The Panic Over Fukushima
Japan’s nuclear accident was a great human tragedy, but its long-term health effects have been exaggerated—and the virtues of nuclear power remain.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444772404577589270444059332.html
I have trouble explaining this topic to friends and family, I post this hear to help me the next time the subject goes up. I know from extensive personal experience that human beings are terrified of radiation (radioation from a (very old) Robin Williams recording: “Wow, man, why can’t you say da damn word? I don’t know, Tommy… I’m on liquid-wrench, and I’m feeling really mellow.”), way past the point of rationality. This article does an excellent job of putting the ‘horror’ in perspective even before we consider the author’s comments about Denver’s higher radiation yet lower cancer rate. Any organism on Earth is bathed in a sea of radiation. If we were unable to cope, we never would have come into existence! Indeed, there are certain organisms that are so resistant to radiation damage that they basically stopped evolving hundreds of millions of years ago. If we (as organisms on Earth) _hadn’t_ developed sensitivity to radiation (and the mutations that result), we would be limited to some single-celled goo on the surface of the planet and certainly no humans would have evolved. Thus, the sensitivity to radiation we have has been a hard won artifact that allowed us to evolve in the first place!
It is very reasonable to assume (but is rarely thus assumed) that there is a lower bound of radiation below which there is every reason to expect that our natural resistance provides immunity. Therefore these rather idiotic extrapolations wwwaaayyy below any measured effect are totally bogus and are creating a huge cost to society as a consequence. Sort of like the whole asbestos folderol. Based on my reading the _only_ people who ever had any health consequences were people working in the mines _without_ respirators. Guess what? Coal miners working without respirators got ill and died also, just not from cancer. Of course, now that there is a massive industry that makes huge bucks off of ‘remediating’ asbestos there is no hope of any sanity returning there. Still, even if we go with the idiotic assumptions, the scary increase in cancers is never put into perspective. 194 additional cancer cases sounds hugely scary in isolation, that is, until one reports that the ‘normal’ rate of cancer in the same population would be 4,400 (with the whole population being 22,000). Keep in mind that this is 194 additional cases over the population’s _lifetime_, not annual, decade or generation. When presented with all the relevant information most reasonable people (yes, I acknowledge that there aren’t very many of them) realize that the threat is way over blow and maybe, just maybe, this information can be ignored.
Of course, I have no expectation that any explanation of the vanishingly small ‘danger’ associated with typical radiation will get any traction. Just like I am sure the article that triggered this post will get no traction. Much like our idiotic Presidential race, 99% of people have already made their minds up, facts be damned.
