From the WSJ;
Denver has particularly high natural radioactivity. It comes primarily from radioactive radon gas, emitted from tiny concentrations of uranium found in local granite. If you live there, you get, on average, an extra dose of .3 rem of radiation per year (on top of the .62 rem that the average American absorbs annually from various sources). A rem is the unit of measure used to gauge radiation damage to human tissue.
The International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends evacuation of a locality whenever the excess radiation dose exceeds .1 rem per year. But that's one-third of what I call the "Denver dose." Applied strictly, the ICRP standard would seem to require the immediate evacuation of Denver.
"....the bottom line is that Fukushima passed the test"
LOL.
Time to go eat a radioactive ice cream, apparently a little radioactivity is better for you than none at all now.
Actually, the reactor design worked betterthan expected. It was the placement of the backup generators that was the problem. Down the road at the sister plant, people were given refuge as those plants were the only thing left standing.
If the Daiichi reactors had their backup diesel generators up on the hill, no one would have ever heard of Fukushima.
And yes, alittle radioactivity is actually good for you. It's called hormesis, whereby the body sustains very minute damage that toughens it up to be better responive to higher doses. It's the same principle behind vaccinations.
The guy at the scrap yard told me some of the pipe coming in was radioactive and just not safe to handle. "There's so much more cancer than there used to be." No mention of his smoking.
Radiophobia is something that has always mystified me. Even before hormesis was discovered, I recall doing a calculation in high school looking at average background radiation on the earth at periods of millions to billions of years ago when there were a lot more radioactive elements that still hadn't decayed kicking around. The radiation level a billion years ago was sufficiently high that the safety Nazi's would have declared the whole planet uninhabitable.
Yet life flourished back then and obviously life on earth grew up in an environment where DNA repair mechanisms were required to deal with the background radiation.
Right now I upset many of my radiophobic patients when I tell them they're getting insufficient radiation exposure. We know that 0.3 Rem/year lowers the incidence of cancer in Denver. Higher exposures drop cancer rates even further as was demonstrated by the Taiwan contaminated steel buildings which had on the order of 1 Rem/year exposure.
It may be that unless there's radiation around to stimulate the DNA repair mechanisms, they aren't brought into play and other mechanisms of DNA damage aren't repaired. For an individual with no DNA repair enzymes, the linear increase in cancer with minimal radiation exposures may hold, bug the one source of radiation people can't get away from is K40 or C14.
Radiophobia is a scientific travesty almost as great as the CAGW boogeyman. The only people benefiting from radiophobia are the owners of private MRI clinics where radiophobes will readily fork over $2 K for an MRI scan that provides identical information as a CT scan at 1/10 the price.
Loki, Muller's numbers are still wrong and greatly exaggerated. They are based on collective dose, an approach the ICRP (International Commission on Radiation Protection) has now ruled illegitimate. It is NEVER appropriate to predict deaths from a given estimated radiation dose. LNT (Linear No Threshold) is a predictor of risk only, not consequences.
He and Garwin are both outrageous alarmists by relying on obsolete methodology long since known to be wrong. Garwin's prediction of a future 1500 deaths from Fukushima is utter garbage.
He demonstrates further how out of his depth he is by referring to evacuations avoiding casualties. Most of the radiation dose comes from Iodine 131. By the time the evacuation order is given, most of the I131 dose has already been incurred, making the evacuation useless.
What Muller seems unaware of is that the evacuation alone directly resulted in the death of more than 50. This is the true tragedy. All of these people would still be alive if the government hadn't panicked and expanded the evacuation zome without any need to do so.
Hey, I have no problem with them evacuating Denver. Just relocate them all to a place where others of their political ilk currently reside. I nominate the Big Crapple, DC, Chicago, or San Francisco! They would fit right in at ANY of those locations...
Heck, you could even add Atlanta or New Orleans to that list...
Loki, I know of another group that benefits from radiophobia. California and some other jurisdications have a new law requiring providers to record all exposures by patient and track cummulative dosage in a database. There is a whole new industry springing up - software and hardware - to make this possible. It's adding much to the cost of healthcare, but of course nothing to the patient.
Logic at its finest.
We've raised an entire generation of terrified little people without the education to understand the details behind things in the news. To replace logic, they seem to have instead acquired a list of Things That Are Bad. Radiation is high on the list.
Look at the blogs shortly after the Japan incident - frantic posts that we here in N America were being flooded with lethal doses of radiation. Posters clearly couldn't differentiate the difference between a sievert and a sidewinder, but that didn't stop them from trying to panic everyone else.
Good article and thanks for posting it.
We've been bathed in anti-nuke propaganda since the Bikini Atol test. Unreasoning fear and panic in the general populace was the aim, and that's what they created. Propaganda works.
Fifth column indeed.
And the Fifth Column is led by the Fourth Estate...
Yeah Castle Bravo was a turning point.
A devise expected to have a yield of 5 Megatons....went to about 15....increasing the fallout footprint exponentially...irridating some Japanese fishermen.
Apparently the lithium 6 fuel was unrefined and was high in Lithium 7 (assumed inert)....the reaction knocked a neutron off the Lithium 7...transforming it to Lithium 6 and here we all are.
