Btw, back then the substance most frequently mentioned was indeed cesium. Certainly not enough to make many people sick, but those who couldn’t wean themselves from mushrooms and venison probably absorbed more cesium than was good for them.

“The fact remains that many, if not most, countries can’t be trusted with the technology, if only because of carelessness with fissionable materials or nuclear waste.”

I do agree whole hearted with this sentence. Many countries of the world cannot even manage the technology necessary to keep their roads paved much less manage nuclear technology.

Technological artifacts like reactors or roads don’t exist in a vacuum. Such artifacts require not only technical knowhow but also organizational management. The lack of a political and managerial “ecosystem” if you will is the major reason that so many areas have trouble effectively using technologies of many kinds.

but what about small amounts of isotopes that still give you several times the dosis you normally get?”

Radioactive substances must be in a form that the body will absorb and integrate before they become dangerous in the tiny quantities that people more than a few kilometers from a disaster site are likely to encounter.

Uranium for example, is not used by any of the bodies natural process, nor is it chemically close to any elements that used. Any uranium that is absorbed by the body will be rapidly expelled before it has a chance to cause much exposure.

The most dangerous of trace isotopes are those of elements like iodine, strontium or cesium. Iodine is used by the body to make thyroid hormones and strontium and cesium are chemically close to calcium and therefor integrate into the bones. Even so, only trace amounts of the elements will occur in any given nuclear pile as they are only naturally occurring impurities in the original materials. Therefor, the amount of such dangerous materials that could be released by the complete vaporization of an entire nuclear reactor would be at the most on the order of a few dozen grams. (Transmutation of local elements into their radioactive isotopes is possible but not significant in the case of a reactor failure.)

Taking iodine and calcium supplements can prevent the body for storing the isotopes and dramatically reduce the risk even if the absolute quantity of isotopes is extremely high.

Chernobyl was such a localized disaster because the reactor was a graphite one with no containment. It didn’t melt down but rather burned, sending a plume of uranium filled smoke over the surrounding area. You could not have gotten better dispersal of the contents of the reactor if you had used a crop duster.

It is technically correct to say that chernobyl sent a cloud of radioactive material all over Europe but that is like saying the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China influence the weather in Texas to some extent. Radioactive material was detectable but that is because our instruments can detectable materials down to the 1 part in a billion or better. That is much different from saying that enough radioactivity spread across the rest of Europe to actually cause anyone to suffer any health consequences.

One researchers I read years ago pointed out that statistically more people died from stress and fear related illnesses because they feared radiation poisoning than could have possibly died (or will ever die) from the actual radiation.

Radiation simply isn’t the boggy man than so many people think it is. There are many chemical compounds in common use that are far more deadly in the same quantities to which you are far more likely to be exposed.

This planet is radioactive. Every day we ingest radioactive isotopes. We have defense mechanisms that limit damage from ionizing radiation. Though many won’t accept it, there is a threshold effect for radioactivity induced illnesses. Even if this planet wasn’t radioactive, people will still die of cancer. Since we have reduced the impact of trauma and infections, we now have more people living to ages where vascular diseases, cancers, and other ‘degenerative’ diseases are prominent causes of death. We should never forget that we are mortal man doomed to die. It is only a matter of how and when.

Ionizing radiation is one of the best-understood carcinogens out there. After six-plus decades of studying the death and morbidity rates among hundreds of thousands of people exposed to known quantities of radiation (from watch-dial painters and early X-Ray technicians to nuclear shipyard workers and Japanese A-bomb casualties), researchers have developed very accurate statistical predictions of how much radiation it will take to kill, injure, or eventually cause cancer in a certain proportion of those exposed.

I’m no expert, but what about ingesting or inhaling small doses of radioactive isotopes? If I’m not mistaken the inverse square law says that people with such isotopes in their bodies, even in very small amounts, would get a disproportianally dosis, even if it just in a very localized way. If it possible to check for that? I’m asking because, for example, mushrooms and venison were, if only lightly radioactive. Particles from Chernobyl aslo rained dowwn all over Europe.

Like I said in the post above, I support the of nuclear power, but I’m a bit dubious to some of the potential effects. It can also be pretty hard to get a straight answer out of the officlail experts around here, who’ll dismiss any worries, while the environmenatalists mostly just try to alarm people.

Ionizing radiation is one of the best-understood carcinogens out there. After six-plus decades of studying the death and morbidity rates among hundreds of thousands of people exposed to known quantities of radiation (from watch-dial painters and early X-Ray technicians to nuclear shipyard workers and Japanese A-bomb casualties), researchers have developed very accurate statistical predictions of how much radiation it will take to kill, injure, or eventually cause cancer in a certain proportion of those exposed. At Chernobyl, the great majority of people in the surrounding towns were exposed to radiation levels much higher than normal, that much is true, but here’s the thing: even those levels were nowhere near the threshold required to cause the effects reported by anti-nuclear organizations. A similar effect was observed among A-bomb survivors in Japan: the cancer rate spiked briefly among those most heavily exposed, then settled back to normal, and many are alive to this day.

Anti-nuclear organizations have been very successful in propagating the belief that Chernobyl caused tens of thousands of deaths, birth defects, and the like, but there is no empirical or theoretical basis for believing this to be true. They have probably caused much more harm by instilling panic and stress among those displaced by the disaster, than were ever killed by radiation.