A long and detailed YouTube video by Kyle Hill about how an outdated principle of “there is no safe level of ionizing radiation” still pervades nuclear and radiation policy in spite of continuously mounting scientific evidence to the contrary, contributing to unnecessarily great caution with things like medical imaging, and to negative public perception and panic regarding nuclear power.
The TL;DW is that there is a mountain of evidence that small doses of radiation are harmless due to the body’s natural defenses and self-repair mechanisms, and in fact according to many studies small doses may in fact reduce the risk of cancer compared to baseline rather than increase it (a phenomenon known as hormesis).
It’s the downstream effects of your message that I’m worried about. We shouldn’t get sloppy with nuclear material. Suggesting that a little radiation exposure isn’t bad or a little water contamination isn’t bad, while perhaps technically correct, can lead to sloppiness and eroding standards. People should be afraid of radiation so they respect it.
No one is suggesting to get sloppy with nuclear material or advocating for some bizarre Fallout-style radium cola society. What I am advocating for is a world where people know that getting a chest X-ray or eating a mushroom in Eastern Europe does not increase their risk of cancer from radiation exposure.
For example, maybe you’ve forgotten, but the radiation psychosis when Fukushima happened was insane. We had loads of people in Europe, which is just about as far away from Fukushima as you can get, poring over those ocean radiation heatmaps for years – when in reality Fukushima released so little radiation that not even the people in Fukushima were at any real risk. This is a direct consequence of unscientific, alarmist policies and messaging poisoning public perception.
People should not be made afraid of radiation, because them “respecting it” gives them absolutely no benefit. There isn’t really anything anyone can do in their daily lives to meaningfully avoid it regardless of how aware they are of it.
This is why it is an organizational responsibility of society to create an environment where people can live their lives without ever thinking about radiation hazards – which is what we have successfully done. Scaremongering contributes nothing to that except give people mental health issues and cause them to vote for insane policies that shut down clean, carbon-free nuclear plants in order to replace them with coal and LNG (which, ironically, contribute more to radiation hazards than nuclear does).