Radiation: Nothing to See Here

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 2011-03-26 20:32

Thank you for the work you are doing.

Could someone from the Department of Nuclear Engineering please respond to this article, which sites very current scientific research to conclude that every exposure to radiation increases risk?

http://www.truth-out.org/radiation-nothing-see-here68711

If after evaluation of all sources cited you think it is incorrect or misleading, please write a detailed response and include citations to support your views.

Thanks.

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I think unfortunately that

Submitted by scientist (not verified) on Sat, 2011-03-26 21:48.

I think unfortunately that risk is very definition dependent, and as noble the effort of the scientists from NUC may be, and their taking their time to respond on these pages, their subjective views of danger might still differ.

Basically the subjective aspect is this. If take a large amount of radiation and distribute it over small area, the risk of dying of cancer in people in this area will be huge. If you take the same amount and distribute it over a large area, the risk to the individual inhabitant may be tiny, but the total number of cancer related deaths will be similar as in the first case.

The latter is pretty much what is happening with Japan (and might be happening for years to come as they let their 4 reactors "air out") and the majority of the radiating emissions being transported to the US. The risk of dying of cancer as a direct result of that radiation for each individual person might be small, but overall there will still be a huge number of cancer deaths throughout the US that are the result of the radiation. It's just that it won't be noticed.

Similarly it has been estimated that there have 100,000 deaths in the Ukraine, Russia, and Europe, as a direct result of Chernobyl over the last 20 years. Because there have been tens of millions of cancer deaths overall, it is impossible to figure out which deaths are due to the radiation.

Now it might be that we will actually feel the result of Fukushima, if all their cores go into full meltdown. I've read that the total amount of fissile materials in Fukushima are over 20 times the amount in Chernobyl. So if all of that gets dumped over North America and the Pacific, we might notice it, i.e. instead of half a million cancer deaths per year we might see one million cancer deaths per year.

But since that's hopefully not going to happen you have to accept that some people will call deaths that can not be traced back to Fukushima insignificant. It's not scientists being mean, it's just scientists being practical.

>> Basically the subjective

Submitted by dchivers on Sat, 2011-03-26 22:11.

>> Basically the subjective aspect is this. If take a large amount of radiation and distribute it over small area, the risk of dying of cancer in people in this area will be huge. If you take the same amount and distribute it over a large area, the risk to the individual inhabitant may be tiny, but the total number of cancer related deaths will be similar as in the first case.

This linearization you suggest of this problem just has not been shown in any reputable study. There are many hypotheses on how the body responds to low levels of radiation and some show that we evolved repair mechanisms to these low levels (called radiation hormesis):
For example: Hormesis: from marginalization to mainstream: A case for hormesis as the default dose-response model in risk assessment

See Wikipedia for a decent description.

Although regulatory agencies maintain the linear no-threshold model (LNT), they do so because this is conservative and thus prudent. However, this has not been shown in hard data.

Thanks for the information.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 2011-03-26 22:26.

Thanks for the information. I will look into the papers you recommended (unfortunately the Calabrese article is not free to the general public but I should be able to get a copy). I had the understanding that the linear model was close to correct that there wasn't enough evidence for the repair mechanisms, but my knowledge is of course much more outdated than yours as I'm not a radiation specialist. Thanks much for doing this! Btw, I'm pretty sure this forum will be overrun with people in the weeks to come. Hopefully some other specialists will take the time to help you answer questions!