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I think a big part of what makes people so afraid of radiation is how easy it is to detect. Imagine if you had a geiger counter that detected Dioxin, Benzine, o

I think a big part of what makes people so afraid of radiation is how easy it is to detect. Imagine if you had a geiger counter that detected Dioxin, Benzine, or PFAS contamination? It would be going off pretty much constantly. You can detect radioactive materials with a cheap detector, where you need an entire lab to find regular poisons, which doesn't help with our lack of ability to assess risk. For example, people side-eye me when I tell them that I have a collection of Uranium glass sitting on a shelf in my house. They assess that risk to be much worse than say, owning Teflon cookware. It's not hyperbole to say that that other forms of pollution kill more people every day than nuclear radiation has in the entire history of atomic power production. But most people don't have the same resistance to an oil refinery or steel factory that they do to a nuclear power station.

bayesian_horse 4y ago
It is not easy to detect UNLESS you have a geiger counter. Those Russian soldiers dug trenches around Tchernobyl blissfully unawhere of any problems. They carried the dirt into the dwellings and labs where people still have to work, causing ongoing problems. If you don't decontaminate and check everything, then any radioactive dirt that gets stuck on you or your equipment can do its damage for a long time. Worse is when you somehow ingest it and it stays inside. Does happen.
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  Except, of course, that the story about the Russian soldiers in Chornobyl was completely made up. > any radioactive dirt that gets stuck on you or your equipment can do its damage for a long time If it's outside of your body ,at the level that remains after 3 decades in Chornobyl, it's completely harmless. It starts causing problem if you ingest it, *and your body metabolizes it* (which is the big problem with iodine, but radioactive iodine has a very short half life and is completely gone now). And even in that scenario, you'll suffer from a cancer many years after, that's bad but that's also very far from the made up stories about soldiers' acute irradiation).
  - amiga-workbench 4y ago
    > Except, of course, that the story about the Russian soldiers in Chornobyl was completely made up. There are satellite photos of trenches dug around the red forest where Russian soldiers had deployed?
    - littlestymaar 4y ago
      The made up story was talking about those soldiers getting radiation sickness (which requires radiation levels millions time higher than the one you'd find there). If the Russian soldiers get problems from their trench digging endeavor, it won't be seen before many years, when a small percentage of them starts getting cancer. (needless to say, the increases mortality from the said cancers will be negligible compared to the mortality induced by being invading soldiers in Ukraine).
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        Your blazée atittude on radiation safety reminds me of Homer Simpson. There is no way to know what radiation dose they got. Their activities increased the ambient radiation levels, but not extremely. But the soldiers themselves probably got quite a bit more since they came into direct contact with contaminated material. A few of them almost certainly got non-trivial doses on parts of their bodies. We don't know if any got radiation sickness, and I don't know of any source that said so. If they did, Russia would keep it quiet. The point of the story is that such a site remains a problem for millenia and people have to pay attention. If you don't want the dirt to travel further, you have to somehow remove it and store it more safely to keep it from circulating. That's what they are doing in Fukushima because they can't afford the same size of permanent exclusion zone. Another point is that the Russians put their artillery pieces near nuclear power plants. They discovered that the Ukrainians wouldn't shoot back when they fire from there. Funny that.
        littlestymaar 4y ago
