Radiation is in the eye of the beholder

Now that the issue of radioactive waste has been solved to the joy of some I have a simple question for you, then a comparison for you to think about.

Almost everyone has heard from one source or another about the radioactive waste that was legally dumped in a landfill in our county. A public outcry occurred that this was dangerous and they wanted it gone.

Now to understand a danger you need to put a number on it. Did you know the numbers, not tonnage, of how bad the material was? Few articles took the time to do that in the furor, but this one did nicely.

The total amount of low level nuclear waste cannot exceed 5 percent of what's in the landfill, but that's once a dump is closed for good. Officials said they're always keeping track of that amount.

And the total radiation dose, be it from plutonium, strontium, cesium, uranium or the host of other isotopes they've accepted, cannot exceed a measurement of 1 millirem, even to a person who later lived on the landfill, farmed crops there and drank the water from a well.

"Do you know the increment that 1 millirem of radiation would cause? Point 8 additional cancers. That's the level of risk were talking about ... very low," said Nanney.

“A millirem is an expression of biological damage to tissue...

My generation grew up in a time when radiation was a common subject of fear. Fear of nuclear war as the cold war always seemed on the verge of going hot, and on the problem with the power plants. Three mile island is a good example of why people feared radiation.

Radiation causes a damn large bit of fear for some.

Now for the comparison. This will likely bother some, but I want you to think about the comparison first before you lay claims of how wrong I am.

Coal ash.

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste.

Now you would not run screaming from a pile of coal ash, but you would from low level nuclear waste....that seems less dangerous in many ways.

Now why is coal radioactive?

At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.

When someone comes up with the latest "the sky is falling" scream..ask them for numbers, and compare it to life in general.

The whole problem seemed emotionally based, and in fact that is important. A person should feel safe in their house and neighborhood. A person has a right to get mad, emotional, and darn mad about any threat to their happiness. But take a moment to find if your emotional response is based on fact, not a misconception of the danger.

We should not fear the dark.....or the coal ash.