

Fear may be more dangerous than radiation - yummyfajitas
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fear-is-potent-risk-of-japanese-nuclear-crisis/2011/03/14/AB76TxV_story.html

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tptacek
According to this (pretty amazing) UCSB lecture:

[http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/plecture/bmonreal11/rm/fl...](http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/plecture/bmonreal11/rm/flashtv.html)

... fear and lack of communication did grave damage at Chernobyl as well. For
example: because the authorities could not get their stories straight, they
were unable to advise local farmers to dispose of contaminated cow's milk,w
which may have been the vector that dispersed the majority of the radioactive
iodine to children in the affected area; elevated thyroid cancer among
children is one of the clearly indicated aftereffects of that disaster.

Fear may be rampant in Japan right now (who could blame them?) but my
understanding is that they are, for the most part, doing everything right:
monitoring mSv exposures, watching the food and water supply, liberally
evacuating the surrounding areas. This stuff sounds simple but is almost
literally the laundry list of things the Chernobyl authorities did wrong.

~~~
joe_the_user
Indeed...

The thing is that I doubt one can blame the fear evoked by radiation and
things-nuclear on the anti-nuclear movement - its the opposite really. The
event of the atomic bomb, the invisible and long-term qualities of radiation
damage and so-forth have pretty much seared the fear of radiation into the
psychies of modern people.

The anti-nuclear movement is a result of this rather than a cause.

But the thing is, unless there's a magic wand to make the fear go away, the
anti-nuke folks have a point. Something that evokes this kind of fear in
people will have a certain danger.

Human beings aren't rational. In some circumstances, they are less rational
than others. Sometimes just avoiding the situations where we are less rational
is more cost-effective than imposing the "most rational" course of action
(Especially since it is only "what would be the most rational course of action
if it weren't for these unfortunate irrational behaviors").

~~~
chc
Oil and coal and nitroglycerin have caused similar destruction, yet you don't
see comments like yours about them, so I find it specious to suggest that
nuclear acquired its stigma honestly. At any rate, we have no better long-term
option for power than nuclear AFAIK.

~~~
neutronicus
Radiation is tailor made to be scary.

The negative outcome for someone outside the nuclear industry has a name:
cancer. The negative outcome for someone outside the coal industry
(respiratory illness) is less well-defined, less likely to be attributed to
coal, and less likely to cause someone to die unusually young. That last is
important - old people and people with asthma die from air pollution.
Otherwise healthy people can contract radiation-induced cancer.

The mechanism by which nuclear plants produce negative outcomes (radiation) is
also poorly understood and _imperceptible_ , whereas one can see smog and
kinda tell when it's a code red day out.

It's not just that there's some destruction - it's that the destruction can't
be understood, perceived, or planned for until it's too late.

People's fear of nuclear power is _irrational_ , but it doesn't necessarily
depend entirely on propaganda.

~~~
tptacek
You can say exactly the same set of things about smog, the soot that blackens
a grilled hamburger, the hamburger itself, and the breakdown products of the
oil that fries the french fries that go with the burger.

~~~
neutronicus
Do you mean in so far as those things are carcinogens?

~~~
tptacek
They are not only carcinogens, but carcinogens that (from what I can tell) are
almost by definition worse than 100msv radiological exposures, in that
radiological exposure is one of the purer sources of carcinogenesis we can
measure, and 100msv is the floor of our ability to measure it.

Compare that to eating four or more serving of red meat in a week (hardly a
crazy amount in the US or Argentina); that corresponds to a lifetime cancer
risk comparable to having been a former longtime active smoker. Smoking will
reliably give you cancer. 100msv of radiation will give one out of some huge
number of people like you cancer. Probably.

~~~
kragen
> Smoking will reliably give you cancer.

I'm having a hard time digging up the figures, but last time I looked, only
about 5% of smokers die from lung cancer, and much smaller numbers from a few
other smoking-related cancers. Another chunk get cancer but don't die from it.
Unless I'm badly misremembering, though, the majority of smokers — more than
50% — never get cancer from smoking.

I don't think that a mechanism that fails more than half the time, or even,
say, 1% of the time, should be considered reliable.

I concur that people should worry more about smoking, red meat, and browned
oils than about 100mSv exposures to radioactivity. Outside the US, I would add
automotive exhaust and indoor wood fires as major causes of cancer.

~~~
Natsu
It puts a lot of stress on the heart, too, and I think a fair number of them
die with smoking as a contributing cause to that.

Anyhow, if you do get cancer from smoking, it's pretty ugly. My grandfather
had it, in spite of quitting immediately once it was generally known that
smoking was a Bad Thing (TM). He had to use Prednisone and it weakened his
bones until they started breaking all the time. He was very upset with Grandma
for calling the paramedics once, too, because he was just ready to die :( It
made for a really miserable way to spend his last ten+ years of life.

