Greenpeace claims that some of the forest fires in Russia are burning in areas contaminated in 1986 with radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. Should people in that region be alarmed? It depends on lots of details -- how much radioactive material was taken up by the trees and bushes that are burning, the energy and radiological stability of those particles, the dose of particles people would be actually be exposed to after dilution in the atmosphere -- but probably not. As is well-noted in a Dot Earth blog by Andy Revkin, Chernobyl, Fires and Radiation .
But will we sound the alarm? Oh, you bet. and not just in Russia. Radiation!!!!!! AAAIIIGGH!!! Chernobyl!!!! AAAAIIIGGGHH! What's that you say? The details matter? Yeah, right. Whatever. CHERNOBYL!!!! RADIATION!!!!! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!
A sample of headlines:
Radioactive smoke? Russia wildfires rage near Chernobyl worries the Christian Science Monitor.
Fears Russian wildfires could drive radioactive Chernobyl waste towards Moscow frets The Guardian
Russian wildfires raise Chernobyl radiation fears reports the Associated Press.
Don't blame Greenpeace for this instinctive reaction to risk. And don't blame the press. Blame our instincts. YOUR instincts. Greenpeace and the news media only sound the alarm when they know we're ready to listen. And because of one critical aspect of the instinctive way human risk perception works, we are instantly ready to hear about and fear certain dangers, and the details be damned.
Stigma, is what the academics call this effect. Certain products or processes or companies or places become so identified as dangerous that anything to do with them sets off alarms in our risk response system, and the facts that follow don't matter. In a 1986 study of public opinion in Phoenix toward the proposed Yucca Mountain Nevada nuclear waste disposal site, subjects were asked to say the first thing that came to mind when they heard "underground nuclear waste storage." The top five categories were Dangerous (including words like "danger," "hazardous," "toxic," "harmful," "disaster"), Death ("sickness," "death," "dying," "destruction") Negative ("wrong," "bad," "terrible," "horrible"), Pollution ("contamination," "spills," "leakage"), and War ("bombs," "nuclear war," "holocaust.") You think the details mattered -- of the nuclear physics of the waste, or the impregnability of the waste containers, or the geologic stability of the disposal site? Nope. Radiation = Danger. End of story.
Chemicals. Offshore drilling. Genetically modified food. They have all been stigmatized, and automatically initiate fear in a risk perception system set on a hair wire trigger to detect anything that might even hint at danger. These are the learned versions of things we're probably born afraid of, like snakes or spiders or the dark, things that set off instinctive fears. We don't have to think about those things. We KNOW they're dangerous.
Only, that's as untrue of radiation and genetically modified food as it is of snakes and spiders. The details do matter. They matter if we want to make the healthiest choices for ourselves and our families. And they really matter if we want to make wise policy choices for society. What kind of energy mix do we end up with when we automatically assume radiation = danger? We end up with policy that favors electricity generation by fossil fuels, the pollution from which is FAR more dangerous (fine particles alone kill tens of thousands of people a year, to say nothing of what CO2 is doing to the climate of the earth) than even the worst industrial releases of nuclear radiation (the World Health Organization estimates the lifetime cancer death toll from Chernobyl will be about 4,000.)
But to get to the details about a risk, and judge it wisely, we have to get past the effect of stigma and the predominantly instinctive, emotional, affective way we very quickly asses whether we might be in danger, giving less careful consideration to the facts (or none at all). Our risk perception system has done a fabulous job getting the species this far, but with its emphasis more on how the facts feel than what the facts actually say, it's not the brightest bulb for illuminating the complex risks and tradeoffs of our modern technological/information age.
In that sense, the alarms being sounded about forest fires in areas contaminated by Chernobyl fall-out are actually great, even though they play on our stigmatized fears of anything nuclear. Our fear of that risk may be overblown, but the dangers of how we go about perceiving and responding to risk in the first place are quite real. We can be too afraid of some things, and not afraid enough of others, and while our perceptions might feel safe, they could end up making things worse. Our rationally reasoning minds have figured this out. Now we have to hope our cognitive firepower can use the facts about how we perceive and respond to risk, so we can do a better job of it.
Follow David Ropeik on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dropeik
Russian fires spark Chernobyl fallout fears
No nuclear health threat from Russian fires: experts
Russia fires cause "brown cloud," may hit Arctic
Thinking the Unthinkable: Russian Fires Fan Nuclear Fears
and you still don't get it....
nuke power has dumped waste all over the planet, doubling the background radiation level.
but you think is safe....
pathetic.
Save money, cut the deficit, employ everyone, cut energy dependence:
Immediately order energy retrofits for all gov buildings.
Rooftop PV Solar, Offshore wind, and Waste Bio char, can supply the worlds energy and fuel needs: cleanly, safely, Forever, within 12 years and cheaper in the long run 2-6 cents now, and 26$ per barrel bio oils.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
about 1$ per Wp solar panels, new.
install solar plants for about $1.30 per watt, compared with an industry average of about $1.75, according to Hardy." http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a7K1FZoNgJ0w
Wind: “between two and six cents today, depending on location.12 Wind power approaches competitiveness with conventional generation at this price point. “
http://www.repp.org/articles/static/1/binaries/wind%20issue%20brief_FINAL.pdf
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/publ/BiofBioproBioref%203,%20547-562,%202009%20Laird.pdf
26$ per barrel bio oil from waste bio char.
