EPA Mulling Relaxed Radiation Protections For Nuclear Power 230
mdsolar sends this news from Forbes:
Both proponents and opponents of nuclear power expect the Environmental Protection Agency in coming months to relax its rules restricting radiation emissions from reactors and other nuclear facilities. EPA officials say they have no such intention, but they are willing to reconsider the method they use to limit public exposure—and the public's level of risk.
At issue is a 1977 rule that limits the total whole-body radiation dose to any member of the public from the normal operation of the uranium fuel cycle—fuel processing, reactors, storage, reprocessing or disposal—to 0.25 millisieverts per year. (This rule, known as 40 CFR part 190, is different from other EPA regulations that restrict radionuclides in drinking water and that limit public exposure during emergencies. Those are also due for revision.) "We have not made any decisions or determined any specifics on how to move forward with any of these issues. We do, however, believe the regulation uses outdated science, and we are thinking about how to bring the regulation more in line with current thinking," said Brian Littleton, a chemical engineer with EPA's Office of Radiation and Indoor Air."
At issue is a 1977 rule that limits the total whole-body radiation dose to any member of the public from the normal operation of the uranium fuel cycle—fuel processing, reactors, storage, reprocessing or disposal—to 0.25 millisieverts per year. (This rule, known as 40 CFR part 190, is different from other EPA regulations that restrict radionuclides in drinking water and that limit public exposure during emergencies. Those are also due for revision.) "We have not made any decisions or determined any specifics on how to move forward with any of these issues. We do, however, believe the regulation uses outdated science, and we are thinking about how to bring the regulation more in line with current thinking," said Brian Littleton, a chemical engineer with EPA's Office of Radiation and Indoor Air."
About time (Score:4, Funny)
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
As the case of China shows, the population is willing to accept an increase in pollution
It's amazing how much the population is willing to accept, provided that they have no say in the matter.
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It's amazing how much the population is willing to accept, provided that they have no say in the matter.
China is aiming to build enough nuclear capacity to beat the USA + France (#1 and #2 users of nuclear power) combined.
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China is aiming to build enough nuclear capacity to beat the USA + France (#1 and #2 users of nuclear power) combined.
Mr. President, we cannot allow a nuclear capacity gap!
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Nuclear isn't profitable without heavy subsidy. It seems only fair that a business which is entirely dependent on government hand-outs should have to play by some fairly strict safety rules.
The alternative is to just let them get on with it, in which case they will be filing for bankruptcy next Tuesday when they find they can't get any insurance, can't afford to run the plant and can't deal with all the lawsuits coming their way. I'm up for that, but only if every penny of subsidy is immediately transferred
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I'm all for equal subsidies on all forms of power, but I'd rather have diversity and not be totally reliant on shal
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Solar is already way cheaper than nuclear, has been for a few years now. Wind, geothermal and hydro even more so.
I agree we need diversity, but the massive drain nuclear is placing on the available funding distorts the market. It's so bad that in the UK we have to guarantee well above the normal selling price of electricity for the lifetime of the plant just to get some Chinese guys to build it for us, because no-one here wants to. They know that Scotland's wind and eventually other renewables making it a l
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Solar is already way cheaper than nuclear, has been for a few years now.
You'll have a hard time backing that claim up with real numbers. Solar doesn't come close when it comes to total cost of producing MWh on an annual basis. Many confuse price with cost, and on top of that forget that pricing is quite artificial due to production credits.
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> Solar doesn't come close when it comes to total cost of producing MWh on an annual basis
True, but certainly not as true as it was even a year ago:
http://www.epelectric.com/files/html/Macho_Springs/Macho_Springs_Notice_of_Proceeding_and_Hearing_12-00386-UT__2_.pdf
20 yr PPA at 5.79 cents/kWh (see para 2). Very competitive with wind and NG.
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Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)
In 1988 when the big nuclear three-holer went in near Phoenix, utility ratepayers were aghast at the idea of paying $2 billion apiece for the reactors. Today, we're all thankful now that the plant is the state's lowest cost provider of power.
Meanwhile, just across the line, the People's Republic of California just paid $2.2 billion for the Ivanpah solar thermal plant, which will generate 0.4 GW compared to our 6 GW, and at much higher operating cost. Ivanpah's cost was also grossly inflated by a slightly less maniacal version of the same useless lawsuits and regulatory delays that plague nuclear construction. The Luddite strategy for any type of energy construction is delay, delay,. delay. As bonding interest steadily ticks upward with time, you can eventually make any project cost too much.
