5 ms·

neat, this analogy travels pretty far - user data is radioactive. theres a background amount of radiation. its everywhere, even in higher amounts than youd exp

neat, this analogy travels pretty far - user data is radioactive. theres a background amount of radiation. its everywhere, even in higher amounts than youd expect like bananas and airplanes. no amount is safe, but the risks are neglibly small when exposure is minimized. concentrated amounts can be safe when exposure is controlled and managed with oversight programs in place. disasters can be managed with disaster programs, but its still possible that unforseen problems can cause big issues. unregulated handling can poison local populations. corporate influence on government can be a problrm. what a comparison! there should be an award for this.

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
Ah, the linear no threshold theory of radiation. If background radiation is everywhere, how can there be no safe dose. It’s a fun analogy, but reinforces an incorrect assumption.
- rileymat2 5y ago
  Can’t it be like playing Russian roulette with a gun that has billions of chambers? The gun is always unsafe, but you will probably be fine? The higher the level, the more full chambers?
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    That's also the linear no threshold model. The risk of dying increases linearly with the number of bullets you load. A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign or even helpful.
    - emn13 5y ago
      I can't find any solid supporting sources that provide any evidence that there exists a positively safe dosage, but even the linear-no-threshold models suggest the effects of low dosages are small enough to be hard to measure; i.e. which model is correct is practically irrelevant for low enough (e.g. 1-10 mSv?) dosages.
      - aidenn0 5y ago
        Presumably there is some level of radiation at which if 100 million people were exposed to for 20 years, we would see measurable excess deaths with the linear no-threshold model, but not with other models. In particular the linear model treats chronic exposure as all the same; X amount for a week is the same as X/52 for a year.
        emn13 5y ago
        Yeah, the linearity in the dose seems more plausible than the linearity in time; and I don't understand why the two dimensions necessarily would be intrinsically linked.
    - ziddoap 5y ago
      >A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign or even helpful. Ah, the classic shoot yourself with small caliber bullets to build up an immunity against the larger caliber ones!
      - api 5y ago
        The radiation hormesis idea is controversial but that is a bad argument against it. Molecular scale events interacting with molecular scale DNA repair machinery is a different physical context than bullets. The body is hit by natural radiation all the time and so it has mechanisms for this. Not so much for macroscopic projectiles. The question is how these mechanisms behave and whether a small amount of radiation stimulates them… and then how much, for how long, etc. It’s a complex model with multiple systems and feedback loops.
        ziddoap 5y ago
        >The radiation hormesis idea is controversial but that is a bad argument against it Jokes don't translate well in ASCII, sorry. It's a (I thought) well known meme.
    - dspillett 5y ago
      > A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign Nothing in what others have said suggests low levels are deadly or even likely to be damaging, at leas not over the time frame of a human life as defined by the many things that can take us out. > or even helpful. A larger amount of something being damaging does not rule out a small amount being helpful, there just comes a point when the potential danger starts to outweigh the potential benefits. Water is very beneficial, necessary in fact, but too much of it over a short time will kill you.
- kryogen1c 5y ago
  > Ah, the linear no threshold theory of radiation. i wasnt aware this was contested. its what i was taught in the us nuclear navy. > If background radiation is everywhere, how can there be no safe dose. this is not a self-evident refutation and is a bad argument. cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in the US, meaning there is an even higher nonlethal occurance of cancer. this is not all radiations doing, but its hardly obvious that bathing in radiation your whole life is a "safe dose"
