Radiation and Reason: The Impact of Science on a Culture of Fear

This is a positive and accessible account of the effect of radiation on life that brings good news for the future of mankind. For more than half a century the view that radiation represents an extreme hazard has been accepted. This book challenges that view by facing the question "How dangerous is ionising radiation?" Briefly the answer is that radiation is about a thousand times less hazardous than suggested by current safety standards. For many this will come as a surprise and then quickly raise a second question "Why are people so worried about radiation?" This is the out-of-date result of Cold War politics combined with a concern about radiation that was appropriate in an earlier age when the scientific understanding was limited. In the book these answers are explained in accessible language and related directly to modern scientific evidence and understanding, for instance the high levels of radiation used to the benefit of health in every major hospital. Four facts illustrate the need for a new understanding. 1. The radiation levels in the nuclear waste storage hall at Sellafield, UK are so low (1 micro-sievert per hour) that anyone would have to stay there for a million hours to receive the same dose that any patient on a course of radiotherapy treatment receives to their healthy tissue in a single day (1 sievert or gray). 2. The radiation dose experienced by the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs caused 0.6% to die of radiation-induced cancer between 1950 and 2000, that is about 1/20 of the chance of dying of cancer anyway and less than the chance of being killed on US highways in that period. 3. The wildlife at Chernobyl today is reported to be thriving, despite being radioactive. 4. The mortality of UK radiation workers before age 85 from all cancers is 15-20% lower than comparable groups. The case for a complete change in attitude towards radiation safety is unrelated to the effects of climate change. But the realisation that radiation and nuclear energy are much safer than is usually supposed is of extreme importance to the current discussion of alternatives to fossil fuels and their relative costs. Further information and downloads are available from http://www.radiationandreason. com

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Preface 1. Perceptions A mistake - Personal risk and knowledge - Individual and collective opinions - Confidence and decisions - Science and safety 2. Atmospheric Environment Size and composition of the atmosphere - Atmospheric change - Energy and agriculture 3. The Atomic Nucleus Powerful and beneficial - Size scales - Atoms and electrons - The nuclear atom - The quiescent nucleus - Energy for the Sun 4. Ionising Radiation The spectrum of radiation - Damage from radiation - Nuclear stability - Measuring radiation - Natural environment 5. Safety and Damage Proportionate effects - Balancing risks - Protection of man - Damage and stress - Time to repair - Collective dose - Safety margins - Multiple causes - Beneficial and adaptive effects - Surprise at Chernobyl 6. A Single Dose of Radiation What happens to molecules - What happens to cells - Evidence at high dose - Repair mechanisms - Low and intermediate doses - Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Radiation-induced cancers - Medical diagnostic scans - Nuclear medicine - People irradiated at Chernobyl - Thyroid cancer - Other cancers at Chernobyl 7. Multiple Doses of Radiation Distributed doses - Cancer therapy - Fractionation - Doses in the environment - Radon and lung cancer - Radiation workers and dial painters - Biological defence in depth 8. Nuclear Energy Realising nuclear energy - Explosive devices - Civil power from fission - Energy without weapons - Waste 9. Radiation and Society Perceiving radiation - Public concern - Testing and fallout - Deterrence and reassurance - Judging radiation safety 10. Action for Survival Relaxed regulations - New power stations - Fuel and politics - Waste strategy - Decommissioning - Proliferation and terrorism - Fusion power - Costs and the economy - Fresh water and food - Education and understanding 11. Summary of Conclusions Further Reading and References Index

About the Author :
Wade Allison is a Fellow of Keble College and a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford where he has studied and taught for over 40 years. His hobby is sailing. "Out there on the ocean far from land survival involves physics, and you are all on your own, like mankind on planet Earth" he tells his children and grandchildren. He was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied the Natural Sciences and Part III Mathematics. His graduate study at Oxford and his earlier research work was in high energy physics, in particular the radiation field of relativistic particles, but his interests and expertise have spread much wider. In 2006 he published Fundamental Physics for Probing and Imaging, an advanced textbook for his course at Oxford on physics in medicine and the wider environment. In 2009 he published Radiation and Reason, a popular science book aimed at the pervasive (and unjustified) fear of radiation. More available from http://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/academics/about/professor-w-w-m-allison

Review :
Sir Eric Ash, FRS "I very much agree with the conclusions of this book, and am very pleased to see them presented in a style that makes them accessible to the general reader." Michael Frayn, playwright and author "If Professor Allison's well-documented arguments are right - and if people can be persuaded to examine them! - his book gives us a little more hope of confronting the problems posed by both dwindling fossil fuel reserves and the release of their waste products into the atmosphere." Simon Jenkins, The Guardian 8 Jan 2010 "The proliferation of nuclear panic is politics at its most ghoulish. The risk from radiation is exaggerated. Some books are written to be read, others to be put in a cannon and blasted at the seat of power. Two such blasts have just crossed my desk, from academics on either side of the Atlantic. Both are on the same subject, the consequence of the irrational fear of radiation. The first book, Radiation and Reason, is by an Oxford professor of physics, Wade Allison. It narrates the history and nature of nuclear radiation, culminating in an attack on the obsessive safety levels governing nuclear energy. These overstate the true risk, in Allison's view, by up to 500 times, thus rendering nuclear prohibitively expensive and endangering the combat of global warming. The second is Atomic Obsession by John Mueller, professor of political science at Ohio State University. Mueller describes the toxic fear associated with radiation from nuclear weapons. It distorts the balance of international relations and senselessly makes enemies of friends. The books jointly undermine conventional wisdom on the two greatest political challenges of the day, in the fields of energy and defence. As such, they are sensational. As Allison and Mueller argue, nothing is as potent as the politics of fear, and there is no fear as blind as that which comes from a bomb and a death ray. So what is science doing? The world is in the grip of a prejudice from which nothing seems able to free it. At least these books try." Popular Science website, ed. Brian Clegg, January 2010 "This is an important and useful book - the problem is going to be getting the right people to read it. Wade Allison's message is simple - we've got it wrong about nuclear power. We've over-reacted to the level of risk posed by low level radiation exposure, and because of that we make nuclear power ridiculously expensive. The arguments are very powerful." Review in CERN Courier, April 2010 "With well formulated arguments and plain language, Allison tries to convey the idea that life is far more radiation-hard than present safety requirements actually presume. .... This is just a taste of the intriguing issues discussed in this book, which is not a technical treatise insofar as the author avoids complicated formulae. Still, the absence of technicalities does not prevent a quantitative approach to the main theme, with appropriate graphs, illustrations, diagrams and pie charts. The first four chapters are introductory and could be useful for readers with no background in physical sciences. From the fifth chapter onwards the core of the problem is tackled by starting with the single dose, the multiple dose and some interesting considerations on nuclear energy. This book should provoke a healthy debate among radiation experts. Physicists and physicians interested in the interplay between science and society will also find in Radiation and Reason timely food for thought at a moment when some European countries are revising their energy policies."