The problem isn't subsidies. we need to fix our legal system to strip Luddies of the legal standing to interfere with vital infrastructure.
Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)
You're trying to be sarcastic, but your words are quite literally true. 0.25 mSv is [xkcd.com]:
If the 0.25 mSv limit were applied consistently to other aspects of our lives, we'd ban mammograms and CT scans, limit people to a dozen chest x-rays in a year, restrict pilots and stewardesses to just 30 hours of flight time per year, and severely curtail brick, stone, and concrete as building materials. If the proposal someone made below to reduce the limit to 0.025 mSv were carried out, we'd have to ban air travel and chest x-rays altogether.
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We would also have to live in shielded homes and never go outside due to background radiation (global average 24mSv/a)
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Nuclear plants don't emit an even level of radiation in all directions. They emit radioactive particles that then move around on the wind, in the soil and in the water. These particles can accumulate, so the level needs to be kept very low so that they can keep dispersing.
0.25 mSv is a measure of the dose received, not the radioactivity emitted. A given amount of radioactivity inside your body will result in a larger dose than the same amount outside, so the effects you describe should already have been allowed for.
Besides, if you believe in the LNT model (which current standards are based on) then it makes little difference whether you give 0.25 mSv/yr to ten people or 2.5 mSv/yr to one person (both being well below the level at which acute effects become significant). Bioa
Re:About time (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear plants don't emit an even level of radiation in all directions. They emit radioactive particles that then move around on the wind, in the soil and in the water.
Did you just make this shit up? Completely false. Radioactive particles are defined as contamination, and there is no contaminated material released from nuclear plants, except for a few cases of tritium leaks. But, tritium is quite benign and doesn't "travel around on the wind". Your statement displays the common misconceptions nuclear power, radiation, and the associated risks.
It is funny how people's definitions of "safe" change depending on the subject. You can get multiple acute radiation doses, each many times above present day safety limits, and your risk of any physically threatening results are still many times less than riding in a car for just a short trip. You have so many higher risk things you just accept. How about leaching chemicals from semiconductors or even your cookware? How about pesticides? How about the risks listed on every medication we take?
For those that don't buy into the FUD, here is a good overview of where we stand today with assessing risks of very high acute exposure medical tests.
http://www.scientificamerican.... [scientificamerican.com]
A key excerpt;
"All these estimates share a serious flaw. Among survivors exposed to 100 mSv of radiation or less—including the doses typical for CT scans—the numbers of cancer cases and deaths are so small that it becomes virtually impossible to be certain that they are significantly higher than the rate of cancer in the general population. To compensate, the National Research Council and others based their estimates primarily on data from survivors who were exposed to levels of radiation in the range of 100 mSv to 2 Sv. The fundamental assumption is that cancer risk and radiation dose have a similar relationship in high and low ranges—but that is not necessarily true."
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So, if that kind of thing truly scares you, you should be glad we've had those nuke plants running for so many years. You can "breathe easier"!
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Read the last paragraph of the section of the Wikipedia article you pointed us to to see why this is all insignificant.
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In what way does Fukushima have anything to do with normal operation?
Fossil fuel plants get to radiate us all they want (Score:5, Interesting)
While the EPA is thinking about raising limits on how much radioactive material nuclear power plants can release into the environment there are no limits on what coal plants can release. The radioactive material in coal is considered "naturally occurring" since it was dug out of the ground. However thorium is not naturally occurring radioactive material because it is... also dug out of the ground.
The federal regulations on radioactive materials and pollution have little relation to reason. This nonsense is holding up research in nuclear power. If our "carbon footprint" is an issue then it does not look to me like the government cares a whole lot. They'll toss money at coal powered "electric" cars but not allow a nuclear power plant to get built in four decades.
What happens to our carbon footprint with all those electric cars powered from coal and natural gas? Oh, we power our cars from wind and solar? That's laughable. No one has yet made a solar panel that can make a profit. Wind power might make a profit but it relies on natural gas turbines to make up for when the wind does not blow. Wind power actually increases carbon output because instead of using efficient boilers they have to use inefficient turbines.