This little detail made miniturization an easier feat.
Then the Soviets constructed a devise the size of a bus (not really a deployable weapon) and dropped it on an arctic island.
Then that high altitude test...part of a series including underwater shots....put the lights out in Hawaii (1500 miles distant)...reinforced the belief that the scientists didn't really know what they were playing with.
The 5th column (a real thing) reinforced by the 4th estate successfully capitalized on a basic principle:
What people don't understand they fear....
What people fear they hate.
You postulate as if radon is good for you?? No extended exposure to radiation is conducive to long term survival. In America, radon is the number 2 cause of lung cancer and kills 22k people yearly. You can't minimalize the ill effects of extended exposure and ingestion of low levels of radiation. Because the source is "natural" is irrelevant.
As for our risks associated with the Japan reactor melt down - some reports on samples taken near west coast US cities show 15 times the radiation that there was before the accident - this is from SOIL testing. The deadly isotope migration was by both wind and ocean currents and weather/rainfall spread the isotope path inland as far as the great lakes.
One loose radioactive isotope is one too many where human food sources is concerned and what happened in Japan is of catastrophic proportions which will affect their food chain for decades. It will affect our food chain to a lesser extent for as long. Remember eating isotope toxified food is a cumulative long term expose to small doses of radiation. It ain't good for ya Tex! Western US dairy products showed dangerous unacceptable levels of radioactivity weeks after Fukushima - the FDA was Johnny-on-the-spot helping big dairy out by raising the acceptable limits of food-borne radiation.
I no longer buy Japan-sourced seaweed or sea food or pacific sea food - that's just the start. I keep my eye on the rem levels recorded by non-government authorities. Radiation toxicity is fact, you know the risks, it's like smoking, it’s a health timebomb, you do what you want but if you ignore reasoned health warnings, don't whine when you get sick.
Occam, most of your post is rubbish. The hormesis effect is well established in science.
"Western US dairy products showed dangerous unacceptable levels of radioactivity weeks after Fukushima"
What's a dangerous level? Do you have a clue, or do you get all your information from radiophobic greenies?
"...some reports on samples taken near west coast US cities show 15 times the radiation that there was before the accident..."
Fifteen times next to nothing is still next to nothing.
"Remember eating isotope toxified food is a cumulative long term expose to small doses of radiation."
You eat radioisotopes every day. Ever hear of Carbon 14? Potassium 40? I assume this means that you've given up eating bananas? No, Occam, radioisotopes don't bio-accumulate. You've been reading too much Greenpeace propaganda again.
"I keep my eye on the rem levels recorded by non-government authorities."
As I said, you're getting your cues from the green slime. Welcome to paranoia.
Ooooohhh - the rays! The rays'll getcha! Be afraid! Be very, very afraid, little green animal!
So afraid that you'll curl up and die of fright. And stop bothering the rest of us.
Yeah I like REM too.
Man in the Moon especially.
Bottom line is, there is no such thing as a risk-free lifestyle or risk-free technology. Lying in bed carries risks as anyone working on an orthopedic ward will be quick to point out.
The key in balancing the risks versus benefits of any option lies in being able to rationally assign the risk and cost versus the expected benefit in light of other available options. Humans are notoriously bad at estimating these things and raw emotion seems to be the currency of the majority of the current debate.
One is often asked if one would like to live next to a nuclear power plant. My answer would be, "No" since I would not choose to live next to any industrial facility. Thus zoning by-laws. But if forced to choose between living next to a coal-fired plant, below a hydro electric dam, next to a wind turbine or next to a modern nuclear power plant, I would choose living next to the nuclear plant. It would be the cleanest, quietest and safest of the options. Life's about choices. Has anyone heard anything new lately about Thorium?
cgh is right. Occam's post was b.s. He says, "No extended exposure to radiation is conducive to long term survival." Well, we've been exposed to radon and other radioactive sources every day, not to mention solar and cosmic radiation. We can't get away from it, and our bodies have evolved to be able to withstand and thrive in such an environment.
If Occam truly wanted to protect himself from every "loose isotope" and "extended exposure to radiation", he'd stop eating bananas, remove all the smoke detectors in his home, avoid visiting rural areas (the cultivation of farmland dregs up masses of radon, not to mention the presence of radioactive fertilizers), throw out his ceramic dishware, and never fly again.
cgh is right. Occam's post was b.s. He says, "No extended exposure to radiation is conducive to long term survival." Well, we've been exposed to radon and other radioactive sources every day, not to mention solar and cosmic radiation. We can't get away from it, and our bodies have evolved to be able to withstand and thrive in such an environment.
If Occam truly wanted to protect himself from every "loose isotope" and "extended exposure to radiation", he'd stop eating bananas, remove all the smoke detectors in his home, avoid visiting rural areas (the cultivation of farmland dregs up masses of radon, not to mention the presence of radioactive fertilizers), throw out his ceramic dishware, and never fly again.
Healthy Lifestyle property is cheap around Chernobyl Ukraine at the moment; some of yall better rush to buy before it all sells out to the rich and famous.
