (Plutonium and Uranium remain radioactive for thousands of years with a half life of 24,000 years - half still remains radioactive at that point). And when ‘decommissioned’, how many thousands of years does the ‘fuel’ have to be stored’ and where is it stored today? Oh and does hydropower have a power hungry industry denying that the disaster ever happened and that anyone who thinks it did is ‘hysterical’ or a ‘fear monger’?
____________________________________________________________

So, my first point is that no human activity is completely “safe”, and power generation in particular has issues. Solar and wind are no panacea, btw, although I do think PV solar roof panels will be worthwhile once a process is discovered that’s efficient, cost effective and doesn’t involve rare earth elements.
_______________________________________________________

Why say that ‘no human activity is completely safe when that isn’t the issue under discussion. The nuke industry lies and yet more medical evidence proves it and you want to talk about hydropower, coal and anything else but the fact that medical evidence refutes the false assertions of the nuke industry AGAIN.

______________________________________________________

Now, on to the radiation exposure discussion in particular. The first data point is that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors have, on average, longer life expectancies than the population at large. That’s quite hard to square with radiation being a huge risk, given that many of them were exposed at high dosages.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++”Fukushima reactor cores are still releasing radiation into the environment and will continue to do so for the forseeable future because no one knows how to stop it. That and tremendous amounts of fuel in spent fuel pools, some of which are located in destroyed buildings, one of which has a sagging wall or two, mean that the disaster is ongoing.”

I guess you mean the “disaster” that has yet to kill a single person...as opposed to the earthquake and tsunami that killed nearly 16,000.

I’m sure you’re aware that the largest single hydropower disaster in history killed over 170,000 people. Also that the best estimate for fossil fuel electricity generation pollution deaths per year is around 200,000 worldwide.

So, my first point is that no human activity is completely “safe”, and power generation in particular has issues. Solar and wind are no panacea, btw, although I do think PV solar roof panels will be worthwhile once a process is discovered that’s efficient, cost effective and doesn’t involve rare earth elements.

Now, on to the radiation exposure discussion in particular. The first data point is that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors have, on average, longer life expectancies than the population at large. That’s quite hard to square with radiation being a huge risk, given that many of them were exposed at high dosages.

___________________________________________________________

The ‘survivors’ are long lived? How about all those who sickened and died? Were those long lived too? Note that the survivor class exists in any population. From Chernobyl data physicians have determined that 15% of a population is ‘sensitive’ to radiation exposure (sickens and dies more readily) and 15% is ‘less sensitive’ (recovers and survives better than average even as extremely high doses) and the rest have ailments like cancer, leukemia, birth defects etc at ‘average radiation exposure levels’ (the big part of the bell curve - yes there is illness and debility but ‘most’ of the population has it at these radiation related levels). SO survivors of HIroshima may well be ‘long lived’ but it begs the question ‘what happened to those who didn’t survive? Why not count them as casualties too? Why exclude non-survivors from proof that radiation is harmful?’ Note that Hiroshima left much less radioactive waste in the area (A-bombs are a cleaner burning fuel in that most of the radioactive material is converted into heat/light/sound/enegery etc.) so those fortunate enough to survive were pretty much ‘flashed once’ and while that killed and maimed many, if you survived you were a particularly healthy specimen that lived longer than others and you didn’t have to eat, drink, and breath continuing doses of radioactive waste like those in Japan are now doing. Oh there is so much proof that radiation damages human health you really have to close your eyes to avoid it. In the Ukraine there were regions were 90% of children were visibly ill and the area still has what doctors call ‘Chernobyl Aids’ because the immune system is kept so busy fighting radiation damage that it can’t fight off other diseases. THe first international report I read regarding Chernobyl (it was about 18 years ago) said “All diseases reported in the area increased.” I blinked and read it again. Of course the nuke industry says those diseases were psychologically induced (!) but people who were battling and recovering from minor and major illnesses succumb to them when their immune systemm is suppressed and irradiation does that.
__________________________________________________

That brings me to the next point - the x axis of the graphs in the article are in units of Sieverts of radiation. One Sievert is a large dose - four Sieverts will cause radiation poisoning. The maximum dose received by a plant worker was 0.180 Sievert (180 millisieverts). No member of the public has received a dose remotely approaching that, by all indications.
____________________________________________________