Getting back to the radiation aspect the burning of natural gas releases radon into the air. Is there any regulations on that? No, because that is "naturally occurring", as if because it's "natural" radiation it does us no harm. What we need to do is hold up fossil fuels to the same standard as nuclear power. We'd switch over to nuclear power on that aspect alone.
All power sources release radiation into the environment. We're disturbing the earth as we dig for coal, uranium, silicon, or hydro electric basins. Even bio-fuels release radiation because we dig up the earth to plant the crops.
Nuclear power has the lowest carbon footprint of any power source we know of. Solar and wind cannot even compete because of all the concrete needed to hold up the structures. I'd suspect that if anyone did an honest assessment of the radiation released then it'd probably do better than the rest there as well.
Re:Fossil fuel plants get to radiate us all they w (Score:5, Insightful)
The further your coal gets from being pure carbon, the more dire some of the potential aerosolized-and-spread-hither-and-yon materials are; but the process is just conventional chemistry, you aren't going to emit anything you didn't dig up(except the added oxygen). A nuclear reactor; shockingly enough, is not subject to this limitation, and fairly aggressively shoves assorted fissionables down the decay chain.
Aside from the one (known) incident at Oklo, the crust isn't seeing much in the way of activity above background decay rates, and it follows that anything with a short half life is going to be extremely scarce. Something that's been dug up, concentrated, and carefully stewed in its own neutrons, by contrast, will have a very different collection of isotopes, some remarkably scarce anywhere else.
This doesn't mean that coal power is good for you, or restricted in what it contributes to our air supply; because that is very unlikely; but it's just silly to pretend that reactor products are isotopically similar to what you'll find in the ground; the 'power' in 'nuclear power' is only there because they aren't.
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Yes, all kinds of interesting things can come from nuclear fission. Some of them very valuable precisely because of their interesting radioactive properties.
What's happening here is that the EPA is considering lifting some of the restrictions on some of the radioactive gasses that are difficult to contain and have half lives that are too short or too long to radiate humans in any statistically significant manner. They are not considering changes to the radioactive solids, the stuff that can affect human h
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Point is that nothing exists in a vacuum, and there is no such thing as a free lunch. We can develop nuclear power and reap the rewards it offers, we can keep digging up coal, or we can revert to a nearly cave man existence of wind and solar power.
Are you an idiot or a liar? There's no third way.
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The key stat though is the radiation released. Coal plants release far more than nuclear plants. It really is silly to treat that emission with less care than emissions from a nuclear plant.
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While the EPA is thinking about raising limits on how much radioactive material nuclear power plants can release into the environment there are no limits on what coal plants can release.
"But Teacher! Billy is punching people, so why can't I punch people?!?"
If you have empirical data to present on the risk of the current levels of radiation exposure measured in QALYs [wikipedia.org], and an argument for adjusting the current regulated level, present it. But saying that we should ease our regulation on this form of harm, mer
How stupid (Score:2)
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Howsabout a few facts to support that assumption.
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I said "facts". Not you simply spouting words.
Something that actually supports what you're saying.
And how you jumped from dumping uranium and thorium into the atmosphere to "Carbon-14", I dunno.
Some studies on Tritium (Score:2)
These scientific studies are on the effects of tritium on living beings.
Some of them show that Triated water's effect is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter and it's characteristics makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells. The available evidence from studies conducted journal a list of effects. From those works;
Tritium can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through skin. Eating food containing 3H can be even more damaging than drinking 3H bound in water. Consequently, an estim
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Then you have the sites in the USA that have got new paper work to run for decades more.
The "unusual event" reports on early warning alarm shuts downs at sites makes the US news over the past few years.
Then you have the US storage site clean ups.
Best to change national standards, stop funding quality US epidemiology, stop the tiny gov grants for books and books chapters on cancer clusters.
Then over time the next generations of top medical staff will be very tame
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A plethora of effluents.
If you can't fix the problem, fiddle the figur
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Great. That's Tritium (Hydrogen 3). When combined with oxygen it produces so-called "heavy water" T2O. Which means your body treats it like water. And it can pretty much go anywhere good old H2O can in your system. So yeah, with that kind of intimate exposure in your system, it can do lots and lots of potential damage.
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That's correct, and has anything changed? Do brains now grow to normal size when exposed to H3?
