Is radiation really as harmful as most believe it is?

I have researched this a little and I have found different articles and websites on both sides of the argument. Some say that radiation is really bad and very harmful and others say that radiation isn't bad as we think it is and that the nuclear plants aren't as scary as people make them out to be. What is your opinion on this?Is radiation really as harmful as most believe it is?
The best way to think about risk is to compare it it something.

The nuclear power plants in Japan, were hit by the 5th worse earthquake in history; where hit by a tsunami 8 meters higher than the designers ever expected and had a complete break down of society around it so problems could not be quickly fixed. Further more, we have found that safety procedures at the plant were handled poorly for years.

This sounds like the recipe for a scale one major disaster, right?

NO ONE has got a fatal dose of radiation. NO ONE has even got radiation sickness. A few people might get cancer 30 years from now. Yet, on the news reports, they keep talking about the nuclear reactors and giving them more air time than the 20,000+ people killed in the earthquake. People are calling for all nuclear power plant (including the safer 4th generation designs on the drawing boards) to be shut down forever.

In China the Banqiao dam on the Ru river burst in 1975 and up to 230,000 people were killed. Why are people not calling for a complete ban hydroelectric power? Why did that disaster get less media frenzy than this nuclear non-disaster in Japan?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

Coal power plants release more radiation to the environment than nuclear power plants. In addition they produce thousands of tonnes of toxic waste, fly ash, acid rain, scrubber sludge, tonnes of coal tar, they put heavy metals into the environment, are a source of acid mine drainage, pump millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (which cause global warming) into the air. The largest single source of mercury contamination world wide is coal. In the USA alone, more than 2,000 stream miles of rivers have been blighted by coal. Compared to burying a cubic meter of radioactive waste a year a coal power plant has the REAL waste disposal problem.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2006/10/coal-ch鈥?/a>

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/鈥?/a>

http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl鈥?/a>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment鈥?/a>

To summarize the links above, we would have to have a Chernobyl twice a week for the nuclear industry to kill as many people as coal. This is not counting future deaths by global warming.

Other 'safe' energy sources have ecological downsides. The damming of the Columbia river for hydro-electric power has devastated the local salmon runs. This has removed the major source of nitrogen in the area (bears eat salmon and poop the nitrate rich results) which has badly hurt the forest's bio-diversity.

Anyway, I doubt anyone's opinion will be changed by a post in Yahoo Answers, but my point is that when worrying about radiation, the dangers should be kept in perspective. If you are worried about radiation from nuclear power plants, what are the costs of other base load power?
Radiation CAN be harmful. Most people who work at nuclear plants suffer long-term effects such as cancer. Or at least that's how it used to be. Power plants are a lot safer now, however a meltdown could still occur, releasing radioactive substances around the affected area. Atomic bombs on the other hand are a lot more deadly when it comes to radiation. They will unleash UV, X-ray, and gamma radiation in all directions, as well as nuclear fallout which lingers after the explosion. Whether radiation is harmful or not depends on these factors:



-The amount of radiation you're exposed to

-The amount of time you're exposed to the radiation

-And finally, how much cellular damage the radiation does to you.



If your DNA alters in a vital segment that controls an important cellular function, and if that cell happens to survive, you might have a future tumor to deal with (or worse). Radiation typically has the worst effect on infants, considering how often their cells divide. It could also mutate sex cells, causing an abnormal fetal growth upon sexual reproduction.Is radiation really as harmful as most believe it is?
As a doctor, I had to care to patients with radiation burns post therapy.



The burns are as if the skin was ironed with an electric iron. It appears slowly, weeks after the radiation, but causes a kind of ulceration in the worst case.



Radiation causes internal injuries too and can be fatal in high doses.



Those directly working heroically to prevent dangerous leaks from the Japanese nuclear plants have already received severe burns, as we saw on TV. One thanks them for sacrificing their lives to save the others.
The problem is that the sites you look at not only muddle with a lot of opinions and panic but also muddle different kinds of radiation in different circumstances.

