Antinuclear

We see this especially in Australia, where the industry is conducting a whatever-it-takes propaganda campaign to ensure that nothing stands in the way of vast profits to be made from continuing to export uranium; from the plan to establish a radioactive waste dump at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory; and from the industry’s desire to dot the continent with reactors.

Proponents of nuclear power – including George Monbiot, who has had a mysterious road-to-Damascus conversion to its supposedly benign effects – accuse me and others of ”cherry-picking” data and overstating the health effects of radiation. Yet by reassuring the public that things aren’t too bad, Monbiot and others misrepresent and distort the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of radiation exposure.

Their first piece of disinformation is to confuse the effects of external and internal radiation. The former is what populations were exposed to when atomic bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Internal radiation, by contrast, emanates from radioactive elements that enter the body by inhalation, ingestion or by skin absorption The grave effects of internal emitters are of the most profound concern at Fukushima – as indeed they continue to be at Chernobyl. It is erroneous and misleading to use the term ”acceptable levels of external radiation” in assessing internal radiation doses. To do so is to propagate inaccuracies and to mislead the public worldwide and journalists who are seeking the truth about radiation’s hazards.n, or skin absorption. Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer.

Further, many remain radioactive in the environment for long periods, posing danger for future generations.

Further, nuclear industry proponents assert that low doses of radiation produce no ill effects and are therefore safe. But, as a US National Academy of Sciences report concluded in 2007, no dose of radiation is safe, however small, including background radiation; exposure is cumulative, so that each dose (whether, for example, from a medical x-ray or from passing through the whole-body scanners soon to be introduced in Australian airports) adds to an individual’s risk of developing cancer during his or her lifetime.

Regarding Chernobyl, various seemingly reputable groups have issued differing reports on the morbidity and mortalities resulting from the 1986 radiation catastrophe. The World Health Organisation in 2005 attributed only 43 human deaths directly to the disaster and estimated an additional 4000 fatal cancers. In contrast, a 2009 report published by the New York Academy of Sciences comes to a very different conclusion. Its scientist authors estimated the number of deaths attributable to the Chernobyl meltdown at about 980,000.

Monbiot wrongly dismisses the report out of hand as worthless, but to ignore and denigrate an entire body of literature is arrogant and irresponsible……http://www.thedailysheeple.com/fukushima-nuclear-apologists-play-shoot-the-messenger-on-radiation_032013