Project 1 – weakening emergency safety standards. Project 2 – discrediting the radiation risk model
THIS is their reaction to Fukushima!?
Also, I think his part is a little too optimistic:
"It’s now just over a year since the tragic Fukushima disaster."
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.
Their mission statement:
Independent Australia is a progressive journal focusing on politics, democracy, the environment, Australian history and Australian identity. It contains news and opinion from Australia and around the world.
IA supports quality investigative journalism, as well as citizen journalism and a diversity of voices.
Red flag words are "environment", "progressive" and "diversity".
Sorry, Leftards, “the science is settled,” low-dose ionizing radiation is NOT harmful to health.
I haven’t read the study and really don’t intend to. These studies generally all use the Linear No Threshold model to extrapolate risk from very high doses of radiation (with very poor dosimetry) to low levels of radiation exposure. I think the LNT concept is dubious at best. I do think studies of medical exposure where there is some basis of the dosimetry and its link to cancer are worthwhile.
Especially ones with an agenda.
“A landmark study on Hiroshima survivors comprehensively disproves nuclear lobby spin about ionising radiation being safe at low doses. Noel Wauchope reports.”
I’ve only gotten through this first sentence...but when I read something like this, I immediately DISCREDIT the source.
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.
Go live in a cave, luddite. Oh wait, that’s probably radioactive too. Guess you’re screwed.
