Nuclear Power Could Save The Planet

AS WE ALL KNOW, our American liberals see themselves as the “reality-based” community that believes in science rather than religious superstition and myths. If so, they will be interested in the emerging science of hormesis, the idea that small quantities of toxins, even those that kill at high concentrations, may actually be beneficial.

The principle was demonstrated by Dorothy L. Sayers in her Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Strong Poison. The not-very-lovely mystery novelist Harriet Vane is accused of poisoning her lover, the avant-garde novelist Philip Boyes, with arsenic. But it turns out it was the oily family lawyer Norman Urquart what done it. Over several months he had ingested small quantities of arsenic and developed a tolerance for the poison. So when he shared an omelette with Philip Boyes that was laced with the stuff, Boyes died in horrible pain while he experienced no ill effect.

It turns out that small amounts of nuclear radiation are beneficial too. Theo Richel reports that they are reducing the estimates of death from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Right now, it is estimated that about 4,000 people will die prematurely from exposure to Chernobyl. But it may be that the estimate of excess deaths will be one day be reduced to a deficit, because “many people in the area [will] not have cancer as a result of their extra doses of radiation.”

Only about 140 people around the reactor received very high doses (28 of them died as a result), the rest of the population received an extra dose that was lower than normal background radiation

The notion that any exposure to nuclear radiation would increase cancer death arose in a report in 1958 analyzing cancer deaths among the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The more radiation, scientists found, the bigger likelihood of cancer death.

But the question is, what happens as you lower the radiation dose. Does the likelihood of cancer reduce slowly toward zero?

Some people had received an amount of radiation that was about 50-100 times the normal, natural, background radiation that the rest of the Japanese receive (about 2.5 milliSieverts/year). In this group of so called Habakushas (bomb survivors) they could not find enough cancer deaths to create a decent statistic that showed radiation is carcinogenic even at these low doses. So the straight line of dose and effect suddenly stopped.

But the scientists didn’t say, well, we don’t know what happens at low doses. Instead, they extended their graph and invented a hypothesis called LNT (Linear no threshold). Radiation was dangerous all the way down.

But maybe they were wrong.

In the past half century it became clear that there are many places on earth where background radiation is 50, 100 or more times higher than the sea level average of 2.5 milliSievert... In all these places epidemiological studies were started and they produced a remarkably consistent picture: the people there have either the same or a slightly lower chance of cancer compared to their less-irradiated countrymen. They live just as long or a little bit longer.

You can see that this rather makes a mess of the nuclear meltdown hypothesis, celebrated on stage and screen. If Chernobyl caused no excess deaths, except for the people actually at the reactor attempting to contain the meltdown, then why are we worried about radiation from nuclear plants and from nuclear waste disposal sites?

Naturally, all you folk in the “reality-based” community will be eager to understand the emerging science of hormesis, and you will want to seek additional information here and here.

Imagine. Maybe hormesis points the way to solving the nightmare of global warming. Instead of burning fossil fuels to power our cars and homes and destroying the planet, we could use nuclear power. Because hey, a little extra radiation might do us good. And it could save the planet.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.