Radiation is the green meanies monster under the bed that they use to scare the uninformed. There has been background radiation since the earth cooled and there will always be cosmic radiation. Need an Xray? That will be 40 millirems. Live in a brick or stone house? More millirems. Fly a lot or live at a high altitude? More millirems from the sun and stars.
The fact is that the Fukushima plants survived one of the three most intense earthquakes ever recorded and a 50 foot tidal wave hours later. It was the fact that the back up generators were drowned by the tsunami, which prevented the emergency cooling system from working which caused all the problems. If the backup generators had been placed uphill no-one would know about Fukushima, it would have been a non-story.
Regarding REM, I like Shiny Happy People. Just for giggles go to youtube and enter "REM Furry Happy Monsters". Enjoy.
I wonder if the poster understands the difference between background radiation and radioactive contamination.
Old Chinese proverb is: The one thing that will kill you long before your time is worrying about what will kill you in the first place. Anything in moderation, and that inludes a little radiation. Why stress when stress is one of the primary killers ?
kevinw, there is no difference between background radiation and that created by nuclear processes. Ionizing radiation is all the same regardless of source.
DrD, so true. There is an enormous difference between actual statistical risk and perceived risk. Unfortumately all too often, governments regulate on perceived risk because panicked voters demand it.
RobHuck, very good point. I'd forgotten about the radon emissions from tillage. Fertilizers? Yup, lots of K-40.
WalterF >
“The guy at the scrap yard told me some of the pipe coming in was radioactive and just not safe to handle”
It’s called (NORM) Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material, pipe and down-hole tools can pick up NORM if they are in most wells for long periods of time.
Whether it’s safe to handle depends on the quality of the oilfield company handling it. The majors take it seriously test it continuously and have safe standards for handeling it. Mom & Pop operations look the other way. Save goes for the individual service companies that send personal to handle it.
If the scrap yard was worth it's salt, it would have some means of testing some of the junk that get dropped in it's yard - IMO.
Another reason proffesional oilfield personnel respect and protect against a variety of hazardous conditions chemical, radioactive, mechanized, natural or manmade. All who directly handle radioactive sources such as wireline logging equipment, RA tags, etcetera wear badges to identify their exposure times.
You also get exposed to higher levels of radiation when flying. I normally fly around +/- 250,000 miles per year, for the last 20 years, and do receive all the “extra” radiation I care to have. But nor do I smoke, and nor do I care what other people do to themselves; they could drink radiation all day long for all I care. Natural Selection baby.
I'm sure that Occam realizes that he, and the rest of us, emit detectable levels of radiation due to the foods we ingest.
Therefore, it behooves him to put as much space as possible between himself and other anthropogenic radiation sources. Sleeping with someone would be borderline suicidal!
The upside here is that he won't reproduce.
Fun with statistics - especially with radio-phobes who believe there is no such thing as a "safe" dose of radiation:
Sleeping next to someone for 8 hours: 2 mrems
Exposure comes from the naturally radioactive potassium in the other person's body
Coal plant, living within 50 miles: .03 mrem
There is much thorium and uranium in coal. Living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant adds .009 mrem of exposure. Both figures are considered extremely low levels.
Living in a masonry home: 7 mrems
Stone, brick and adobe have natural radioisotopes in them.
Living on the Earth: 200 mrems
We are living in a sea of radon. It is made from the natural decay of uranium and thorium in the soil, left over from the creation of the solar system. Radon is a rare gas that diffuses out of soil and into the air. It contributes more than half of our background exposure.
Smoking: up to 16,000 mrems
The tobacco leaf acts like the absorbing surface of charcoal in a radon test kit. It collects long-lived isotopes of airborne radon, like lead-210 and polonium. Small portions of the lungs can get relatively whopping doses, compared to background levels.
Porcelain teeth or crowns: tenths of a rem
Uranium is often added to these dental products to increase whiteness and florescence.
Air Travel: 1 mrem per 1000 miles
30,000 feet above the ground you're closer to the ionizing radiation (high-energy gammas well as particles) from the sun.
Grand Central Station, NYC: 120 mrem for employees
Its granite walls have a high uranium content.
Brazil Nuts:
This is the world's most radioactive food due to high radium concentrations 1000-times that of average foods.
The US Capitol Building in Washington DC:
This building is so radioactive, due to the high uranium content in its granite walls, it could never be licensed as a nuclear power reactor site.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.html
We should mention cosmic rays I suppose. Worse at high altitudes than low, but to avoid them completely it is necessary to live in a deep cave (4 or 5 km) in old rock. Muons are very penetrating.
I stand by what I say, you have no factual refuting my evidence but hear-say and msde up gibberish. Research my poits and then call them BS if they are, but reactionary nay saying is what has given the conservative movement a bad ( rightly earned) rep.
Secondly if you want an "opinion" echo chamber go post on the CBC.
"I stand by what I say, you have no factual refuting my evidence but hear-say and msde up gibberish."
This is too funny. We gave you a massive string of scientific facts, all readily and easily verifiable. And you come back with this. Your points are ALL BS, Occam. You just don't want to admit that on the subject of radiation you've been led around by your nose-ring by the green slime.