Panel Affirms Radiation Link to Cancer

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/thrive/2005/jun/29/062903910.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer over a person's lifetime, a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded Wednesday. It rejected some scientists' arguments that tiny doses are harmless or may in fact be beneficial.

The findings could influence the maximum radiation levels that are allowed at abandoned reactors and other nuclear sites. The conclusions also raise warnings about excessive exposure to radiation for medical purposes such as repeated whole-body CT scans.

"It is unlikely that there is a threshold (of radiation exposure) below which cancers are not induced," scientists said in the report.

While at low doses "the number of radiation-induced cancers will be small ... as the overall lifetime exposure increases, so does the risk," the experts said.

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on edit: fixed link...more extensive article

[Maple]

1. Link

needs fixing

[jpak]

3. Thanks - done

n/t

[htuttle]

2. Ever been to Utah?

Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year.

They ought to have them, too.

[NNadir]

6. Utah, the state with the fourth highest life expectancy?

http://www.unitedhealthfoundation.org/shr2003/components/prematuredeath.html

It must have been very bad, living near those nuclear tests and all those uranium mines.

I note that all airline pilots are also dead because of (gasp) radiation?

All of the astronauts have also died from cancer.

I am also dead from the Radon in my basement.

Also, everyone in Kiev has died from Chernobyl.

Everyone near that very scary leaky pipe at Sellafield has died.


Oh, and lot's of people who have pretended to do useless research using tritium have also died, just imagining it. It's it amazing what magical thinking can do.

Magically, no one is ever killed by air pollution. People who imagine that people are killed by air pollution are just part of the big bad international conspiracy to keep rich spoiled brats from starving the rest of the world through 4 megawatt, 76 million dollar solar cells that work for a fraction of the day on a subset of days. In any case 100,000 people killed by air pollution are hardly worth

Air pollution is perfectly OK, because well, it isn't radioactive.


Or is it?


http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Coal, coal, we love our coal, mostly because we have no souls.

One thing you have to give to the stupid is that they are too stupid to know they are stupid, apparently. It must be blissful, like a continuous bender or something.

The rest of us have to be sober and face the real world.

[htuttle]

7. That is a bitter, bitter post

Do you think that the decision on whether to build more nukes will be decided in DU's Environment & Energy forum? You speake as though it's the posters in this forum that are keeping new nuclear plants from being built.

As I've asked before, what's stopping them from building new nukes? Not me. In fact, as we run up against oil depletion, I'm starting to see a grudging acceptance of the inevitable expansion of nuclear power among a lot of people who'd previously rejected it. It's not the post-Three Mile Island 80's anymore. It's the oil-war '00's, and a lot of things have changed.

From what *I* can see, what the nuclear power companies are waiting for is another handout from the Federal trough before building new plants.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=26060&mesg_id=26060

So they want us to pay for them, then they get to charge us for operating them for as long as they last. And then we get to pay for dealing with the waste on our dime, too. That's what I have a problem with. If my money goes to pay for a business investment, then I want a piece of it. Same goes for my tax dollars and my government.

If there's an argument that new nuke plants must be built for the greater good, and I'd grant that there IS an argument to be made on that count, then maybe we shouldn't allow private companies to run them for profit. If it's that vital to the national interest to build new nukes, then they should be owned collectively by the government and the power sold at cost.

If not, then what's the problem with just letting capitalism and the vaunted free market decide whether new nukes make sense?

[jpak]

9. Utah residents live longer due to radiation? Tell it to the NAS.

:rofl:

Uranium mines are harmless???

:rofl:

Tell it to the Navajos..

http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/nativelands/humanhealth.html.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7602821/

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4535148/

And please tell us about the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and uranium workers...

PV cells are responsible for 100,000 air pollution deaths???

:rofl:

I use tritium on a nearly daily basis. I have published 9 peer reviewed papers in the last 14 years using radioisotopes, including one in Nature. I am not a "radiation paranoid".

Furthermore, I do not "pretend" - unlike some that claim they severely contaminated themselves with 125-I over a three year period and "controlled" their contamination with iodized table salt.

Yo, I'm a molten salt guy. I will soon become fabulously rich with my advanced molten salt reactor design.

I called BP solar and an out-of-state independent contractor told me to buy an $80k 10 kW PV system "because it only works part of the time" and he didn't mention any rebate.

Solar-only advocates are willing to kill for their ignorance.

The amount of fissionable material on Earth is inexhaustible.

The choice is between Yucca Mountain and mountain top coal mining.

Pro-solar anti-nuclear anti-environmental advocates are for the war in Iraq.

Radiation is good for you.

:rofl:

[struggle4progress]

11. Weren't you going to go strike it rich inventing a nuclear sedan or ..

.. some such thing?

I've been half expecting to see you in the national news:

Nuclear hobbyist arrested in effort to obtain regulated materials
'Cranky,' neighbors say
But is he a terrorist?

[Massacure]

4. One more argument to ban smoking.

One cigarette is the same amount of radiation a nuclear power plant emits to the outside environment during a year of operations.

edit: oh, that the people who wrote that article don't have a frickin clue what they are talking about. I can't stop laughing at the fact that they said Tritium is three atoms of hydrogen. :rofl:

[jpak]

5. There was no mention of tritium in the article.

none...

[Massacure]

10. Funny.

The website I was trying to reply to was this one:

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0415-23.htm

I wonder which thread posted that link and didn't get my message. :shrug:

[struggle4progress]

8. The 2000 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report for Palo Verde ..

.. says PVNGS released 2890 Ci of H3 in 2000.

Reactor releases typically show irregular high spikes: so you have to look at a number of reactors for several years to get a really representative idea of how much is being released.

This 2890 Ci represents rather more radioactivity than a typical ordinary cigarette. I don't know exactly what you're smoking, but if you can't quit you really might want to consider switching to something not quite so "hot."