4 ms·

EVERYTHING around us is contaminated in some way or another. We are constantly bombarded by cosmic radiation with doses far in excess of the expose you will get

EVERYTHING around us is contaminated in some way or another. We are constantly bombarded by cosmic radiation with doses far in excess of the expose you will get from eating those mushrooms. Below 100mSv, there is "no evidence" that exposure leads to any elevation of cancer risk. At levels covered by the article, ie 1000Bq/kg / 80000 Bq/mSv = 0.0125 mSv/kg. In other words, you can eat 8 tons of those mush before there is any measurable increase in cancer risk. And breating the air in Berlin for 1 year is MUCH more dangerous than eating those 8000 kg of mushrooms. (Not to speak about taking a single shot of covid vaccine.) In other words, dispite being scientifically "true", the net effect of an article like this, is to mislead people into thinking that radiation is a lot more dangerous than it is in reality. If nuclear were to be treated like other health hazards in our environment, the thresholds should be set somewhere between 10000-100000Bq/kg, depending on how much people would eat of that food in a year, not at 600Bq/kg.

layer8 4y ago
The website is official information from the German federal agency for radiation protection. While the risk now is low, and the article is actually giving a useful comparison to radiation exposure in airplane travel, you probably still wouldn’t want to eat those mushrooms or game every day, and the contamination was much higher in the first months/years after Chernobyl. The overall point is that the impact was not restricted to a 50 mile radius as suggested by the GP.
- trashtester 4y ago
  > you probably still wouldn’t want to eat those mushrooms or game every day For the mushrooms, as a side order, even every day would be harmless. If you follow some stone age diet, eating only meat, then MAYBE eating those boars every day might cause a measurable increase in cancer risk. Probably still less than simply breathing the air in a city, though. > and the contamination was much higher in the first months/years after Chernobyl In the first days and months after Chernobyl, there were real reasons to be somewhat careful. That was before the short-lived isotopes had decayed. Once the decays of those isotopes took over, and Cs-137 became the main source, the levels were pretty safe, even if they were double compared to today (the half-life of Cs137 is 30 years). > The overall point is that the impact was not restricted to a 50 mile radius as suggested by the GP. And this is where my main objection is. The "impact" as counted in measurable increase in cancer risk, is nil. By employing the ultra-conservative "linear no-threshold model" (LNT) of radiatino risk, then theoretically, over a very large population, you could calculate some number of expected cancer cases. But there is (last time I checked) no consensus that the LNT hypothesis matches data better than a null-hypothesis that doses under about 100mSv are harmless. In any case, at that level, the risk for any given individual is so small, that it disappears next to any other risk you can imagine from pollutants or similar, so there is no reason to take such hypothetical risks into account for your personal behavior.
karmakurtisaani 4y ago
How radioactive are covid vaccines?
- trashtester 4y ago
  They are bioactive, not very radioactive....
  - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    Then why bring them up here at all? I hope it's not to push some backwards anti-vaccine bs.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      Quite the contrary. It is based on the obvious premise that it's a good idea to get vaccinated. Just because it is well known that vaccines come with a tiny, tiny risk of some complication doesn't mean we should not take them. They save a lot more lives than they take. is the same as Just because it is well know that nuclear power come with a tiny, tiny risk of some complication doesn't mean we should not use it. It saves a lot more lives than it takes.
      - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
        Ah ok, thanks for clarifying!
ncmncm 4y ago
Arguing that leaked radioactive contamination is less harmful than often assumed does not make habitually leaky nukes seem any more attractive, vs. alternatives that leak nothing hazardous at all, ever.
- skrbjc 4y ago
  " the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy" From: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... We seem to have been fine burning coal and not thinking about the radiation that puts into the surrounding environment. It's also disingenuous to think that there aren't negative environmental externalities from the production and operation of "renewables". All forms of energy production will have some negative consequences and we need to understand what those are and think of ways to mitigate them, rather than just pointing to what's bad about one form and ignore what's bad about others.
  - alar44 4y ago
    Yeah but that coal radiation is tiny! Nuclear reactor radiation is big! It's like a kid preferring 5 nickels to 2 quarters because 5 is more.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Both are irrelevant. Twittering about them is disingenuous.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Coal is on the way out, so immaterial to argument now. Only just enough coal is burnt to fill in for insufficiently built-out renewables and storage. In many places that role is being moved to NG. The immediate hiccup is a short-term setback that will be fixed the way we are doing, building out renewables, later storage.
basicplus2 4y ago
These different radiation types are NOT equivalent.
- trashtester 4y ago
  The purpose of the Sievert scale is precisely to to provide a measure that enables equivalent comparisons of radiation doses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert Even if it's not perfectly accurate, it's probably quite close.

