{"id":6808,"date":"2016-04-29T11:33:04","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T10:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6808"},"modified":"2016-04-29T11:33:04","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T10:33:04","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-radiation-danger-chernobyl-30-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6808","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week- radiation danger Chernobyl 30 years on"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the first post<\/a> I started giving some background information on radiation danger on the event of the 30th anniversary of Chernobyl.\u00a0 Most people accept the dangers of high doses of radiation.\u00a0 The disagreement<\/a> is over whether constant small doses of radiation are bad for you.\u00a0 This area is confusing with lots of\u00a0polemical websites putting opposite points of view.\u00a0 To add to the murk even for someone who has worked with radiation in the lab the units<\/a> used are confusing.\u00a0 A couple more background points (no pun intended) I need to made before we move on.\u00a0 The first is that we are constantly exposed to radiation all the time.\u00a0 The sources are from space (cosmic rays) and from naturally occurring radioisotopes in our bodies and environment.\u00a0 Even this background dose seems to be disputed with some people saying its about 6millisieverts\/year, others putting it lower at 1-3.\u00a0 It is said to have risen due to bomb tests and civil nuclear power.\u00a0 The second point is that radiation damage occurs by what is regarded as ionising radiation (that mentioned in the first post) forming free radicals.\u00a0 These are shortlived atom(s) with unusual and unstable number of unpaired electrons.\u00a0 They interact rapidly with chemicals in our body such as DNA damaging them.\u00a0 This can lead to cancers but also other effects such cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n

There are several areas of uncertainty when it comes to low doses.\u00a0 The first as was made plain in the letter given in the link above is where and how the dose is received.\u00a0 The unit dose for gamma rays and alpha particles could be the same but the alpha emitter must be swallowed or on the skin.\u00a0 Hence the dose could be delivered in a concentrated manner to one particular organ.\u00a0 The same dose of gamma over the whole body would likely not be as damaging.\u00a0 As an example of this I went to dentist today.\u00a0 He would not give me an X-ray since it was too soon after the last one.\u00a0 The dose would have been 0.1millisieverts which is not much in whole body terms, but of course I would be getting it on one small part of jaw.<\/p>\n

The second area of uncertainty arises from if you were living close to Chernobyl what particular isotope you ingested.\u00a0 I worked with Iodine-125 (the number refers to its atomic mass).\u00a0 This is a potent gamma emitter and is produced in nuclear reactors.\u00a0 Its leaked from reactors such as Calder Hall in the past.\u00a0 However the turnover of iodine in the thyroid gland is very high.\u00a0 We had a stock of iodine tablets, if you were irradiated you take some some of these and pee the radiation out.\u00a0 Radioactive sodium or elements chemically similar to it would be the same.\u00a0 The problem arises where the turnover is slow or almost non-existent.\u00a0 Radioactive carbon is one example and strontium which is similar enough to calcium to end up in the bone marrow is another.<\/p>\n

Another area of uncertainty is that the idea of a cumulative dose is hard to measure at low levels and hard to work with scientifically.<\/p>\n

The last problem is due to the ethics of exposing people to low levels of radiation.\u00a0 This tends to automatically limit the studies.\u00a0 Theses (such as they are) have used Japanese bomb survivors, Chernobyl cleanup workers, people living around nuclear plants and astronauts (the dose they receive cannot really be described as low though).<\/p>\n

The evidence stacks up as follows.\u00a0 There do seem to be more cancers in Nagasaki survivors who received low doses (see http:\/\/www.nap.edu\/read\/11340\/chapter\/2).\u00a0 There has been one very large study on Chernobyl clean up workers which claims a significant increase in Leukaemia rates.\u00a0 There have been some studies that have found Leukaemia rate increases around nuclear power plants.\u00a0 To the best of my knowledge there have been no major increases in cancer rates in astronauts.<\/p>\n

I would ask the following questions about the above.\u00a0 How did scientists determine the Nagasaki survivors dose retrospectively and know it was low?\u00a0\u00a0 On the Chernobyl workers as we wrote in our book<\/a> its hard in the ex-Soviet Union to determine whether someone has died of other causes due to the low life expectancy and very unhealthy lifestyles (its also difficult to get hold of such data in Russia).\u00a0 On the childhood Leukaemia rates the data does not always prove a link (in fact in this<\/a> table only one study does show a significant rate).\u00a0 The problem with these latter studies as you will see is that the numbers are so small.\u00a0 A small number of outliers can skew the stats.<\/p>\n

Looking into this from what I have found I don’t think the low level radiation dose theory is proven.\u00a0 However that does not mean I would want to live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone or think the scientific logic is flawed.\u00a0 Essentially at an individual level you are looking a random event.\u00a0 It takes changes to 3 or 4 genes to trigger cancer.\u00a0 Radiation could be the trigger for all or none of these, it depends where you are are and what you are in contact with.\u00a0 There is though a precautionary principle and many effects in biology are exponential i.e.\u00a0 a small trigger has a huge effect.\u00a0 There is no good reason to build more nuclear power stations for a variety of reasons -this is just another one. We may have to rely on space research to look for an answer here.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n

PS Incidentally I heard a epidemiologist on the 5pm news last night who confirmed my points on the Chernobyl workers it looks like there was an effect buts its hard to prove.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first post I started giving some background information on radiation danger on the event of the 30th anniversary of Chernobyl.\u00a0 Most people accept the dangers of high doses of radiation.\u00a0 The disagreement is over whether constant small doses … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[187,49,188],"class_list":["post-6808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chernobyl","tag-nuclear-power","tag-radiation"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week- radiation danger Chernobyl 30 years on - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6808\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6808\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6808\",\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week- radiation danger Chernobyl 30 years on - 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