Radiation and Reason - the Impact of Science on a Culture of Fear

Are you worried about radiation from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plants? Are you confused about conflicting news reports? Do you wish you had some better information so that you can judge what's best for you and your family?


Well, the only way to do that is to educate yourself.


A good friend sends me the link to the Radiation and Reason website by professor Wade Allison. Professor Allison is Emeritus Professor of Physics at Oxford University and author of the book Radiation and Reason - the Impact of Science on a Culture of Fear. 

The book has been getting excellent reviews and after reading, I thought that you, dear reader, might find this quite interesting. But first, the things that initially caught my eye were some of the reviews:

“Even if you disagree with where Allison takes his arguments, a large part of the book is a good accessible review of the science of radiation and its biological effects. This in itself makes it a potentially valuable read for activists interested in nuclear and environmental issues.” - Peace News, July/August 2010

"Why I'm becoming a pro-nuke nut..... I'd like to urge readers to check out two even more provocative analysts of the risks of nuclear energy..... The other scholar challenging my nuclear views is Wade Allison.... I do think that these and similar views should be included in the conversation we're having about how to solve our energy problems. These are desperate times, and we must consider all alternatives available to us—including nuclear energy, which just a few months ago I fervently opposed.” - John Horgan, Scientific American 23 August 2010

On that note, I'd like to reprint the final chapter of the book here for you to read to help you draw your own conclusions about the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Professor Wade Allison

Chapter 11 Summary of Conclusions

Risks to health associated with ionising radiation have been

overestimated by a wide margin. This conclusion has been

reached bringing together three sources of scientific information:

firstly a century of clinical experience of radiotherapy; secondly

the current knowledge of radiobiology based on laboratory

studies; thirdly the analysis of the long-term health records of

large populations of people exposed to radiation, either as a

single (acute) dose or as a continuing (chronic) one. The result is

that new safety levels for human radiation exposures are

suggested: 100 millisievert in a single dose; 100 millisievert in

total in any month; 5,000 millisievert as a total whole-of-life

exposure. These figures are conservative, and may be debatable

within factors of two, but not ten.

There are three reasons why existing radiation safety standards

have been set at levels that are typically a thousand times more

cautious: firstly the association in the public mind of radiation

with the dangers of nuclear weapons; secondly the advice of

authorities, set up with a narrow remit to minimise public

exposure to radiation and to satisfy the public aspiration for

safety and reassurance; thirdly the lack of available firm

scientific evidence and understanding in earlier decades. During

the Cold War era there were good political reasons not to

minimise the health legacy of a nuclear war, but this association

is now engrained in the general consciousness. In their physical

destructive power nuclear weapons are especially dangerous.

But, when the initial blast with its flash of ionising radiation and

heat has gone, the residual radioactivity and fallout have a much

smaller impact on human health than was supposed in the past.

The underlying idea that a radiation dose, however small, leaves

an indelible mark on health is not supportable. The evidence that

workers exposed to radiation have 15–20% lower mortality from

cancer before age 85 suggests that low doses of radiation might

be beneficial.

New dangers are now evident. These are more global and

threatening than any local nuclear incident, and arise from

changes in the Earth's atmosphere, triggered by the continuing

use of fossil fuels. Although many initiatives are possible in

response, the only large-scale solution is a major switch to

nuclear power for electricity generation and the supply of

additional fresh water. For this to happen rapidly, cheaply and

without disruption, the public perception of ionising radiation

needs to be turned around, and substantial changes in regulations

and working practices, based on new safety levels, determined

afresh. For the future, improved biological understanding may be

able to justify relaxing safety levels still further, and legislation

and working practices should be drawn up, allowing for this

possibility. Such a relaxation of safety levels by factors of about

a thousand means that current concerns, such as waste,

decommissioning, radiation health, terrorism and costs, can be

seen in a better light.

This is a most positive conclusion. But are we able and ready to

reconsider our views, and then act fast enough to lessen the

impending change in climate?

Epilogue: Fukushima

Instability and self destruction

There is a legend in English folklore about Canute, a wise king

of England and Scandinavia (1016-1035). His flattering courtiers

told him that he was 'So great, he could command the tides of the

sea to go back'. But he knew his own limitations -- even if his

courtiers did not -- so he had his throne carried to the seashore

and sat on it as the tide came in, commanding the waves to

advance no further. When they did not, he had made his point

that, though the deeds of kings might appear great in the minds

of men, they were as nothing in the face of nature. As with the

sea, so with radiation; it is nature and science that determine the

effect of radiation and its safety, not political authority. Just

following safety regulations is no substitute for achieving some

understanding.