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    LNT is controversial because there is not enough data to support it. The data that we do have doesn't support any low-dose model conclusively as far as I know. The upside of this is the effects have to be very small, so it basically doesn't matter, because the risk of low-doses is effectively zero regardless the theory. The problem with LNT in terms of science communication is it's easy to make it sound as-if the risk isn't effectively zero.
    - kryogen1c 5y ago
      > it basically doesn't matter, because the risk of low-doses is effectively zero regardless this is exactly what i said in my original comment. I looked up competing LNT models. TIL about radiation hormesis. theoretically, near-zero but >0 levels of radiation activate dormant repair mechanisms that not only repair radiation damage, but also non-radiation damage; this results in a healthier host. interesting. having thought about this for all of 30 seconds, i wonder if both models arent simultaneously correct. if most radiation damage is repairable, activating dormant repair mechanisms with tiny amounts of radiation would be a net benefit. however, if there exists any possible irrepairable damage in any cell anywhere on your body regardless of otherwise functioning repair processes - which i dont know to be true but seems likely - then LNT could also be true concurrently with radiation hormesis.
- joshklein 5y ago
  The reason there is no safe dose is because even background levels of radiation will cause eventual health consequences, just not before another cause of death.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  Well depend what safe means. Maybe we d spend less energy in copy redundancy at the cellular level if werent bombarded non stop ?
- dspillett 5y ago
  > If background radiation is everywhere, how can there be no safe dose. Easy: there is no absolutely safe dose. At normal background levels the chance of it causing you significant trouble before something else has long since killed you off in some other way is practically zero so there effectively a “safe enough” dose. But if you are very very unlucky background levels could cause you an embuggerance that becomes life changing or life ending. It is more complicated than safe doses of most (but obviously not all) drugs/poisons/etc, because for most of the latter they are purged from your system in fairly short order assuming you survive the initial hit, so the next hit if there is one of equal strength is likely to have much the same effect. Radiation tends to hang around a lot longer so repeated exposure to higher levels builds up so the safe dose has to be stated “over time” rather than being simplified to a fixed dose perhaps related to your mass. There was a village (unfortunately I can't find the reference in a quick search ATM) where there was/is an unusually high incidence of thyroid cancer which was thought to be a genetic pre-disposition as the population stated from a fairly small gene pool, but is now thought to be because the background radiation in the area is a bit higher than elsewhere due to the makeup of the local ground rocks. The difference is nothing to worry about if passing through or visiting regularly, in fact the difference is small enough not to be a major concern to the locals, but a lifetime of the extra exposure is enough to at least be visible in certain health stats.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rvnx 5y ago
Isn't the typical storage and handling for Uranium quite safe and even safer than oil ? Triuranium octoxide (Yellowcake): Yellowcake is as radiologically harmless as natural potassium-carrying minerals or thorium-oxide mantles used in paraffin fuel lanterns.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  It can't be safer than oil, because nobody who wants to make a dirty bomb is trying to steal your oil.
  - Kye 5y ago
    In this growing analogy, developers collecting data mindlessly are descendants of Early Anthropocene humans discovering entombed nuclear fuel and not understanding or ignoring the dire warnings outside.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  Think nuclear reactors, not yellowcake.