As several people have said, properly operating nuclear plants do not emit radiation although they produce radioactive waste products (like the rods in storage that produced the hydrogen fires)

But on the other hand, we are constantly exposed to different kinds of radiation from natural source, so that when someone panics over increased iodine in rain fall, they usually fail to include the information that it is only double what is there every day and will go away at that level in a few days, leaving the background.

There are three kinds of radiation from radioactivity and one won't go through a piece of paper (alpha)

Severe radiation is dangerous but most people have no chance of encountering it as they do not handle or even work in the area of intense radioactive materials.

Continuing contact with moderate to low levels of radiation, such as radon in homes, is subject to the greatest debate because some people demand that no level at all is acceptable. But this is like people with varying ability to throw off infections being told that all levels of colds and coughing must be banned from the office, school or even street.Is radiation really as harmful as most believe it is?
"Radiation" and "nuclear power", are two very different things.



Ionising radiation can be extremely dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, but safety procedures exist for dealing with it (it can't go through thick walls). You also need to get quite a high radiation dose for anything bad to happen. Small amounts of radiation do very little, but a high dose can kill you very easily.



Nuclear power is another matter entirely. If the relevant safety procedures are followed, it's normally all right, although if not, things can get very interesting. A well-run plant produces no radiation damage at all.
Nuclear power is great so long as it's contained. But as soon as something like what's happening in japan currently. If the plant in japan actually melts down were going to have massive problems occur I'm the US when the fallout hits us. I have never heard of an argument pro radiation other than the limited medical uses it has. Radiation is very deadly, our soldiers are using ammo/bombs "enhanced" with depleted uranium, leading to childbearing issues for them, as well as for the people in the middle east. Look that one up.
you're talking about two different issues here, radiation effects and the safety of nuclear power.
No, it is not.
Radiation is a class of energetic particles, there are MANY types of radiation including electromagnetic as example of non-ionizing radiation (doesn't produce ions when passing through matter). Alpha, beta, gamma and X-ray are examples of Ionizing radiation.



Radiation is far far far too complex to describe in a yahoo answer, but to answer your question on how harmful it is, I can summarize some important points:



Radiation of the electromagnetic class includes (in decreasing order of wavelength) radio waves, infrared (may be harmful to eyes), visible light, ultraviolet (harmful to skin), X-Ray (high exposure harmful to entire body) and Gamma radiation which is deadly in moderate exposure. These types of radiation are modeled as waves rather than particles.



With regard to nuclear radiation we have 3 main types to be concerned with, alpha, beta and gamma (as mentioned earlier).

Alpha radiation is composed of large particles (He nuclei) and cannot penetrate anything thicker than standard paper, therefore it is perfectly safe to take a bath in the stuff, as long as it doesn't get inside you. If you swallow it, you're as good as dead.

Beta radiation is much smaller in comparison (electron). It can be stopped by a thin sheet of aluminium, so it damages your body if you're around it, but is easy to contain in the case of nuclear reactions.

Gamma radiation as mentioned in EM is VERY penetrating. It requires a few feet of lead to stop gamma radiation leaking from a reactor, on the other hand, it doesn't interact with matter nearly as easily as alpha or beta, so unless the levels are high, you're probably going to be okay.



The amount of harm really depends on how MUCH radiation there is. If you're standing by a nuclear reactor and it's leaking insane amounts of alpha radiation, you'll be fine, if the radiation is beta, not so good for you, but if its Gamma, you're as good as dead. As far as nuclear reactor concerns go, the main issue is that the radioactive substances could cling to dust in the atmosphere and spread through the wind, causing radioactive dust to spread around the world. Since the material used in the reactor cores are insanely radioactive, this would be VERY bad. I think Japan is in quite a bit of trouble right now though!



Radiation is a fascinating topic, and if you want to learn, pick up any physics text book and have a read of the radiation chapters, Advanced Physics by Steve Adams and Jonathan Allday is particularly useful, and got me top marks in my exams :)