Ten Nuclear Misconceptions - Part Two of Two Parts
Part Two of Two Parts. (Please read Part One first.)
Yesterday, I posted the first part of my comments on comments on a list of misconceptions about nuclear power. Today I finish my comments on the list. This list was published on the listverse.com website.
5) The radiation risks from cell phone use are well understood and publicized. There has been a long debate over whether or not cell phones pose a threat to human health. Scientific studies suggest that they might depending on the amount of radiation exposure. The FCC in the U.S. has published standards for the maximum radiation that a cell phone should emit based on the specific absorption rate (SAR) of a human head next to a cell phone. Manufacturers are supposed to measure the radiation of their specific models of phones and put that information in their manuals. The problem with this approach is that many manufactures recommend holding the phone much farther away from the ear than most people do in practice. People who read the published SAR ratings do not understand that the SAR rating system of the FCC is based on holding the phones in a very specific way at a specific distance that may not used when the manufactures test their phone. Users cannot rely on the SAR numbers published in their user manuals to assess the relative risk of the use of that particular model of cell phone.
4) There is a type of energy production originally called "cold fusion" that could provide safe and cheap energy. Around twenty years ago, a couple of scientists claimed that they had developed a device that produced more energy than was fed into it by a process they dubbed "cold fusion." Subsequent experiments failed to duplicate the process and cold fusion was dismissed as a fraud. As more time passed, some researchers were able to produce some energy in their labs with similar approaches to the original experiments but the results were ambiguous and difficult to replicate. No generally accepted theory has been advanced that could account for the successful new experiments. Currently, there is a company in Italy which is claiming that they have a reliable way to produce energy with this mysterious process and that it will be on the market soon. Skeptics are still not convinced that there is anything to these claims.
3) Prolonged exposure to low levels of radiation are not harmful. There is an ongoing debate about whether or not low levels of radiation are harmful. There is naturally occurring background radiation from uranium and cosmic rays every where on Earth that varies from place to place. Experiments and studies have yielded different results. Some scientists think that not only is the natural background radiation not harmful but that it may have beneficial health effects. Other scientists feel that there is no level of radiation exposure that is totally safe, especially in the long term. A recent metastudy of health problems and natural radiation levels seemed to indicate that there was a direct relationship between radiation levels in the environment and a host of health problems. This study appears to validate the idea that any radiation exposure may cause damage to human health but some people may be unaffected.
2) Environmental increases in radioactivity are mainly the result of nuclear accidents. People assume that the increase in radioactivity in the natural environment in the past 60 years is due to major nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Actually, the overwhelming additional radioactive materials in the natural environment caused by human activity can be attributed to fallout from the more than two thousand nuclear bombs that have been exploded since the beginning of the nuclear age in the 1940s.
1) North Korea's nuclear weapons program is not a serious threat to the world. When North Korea embarked on its quest to create nuclear weapons, the world was skeptical that such a backward country could have the scientific knowledge and equipment to be successful. Over the years, the North Koreans have continued to surprise the world as they did develop and test nuclear bombs. They are also making progress on missile technology and the miniaturization of their bombs to make warheads. Recently, an article was published that claimed that North Korea may soon have missiles with nuclear warheads that could reach the west coast of the United States. Obviously the skeptics were wrong and North Korea does pose a serious threat to the world.