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago

Ah, the linear no threshold theory of radiation. If background radiation is everywhere, how can there be no safe dose. It’s a fun analogy, but reinforces an incorrect assumption.

rileymat2 5y ago
Can’t it be like playing Russian roulette with a gun that has billions of chambers? The gun is always unsafe, but you will probably be fine? The higher the level, the more full chambers?
- aidenn0 5y ago
  That's also the linear no threshold model. The risk of dying increases linearly with the number of bullets you load. A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign or even helpful.
  - emn13 5y ago
    I can't find any solid supporting sources that provide any evidence that there exists a positively safe dosage, but even the linear-no-threshold models suggest the effects of low dosages are small enough to be hard to measure; i.e. which model is correct is practically irrelevant for low enough (e.g. 1-10 mSv?) dosages.
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      Presumably there is some level of radiation at which if 100 million people were exposed to for 20 years, we would see measurable excess deaths with the linear no-threshold model, but not with other models. In particular the linear model treats chronic exposure as all the same; X amount for a week is the same as X/52 for a year.
      - emn13 5y ago
        Yeah, the linearity in the dose seems more plausible than the linearity in time; and I don't understand why the two dimensions necessarily would be intrinsically linked.
  - ziddoap 5y ago
    >A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign or even helpful. Ah, the classic shoot yourself with small caliber bullets to build up an immunity against the larger caliber ones!
    - api 5y ago
      The radiation hormesis idea is controversial but that is a bad argument against it. Molecular scale events interacting with molecular scale DNA repair machinery is a different physical context than bullets. The body is hit by natural radiation all the time and so it has mechanisms for this. Not so much for macroscopic projectiles. The question is how these mechanisms behave and whether a small amount of radiation stimulates them… and then how much, for how long, etc. It’s a complex model with multiple systems and feedback loops.
      - ziddoap 5y ago
        >The radiation hormesis idea is controversial but that is a bad argument against it Jokes don't translate well in ASCII, sorry. It's a (I thought) well known meme.
  - dspillett 5y ago
    > A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign Nothing in what others have said suggests low levels are deadly or even likely to be damaging, at leas not over the time frame of a human life as defined by the many things that can take us out. > or even helpful. A larger amount of something being damaging does not rule out a small amount being helpful, there just comes a point when the potential danger starts to outweigh the potential benefits. Water is very beneficial, necessary in fact, but too much of it over a short time will kill you.
kryogen1c 5y ago
> Ah, the linear no threshold theory of radiation. i wasnt aware this was contested. its what i was taught in the us nuclear navy. > If background radiation is everywhere, how can there be no safe dose. this is not a self-evident refutation and is a bad argument. cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in the US, meaning there is an even higher nonlethal occurance of cancer. this is not all radiations doing, but its hardly obvious that bathing in radiation your whole life is a "safe dose"
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  LNT is controversial because there is not enough data to support it. The data that we do have doesn't support any low-dose model conclusively as far as I know. The upside of this is the effects have to be very small, so it basically doesn't matter, because the risk of low-doses is effectively zero regardless the theory. The problem with LNT in terms of science communication is it's easy to make it sound as-if the risk isn't effectively zero.
  - kryogen1c 5y ago
    > it basically doesn't matter, because the risk of low-doses is effectively zero regardless this is exactly what i said in my original comment. I looked up competing LNT models. TIL about radiation hormesis. theoretically, near-zero but >0 levels of radiation activate dormant repair mechanisms that not only repair radiation damage, but also non-radiation damage; this results in a healthier host. interesting. having thought about this for all of 30 seconds, i wonder if both models arent simultaneously correct. if most radiation damage is repairable, activating dormant repair mechanisms with tiny amounts of radiation would be a net benefit. however, if there exists any possible irrepairable damage in any cell anywhere on your body regardless of otherwise functioning repair processes - which i dont know to be true but seems likely - then LNT could also be true concurrently with radiation hormesis.
joshklein 5y ago
The reason there is no safe dose is because even background levels of radiation will cause eventual health consequences, just not before another cause of death.
xwolfi 5y ago
Well depend what safe means. Maybe we d spend less energy in copy redundancy at the cellular level if werent bombarded non stop ?
dspillett 5y ago
> If background radiation is everywhere, how can there be no safe dose. Easy: there is no absolutely safe dose. At normal background levels the chance of it causing you significant trouble before something else has long since killed you off in some other way is practically zero so there effectively a “safe enough” dose. But if you are very very unlucky background levels could cause you an embuggerance that becomes life changing or life ending. It is more complicated than safe doses of most (but obviously not all) drugs/poisons/etc, because for most of the latter they are purged from your system in fairly short order assuming you survive the initial hit, so the next hit if there is one of equal strength is likely to have much the same effect. Radiation tends to hang around a lot longer so repeated exposure to higher levels builds up so the safe dose has to be stated “over time” rather than being simplified to a fixed dose perhaps related to your mass. There was a village (unfortunately I can't find the reference in a quick search ATM) where there was/is an unusually high incidence of thyroid cancer which was thought to be a genetic pre-disposition as the population stated from a fairly small gene pool, but is now thought to be because the background radiation in the area is a bit higher than elsewhere due to the makeup of the local ground rocks. The difference is nothing to worry about if passing through or visiting regularly, in fact the difference is small enough not to be a major concern to the locals, but a lifetime of the extra exposure is enough to at least be visible in certain health stats.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rvnx 5y ago

Isn't the typical storage and handling for Uranium quite safe and even safer than oil ? Triuranium octoxide (Yellowcake): Yellowcake is as radiologically harmless as natural potassium-carrying minerals or thorium-oxide mantles used in paraffin fuel lanterns.

pessimizer 5y ago
It can't be safer than oil, because nobody who wants to make a dirty bomb is trying to steal your oil.
- Kye 5y ago
  In this growing analogy, developers collecting data mindlessly are descendants of Early Anthropocene humans discovering entombed nuclear fuel and not understanding or ignoring the dire warnings outside.
imwillofficial 5y ago
Think nuclear reactors, not yellowcake.