No one knows what doses the populace is receiving combining external, internal, food, water, air etc. and you state it as ‘no member of the public HAS received’ but you know that they continue to receive doses of radiation every day of every year. Low doses cause cancer and debility too - that’s the point of the BEIR VII for example, that there isn’t a ‘safe threshold’. The Hiroshima data details what happens both at low doses and at higher one-time doses (oh and what about the nuke workers that TEPCO didn’t provide with dosimeters and didn’t record their names and no longer ‘knows who they are’? How much radiation did they receive at the plant?)and reports like BEIR VII and
http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf. Like those reports, the Hiroshima data proves that there isn’t a safe threshold.

http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdfhttp://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf
__________________________________________________________

I refer you to the excellent xkcd radiation chart which shows graphically the various radiation doses from different types of exposure. For instance, the average personal yearly dose is about four millisieverts, 85% of which is from natural (non-medical) sources.
___________________________________________________

That chart is a waste of time. It does not replicate conditions experienced by those who have to live with disinformation campaigns from the nuke industry. WE know that radiation is harmful and some of it is unavoidable - we object to incompetence increasing the levels of radiation which we are exposed to. We accept medical xrays as a trade off - we increase our risk of cancer because we were exposed to radiation but in return we find that a bone is broken or a tooth needs a root canal. We have to sign medical wavers. Yes I know that ore, the core of earth etc. contains radiation. What does that have to do with TEPCO’s refusing to increase the embankment and placement of back up genrators, refusing to release SPEEDI data, ordering mayors not to distribute potassium iodide? What does it have to do with medical evidence resulting from Hiroshima which proves that the radiation that the nuke industry’s incompetence is exposing us to is harmful?
_________________________________________________________

It’s also worth remembering that between 1945 and 1963, hundreds of nuclear weapons were detonated above ground. The total worldwide was about 500 megatons of TNT equivalent. Compared with that, nuclear releases related to power generation have been absolutely minuscule - most certainly including Fukushima.

________________________________________________________

I have to assume that you are intentionally employing apples to oranges comparisons to misinform or that you are too uninformed on the subject of science to continue in this vein. Yes - above ground testing caused death and disease and there are organizations for ‘DownWinders’ for people living downwind of those test whose lives were destroyed (death and livestock, livelihoods). Recently when I went looking for those organizations I also found ‘Downwinder’ organizations created to address people becoming ill from radiation releases from nuke plants and actual settlements awarded to plaintiffs. In Europe (England I think) a physician has plotted cancer clusters around muke plants. I’ve seen breast cancer charts which plotted 2/3 of the breast cancer reported in the US during a certain period of years all within a few miles of nuke plants. (THe public is largely unaware that Nuke plants are legally allowed to vent specific amounts of radiation yearly) Above ground testing killed and maimed, the US government under reported by a factor of 10 and years later a researcher finally proved it but that was after the US GOvernment tried to suppress his report. For more - please educate yourself by reading John Gofman (known as the ‘father of plutonium’ because he was the scientist who ‘discovered it and other isotopes and was a medical physician as well) and other scientists working in that field at the time.