Looks like it could be interesting when it is complete. It is studying the effect of radia
Radiation makes you stupid (Score:2)
US Western Moutain Cities with Low IQ (Score:2)
Segmentation issue (Score:2)
New reactors are supposed to be safer (Score:2)
Re:headed in the wrong direction (Score:4, Insightful)
it is the common view of medical and general science during the century-odd that we have discovered and been able to document radiation and its effects... that no amount is "generally recognized as safe" and standards need to be tightened.
What makes your "common view" any more valid than any other "common view"? Especially given that "generally recognized as safe" is a completely non-scientific quantity. In the end, you need evidence to back up such assertions not alleged consensus of vague groups of people.
so a comprehensive review based on science would move the decimal point to the left, at least to .025 mS/year, and perhaps .0025 mS.
Background levels are around 1 mS/year. So why advocate thresholds more than two orders of magnitude lower than what people normally get in a year? I just don't think science has much to do with your choice of thresholds.
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When does it, versus the notion of "protecting the children" ? If you think that the government and associated puppet regulators actually have anyone's good as their goal, think again.
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If you think that the government and associated puppet regulators actually have anyone's good as their goal, think again.
"IF". I doubt the poster I was replying to qualifies as a government or a puppet regulator.
Re:headed in the wrong direction (Score:4, Informative)
I have no opinion about the threshold, but there are two things to correct in your post:
it is the common view of medical and general science during the century-odd that we have discovered and been able to document radiation and its effects... that no amount is "generally recognized as safe" and standards need to be tightened.
What makes your "common view" any more valid than any other "common view"? Especially given that "generally recognized as safe" is a completely non-scientific quantity. In the end, you need evidence to back up such assertions not alleged consensus of vague groups of people.
He is absolutely right though. It is the common view of the scientific community that no amount of ionizing radiation is safe. This is also the basis of all radiation protection regulation everywhere (ALARA principle). The reason is simple: Ionizing radiation creates DNA damage with a small probability which then causes cancer with a small probability (which has then a certain probability of killing you). So even a single particle has a very small probability of causing cancer. There is a minority of people that believe that there are other effects (e.g. radiation at low doses activates the immune system) which dominate at low doses, but this is a minority view point and the data we have does not support this. From atomic bomb survivors see a linear correspondence between dose and risk down to about 50 mSv. For example, from this it was predictated that CT scans cause cancer with a very low probability and this has recently been confirmed.
so a comprehensive review based on science would move the decimal point to the left, at least to .025 mS/year, and perhaps .0025 mS.
Background levels are around 1 mS/year. So why advocate thresholds more than two orders of magnitude lower than what people normally get in a year? I just don't think science has much to do with your choice of thresholds.
This is a fallacy. The threshold should be set on the estimated benefits of a higher threshold vs the estimated harm from the additional radiation. The background radiation has nothing to with it.
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Sorry, but doing completely without ionizing radiation is a patent impossibility on this planet.
The view that "there is no safe level" is idiotic in light of this. Obviously there ARE safe levels. Or we'd have people in certain areas of the world keeling over from "massive" radiation exposure.
Granted, chances of funding to determine safe levels via human testing are completely non-existent (for good reasons), but there are areas all over the world sporting inordinately high levels of background radiation.
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You are equating "very low risk" with "safe". This is OK in personal life but not if you talking about a large number of affected people. If something causes an additional very low statisitical risk of death to a high enough number of people, then some of them will die because of this. And this needs to be considered. That there are other risks which are higher is irrelevant and no justification to simply ignore this.
And yes, nuclear proliferation is also a concern, although I do not really understand why y
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Additionally, if added radiation puts a hundredth of a percent of the population at greater risk, but stops or significantly reduces global warming?
GREAT! Even if it means I'm one of that "unlucky" percentage.
Sure, 800K people MAY die sooner. MAYBE.
But having this planet melt down will likely kill us ALL.
Possible 800K vs DEFINITE 8 Billion?
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Go ahead. Stick your head in the sand.
I'm sure that'll save you when the water comes rolling in.
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You are equating "very low risk" with "safe".
Something can be high risk and still be rationally considered safe.
This is OK in personal life but not if you talking about a large number of affected people.
Sure, it can. We do it all the time, such as in this discussion about radiation exposure.
If something causes an additional very low statisitical risk of death to a high enough number of people, then some of them will die because of this.
Unless, of course, that doesn't actually happen to be the case.
