Monbiot tells us of the catalogue of mistakes at Dounreay over the storage and disposal of nuclear waste. He asks:
What should we conclude from this story?
Well, given that despite pieces of fuel rod all over the seabed, the fact that no harm has been shown to have happened to anyone, perhaps that the dangers of radioactivity are a tad overblown?
There was a Horizon (I know – downhill trend and all that) a few weeks ago about how there was mounting evidence that radioactivity was actually not only harmless but even beneficial. That there’s no evidence that the radioactivty from Chernobyl for example has caused any increases in cancers that can’t be explained by other means and indeed that exposure boosts the body’s systems. It was a bit bizarre really and I’ve not heard the claims anywhere else but interesting if remotely true.
Tim adds: Low levels of radiation being beneficial: known as hormesis. Controversial but to my mind well established as fact.
It’s all a question of dose, old thing. Get a big enough dose, and radiation will kill you in seconds.
It’s the old political question of how do you decide about risks that no-one fully knows about or understands?
The key dose in question is probably how much of the Old Left was keen to help the USSR by hyping up radiation dangers in Britain and elsewhere. There may be more chance now of a sense of proportion, but it probably won’t be helped by the usual government lies, cover-ups and incompetence at Dounreay or elsewhere.
Jock, I think you could make a plausible case that Chernobyl didn’t do anybody much good.
In 1980 somebody in Taiwan managed to (accidentally) build an appartment block contaminated by radioactivity. 20 years later when they found out the tracked down the families & found that there had been a 97% REDUCTION in cancers.
Hormesisi has been known for a very long time & there has never been any evidence to support the alternative no lower threshold theory. it is merely that this & other evidence has been ignored.
As an example of how the media ignore the facts here is a letter on the subject which i have been unable to get published by any dead tree paper.
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2005/05/nuclear-radiation-is-good-for-you-indy.html
Perhaps the fact that the government now supports nuclear, & purely coincidentally the BBC are prepared to mention previously inconvenient facts will change things.
It’s not just radioactivity. The standard for toxicity, carcinogenicity, teratogenicity, whathaveyou is also usually calculated using a linear no-threshold fit (to animal data!). Toxicologists know this is bunk.
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