Citrute
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Posted - 2010.08.23 01:13:00 -
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Claims about adverse effects from low levels of radiation are often based on a so-called linear non-threshold model. The model assumes, for example, that if an exposure of n millirem kills 50 percent of a population, then 0.1 n will kill 5 percent, 0.01 will kill 0.5 percent and so on. There is no evidence for this model. Background radiation from natural sources varies around the world from an annual dosage of less than 100 to over 10,000 millirem. (Residents of Ramsar, Iran, receive up to 26,000 millirem a year!) Studies have not found increased cancer or other illnesses in areas with naturally high radiation
Fifty plant and emergency workers died of acute radiation exposure in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the U.S.S.R., the worst nuclear accident in history. The explosion contaminated more than 200,000 square kilometers with radioactive fallout, but radiation in parts of this zone is now lower than in Finland and other regions of the world with naturally high radiation. The International Agency for Research on Cancer estimates that radiation releases from Chernobyl caused a slight increase in thyroid cancer but adds that "smoking will cause several thousand times more cancers in the same population." So far, there have been no excess deaths among the 200,000 "liquidators" who helped clean up the mess from Chernobyl compared with controls.
The waste from coal-burning plants is much greater in volume and more harmful than from nuclear generators. If you, as an average American, got all your electricity from nuclear plants, you'd generate one kilogram of nuclear waste during your lifetime, enough to fit in a soda can. If you got all your electricity from coal, you'd generate almost 70 tons of waste. Coal plants emit far more radioactive materials than nuclear plants do; each year a 1,000-megawatt coal plant disperses about 27 metric tons of uranium, thorium and other radioactive substances. Coals plants also emit mercury and other toxins, in addition of course to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. An estimated 24,000 Americans die prematurely per annum because of pollution from coal plants; in China, the number is 400,000.
Hydropower has killed many more people than nuclear power. About 1,000 Americans have died in dam collapses in the past 100 years. Dam collapses caused by a typhoon in China in 1975 killed 26,000 people immediately; another 145,000 people later died of disease and famine. The output of hydroelectric plants is decreasing because of droughts, possibly brought on by global warming.
Source: Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy,
Gwyneth Cravens |