And this needs to be considered.
Not if the cost is well below background noise.
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If something causes an additional very low statisitical risk of death to a high enough number of people, then some of them will die because of this.
Unless, of course, that doesn't actually happen to be the case.
In other replies in this thread I pointed out the basic argument why most scientists believe that even very low doses of radiation cause a small risk of cancer and also gave a link to recent review which summarized the discussion and a study which shows an effect for patients which had CT scans. Giving you the right pointers to learn the facts is all I can do. Discussing this further is a waste of time.
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In other replies in this thread I pointed out the basic argument why most scientists believe that even very low doses of radiation cause a small risk of cancer and also gave a link to recent review which summarized the discussion and a study which shows an effect for patients which had CT scans. Giving you the right pointers to learn the facts is all I can do. Discussing this further is a waste of time.
Again, where's the evidence to support your claim? The study doesn't show what you think it shows. I get tired of people who confuse opinion and confirmation bias with evidence.
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The view that "there is no safe level" is idiotic in light of this. Obviously there ARE safe levels.
I'm telling you, flat out, that there's no such THING as "safe". PERIOD.
No comment.
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There's always going to be some minimal risk.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you (see "SELLING SOMETHING").
There has to be a minimum acceptable level of risk. But there's STILL a risk.
If you think this makes you "safe" you're nuts.
But you have to weigh it against the other risks.
You want to keep dumping tons of nuclear waste into the open environment? Want to kill off most of the population of this planet by disrupting the environment? Keep burning fossil fuels.
For the record, I don't think th
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I get the impression you're trying to score points here by playing semantic games. I wish you would not do so.
What Chas was saying was that there is no such concept as absolute safety, and thus there is always a concept of 'acceptable risk', or 'minimum risk'. This is usually synonymous with safety -- most people are willing to recognize that we do not live in an ideal world.
Back on topic, you seem to be fixated on the idea that any increase in risk is unacceptable. Please explain why.
No you are misrepresenting what I said. My original point is exactly that there is a risk even from very small doses. I was attacked merely for pointing this out.
I never said that the risk in unacceptable, but merely stated that the risk has to be weighted against its potential benefits.
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For example, from this it was predictated that CT scans cause cancer with a very low probability and this has recently been confirmed.
No, this is false. There are estimates of case probabilities based on the same old data that was used to determine safety limits, but although there are continued efforts to find a statistical increase in the real world, none has been observed despite a the huge number of CT scans that have been performed.
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Pearce et al., Radiation exposure from CT scans in childhood and subsequent risk of leukaemia and brain tumours: a retrospective cohort study, The Lancet 2012;380:499-505
First sentence of the discussion section: "In this retrospective cohort study, we show significant associations between the estimated radiation doses provided by CT scans to red bone marrow and brain and subsequent incidence of leukaemia and brain tumours."
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http://hps.org/documents/risk_... [hps.org]
"There is substantial and convincing scientific evidence for health risks following high dose exposures. However, below 50 - 100 mSv (which i
margin of error (Score:2)
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This is a fallacy. The threshold should be set on the estimated benefits of a higher threshold vs the estimated harm from the additional radiation. The background radiation has nothing to with it.
Bingo. Consider that the likely alternatives if you kill nuclear power are coal and natural gas. Realistically speaking you'd have to consider the harm from coal pollution for every kWh burned, which I'd easily say is going to be more. Natural Gas is far cleaner, but still has some pollution issues even without considering global warming. With this in mind, loosening nuclear power restrictions can actually save lives if you use it as an opportunity to prevent more coal or NG plants.
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Background levels are around 1 mS/year. So why advocate thresholds more than two orders of magnitude lower than what people normally get in a year? I just don't think science has much to do with your choice of thresholds.
This is a fallacy. The threshold should be set on the estimated benefits of a higher threshold vs the estimated harm from the additional radiation. The background radiation has nothing to with it.
It would be a fallacy if background levels were fixed and unavoidable. They're not. So long as people are allowed to and choose to travel by air, and live in areas with above-average background radiation, it is reasonable to argue that nuclear power should be held to a similar standard.
(Granted that medical imaging is different because you would normally be doing it for a good medical reason.)
