4 ms·

This seems like pretty strong evidence that the Linear No-Threshold Model for radiation exposure is the correct model. Not great for the many companies attempt

This seems like pretty strong evidence that the Linear No-Threshold Model for radiation exposure is the correct model. Not great for the many companies attempting to revive the nuclear power industry.

stackskipton 21d ago
What? Nuclear Power workers are exposed much less than flight attendants and everyone else gets more radiation from their occasional flight. Yes, disasters are worse but most other power options are killing people in non visible ways.
- arghwhat 21d ago
  Whether the disasters are worse depends on your metric. The deaths from Fukushima was, to my knowledge, only a few elderly individuals who had stress-induced heart failures. And that's a worst-case scenario with corruption, old designs, complete negligence and dual natural disasters hitting the plant in parallel. It seems absolutely silly, but even wind power kills more people per TWh produced than nuclear due to workplace accidents in installation/maintenance. Also not sure why lung cancer from oil/coal air pollution would be less visible than hypothetical radiation-induced cancers. EDIT: Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p..., accidents include indirect deaths. Solar is the only energy source that beats nuclear in safety.
  - ch4s3 21d ago
    > only a few elderly individual who had stress-induced heart failures Caused by the evacuation
  - gosub100 21d ago
    Both arguments can be correct: if X dose of radiation increases cancer risk, and it's shown that a nuclear plant released Y dose (by, oh, say, leaking tritium into the earth [1]), it's not out of the question to ask them to pay into a compensation fund. That has no bearing on whether wind turbines kill people. 1: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-the-monticello-nuclear-plant-radioactive-tritium-leak https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-...
    - arghwhat 20d ago
      I see the good intent but I cannot agree on several points. First point is that even though radiation can cause cancer, radiation is part of life. If my basement has higher levels of radon, who should compensate me? What about the radiation exposure from requested x-rays, or food? Second is responsibility. If I decide to fly a lot, my increased radiation exposure is not the fault if the airline. It's not their fault that the atmosphere is less protective up there, and everyone flying is equally exposed. Now if they could prevent the radiation they preferably should, but until then their responsibility is disclosure of this information to allow informed decisions. Can't blame the ocean for being wet. Third is that by that logic, it very much has bearing whether "wind turbines kill people", as it implies that every fractional possible cause of harm must all be measured and pay in proportion to their possibility of damage. There would be no way to even start. However, I do agree that when accidents or negligence/malice is involved, it makes sense that the actor spends energy cleaning up. For example, the biological harm to people in Fukushima was practically non-existent, but the short-term the economic and social harm was there and was entirely avoidable. Damages should be paid. (Of course, windmills don't kill people, point is that wind, nuclear and solar is so harmless that the only thing we're looking at is differences in construction-related workplace accidents, which are a bit higher with windmills and lower with solar.)
      - gosub100 20d ago
        First paragraph of your reply is the relative privation fallacy: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative-Privation https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relativ... You cannot make the claim that releasing toxins is okay because some toxic elements occur naturally. ( Also, if your basement has a radon problem, you can mitigate it by better ventilation. You cannot mitigate a contamination zone without decades-long cleanup.) Personal responsibility only assumes informed consent. This is why cigarette packs have warnings on them. I would argue that w passenger does have a case against the airline for not informing them that they are being exposed to cancer causing radiation even when everything this perfectly normal. The classic argument "but what about plane crashes? They don't inform you about that" is different, because crashes are.by definition abnormal, tragic, and rare. Whereas absolutely everyone on board is getting a dose every time they fly. As for medical exposure, I will go out on a limb and say that's covered under medical consent forms, and/or a medical research board has determined that the benefits from the dose outweigh the cancer risk. But that only covers airline passengers, not employees that are getting orders of magnitude more dose. That only strengthens the argument that the airline shares liability. Do you think coal miners should have no case for lung diseases because maybe they got it from cigarettes? Or inherited it? Their employment put them in the position where they got exposed. Therefore the employer is liable for their illness.
  - garbagewoman 21d ago
    >only a few elderly individuals
- aeternum 21d ago
  Agreed, but one of the key reasons plants are so expensive is to ensure that power workers are exposed to much less radiation than flight attendants. The fact that even a small amount of discharged radiation can cause damage makes everything more expensive for those companies, not just design and certification of the reactor itself but also liability insurance.
redsocksfan45 21d ago
[dead]
ch4s3 21d ago
Not really. A round trip transatlantic flight hits you with ~0.06 to 0.1 mSv and a chest x-ray is on the order of up to ~0.02 to 0.1 mSv, so roughly similar. There's a reason x-ray techs stand behind a wall, you have a VERY small chance of DNA damage with each exposure and for most people that doesn't matter because you don't fly that often or get that many x-rays but if you do it all the time, your bound to have a high energy particle smash into the wrong part of a cell's DNA. This isn't an effect of cumulative small doses but rather rolling the same dice many times.
- varjag 21d ago
  You do get DNA damage all the time, just very few of them lead to cancerous growth. So it would make sense the risk goes linearly up with exposure.
  - colechristensen 21d ago
    You also evolved in a world with radiation and have repair mechanisms in place so it makes sense that the "realized" damage is not necessarily linear.
- colechristensen 21d ago
  You have to be up to date on the exposure of a "chest xray" because tech improvements have considerably changed this in our lifetimes.
  - manarth 21d ago
    And cultural references can be dramatically and wildly off. "Plant director Bryukhanov reports no more than 3.6 roentgen, which I'm told is the equivalent of a chest x-ray, so if you're overdue for a check-up…" – HBO Chernobyl https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
- thehappypm 20d ago
  This isn’t exactly correct. Cancer is not (typically) caused by a single DNA mutation, but multiple accumulated errors.