On 11 March 2011 a magnitude-9 earthquake struck the northeast

coast of Japan and generated a tsunami that completely

devastated a wide coastal area. The death toll was 15,247 with

8,593 missing (as at 27 May) and over 100,000 properties were

completely destroyed [62]. All eleven nuclear reactors at four

nuclear power plants in the region that were operating at the time

of the earthquake immediately shut down exactly as designed. In

the aftermath of the subsequent tsunami three nuclear reactors at

the Fukushima Daiichi plant destroyed themselves and released

radioactive material into the environment. The accident was

declared to be 'severity 7', the maximum on the nuclear accident

scale, the same as Chernobyl -- but Chernobyl was quite

different; its reactor was not shut down, there was no

containment structure to inhibit the spread of radioactivity and

the entire reactor core was exposed to the open air with a

graphite fire that burned and contributed further heat to 'boil off'

and send all volatile material high into the atmosphere.

So what happened to these reactors at Fukushima? The description 'shut down' means that the neutron flux was reduced

to zero and all nuclear fission ceased. Although there was never

any risk of a nuclear fission explosion -- a nuclear bomb -- heat

continued to be produced by radioactive decay, initially at 7% of

full reactor power and falling to 1/2% within a day. This 'decay

heat' is a feature of every fission reactor, as described in Fig. 22,

and the Fukushima reactors were provided with many ways to

disperse this heat without releasing radioactivity into the

environment. At the time of the accident the tsunami deprived

the reactors of power -- connections to the electrical utility were

severed, emergency diesel generators were flooded and back-up

batteries were exhausted after a few hours. As a result the

cooling systems failed and the reactor cores became too hot and

started to melt. In addition the pressure in the reactor

containment vessels rose beyond their design strength. To

prevent complete rupture it was necessary to reduce this pressure

by venting steam including some volatile radioactive material,

largely iodine and caesium. The released gas also included some

hydrogen which exploded (chemically) in the air, blowing the

roof off the outermost cladding of the buildings and hurling some

contaminated debris around the plant and its neighbourhood.

However, it would seem that these explosions did not involve

any further release of activity as they were external to the

primary containment vessel.

Of the dispersed radioactive elements, iodine-131 is known to be

dangerous because it causes thyroid cancer if ingested by

children who have not taken prophylactic iodine tablets. In Japan

these tablets were made available, unlike at Chernobyl (see

chapter 6). Since the activity of iodine-131 halves every eight

days following cessation of nuclear fission, there was no iodine

in the spent fuel ponds. Nevertheless the cooling of these storage

ponds and their potential radioactive discharges have been an

additional focus of attention. Radioactive caesium -- particularly

caesium-137 which has a half-life of 30 years -- was released in

significant quantities both at Fukushima and at Chernobyl.

Outside the plant at Chernobyl there were no fatalities that can

be attributed to radioactivity (other than iodine) and therefore

Instability and self destruction none attributable to caesium. 

Indeed it is a curious fact that at

Fukushima, in spite of the intense media interest in the radiation,

while the tsunami killed thousands, the radiation killed none, and

is unlikely to do so in the future. [After six weeks 30 workers

had received a radiation dose between 100 and 250 milli-sievert

[63]. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki 41 people contracted radiation induced

cancer in 50 years out of 5949 who received a dose in

this range -- that is 1 in 150 (Table 5). At Chernobyl no

emergency worker who received less than 2,000 milli-sievert

died from Acute Radiation Syndrome (Fig. 9b).]

The powerful self destruction of the reactors at Fukushima has

made arresting media headlines that have been closely followed

by predictable promises of increased safety by the authorities.

Modern reactor designs include more safety features than those

at Fukushima and spending many millions of dollars on

protecting a reactor against self destruction has always been a

major element of its design and construction. But the record

shows that human lives are far less at risk in nuclear than in

conventional accidents -- at Windscale (0), Three Mile Island (0),

Chernobyl (50) or Fukushima (0) than at Piper Alpha (167),

Bhopal (3,800) or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (11). The

distinction would seem to be the simple legacy of fear associated

with nuclear radiation. Distance is no barrier to alarm and fear;

press reports of traces of activity from Fukushima detected as far

away as Scotland, often failed to note the miniscule level found.

Such reports sometimes have serious consequences; following

Chernobyl, statistics for births in Greece published in the

medical literature showed evidence for nearly 2,000 extra

induced abortions attributed to the perceived threat [64]. Instead

of spending large sums on appeasing fears by isolating people

from radiation yet further in the name of safety, resources should

be spent on real public education about nuclear radiation and its

benefits for mankind.

Within days of the accident at Fukushima the media had

exhausted their ability to described the size of the radiation

threat, so spread panic rather than information. As a result many

people fled Tokyo by plane and train. The cause was the fear that

nuclear radiation engenders, rather than any knowledge of the

radiation effect itself. Over-cautious radiation safety limits,

enshrined in regulation in Japan as elsewhere, caused apparently

incomprehensible information to be given by the authorities. For

example, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the

electric utility company responsible for Fukushima, said that in

the week of the 4 April it had released 10,400 tons of slightly

contaminated water into the sea and that, although this contained

100 times the legal limit for iodine-131, this level would be safe,

and that eating fish and seaweed caught near the plant every day

for a year would add some 0.6 mSv to the dose above natural

background [63]. These statements are probably true but their

apparent mutual contradiction is a source for understandable

alarm. This contradiction would not have occurred if the legal

limits had been set to match a level As High As Relatively Safe

(AHARS) instead of As Low As Reasonably Achievable

(ALARA), a difference of a factor of 1000 or so.