____________________________________________________

Finally, I will state that I’m unabashedly pro-nuclear as far as power generation goes. There are readily achievable methods to handle nuclear waste, and thorium reactors greatly limit this problem regardless. Nuclear is the best solution for meeting our power needs going forward with minimal environmental impact. Wind power generation is a joke, not only is it area-intensive, but the dirty secret is that for every megawatt of wind generation, you must build a megawatt of conventional power generation as backup.
________________________________________________________
Readily achievable means of handling nuclear waste do not exist and if they did - Chernobyl and Japan would be employing them right now. After the Fukushima explosions etc., 25% of the US’s nuke power plants submitted a report to the federal government stating that they, too, had vulnerabilities regarding fuel storage similar to FUkushima (i.e., mass quantities of fuel stored in above ground pools above reactors) and requested funds to address it. Oh I know the nuke industry will somehow blame the public for their nuke fuel storage issues.
You say “minimal environmental impact.” even though Chernobyl regions have never recovered and are still sickening and killing those who continue to live in contaminated regions. Their ‘containment’ building covering the Cherobyl reactor is near collapse and if it ‘goes’ before they cover it again, it will shower the surrounding regions with additional layers of long lived isotopes. They are trying to build a cover that will last long but that one has problems too and will have to be replaced. There isn’t enough land in the region to move the populace to ‘clean’ not contanimated regions so generations of people are discovering that they have to live their entire lives and raise families in contaminated zones knowing the medical hardships they will all face.
The melted fuel of three Fukushima reactors is not containamble, recoverable, and is pumping out radiation into the environment every day and there is no known way to stop it. The Japanese Government released a map indicating that all of Japan had received various levels of irradiation with hot spots clustered here and there and you consider this ‘minimal environmental impact.’
UC Berkely tested and found produce and milk tainted with radiation from Fukushima and there are milk samples from that area (as well as someplace on the East Coast, which exceeded radiation limits set by the government for milk. and information like this generally encourages you that this is the best, ‘cleanest’ alternative.

This is an edited version of the above post because I cannot edit the original and it contains large blocks of redundant text:

I guess you mean the “disaster” that has yet to kill a single person...as opposed to the earthquake and tsunami that killed nearly 16,000.
_______________________________________________________

I remember how the Soviets attempted to make the most of the fact that irradiation doesn’t necessarily kill the moment you are exposed but can take years before illnesse kill or maim. They claimed the death count was approximately 40 persons because that was the sum of the firemen on the scene of the explosion and the scientists irradiated in the control room. For many years they refused to count the pilot filmed flying a helicopter over the reactor and, being overcome with intense radiation, crashed his helicopter into it, killing everyone aboard. SEE?? SEE? He didn’t get cancer did he. Oh and the UN’s IAEA supported the Soviet’s assertions and even went to far to underreport the radiation released by a factor of 10 (Hans Blix is on tape explaining why he ‘elected’ to only report one tenth of the radiation reported by the Soviets) The Soviets also made it illegal for a physician to report a death from radiation for the first 3 years following the disaster - that REALLY held the death toll down! But eventually the physicians of the most affected regions pooled their data and researchers helped compile it into a report and were able to track rapid increases in infant mortality. Combining significant increases in illnesses far and wide (downwind, having received detectable amounts of radiation) and worldwide calculations indicate 1,000,000 people will killed and another 8million suffered severe debility. The area is still heavily radioactive and causing cancer, leukemia etc. - still taking human lives or just the health of survivors and will do so for many many generations - it’s not over yet. Say - do you think there’s any reason why the Japanese government forbids physicians from examining patients from Fukushima without permission from the government? Do you think that Japan would allow increased infant mortality rates to be reported or would they suppress it to avoid ‘public panic’ - the old touchstone of the nuke industry. How about the diseases like cancer and leukemia which take a few years to form? Will those be excluded from the actual body count because they didn’t occur on the day the reactors were destroyed? Generations of birth defects? Or are the people of Japan just magically going to avoid the illnesses and infant mortality rates experienced by other human populations that were irradiate? Doesn’t matter - the nuke industry has already started the long laborious process of denying all knowledge and responsibility. Let the medical proof come - the nuke industry will simply deny it.
______________________________________________________

I’m sure you’re aware that the largest single hydropower disaster in history killed over 170,000 people. Also that the best estimate for fossil fuel electricity generation pollution deaths per year is around 200,000 worldwide.
______________________________________________________

How many people is that single hydropower disaster killing today and for the next hundreds or thousands of years (Plutonium and Uranium remain radioactive for thousands of years with a half life of 24,000 years - half still remains radioactive at that point). And when ‘decommissioned’, how many thousands of years does the ‘fuel’ have to be stored’ and where is it stored today? Oh and does hydropower have a power hungry industry denying that the disaster ever happened and that anyone who thinks it did is ‘hysterical’ or a ‘fear monger’?
____________________________________________________________

So, my first point is that no human activity is completely “safe”, and power generation in particular has issues. Solar and wind are no panacea, btw, although I do think PV solar roof panels will be worthwhile once a process is discovered that’s efficient, cost effective and doesn’t involve rare earth elements.
_______________________________________________________

Why say that ‘no human activity is completely safe when that isn’t the issue under discussion. The nuke industry lies and yet more medical evidence proves it and you want to talk about hydropower, coal and anything else but the fact that medical evidence refutes the false assertions of the nuke industry AGAIN.

