Posted on 08/07/2004 4:12:04 PM PDT by MadIvan
Oil prices are at their highest for almost 20 years amid ever-increasing concerns that the world faces an energy drought. At the same time, as a signatory to the Kyoto Treaty, our Government is giving financial incentives to those who want to cover the country with giant wind turbines.
Yet, why, with the notable exception of James Lovelock, the inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, do the world's environmentalists reject nuclear power, which emits almost no greenhouse gases? Because they are frightened of accidents and of radiation emanating from nuclear power stations and nuclear waste. Their fears of radiation are not only widely shared, but they are nourished by official sources and have even become official policy.
The present policies for radiation safety are based on the "linear no-threshold assumption", which is endorsed by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. This is the assumption that even the smallest amount of radiation is harmful and may cause cancer and genetic disorders, and that the risk of harm increases proportionately with the dose.
On this basis, we should aim to avoid any exposure at all. Accordingly, the standards for radiation protection set by the commission have become more exacting and the maximum exposure dose declared to be safe is continually lowered.
The standard measurement of radiation is set in terms of milliSieverts (mSv) per year. In the 1920s, the maximum dose regarded as safe was 700 mSv. By 1941, it was reduced to 70. By the 1990s, it became 20 for occupationally exposed people and 1 mSv for the general population. Some people believe that the maximum exposure dose should be lower still.
Unfortunately, far from safeguarding our health, current safety standards will almost certainly increase the incidence of cancer. The evidence shows that the effect of radiation on human health is not a linear one, but is a J-shaped curve. Exposure starts by being beneficial at low doses and only becomes harmful at higher doses. This effect is known as hormesis.
A low dose of ionising radiation seems to stimulate DNA repair and the immune system, so providing a measure of protection against cancer. The benefit of low doses of radiation in treating cancer have been known for some time and are confirmed by a mass of evidence, particularly from Japan where it has been studied in detail as a result of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Many other examples of the hormesis effect are well known. A bit of sunshine does you good; too much may cause skin cancer. Small doses of aspirin have many beneficial effects; too much will kill you. It also appears to apply to arsenic, cadmium, dioxins and residues of synthetic pesticides, but that is another story.
Epidemiological evidence confirms the hormesis effect of radiation. The prediction that there would be terrible after-effects from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the survivors and their children was proved wrong. Japanese studies of the life expectancy of survivors who suffered relatively low amounts of radiation show that their life expectancy turned out to be higher than those of the control group and no unusual genetic defects have been found in their children.
Again, a follow-up study of Japanese fishermen who were contaminated with plutonium after the nuclear tests at Bikini found 25 years later that none of them had died from cancer.
After the Chernobyl disaster it was also predicted that the incidence of cancer among those affected by fallout would greatly increase and there would be huge genetic damage to future generations. It was about as bad an accident to a nuclear power station (a badly constructed one) as is likely to happen. Its psychological effect was huge and changed people's perception of the risk of nuclear energy all over the world.
Indeed, it is constantly cited as an example of the unparalleled threat to health from nuclear disasters. Tragically, it led to 31 deaths, mainly among rescue workers who were exposed to very high doses of radiation. Yet in the areas around Chernobyl the extra radiation to which people were exposed in the nine years following the accident was slight - an increase of about 0.8- 1.4 mSv.
In May 2001, in the Ukrainian town of Pripyat, which is now a ghost town after its complete evacuation, the average amount of persistent radiation found was 0.9 mSv a year, five times lower than the level in New York's Grand Central Station. In parts of southwest France the levels of natural radiation are as high as 870 mSv a year.
There is strong evidence that people exposed to low doses of radiation - amounts 100 times more than the recommended range - actually benefit. The incidence of thyroid cancers among children under 15 exposed to fallout from Chernobyl was far lower than the normal incidence of thyroid cancer among Finnish children.
The death rate from leukemia of nuclear industry workers in Canada is 68 per cent lower than average. Workers in nuclear shipyards and other nuclear establishments in the US and many other countries have substantially lower death rates from all cancers and are much less likely to die from leukemia.
This might be explained by the fact that their health is regularly checked and that only healthy workers are employed. But it corresponds with a mass of other evidence that people who live in areas of unusually high natural radiation, in Japan, China, India and the US, are less likely to die from cancer than a control group.
These facts destroy what are perhaps the strongest objections to nuclear power. They show that the regulations seeking to enforce present, let alone proposed, minimum standards of safety not only cost billions of pounds and have undermined the prospects of our development of nuclear power, but do more harm than good.
It is time that we looked more closely at the phenomenon of hormesis and at the successful Japanese experience of using low-dose radiation to treat cancer. When the evidence is so clear, we should not allow it to be brushed aside by conventional wisdom and ignorance.