However the story is not yet over and the task of containing the

fuel and keeping it cool continues. Water, so essential to the

cooling task, has become contaminated and must be filtered.

Even with the use of robots the management of these tasks is

daunting. Although the current position [4 June 2011] may not

improve for some months yet, it is worth noting that at

Chernobyl the fuel was open to the sky at high temperature so

that the fate of the cooling water became irrelevant.

Much attention has been given to pointing a finger at who is to

blame for the accident at Fukushima. For many TEPCO is seen

as the villain. But I argue that this is unreasonable; those who

live in Japan accept a very unstable geological environment. In

the tsunami other buildings and plant were swept away

completely, but the Fukushima Daiichi plant survived. It seems

that the nuclear plant was able to withstand an earthquake well

beyond its design and with a few changes it would have

withstood the tsunami too, for instance, a better site, a higher sea

wall and protected diesel generators. Indeed the other reactors in

Japan did so with little or no damage. With hindsight it is easy to

find measures that could have been taken, but why should

nuclear safety be treated as exceptional? Nobody died from

failure of nuclear safety but they died in tens of thousands from

failure of general protection against the effect of a tsunami, about

which there is far less comment [66]. This blame game arises

from a preference to pin responsibility on someone rather than to

sit down and think carefully about what happened -- and whether

a nuclear radiation incident is worse than a tsunami. In more

stable parts of the world these natural forces represent no hazard

to a nuclear plant in any event. However, irrational fear and a

loss of trust in fellow human beings and the organisations for

which they are responsible show the presence of instabilities in

society, just as earthquakes show geologically unstable regions.

International reactions to Fukushima have indicated that many

countries suffer from such instability, whether through

inadequate public education, uninformed political leadership or a

lack of readiness among individuals to learn about the science

that affects their lives. In every community a few members of

society should find out and others should trust them. Mutual trust

is essential for human survival and there is no reason to treat

nuclear radiation safety as a special case.

Explanation or appeasement

A lack of public information and over-cautious radiation

regulations, mis-interpreted as danger levels, caused widespread

despair and misery at Chernobyl where the enforced evacuation

at short notice of the local agricultural population to distant and

unfamiliar accommodation was responsible for serious social

damage; the consequences of this dislocation have been

emphasised in recent reports [12]. The nuclear accident

highlighted the fractures inherent in Soviet society and when

Gorbachev reflected on the disaster it was the socio-economic

earthquake of the end of the Soviet era that he saw. Abroad, the

over-cautious regulations based on appeasing public opinion

caused serious economic damage, as admitted, for instance, in

the press by the authorities in Sweden in 2002 [28].

At Fukushima too there has been damage to families,

communities and the economy caused by the evacuation on top

of the destruction and death from the tsunami. The exposure

level (20 milli-sievert per year) used to define the evacuation

zone is too low and large numbers of people have been evacuated

who should not have been displaced. The criterion for such

invasive socio-economic surgery should be set relatively high,

perhaps up to 100 milli-sievert per month, which is still some

200 times smaller than the monthly dose rate received by the

healthy tissue of patients on a course of cancer therapy.

Evidently concerns for human health based on ALARA are out of

balance with concerns for human health applied in clinical

medicine. At Fukushima, as at Chernobyl, the principal threat to

health has come from fear, uncertainty and enforced evacuation,

not from radiation. In Japan official caution about radiation has

damaged many lives and generated extra socio-economic cost,

misery, recrimination and loss of trust in authorities.

We need better public explanation and realistic safety standards.

Currently these are set on the advice of the International

Committee for Radiological Protection (ICRP) “based on (i) the

current understanding of the science of radiation exposures and

effects and (ii) value judgements. These value judgements take

into account societal expectations, ethics, and experience” [65].

In the past ICRP has followed opinion rather than leading it, a

mistaken approach given the state of popular understanding of

radiation derived from the primitive picture left by last century's

political propaganda. After Chernobyl the chairman of ICRP

admitted that the approach of extra caution had failed (see final

pages of chapter 6). The ICRP has been urged to revise its

approach by academic national reviews [21,22] and others [41].

Accordingly, it should now show some leadership; safety levels

should be revised in the light of modern radiobiology and

supported with programmes of public re-education -- some in the

community are quite bright and welcome reasoned explanation.

The new levels should be as high as is relatively safe (AHARS)

rather than as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA). For their

sakes we need to educate young people for the dangers of the

21st century, not shackle them with the misunderstandings of the

20th. In a world of other dangers -- earthquakes, global warming,

economic collapse, shortages of jobs, power, food and water --

the expensive pursuit of the lowest possible radiation levels is in

the best interest of no one.

Thanks to Timo Budow