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Show EMERGYUPDATE CAN WE ELIMINATE THE RADIATION HAZARD FROM NUCLEAR POWER? By Dr. Leonard Sagan Dr. Leonard Sagan, Manager Man-ager of the Biomedical Effects Program of the Electric Power Research Institute, was formerly Associate Director of the Department of Environmental Environ-mental Medicine at the Palo Alto Medical Clinic. It's impossible to live in a totally radiation free environment envir-onment because the earth , itself is radioactive and we receive cosmic radiation from outer space. Everything in the world-rocks, world-rocks, mountains, the houses we live in, our bodies is radioactive because be-cause of the natural radioactivity radio-activity that exists in materials mate-rials and within our environment environ-ment itself. People who live at higher altitudes receive more radiation radia-tion from cosmic sources than people who live at sea level. People who live in brick houses receive more exposure than people who live in wooden houses and people who receive medical x-rays receive a good deal more exposure than people who don't receive medical x-rays. Exposures from nuclear nu-clear power are very small on the order of one percent or less of an increment. If we did not build or operate any nuclear plants, it would create certain dangers, dan-gers, too. For example, we'd have to build some other kinds of plants to generate electricity. Many studies have shown that the risks or hazards from operating those plants is as great or greater than those from nuclear nu-clear plants. There is radioactivity radio-activity released from the burning of coal. The dose :' A K Li Dr. Leonard Sagan from the burning of coal in a generating plant is, in fact, about the same as the dose of radiation from a nuclear plant, so we wouldn't have achieved very much in terms of reducing radiation exposure. ex-posure. Most of the things we do have some risks associated with them and that's true of nuclear power too. It would be foolish to think that any technology or human activity activ-ity has zero risk, but the risks for nuclear power, in my estimation, are small compared to those other risks. As for the people who live around nuclear plants, their exposure from that opera-. opera-. tion is very small in the order of a few percent as compared to radiation that they can get from natural sources. So I don't consider that a hazard. As a medical doctor, I think the risks from nuclear power generation compared to other risks we take in our daily lives and compared to the benefits we get from energy availability is very acceptable and small. |