------
jschuur
Timely chart about the relative levels of radiation dosage involved in every
day living, medical procedures and exposure to nuclear power plants vs. what's
harmful for you from XKCD:

[http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/19/graphic-chart-
showin.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/19/graphic-chart-showin.html)

~~~
Tichy
The chart seems to indicate that radiation 50km away from Fukushima was high
enough to get into the "clearly linked to increased cancer risk" zone within
20 days. That's scary enough for me.

~~~
jschuur
Now that I look at the chart again, I'm a little confused. It says ~3.5 micro
sievert 'extra dose from one day in average town near the Fukushima plant as
of March 17th, varies quite a bit' in the blue squares, but also 'one day dose
(~3.6 milli sievert) at two sites 50 km NW of Fukushima on 3/16, seen again on
3/17' in the green ones.

Even factoring in the variation they mention, that's a 1000x difference. I
know the dosage drops off exponentially, but first example must be a lot
further away than 50km, which is no longer 'near' in my book. Perhaps the
latter measurements were extreme cases caused by wind patterns.

~~~
Wientje
Radiation is not a static. If a particle happens to decay at your detector
when it is detecting, you'll get a massive spike. As the radiation changes
between hours, places and the specific isotopes decaying, it's near impossible
to get fast and accurate results for average dose recieved.

~~~
neutronicus

        If a particle happens to decay at your detector when it is detecting, you'll get a massive spike.
    

This is not true. The energy deposited by a single quantum of radiation is
negligible, and at this point most of the activity is from long-lived isotopes
and so shouldn't change from day to day.

I would guess that wind patterns are responsible for the variability in
measurements, not nuclear physics.

------
danenania
What many seem to be missing is that the potential downside of a black swan
nuclear catastrophe is many orders of magnitude worse than anything that could
occur at a coal plant and includes such lovely scenes as giant radioactive
clouds circling the earth. Clearly the Japanese disaster has come nowhere
close to this severity, but what would have happened if another larger
earthquake and tsunami had struck in the midst of the containment operations?
How about five more? Yes, these scenarios are extremely extremely unlikely,
but if the possible results include worldwide radiation poisoning, it still
could be worth considering, so I think these fears do have some rational
basis. Comparisons to x-ray output or air pollution are completely missing the
point.

~~~
jerf
"if the possible results include worldwide radiation poisoning"

Well, they don't. We've blown up dozens upon dozens of nuclear bombs, actual
factual nuclear bombs, each of which is far far worse than even the worst
possible multi-plant catastrophe that could possibly strike, and all we got
was a measurable but as far as I know impact-free increase in radioactive
cesium levels in people's bones. (Which is even less impressive than it sounds
because it's _really easy_ to measure radiation. "Measurable" is orders of
magnitude below "dangerous".) "Some plants melt down and everybody in the
world gets radiation poisoning" is not a "Black Swan", that's "The laws of
physics have been rewritten" event. We can't plan for those at all.

(No, please do _not_ trot out anything about how we "may not" fully understand
the science. Again, if there is some weird circumstance under which some
uranium can suddenly become conscious and declare its undying hatred of the
human race in magnificent Elizabethan English shortly before completely
converting all its mass to energy, rendering the planet sterile in the
resulting explosion, it still doesn't matter, because we can't plan for such
low-probability events regardless. We understand radioactivity matters well
more than we need to to run reactors.)

I am all for rational analysis of the risks, but if you're including actual
doomsday scenarios in your analysis, you haven't even started rational
analysis yet.

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Tichy
Misleading title - fear affects more people and hence, by some kind of
measuring, might do more damage in some cases. It doesn't imply that if you
are exposed to both radiation and fear, fear does more damage.

Besides, the fear is a real consequence of such disasters.

As for the calculations of "only 500 people died of radiation" after Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, I am not sure I trust those. All kinds of stories seem to float
around (also for Chernobyl), I would like to see some serious studies
determining who died of what. Since radiation might kill slowly, it could be
difficult to study.

Also the comparison to other toxins is plain silly and betrays the article as
a propaganda piece.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> Besides, the fear is a real consequence of such disasters.

I was thinking the same thing. Fear/anxiety/depression/despair are
predictable, measurable and likely unavoidable.

~~~
serichsen
The basic fear may be unavoidable, but the current media coverage is
ridiculously overblown (there is one casualty so far at Fukushima---due to a
fallen crane, not any kind of radiation).

This is fearmongering, and this _is_ avoidable.

~~~
Tichy
Media trying to cause a panic, news at 11.

------
guscost
This was my conclusion as well. It was somewhat true at Chernobyl, definitely
true at Three Mile Island and it's going to be exponentially more true at
Fukushima.

------
pessimist
In addition, irrational fears will devastate Japan food exports for years -
Kobe beef and sushi industries better look to diversify.