layer8 4y ago

The website is official information from the German federal agency for radiation protection. While the risk now is low, and the article is actually giving a useful comparison to radiation exposure in airplane travel, you probably still wouldn’t want to eat those mushrooms or game every day, and the contamination was much higher in the first months/years after Chernobyl. The overall point is that the impact was not restricted to a 50 mile radius as suggested by the GP.

trashtester 4y ago
> you probably still wouldn’t want to eat those mushrooms or game every day For the mushrooms, as a side order, even every day would be harmless. If you follow some stone age diet, eating only meat, then MAYBE eating those boars every day might cause a measurable increase in cancer risk. Probably still less than simply breathing the air in a city, though. > and the contamination was much higher in the first months/years after Chernobyl In the first days and months after Chernobyl, there were real reasons to be somewhat careful. That was before the short-lived isotopes had decayed. Once the decays of those isotopes took over, and Cs-137 became the main source, the levels were pretty safe, even if they were double compared to today (the half-life of Cs137 is 30 years). > The overall point is that the impact was not restricted to a 50 mile radius as suggested by the GP. And this is where my main objection is. The "impact" as counted in measurable increase in cancer risk, is nil. By employing the ultra-conservative "linear no-threshold model" (LNT) of radiatino risk, then theoretically, over a very large population, you could calculate some number of expected cancer cases. But there is (last time I checked) no consensus that the LNT hypothesis matches data better than a null-hypothesis that doses under about 100mSv are harmless. In any case, at that level, the risk for any given individual is so small, that it disappears next to any other risk you can imagine from pollutants or similar, so there is no reason to take such hypothetical risks into account for your personal behavior.

karmakurtisaani 4y ago

How radioactive are covid vaccines?

trashtester 4y ago
They are bioactive, not very radioactive....
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  Then why bring them up here at all? I hope it's not to push some backwards anti-vaccine bs.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    Quite the contrary. It is based on the obvious premise that it's a good idea to get vaccinated. Just because it is well known that vaccines come with a tiny, tiny risk of some complication doesn't mean we should not take them. They save a lot more lives than they take. is the same as Just because it is well know that nuclear power come with a tiny, tiny risk of some complication doesn't mean we should not use it. It saves a lot more lives than it takes.
    - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
      Ah ok, thanks for clarifying!

ncmncm 4y ago

Arguing that leaked radioactive contamination is less harmful than often assumed does not make habitually leaky nukes seem any more attractive, vs. alternatives that leak nothing hazardous at all, ever.

skrbjc 4y ago
" the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy" From: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... We seem to have been fine burning coal and not thinking about the radiation that puts into the surrounding environment. It's also disingenuous to think that there aren't negative environmental externalities from the production and operation of "renewables". All forms of energy production will have some negative consequences and we need to understand what those are and think of ways to mitigate them, rather than just pointing to what's bad about one form and ignore what's bad about others.
- alar44 4y ago
  Yeah but that coal radiation is tiny! Nuclear reactor radiation is big! It's like a kid preferring 5 nickels to 2 quarters because 5 is more.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Both are irrelevant. Twittering about them is disingenuous.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Coal is on the way out, so immaterial to argument now. Only just enough coal is burnt to fill in for insufficiently built-out renewables and storage. In many places that role is being moved to NG. The immediate hiccup is a short-term setback that will be fixed the way we are doing, building out renewables, later storage.

basicplus2 4y ago

These different radiation types are NOT equivalent.

trashtester 4y ago
The purpose of the Sievert scale is precisely to to provide a measure that enables equivalent comparisons of radiation doses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert Even if it's not perfectly accurate, it's probably quite close.