The Nuclear Energy Scare

Posted: 1/3/2015 Updated: 1/25/2015

Update: Reversing The Biological Damage Of Radioactive Radiation

Just read New drug keeps irradiated mice alive. This article suggests that scientists/doctors are making great progress to repair DNA mutations caused by radiation.

Trigger

Recently watched PBS American Experience titled Las Vegas : Documentary on the Unconventional History of Las Vegas part 1.

What caught my attention were the many atmospheric atomic bomb explosions in the 1950 happening in the desert only about 65 miles away from Las Vegas. The pictures show how many people came to Las Vegas to see this spectacle, how the earth was shaking, wind and dust was blowing from the explosion etc.  I knew about this before, but the video mentioned these explosions occurred about every 5 weeks for several years.

Irrational Reaction To Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident

The governments of Japan and Germany immediately shut down their nuclear power plants in the wake of this unusual natural disaster in 2011. What a highly irrational, but expected overreaction by our politicians!

Atmospheric Testing Of Nuclear Weapons Near Las Vegas

Surprisingly, it appears to be not quite so easy to get the statistics on those tests from the Internet. I tried several times. Probably, I used the wrong search terms etc. Besides the U.S., other nuclear powers also conducted atmospheric nuclear weapons tests.

From this website, I learnt that the U.S. conducted about a 100 atmospheric nuclear bomb tests in Nevada between 1951-58. This translates indeed into about 14 such tests per year over this 7 year period unless these tests were scheduled in a very different way.

The U.S. Department of Justice states about 200 atmospheric nuclear bomb tests were conducted between 1945 and 1962 or about 11 per year.

Thousands of soldiers (many of them at a very close range) and 10,000s or perhaps 100,000s of civilians were exposed to these tests within less than 70 miles. 10,000s of workers were involved in Uranium mining, processing, and transport.

How many people actually became sick because of the extreme exposure to radioactive radiation? We will probably never know for sure.

The Federal Government Compensated
About 30,000 Nuclear Weapons Testing Victims

“According to the Department of Justice, as of July 2010 over $1.5 billion had been approved for 22,716 victims and their families who suffered health problems as a result of exposure to fallout from nuclear weapons development and testing in states including Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Almost half of the payments have gone to “down winders” who were exposed to radiation through bomb tests. Others who have received payments include workers who took part in above-ground tests, uranium miners and ore transporters.”(source).

Here is an updated count of total 29,630 victims from the U.S. Department of Justice as of 10/19/2014.

What to keep in mind here is that these about 30,000 victims include:

1. All U.S. nuclear weapons testing (totalling about 1,032 between 1945 and 1992, including e.g. underground bomb tests).
2. Victims in other states than Nevada
3. Workers involved in mining, transport, on site etc.

Conclusion

We all wish to live in a better and more peaceful world! If all humans were angels, nuclear weapons would never have been developed.

Every victim of radioactive exposure due to nuclear weapons development or testing is one to many and every effort should have been made to minimize negative health effects to humans.

However, the overall relatively small number of such victims given the more than 1,000 nuclear weapons tests conducted (of which about 200 were atmospheric tests) should be a reminder that nuclear power is by far not as dangerous as many would have believe us.

Could that be “an inconvenient truth”?