Now that is a hugely funny one.
Research has an imagination like no other thats where he get his facts.
His solar and wind per kwh costs are not real. He just makes them up.
Real wind cost.
Cape Wind is 24 cents a kwh going to 34 over 15 years - approved tariff
Arcadia Solar just built largest solar plant in the US is 50 cents a kwh at Florida Powers Rate of Return on Investment.
Biofuels from waste biomass producing waste biochar can produce almost no energy after the waste stream is properly processed for compost and recyclables. Whats left releases Dioxins and Furons when burned
His wind study was from 2003 and used many assumptions which turned out to be invalid. The world has moved on.
waste dumps all over the world.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=8899147
great world polutionmapstoo.
http://maps.grida.no/region/global/page/46
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4312553.stm Somali nuke waste dumping
. "Over 100 of these sites are so contaminated that we don't know how to clean them up," he said. "We have no choice but to rely on fallible human institutions to manage them."
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1099
The global volume of spent fuel was 220,000 tonnes in the year 2000, and is growing by approximately 10,000 tonnes annually... nuclear industry and governments have failed to come up with a feasible and sustainable solutio
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/nuclear/waste/?tab=0
The dying off of the numerically small peoples of the Russian north,
http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=31593
that Russia (the former Soviet Union) has been dumping highly
radioactive materials in the Ar
http://www1.american.edu/TED/arctic.htm
Seth prefers to pay more for his solar, I list the best deals around.
After saying something so wrong as this, is there really any reason anyone should believe anything else in your comment? I'm trying to help you here. If you want to build a reasonable argument for halting new nuclear construction and decommissioning existing ones, you should start by eliminating grossly inaccurate statements such as the one above. Try taking some time off from posting to HuffPo and go read "Environmental Radioactivity from Natural, Industrial & Military Sources, Fourth Edition," by Merrill Eisenbud.
anything else to say?
I've done the math, I have the old nuke books that list the background radiation it is no double what was used in the 1950's.
Please don't bs us with the "radiation the average person is exposed to" that's not the same thing.
http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2010/08/13/russia-is-still-on-fire/
* Respected scientistys were routinely sacked for reporing adverse harm.
* Radioactive fallout from open air nuclear testing in the U.S. was found in 1992 by the National Cancer Institute to be quite significant -- posing risks to thousands of children who drank contaminated milk. However, the NCI supressed this study for five years and was forced to admit it do so under oath before the U,S. Congress in 1998. The list goes on.
The Chernobyl catastrophe required nearly a million emergency responders and cleanup workers. A 1000 sq kilometer zone near the reactor remains uninhabitable. The World Health Organization ultimately depended on data furnished by the Russian government, which makes its findings suspect. Russia is hardly known as being forthcoming about this accident, or the other nuclear disasters that took place in Kazakstan and the Urals. You might recall that Russia tried to hide the Chernobyl disater from its people and the rest of the world.
In short, people'e response to terms such as "nuclear" and "radiation" are not just due to irrattional fears but also to the self-inflicted destruction of scientific credibility.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/2006_articles/spring%202006/Chernobyl_Folly.pdf
Also of interest is Jaworowski's article on the recent Belarus decision to repopulate the
Chernobyl exclusion area:
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Chernobyl_repopulation.pdf
trillion dollar nuke industry trying to white wash Chernobyl, but still multiple studies show over a million excess deaths.
Nuclear power and weapons cause the death of 65M people.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nuclear-weapons-and-pollution-linked-to-65-million-deaths-609008.html
nukes are a multi billion dollar business.
CANDU Inc is 800M$ in debt, only the government keeps it going.
They will say anything to convince people nukes are safe, and they could care less about some people dying in Chernobyl to do that.
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/docs/402-k-07-006.pdf
You can calculate you approximate dose with this:
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/calculate.html
It is very easy to monitor and control your "dose" with time distance and shielding, be informed not scared. Know nukes!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents Check bottom of page for more info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_industrial_disasters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll#Industrial_accidents
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/07/summarizing-deaths-per-twh.html
You know its funny how the really ghoulish renewable types never seem to acknowlegde the 3 million folks that die from coal pollution every year they can defer the coal to nuclear conversion. It's like these folks are a reasonable sacrifice on the road to the perfect future powered by their visions of pink windmills and warm sunbeams gleaming on ebony solar panels.
The sentence should have been written as, "...contaminated in 1986 with radioactivity from Chernobyl..." Material is radioactive and it emits radiation. The public does not need to fear radiation from a nuclear power plant because its well shielded by steel and concrete plus there's several kilometers of atmosphere, however any release of radioactivity should be of concern and must be well monitored.