stackskipton 21d ago

What? Nuclear Power workers are exposed much less than flight attendants and everyone else gets more radiation from their occasional flight. Yes, disasters are worse but most other power options are killing people in non visible ways.

arghwhat 21d ago
Whether the disasters are worse depends on your metric. The deaths from Fukushima was, to my knowledge, only a few elderly individuals who had stress-induced heart failures. And that's a worst-case scenario with corruption, old designs, complete negligence and dual natural disasters hitting the plant in parallel. It seems absolutely silly, but even wind power kills more people per TWh produced than nuclear due to workplace accidents in installation/maintenance. Also not sure why lung cancer from oil/coal air pollution would be less visible than hypothetical radiation-induced cancers. EDIT: Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p..., accidents include indirect deaths. Solar is the only energy source that beats nuclear in safety.
- ch4s3 21d ago
  > only a few elderly individual who had stress-induced heart failures Caused by the evacuation
- gosub100 21d ago
  Both arguments can be correct: if X dose of radiation increases cancer risk, and it's shown that a nuclear plant released Y dose (by, oh, say, leaking tritium into the earth [1]), it's not out of the question to ask them to pay into a compensation fund. That has no bearing on whether wind turbines kill people. 1: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-the-monticello-nuclear-plant-radioactive-tritium-leak https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-...
  - arghwhat 20d ago
    I see the good intent but I cannot agree on several points. First point is that even though radiation can cause cancer, radiation is part of life. If my basement has higher levels of radon, who should compensate me? What about the radiation exposure from requested x-rays, or food? Second is responsibility. If I decide to fly a lot, my increased radiation exposure is not the fault if the airline. It's not their fault that the atmosphere is less protective up there, and everyone flying is equally exposed. Now if they could prevent the radiation they preferably should, but until then their responsibility is disclosure of this information to allow informed decisions. Can't blame the ocean for being wet. Third is that by that logic, it very much has bearing whether "wind turbines kill people", as it implies that every fractional possible cause of harm must all be measured and pay in proportion to their possibility of damage. There would be no way to even start. However, I do agree that when accidents or negligence/malice is involved, it makes sense that the actor spends energy cleaning up. For example, the biological harm to people in Fukushima was practically non-existent, but the short-term the economic and social harm was there and was entirely avoidable. Damages should be paid. (Of course, windmills don't kill people, point is that wind, nuclear and solar is so harmless that the only thing we're looking at is differences in construction-related workplace accidents, which are a bit higher with windmills and lower with solar.)
    - gosub100 20d ago
      First paragraph of your reply is the relative privation fallacy: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative-Privation https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relativ... You cannot make the claim that releasing toxins is okay because some toxic elements occur naturally. ( Also, if your basement has a radon problem, you can mitigate it by better ventilation. You cannot mitigate a contamination zone without decades-long cleanup.) Personal responsibility only assumes informed consent. This is why cigarette packs have warnings on them. I would argue that w passenger does have a case against the airline for not informing them that they are being exposed to cancer causing radiation even when everything this perfectly normal. The classic argument "but what about plane crashes? They don't inform you about that" is different, because crashes are.by definition abnormal, tragic, and rare. Whereas absolutely everyone on board is getting a dose every time they fly. As for medical exposure, I will go out on a limb and say that's covered under medical consent forms, and/or a medical research board has determined that the benefits from the dose outweigh the cancer risk. But that only covers airline passengers, not employees that are getting orders of magnitude more dose. That only strengthens the argument that the airline shares liability. Do you think coal miners should have no case for lung diseases because maybe they got it from cigarettes? Or inherited it? Their employment put them in the position where they got exposed. Therefore the employer is liable for their illness.
- garbagewoman 21d ago
  >only a few elderly individuals
aeternum 21d ago
Agreed, but one of the key reasons plants are so expensive is to ensure that power workers are exposed to much less radiation than flight attendants. The fact that even a small amount of discharged radiation can cause damage makes everything more expensive for those companies, not just design and certification of the reactor itself but also liability insurance.

redsocksfan45 21d ago

[dead]

ch4s3 21d ago

Not really. A round trip transatlantic flight hits you with ~0.06 to 0.1 mSv and a chest x-ray is on the order of up to ~0.02 to 0.1 mSv, so roughly similar. There's a reason x-ray techs stand behind a wall, you have a VERY small chance of DNA damage with each exposure and for most people that doesn't matter because you don't fly that often or get that many x-rays but if you do it all the time, your bound to have a high energy particle smash into the wrong part of a cell's DNA. This isn't an effect of cumulative small doses but rather rolling the same dice many times.

varjag 21d ago
You do get DNA damage all the time, just very few of them lead to cancerous growth. So it would make sense the risk goes linearly up with exposure.
- colechristensen 21d ago
  You also evolved in a world with radiation and have repair mechanisms in place so it makes sense that the "realized" damage is not necessarily linear.
colechristensen 21d ago
You have to be up to date on the exposure of a "chest xray" because tech improvements have considerably changed this in our lifetimes.
- manarth 21d ago
  And cultural references can be dramatically and wildly off. "Plant director Bryukhanov reports no more than 3.6 roentgen, which I'm told is the equivalent of a chest x-ray, so if you're overdue for a check-up…" – HBO Chernobyl https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
thehappypm 20d ago
This isn’t exactly correct. Cancer is not (typically) caused by a single DNA mutation, but multiple accumulated errors.