Setting the Record Straight on Radiation

Popular fears of nuclear power generation are largely groundless

In a class on nuclear physics, I remember one experiment where we had some kind of home-made Geiger counter, aimed at the sky. It was registering incoming radiation from cosmic rays. We tracked the cumulative ticks registered over 24 hours. I was quite surprised to learn that we are all being bombarded with these cosmic rays all the time.

schematic of nuclear power generation

“Radiation is natural and ubiquitous. It is everywhere. It is pointless to talk about something being radioactive. You are radioactive. Your dog is radioactive. The only question is how radioactive…Going over the examples where people have been exposed to far higher than background dose rates. We see no increase in cancer incidence, until we get into the range of 20 mGy/day (milligray/day) or higher, even when that daily dose is repeated for thousands of days. We don't say there is absolutely no harm. Rather we say, if there is any harm, it is so small we can't reliably detect it. A risk that you cannot detect is hardly a risk at all…Even in a release as large as Fukushima, no member of the public was exposed to 20 mGy/d for even one day…” a (above quote is from J. Devanney)

Even though the 3 mile island nuclear meltdown accident in 1979 was the “worst nuclear accident in our history”, Barry Butterfield commented that Alex Epstein [wrote] that Three Mile Island was “history’s only major disaster with a toll of zero dead, zero injured, and zero diseased.”

Note: Another measure of radiation dosage is called a microsievert (µSv), which is 1/1000th of a mGy, so 20 mGy/day would be 20,000 µSv. Here is an interesting chart that shows living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant for a whole year is about the same as eating a banana - LOL:

“The whole-body exposure threshold for…"radiation sickness" is 500 mGy… the same dose fractionated over a series of exposures or over a longer time may produce less injury, as the body has a chance to repair damage between exposures.” (emphasis in last sentence is mine - our body’s ability to repair damaged cells is amazing)

zionlights lets us know that she had the usual misconceptions, fearing nuclear radiation, until she decided to dig deep to get the actual facts. She now explains that nuclear waste is not to be feared: “What I’d been told about leaking waste was not to do with nuclear energy. The leaky vats I was afraid of were from weapons-related reactors, such as the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State, where the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Energy produced plutonium for use in the atomic weapon program. Some of these contaminants leaked into the land and water, including into the Columbia River. I learned that I had been confusing waste from nuclear energy with waste from nuclear weapons. How much waste is there? I was also confused about how much nuclear waste there is in the world. It turns out that there isn’t very much of it. All the high-level nuclear waste produced in the world would fit in a single football field to a height of approximately ten yards.  The amount of high-level waste produced during nuclear energy production is also small: a typical large reactor produces about 25-30 tonnes of used fuel per year. Worldwide, 97% of the waste produced by the nuclear power industry is classified as low- or medium-level waste. In France, where fuel is reprocessed, just 0.2% of all radioactive waste by volume is classified as high-level waste.  Cooling pools When a fuel assembly is removed from a reactor because it can no longer provide useful power it is extremely hot, both thermally and radioactively. It is immediately transferred to a cooling pool where it is stored alongside other used fuel for two to ten years as it cools down and becomes less radioactive. After this, it can be moved to a dry storage cask.”

dry storage of nuclear waste

continuing, quoting zionlights… “What about the radiation? After I realised how wrong I’d been about what nuclear waste is, I was determined to learn how it is managed. This required a lot more work as I had to understand how waste is managed by other industries and also from fossil fuels and renewable production, to give a fair comparison. We live in an industrialised civilization where waste is a by-product of our everyday lifestyles. Many of these wastes are hazardous, including lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, chlorine, hydrofluoric acid, cyanide, asbestos, dioxins, many other carcinogens, clinical wastes and various pathogens. They are, for the most part, managed carefully. But arguably, of all of them, nuclear waste is managed the most carefully.  I had this misconception about nuclear waste and radioactivity, where I believed that it would stay highly radioactive for many hundreds of thousands of years. I learned that unlike other industrial toxic wastes, the principal hazard associated with high-level waste - radioactivity - diminishes significantly with time. (emphasis mine) This is known as radioactive decay. The amount of time it takes for the radioactivity of radioactive material to decrease to half its original level is called the radioactive half-life. The decay of heat and radioactivity over time means that after only forty years, the radioactivity of used fuel has decreased to about one-thousandth of the level at the point when it was unloaded. (again, emphasis mine) Less than 1% is radioactive for 10,000 years.  This portion can be easily isolated and shielded to protect humans and wildlife. conclusion Fear of nuclear power, radiation, and disposal of nuclear waste is unjustified. It’s no more dangerous than hundreds of other types of risks we face every day, and it can be managed successfully and safely. Nuclear power, with zero emissions, should satisfy the most avid climate activist’s desire for reducing CO2 emissions at the same time as providing an extremely reliable, long lasting, 24/7/365 source of badly needed power that does not depend on the ups and downs in the weather.” kudos to zionlights for her great research that gets out the facts, and to Jack DeVanney for his expertise on radiation dosimetry.