Re:headed in the wrong direction (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is to say, forever. By definition precisely one half of the population live with background radiation above the median level. That can be stated without any knowledge whatsoever of what that median level is or what the distribution is. It is a truism. I'm not aware of the precise statisic for percentage living with above average background radiation, but for example we do know that the natural background radiation in Finland is about three times [wikipedia.org] that in the UK.
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It is the common view of the scientific community that no amount of ionizing radiation is safe.
That is incorrect. It is one of several common views. Argument from consensus is not scientific, especially when the consensus doesn't actually exist.
Here is a relative new review: http://dx.doi.org/10.1259/bjr/... [doi.org]
This is a fallacy. The threshold should be set on the estimated benefits of a higher threshold vs the estimated harm from the additional radiation. The background radiation has nothing to with it.
I agree. But a high natural background radiation indicates that the estimated harm is likely very overstated.
No, you didn't get it. I will try with a car analogy: There are about 30000 fatal accidents with motor cycles per year in the US. This does not mean that the harm (16 deaths total or so) from GM's ignition key issue was overstated. The harm was huge relative to the minor cost savings. The other deaths are simply irrelevant to this consideration.
Re:headed in the wrong direction (Score:4, Informative)
The other deaths are simply irrelevant to this consideration.
No, they indicate that society accepts a certain level of harm from automobiles. The "minor cost savings" is capped from above before it is just not worth doing.
The overall harm society accepts for mobility is unrelated to the question whether a couple of lifes are worth the cost of an improved ignitation key.
Re:headed in the wrong direction (Score:4, Informative)
I see your point, but I do not agree to the idea that society, by tolerating fatalities from traffic accidents, has accepted a universal trade-off between risk of death and cost. (There are many problems with this idea: how would you quantify the total value of mobility? Also society is not one single entity but consits of many different people with different interests. Cost and risks are also not equally distributed, e.g.. why should society trade a cost to GM with a risk of death to others?). But this is also irrelevant to the original question: The natural background radiation is nothing society has voluntarily accepted.
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Then your argument makes even less sense.
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Background levels are around 1 mS/year. So why advocate thresholds more than two orders of magnitude lower than what people normally get in a year?
There is no safe level for radiation, there are only levels less statistically likely to cause you a problem. Cancer is already the practical upper bound on our lifespans, not for all individuals but for many. They occur already, without increasing radiation exposure. Presumably, some percentage [wikipedia.org] of cancers occurring "naturally" are due to this background radiation. Some 20% of the radiation the median person will be exposed to in their lifetime is man-made. How many cancer cases are caused by that radiation
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it is the common view of medical and general science during the century-odd that we have discovered and been able to document radiation and its effects... that no amount is "generally recognized as safe" and standards need to be tightened.
In the end, you need evidence to back up such assertions not alleged consensus of vague groups of people.
Here you go. The story is discussing Tritium and here is some studies [slashdot.org] that you can go an examine yourself. I've copied the post for you to read.
These scientific studies are on the effects of tritium on living beings.
Some of them show that Triated water's effect is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter and it's characteristics makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells. The available evidence from studies conducted journal a list of effects. From those works;
Tritium can be inhaled,
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I live at Yellowstone National Park above 7,000 feet. That altitude plus enhanced radon exposure from the volcanism probably means I'm getting a bit more than 1 mS/year too.
That sounds like a great place to live.
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Yours was actually an early, post-WW II fear about radiation effects, with the modern perception trending the other way, as TFA indicates.
If radiation really were 'cumulative' with no threshold, the constant drizzle of background radiation we all live in would have terminated human existence long before this argument even started.
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Re:headed in the wrong direction (Score:5, Informative)
so a comprehensive review based on science would move the decimal point to the left, at least to .025 mS/year, and perhaps .0025 mS.
Quite the opposite actually. A comprehensive review based on your assumptions might, but based on science they would use real world data with real people. Even with the decades of medical data we have today, exposure from numerous CT Scans, regional radon exposures, and other sources, there is still no evidence in the real population that there are any negative effects from low dose radiation, and it is increasingly clear that the existing safety limits are ultra conservative. Those limits are based on decades old war era studies that observed effects of huge radiation doses which dropped off at lower rates to non-observable percentages. In the interest of being conservatively safe in a world where nuclear fear was at an all time high, they simply drew an almost linear correlation from the high does cases down to zero. But it is quite clear that once you get down into ranges even several times higher than safety limits, no actual increase in cancers or similar are found.
