I was walking along the Internet minding my own business - well, sort of - when I came across some information I wanted to share. The video itself is a segment of a show called "Myth Lies and Downright Stupidity with John Stossel (he of the Jim Croce throwback 70s stache). The premise is that we’ve been told a pack of lies (and myths and stupidisms too I’ll wager) about radiation. It begins with monsters who use radiation to kill, and then shifts to scenes from the bombing of Japan. They cite the radiation deaths, but hten…they show that fearful writing in the New York Times from the forties turned out to be wrong. The film cuts to modern Japan, with healthy people walking down a crowded Tokyo sidewak. Hey! Guess they were wrong about radiation, huh? It didn’t have any effects after the first horrific exposure.
A toxicology expert, Dr Calabrese, argues that in fact those Japanese victims who got a smaller dose of radiation are actually living longer. It turns out that radiation is good for you in certain doses can slow aging and extend the life span of mice and possibly humans. They show people bathing in irradiated water in Euroep and Westerners go to an old uranium mine to breathe in the low dose goodness of radiation.
It turns out that the hysteria about radiation is hysterical. And The China Syndrome was Ground Zero on the hysteria. When Three Mile Island had its partial meltdown, people reacted with unreasonable fears and hysteria due to the Hollywood images of radiation; and that, says Calabrese, is why Americans are against nuclear power.
This story – that the real fear is the unwarranted hysterical fear of radiation, of nuclear power, of those in power who make and oversee nuclear policy – is all over the internet right now. It isn’t wrong, in one way: people are afraid and they are not educated about radiation dosages, amounts, etc. It’s like my friend Will Forest argues: if people can’t imagine the different between a thousand and a mmillion, a million and a billion, it is hard to imagine them making clear well founded decisions when it comes to the measurement of things.
The argument that no harm came from Three Mile Island, though. That’s a stretch. And what we know in retrospect was that the core was dangerously close to melting down all the way. It is easy in hindsight to say the hydrogen bubble could never have exploded because there was no oxygen, or that the meltdown was controlled and controllable. And while it is true that no significant radiation effects have been documented, the release of hydrogen and steam directly into the atmosphere, the release of radioactive water, and the disputed status of whether or not a hydrogen explosion actually occurred, all ought to raise some read flags about TMI being somehow “not” an accident, or not being serious.
Citation: Myth: Nuclear Energy is Dangerous
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2ZTt8O__zk&feature=related
The descriptor reads:
104 Nuclear Reactors operate safely in the United States without a single loss of life. Contrary to belief, only 56 people have died from the Chernobyl accident and no one from Three Mile Island.
Here are other links embedded in the above Youtube vid:
Going Nuclear - A Green Makes the Case (Patrick Moore, Ph.D. - Greenpeace Co-Founder) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR20060414012... Love Uranium (Peter Huber, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, MIT) http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1127/122.html Former 'No Nukes' Protester: Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Power (Wired) http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/12/nuclear_qa?currentPage=1 Let's Have Some Love for Nuclear Power (The Wall Street Journal) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121659839296769061.html Chernobyl Incident Had Fewer Long-Term Health Impacts Than Expected (Natural Environment Research Council) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070407172204.htm Danger from radiation is exaggerated, say scientists (The Times, UK) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article685386.ece The Truth About Chernobyl Is Told (Zbigniew Jaworowski, Central Laboratory for Radilogical Protection) http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/chernobyl.html UN Report says 56 killed so far due to Chernobyl nuclear accident (CBC News) http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2005/09/05/UN_Chernobyl20050905.html No Apparent Increase In Cancer Deaths Among Three Mile Island Residents, Report University Of Pittsburgh Researchers (University Of Pittsburgh Medical Center) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/05/000531071558.htm No Significant Rise In Cancer Deaths In 3-Mile Island Residents Over 20 Years, According To Study (University Of Pittsburgh Medical Center) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/11/021101065838.htm Uranium resources sufficient to meet projected nuclear energy requirements long into the future (Nuclear Energy Administration) http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2008/2008-02.html World has 200 Years of Uranium Reserves - Germany (Reuters) http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/35026/newsDate/10-Feb-2006... Recycling Nuclear Fuel: The French Do It, Why Cant Oui? (FOX News) http://tinyurl.com/24qlau
Dearest Bunny:
ReplyDeleteDo this a bit differently please. You can make it easy for your users to click on URLs to get access to them. As is they have to do a multi-line cut and paste it. You could also describe the link rather than name it.
lets make these things better together.