        > There is no way to know what radiation dose they got. […] We don't know if any got radiation sickness We cannot know an exact figure for that, but we know they cannot by any means get radiation sickness, because the radiation level that it would have need is many orders of magnitude higher than what can be found there. You have no idea of how tall I am, but you can be 100% certain that I'm lying if I pretend I'm two thousand kilometers tall! (that's the order of magnitude we're talking about) > The point of the story is that such a site remains a problem for millenia and people have to pay attention. This sentence is still wrong. Cesium 137 half-life is around 30 years. In 300 years, the amount remaining would be 1000 times lower than it currently is. In 900 years, that's 1 billion lower, which means that almost every single atom will be gone. > Another point is that the Russians put their artillery pieces near nuclear power plants. They discovered that the Ukrainians wouldn't shoot back when they fire from there. Funny that. Obviously nobody wants to destroy a nuclear plant, and no-one said a nuclear plant accident wasn't bad, it's just far from the pop-culture depiction of it. It doesn't last for millennia and doesn't cause a mushroom cloud either. Talking about artillery, you know what last for millennia, leaving empty exclusion zones no-one talks about? Contamination from artillery shells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge Given that both sides are using uranium-based APFSDS munitions, we'll more likely see more radiation-induced casualties from exposure to depleted uranium than from people digging in the red forest, or even maybe more than from the fallout of Chornobyl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Iraqi_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Iraqi_populat...
adrian_b 4y ago
Most people are not aware that carbon, potassium and calcium are radioactive elements. Despite that, our body contains large quantities of them. Like also for the chemical toxins, the dangers of radiation depend on the dose, and we should not worry when it is low enough. Also platinum is a radioactive element, but those who wear platinum jewelry are seldom aware of this. All computer displays are slightly radioactive, because the ITO transparent electrodes contain indium, which is a radioactive element too. The ceramic kitchen knives are slightly radioactive, because their blades are made of zirconia, and both zirconium and hafnium are radioactive elements (all Zr, unless specially purified for nuclear reactors, contains Hf).
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Someone has downvoted this, but I cannot understand the reason, unless it was due to ignorance. Everything written above are facts, not opinions. They are little known facts, which is why I have mentioned them. Uranium and thorium are the most radioactive among the elements that have survived since the creation of the Solar System, but they are not the only radioactive primordial elements, there are many others. Most people who are afraid of radiation do not realize how many of the surrounding objects are radioactive, without being dangerous because of that.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    You were downvoted because, whether or not they understand the numbers or know the names, most people understand that long lived bioaccumulative high activity alpha emitters like Tc99, Cs137 or Pu240 are really, really bad. Obvious half truths and misdirections told in a really arrogant way then re-enforce the idea that anyone telling them any amount of radiation is safe is deliberately trying to mislead them, and so they wind up trusting nobody. They then correctly infer that the liar is malicious and trying to scam them. So all in all they get to the right place even if it is for the wrong reasons.
  - hcknwscommenter 4y ago
    Typically, when one refers to an element as "radioactive" one is either referring to a particular isotope that is radioactive (e.g., C14) or an element in which the most abundant naturally occurring isotope(s) are radioactive (e.g., U). To call "carbon" radioactive, is technically true I suppose depending on your view but the level of radioactivity in natural carbon is so low that it is an almost meaningless truth. Potassium and calcium have a bit more natural radioactivity, but still it poses no health issues. The other elements you list are essentially the same, except perhaps Halfnium (have not checked). Heck by the definition you seem to be using of the term "radioactive element", I do not think there exists a non-radioactive element. Of course, you are correct that the dangers of radioactivity depend on the dose. But your message is diminished by overly emphasizing the radioactivity in carbon and other naturally occurring elements that pose zero health risk and frankly are so very non-radioactive in a relative sense.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
The eye opener for me was, when i read that one overheated teflon cookware kills all birds in a whole area. https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluoroethylene-poisoning-in-birds https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluor... Its like a trenchwarfare coated nightmare.
reason-mr 4y ago
The current proposed sample size is small in comparison to the required waste storage lifetime ….