The problem is the old issue of proving the negative combined with a societal mus-perception of radiation exposure risk. There is little incentive in society to improve on the outdated basis we are using.
Re:headed in the wrong direction...riiight! (Score:4, Informative)
Never mind that, even were all nuclear power stations (and their accumulated waste waste), and the effects of every nuclear test in history to disappear from the planet TODAY, you'd STILL be living in an environment FILLED with radiation.
And how do you explain places like Guarapari Brazil, with its naturally radioactive beaches? Where the average exposure a year is 175 mS? Yet they don't have higher instances of cancer and radiation-related disease?
I'm sorry, your views of radiation, and its place in nature are uneducated, fear-driven and have no real basis in "science".
Re:headed in the wrong direction (Score:4, Insightful)
(Pretty pointless to have a 1mSv/year limit when you have had a population of millions living in twice that for a couple of millennium without any measurable problems.)
Indeed, this is even measurable. 1mSv/year is average, if variations caused significant differences in cancer rates you'd expect it to readily show in in areas like Colorado vs Mississippi.
Re:There is no "safe" amount of ionizing radiation (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sick and tired of the notion that it's OK to pollute, as long as you don't pollute "too much."
It's pretty straightforward actually. We do valuable things and sometimes they cause pollution, sometimes minor sometimes massive. Instead of being "sick and tired" about the non problem of minute pollution (especially given that there is actual large scale, heavy, life-threatening pollution out there), do a cost/benefits analysis instead.
Re:There is no "safe" amount of ionizing radiation (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, I think we can all agree that it's worth a few punkin' headed babies and/or a couple of deaths so the rest of us can have brighter colors and whiter whites.
I know you're trying to be sarcastic, but yes, that is right. A small or even non-existent harm for vast benefit to many people justifies the harm. Given that we know there are far more serious problems, not just environmental, but of the human condition, this is a strong indication that we should be bothering with those big problems rather than obsessing over the small or non-existent ones.
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Back up your opinion, at least (Score:2)
At least your opinion is backed up by facts and reasoning, unlike the AC's.
Fact: Humans today, on the whole, live better lives than they ever have before.
Brighter colors and whiter whites is only a small fraction of what makes our quality of life so much better. For example, modern medical care has prevented far more death, retardation, and disabilities than modern industry has created short of the sheer population increases it's enabled.
Re:There is no "safe" amount of ionizing radiation (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but YES.
This isn't about "brighter colors" and "whiter whites".
It's about providing for the world's energy needs WITHOUT massive greenhouse gas pollution, whose effects could kill off significant chunks of life on this planet.
Unless YOU want to be one of the unlucky 99% who is volunteering to go shiver and starve in a cave someplace.
Re:There is no "safe" amount of ionizing radiation (Score:5, Informative)
That's the tradeoff we make with vaccination programs. A small percentage of kids who are vaccinated get sick, and a few of them die every year. But we still vaccinate everyone because the benefits far outweigh those costs.
The flaw in your reasoning (it's a pretty common flawed line of reasoning, not just yours, so I'm not picking on you) is that you're trying to compare against a nonexistent zero state. Radiation can cause death. If there were no radiation, there would be no deaths. Therefore we must avoid radiation. Likewise, if we didn't vaccinate, those kids who died from vaccination wouldn't die. Therefore we shouldn't vaccinate.
To do a correct comparison, you can't compare to a zero state. You must take into account opportunity costs; you have to compare with alternative equivalent states. Without vaccination, far more people would die from the diseases we're vaccinating against. Without nuclear power, the world loses 13% of its electricity. The harm from that far exceeds the few deaths from even Fukushima-level accidents. Or if you replaced that nuclear generation with the next most-viable alternative (coal/gas), the emissions from those are far more harmful than the radiation hazards from nuclear. Even if you managed to replace them with wind and solar, the number of deaths installing and maintaining all those turbines and rooftop panels (roughly 11,000 turbines for a Fukushima-level plant, or 4.8 million homes with 40 m^2 of panels installed on each of their roofs) far exceeds the number that nuclear has killed.*
* Math for the wind/solar comparison:
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I'm sick and tired of the notion that it's OK to pollute, as long as you don't pollute "too much."
Agreed in principal, although I am sure even you pollute. Thankfully we have had nuclear plants that don't pollute the air or emit contaminants that wind up in anyone's blood. Too bad that damn sun is beaming us with radiation all the time, while almost nobody except those that enter reactor buildings gets any comparatively measurable exposure to radiation from the plant itself.