As mvpel stated, I am currently exposed to much higher levels of radiation here in Arizona than I was on the nuclear submarine. Does this answer your question?
It's worse than that. If the average nuke emitted as much radiation as the average coal-fired power plant, it would have to be shut down. There's just no established radiation standard foor coal plants.
Bingo! The coal fired electric plants in merry old England spew at least 800 pounds of uranium into the atmosphere every day, and no one says boo. Uranium is distributed all through the crust, a little of it nearly everywhere. If you work in a granite faced building, you are soaking up measurably more radiation than the man in the steel building.
Chernobyl be damned, it was nothing more than a jumped up version of the graphite pile Enrico Fermi set up under the stands of a Chicago stadium, with nothing resembling a real containment building, and even then it took a third shift tech with no adult supervision to ramp it up to test level to make it blow.
Three Mile Island, no one outside the perimeter fence was exposed to as much additional radiation than they would have received by flying to Denver. I helped build a plant in NC, Shearon Harris, and these babies are tough. NRC man told me the design was to withstand an impact from a 747, that being worst case scenario when it was only dreamed of as an accident, and having been there, I don't doubt it would. We have new designs that don't require constant coolant flow to keep from meltdown, so forget even TMI.
Want a hydrogen economy for transportation, clean up big city air? Takes electricity to crack water into hydrogen and oxy. If we burn hydrocarbons to make the juice to crack out the hydrogen, where the hell is our net gain? Same applies to electric cars, where does the electric come from, and by the way, what do we do with a ton or so of highly toxic battery material when it needs replacing every few years?
Storage, WHY? If the spent fuel is hot enough to be hazardous, and it is, it is a better source than any ore on Earth, recycle it. Too expensive, someone said? The French, not having been blessed with the peanut farmer, have done it for years. Hurts my soul to admit the French are brighter than we are on anything, but they got this right. Once again, we are being held back by an executive order issued to get a treaty with a country that NO LONGER EXISTS!
I pray my grandchildren will not have to bow towards Mecca five times a day to keep from freezing, but there are days I despair of just that.
If the aggregate in your concrete is principally granite, you'll be getting a higher dose. I should finally get around to writing a Linux driver for my geiger counter and get it plugged in to graphing software...
Uranium prices have fallen because of reduced demand and a political decision to buy enriched uranium from recycled Russian warheads. When the stockpiles of recycled warhead uranium dwindle, the price will likely bump up. Likewise, if the power industry revives in some fashion, the economics will change.
Reprocessing is not inexpensive. Capital investment in reprocessing plants can be significant. If the demand for the product you're producing is down, that will tend to discourage development. But NOTHING is going to happen here on that front until the EO that Carter put in is rescinded.
Actually, the very best option is a closed fuel cycle like the IFR that was being developed at Idaho. Raw materials go in the front door of the plant, electricity comes out on the lines, reprocessing occurs inside, and every few years an aspirin-sized tablet of non-reprocessable waste comes out the back end. Clinton canceled that one (of course).
Do you know offhand if they're doing Pu MOX in CANDU or other compatible reactors? I remember when it was proposed, but didn't catch news of whether they'd gone ahead with it.
With all the vilification of Bush's Texas oil connections, this makes you wonder who's actually in the pocket of the fossil energy industries, doesn't it?
You bet we will!!! It'll use up too much of the freakin' sunlight!!!!< /smirk>
I'm sure they will come up with something more irrational than that.
But since Geiger counters have only been around about 50 years, there probably hasn't been time to get a Linux driver written for them yet.
The last I heard of the program, which at the time was called the Parallex Project, was that test fuel samples were to be irradiated in the Chalk River test reactor starting near the end of 2000. I don't know if that ever started. Even if it did, there will be a period of time to accumulate the desired flounce, then a fairly extensive program of PIE for the irradiated specimens. The draft EIS addressing the use of MOX in CANDU systems was, as I recall, reasonably positive.
I notice "they're" at it again:
Today's headlines, everyone I've seen, has been like "4 Killed in accident at Japanese NUKE plant".
Only when getting down aways, does it state that it was a STEAM leak that scalded them to death, and NO radiation was involved.
An honest headline (and how many papers would THAT sell?) would be "4 Killed by Steam Leak at Power Plant". that, however, does not serve the anti-nuke agenda.
In reality, the burning of coal releases more radiation than nuclear power stations. The fact is that coal form in the ground, and in its process of formation, absorbs some radioactive elements.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Actually, I do not think we would be here without the natural background radiation. IMHO, it helped "push" evolution.
Well, along with some atmospheric and solar events blowing away various protective layers I would say that it clearly helped push mutation and natural selection.
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