______________________________________________________

Now, on to the radiation exposure discussion in particular. The first data point is that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors have, on average, longer life expectancies than the population at large. That’s quite hard to square with radiation being a huge risk, given that many of them were exposed at high dosages.

___________________________________________________________

The ‘survivors’ are long lived? How about all those who sickened and died? Were those long lived too? Note that the survivor class exists in any population. From Chernobyl data physicians have determined that 15% of a population is ‘sensitive’ to radiation exposure (sickens and dies more readily) and 15% is ‘less sensitive’ (recovers and survives better than average even as extremely high doses) and the rest have ailments like cancer, leukemia, birth defects etc at ‘average radiation exposure levels’ (the big part of the bell curve - yes there is illness and debility but ‘most’ of the population has it at these radiation related levels). SO survivors of HIroshima may well be ‘long lived’ but it begs the question ‘what happened to those who didn’t survive? Why not count them as casualties too? Why exclude non-survivors from proof that radiation is harmful?’ Note that Hiroshima left much less radioactive waste in the area (A-bombs are a cleaner burning fuel in that most of the radioactive material is converted into heat/light/sound/enegery etc.) so those fortunate enough to survive were pretty much ‘flashed once’ and while that killed and maimed many, if you survived you were a particularly healthy specimen that lived longer than others and you didn’t have to eat, drink, and breath continuing doses of radioactive waste like those in Japan are now doing. Oh there is so much proof that radiation damages human health you really have to close your eyes to avoid it. In the Ukraine there were regions were 90% of children were visibly ill and the area still has what doctors call ‘Chernobyl Aids’ because the immune system is kept so busy fighting radiation damage that it can’t fight off other diseases. THe first international report I read regarding Chernobyl (it was about 18 years ago) said “All diseases reported in the area increased.” I blinked and read it again. Of course the nuke industry says those diseases were psychologically induced (!) but people who were battling and recovering from minor and major illnesses succumb to them when their immune systemm is suppressed and irradiation does that.
__________________________________________________

That brings me to the next point - the x axis of the graphs in the article are in units of Sieverts of radiation. One Sievert is a large dose - four Sieverts will cause radiation poisoning. The maximum dose received by a plant worker was 0.180 Sievert (180 millisieverts). No member of the public has received a dose remotely approaching that, by all indications.
____________________________________________________

No one knows what doses the populace is receiving combining external, internal, food, water, air etc. and you state it as ‘no member of the public HAS received’ but you know that they continue to receive doses of radiation every day of every year. Low doses cause cancer and debility too - that’s the point of the BEIR VII for example, that there isn’t a ‘safe threshold’. The Hiroshima data details what happens both at low doses and at higher one-time doses (oh and what about the nuke workers that TEPCO didn’t provide with dosimeters and didn’t record their names and no longer ‘knows who they are’? How much radiation did they receive at the plant?)and reports like BEIR VII and
http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf. Like those reports, the Hiroshima data proves that there isn’t a safe threshold.

http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf
__________________________________________________________

I refer you to the excellent xkcd radiation chart which shows graphically the various radiation doses from different types of exposure. For instance, the average personal yearly dose is about four millisieverts, 85% of which is from natural (non-medical) sources.
___________________________________________________

That chart is a waste of time. It does not replicate conditions experienced by those who have to live with disinformation campaigns from the nuke industry. WE know that radiation is harmful and some of it is unavoidable - we object to incompetence increasing the levels of radiation which we are exposed to. We accept medical x-rays as a trade off - we increase our risk of cancer because we were exposed to radiation but in return we find that a bone is broken or a tooth needs a root canal. We have to sign medical wavers. Yes I know that ore, the core of earth etc. contains radiation. What does that have to do with TEPCO’s refusing to increase the embankment and placement of back up genrators, refusing to release SPEEDI data, ordering mayors not to distribute potassium iodide? What does it have to do with medical evidence resulting from Hiroshima which proves that the radiation that the nuke industry’s incompetence is exposing us to is harmful?
_________________________________________________________

It’s also worth remembering that between 1945 and 1963, hundreds of nuclear weapons were detonated above ground. The total worldwide was about 500 megatons of TNT equivalent. Compared with that, nuclear releases related to power generation have been absolutely minuscule - most certainly including Fukushima.