Re:There is no "safe" amount of ionizing radiation (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick and tired of the notion that it's OK to pollute, as long as you don't pollute "too much."
If it isn't "too much", it isn't pollution.
In a sense, breathing and pissing are polluting but as long as the ecosystem can handle it you are in a sustainable pattern.
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The nice thing about the radioactive releases from reactors is that they *DO* go away.
Unlike most of those chemicals, we do have a reasonable understanding of radiation's effects.
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The Fukushima exclusion zone will shrink with time as the site is cleaned up. Meanwhile, the German Greens have replaced nuclear with the world's largest strip mine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler_surface_mine), which is about to be supplemented by a pit twice its size (Tagebau Hambach). Who can't love the smell of smoldering lignite in the morning!
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This is an article by Amory Lovins, a well known axe-grinder from the darkest days of the Seventies, not by a nuclear expert. Forbes is run by Wall Street lunkheads who don't know the difference. When Germany turned off the first half of its nuclear plants in its panic after Fukushima, it had the fallback of being able to buy power from France while it shifts its own generation baseload to brown coal.
Japan has no adjacent nuclear country to get transitional power from (Korea is too far away and is too busy
Banquiao, baby. 230,000 killed by hydroelectric da (Score:2)
Fukishima killed 1,000 people, which is really sad. 230,000 were killed by the Banquiao hydroelectric dam disaster. Even if the worst nuclear accident in history happened EVERY YEAR, it would still be safer than hydroelectric.
Let's look at US safety standards. The one accident at a US nuclear utility which some find concerning occurred in 1979, at Three Mile Island. Fatalities linked to the Three Mile Island incident total zero, as shown by Hatch, Beyea, Nieves, and Susser (1990) and many other s
You forgot about Chernobyl (Score:2)
230,000 were killed by the Banquiao hydroelectric dam disaster.
Not quite. 20,000 were killed in the immediate flooding. The rest were killed in the epidemics, famines, etc that followed.
Even if the worst nuclear accident in history happened EVERY YEAR, it would still be safer than hydroelectric.
If you're going to claim indirect deaths as you did above, then I'm going to claim indirect deaths too.
http://www.who.int/ionizing_ra... [who.int]
Chernobyl didn't kill that many people directly/immediately, but it has impac
try 4,000 and 30 years (Score:2)
> but it has impacted the health of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.
Try 4,00. I gave you references for every single number in my post. Are you SO lazy you'd rather make shit up out of whole cloth rather than spend two seconds to look at the real numbers?
> It will continue to do so, for generations. Nuclear disasters never go away.
The half-life of cesium-137 is 30 years.
Radioactive substances can be classified by their halflife, which is the amount of time required for half o
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Fukishima killed 1,000 people, which is really sad.
Nobody was killed from the nuclear accident at Fukushima. Some were killed by the Tsunami, of course. Workers have been injured from construction type activities, but it is nowhere near 1,000.
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increased cancer risk. See references (Score:2)
1,000 is the estimate from increased cancer risk. If anything else in my post is unclear, you can check the reference I listed for each number. For example, that one says (von Hippel 2011), meaning if you Google von Hippel 2011 you can see exactly where I got that number.
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increased cancer risk (Score:3)
The 1,000 figure is based on increased cancer risk. See von Hippel 2011 for details.
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You fail statistics forever. Science too! (Score:3)
There's no such thing as "zero" radiation.
You'd DIE in a zero-radiation environment, as your body and its symbionts are accustomed to certain levels of naturally occurring radiation in the background.
Also, contrary to your assertion, there's no such thing as a linear progression of exposure levels to cancer.
Average background radiation is usually between 1-3 mS. But there are places like Guarapari, Brazil, where the background radiation is something in excess of 175 mS.
But you do NOT find 175x the instance
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Sorry but your body (and the things living in it) are used to certain levels of radiation. With ZERO radiation (which is pretty much impossible as the entire biosphere is at least marginally radioactive), you'd get a canary in the coal mine effect with your body's symbionts. Which would initially make you very ill, and you likely wouldn't recover as you wouldn't acquire new ones and your body wouldn't function well without them.
Don't take my word for it through. Talk to a real medical doctor about it.