bayesian_horse 4y ago

It is not easy to detect UNLESS you have a geiger counter. Those Russian soldiers dug trenches around Tchernobyl blissfully unawhere of any problems. They carried the dirt into the dwellings and labs where people still have to work, causing ongoing problems. If you don't decontaminate and check everything, then any radioactive dirt that gets stuck on you or your equipment can do its damage for a long time. Worse is when you somehow ingest it and it stays inside. Does happen.

littlestymaar 4y ago
Except, of course, that the story about the Russian soldiers in Chornobyl was completely made up. > any radioactive dirt that gets stuck on you or your equipment can do its damage for a long time If it's outside of your body ,at the level that remains after 3 decades in Chornobyl, it's completely harmless. It starts causing problem if you ingest it, *and your body metabolizes it* (which is the big problem with iodine, but radioactive iodine has a very short half life and is completely gone now). And even in that scenario, you'll suffer from a cancer many years after, that's bad but that's also very far from the made up stories about soldiers' acute irradiation).
- amiga-workbench 4y ago
  > Except, of course, that the story about the Russian soldiers in Chornobyl was completely made up. There are satellite photos of trenches dug around the red forest where Russian soldiers had deployed?
  - littlestymaar 4y ago
    The made up story was talking about those soldiers getting radiation sickness (which requires radiation levels millions time higher than the one you'd find there). If the Russian soldiers get problems from their trench digging endeavor, it won't be seen before many years, when a small percentage of them starts getting cancer. (needless to say, the increases mortality from the said cancers will be negligible compared to the mortality induced by being invading soldiers in Ukraine).
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      Your blazée atittude on radiation safety reminds me of Homer Simpson. There is no way to know what radiation dose they got. Their activities increased the ambient radiation levels, but not extremely. But the soldiers themselves probably got quite a bit more since they came into direct contact with contaminated material. A few of them almost certainly got non-trivial doses on parts of their bodies. We don't know if any got radiation sickness, and I don't know of any source that said so. If they did, Russia would keep it quiet. The point of the story is that such a site remains a problem for millenia and people have to pay attention. If you don't want the dirt to travel further, you have to somehow remove it and store it more safely to keep it from circulating. That's what they are doing in Fukushima because they can't afford the same size of permanent exclusion zone. Another point is that the Russians put their artillery pieces near nuclear power plants. They discovered that the Ukrainians wouldn't shoot back when they fire from there. Funny that.
      - littlestymaar 4y ago
        > There is no way to know what radiation dose they got. […] We don't know if any got radiation sickness We cannot know an exact figure for that, but we know they cannot by any means get radiation sickness, because the radiation level that it would have need is many orders of magnitude higher than what can be found there. You have no idea of how tall I am, but you can be 100% certain that I'm lying if I pretend I'm two thousand kilometers tall! (that's the order of magnitude we're talking about) > The point of the story is that such a site remains a problem for millenia and people have to pay attention. This sentence is still wrong. Cesium 137 half-life is around 30 years. In 300 years, the amount remaining would be 1000 times lower than it currently is. In 900 years, that's 1 billion lower, which means that almost every single atom will be gone. > Another point is that the Russians put their artillery pieces near nuclear power plants. They discovered that the Ukrainians wouldn't shoot back when they fire from there. Funny that. Obviously nobody wants to destroy a nuclear plant, and no-one said a nuclear plant accident wasn't bad, it's just far from the pop-culture depiction of it. It doesn't last for millennia and doesn't cause a mushroom cloud either. Talking about artillery, you know what last for millennia, leaving empty exclusion zones no-one talks about? Contamination from artillery shells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge Given that both sides are using uranium-based APFSDS munitions, we'll more likely see more radiation-induced casualties from exposure to depleted uranium than from people digging in the red forest, or even maybe more than from the fallout of Chornobyl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Iraqi_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Iraqi_populat...

adrian_b 4y ago

Most people are not aware that carbon, potassium and calcium are radioactive elements. Despite that, our body contains large quantities of them. Like also for the chemical toxins, the dangers of radiation depend on the dose, and we should not worry when it is low enough. Also platinum is a radioactive element, but those who wear platinum jewelry are seldom aware of this. All computer displays are slightly radioactive, because the ITO transparent electrodes contain indium, which is a radioactive element too. The ceramic kitchen knives are slightly radioactive, because their blades are made of zirconia, and both zirconium and hafnium are radioactive elements (all Zr, unless specially purified for nuclear reactors, contains Hf).

adrian_b 4y ago
Someone has downvoted this, but I cannot understand the reason, unless it was due to ignorance. Everything written above are facts, not opinions. They are little known facts, which is why I have mentioned them. Uranium and thorium are the most radioactive among the elements that have survived since the creation of the Solar System, but they are not the only radioactive primordial elements, there are many others. Most people who are afraid of radiation do not realize how many of the surrounding objects are radioactive, without being dangerous because of that.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  You were downvoted because, whether or not they understand the numbers or know the names, most people understand that long lived bioaccumulative high activity alpha emitters like Tc99, Cs137 or Pu240 are really, really bad. Obvious half truths and misdirections told in a really arrogant way then re-enforce the idea that anyone telling them any amount of radiation is safe is deliberately trying to mislead them, and so they wind up trusting nobody. They then correctly infer that the liar is malicious and trying to scam them. So all in all they get to the right place even if it is for the wrong reasons.
- hcknwscommenter 4y ago
  Typically, when one refers to an element as "radioactive" one is either referring to a particular isotope that is radioactive (e.g., C14) or an element in which the most abundant naturally occurring isotope(s) are radioactive (e.g., U). To call "carbon" radioactive, is technically true I suppose depending on your view but the level of radioactivity in natural carbon is so low that it is an almost meaningless truth. Potassium and calcium have a bit more natural radioactivity, but still it poses no health issues. The other elements you list are essentially the same, except perhaps Halfnium (have not checked). Heck by the definition you seem to be using of the term "radioactive element", I do not think there exists a non-radioactive element. Of course, you are correct that the dangers of radioactivity depend on the dose. But your message is diminished by overly emphasizing the radioactivity in carbon and other naturally occurring elements that pose zero health risk and frankly are so very non-radioactive in a relative sense.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

The eye opener for me was, when i read that one overheated teflon cookware kills all birds in a whole area. https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluoroethylene-poisoning-in-birds https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluor... Its like a trenchwarfare coated nightmare.

reason-mr 4y ago

The current proposed sample size is small in comparison to the required waste storage lifetime ….