________________________________________________________

I have to assume that you are intentionally employing apples to oranges comparisons to misinform or that you are too uninformed on the subject of science to continue in this vein. Yes - above ground testing caused death and disease and there are organizations for ‘DownWinders’ (people living downwind of those tests) whose lives were destroyed (death and livestock, livelihoods). Recently when I went looking for those organizations I also found ‘Downwinder’ organizations created to address people becoming ill from radiation releases from nuke plants and actual settlements awarded to plaintiffs. In Europe (England I think) a physician has plotted cancer clusters around muke plants. I’ve seen breast cancer charts which plotted 2/3 of the breast cancer reported in the US during a certain period of years all within a few miles of nuke plants. (THe public is largely unaware that Nuke plants are legally allowed to vent specific amounts of radiation yearly)

Above ground testing killed and maimed, the US government under reported by a factor of 10 and years later a researcher finally proved it but that was after the US GOvernment tried to suppress his report. For more - please educate yourself by reading John Gofman (known as the ‘father of plutonium’ because he was the scientist who ‘discovered it and other isotopes and was a medical physician as well) and other scientists working in that field at the time.

____________________________________________________

Finally, I will state that I’m unabashedly pro-nuclear as far as power generation goes. There are readily achievable methods to handle nuclear waste, and thorium reactors greatly limit this problem regardless. Nuclear is the best solution for meeting our power needs going forward with minimal environmental impact. Wind power generation is a joke, not only is it area-intensive, but the dirty secret is that for every megawatt of wind generation, you must build a megawatt of conventional power generation as backup.
________________________________________________________
Readily achievable means of handling nuclear waste do not exist and if they did - Chernobyl and Japan would be employing them right now. After the Fukushima explosions etc., 25% of the US’s nuke power plants submitted a report to the federal government stating that they, too, had vulnerabilities regarding fuel storage similar to FUkushima (i.e., mass quantities of fuel stored in above ground pools above reactors) and requested funds to address it. Oh I know the nuke industry will somehow blame the public for their nuke fuel storage issues.

You say “minimal environmental impact.” even though Chernobyl regions have never recovered and are still sickening and killing those who continue to live in contaminated regions. Their ‘containment’ building covering the Cherobyl reactor is near collapse and if it ‘goes’ before they cover it again, it will shower the surrounding regions with additional layers of long lived isotopes. They are trying to build a cover that will last long but that one has problems too and will have to be replaced. There isn’t enough land in the region to move the populace to ‘clean’ not contanimated regions so generations of people are discovering that they have to live their entire lives and raise families in contaminated zones knowing the medical hardships they will all face.

The melted fuel of three Fukushima reactors is not containable, recoverable, and is pumping out radiation into the environment every day and there is no known way to stop it and it will continue indefinitely. The Japanese Government released a map indicating that all of Japan had received various levels of irradiation with hot spots clustered here and there and you consider this ‘minimal environmental impact.’
UC Berkely tested and found produce and milk tainted with radiation from Fukushima and there are milk samples from that area (as well as someplace on the East Coast, which exceeded radiation limits set by the government for milk. and information like this generally encourages you that this is the best, ‘cleanest’ alternative.

Low doses radiation is good for your health as it can be used to destroy cancer. I have 44 radioactive iodine capsules in my prostate to kill my prostate cancer. It is working. See radiation does have a place in this world after all and I am not the idiot you think.

Placemark.

Go live in a cave, luddite. Oh wait, that’s probably radioactive too. Guess you’re screwed.

___________________________________________________

No - you go live in a cave, shill.

Citing medical research and objecting to nuke industry incompetence an lies is not the mark of a Luddite. But - you didn’t have any substance to add so you went for the old nuke shill standbys - name calling and comparing radon to plutonium/cesium/uranium etc.