Reply To: Where are Japan and China in funding Focus?

[jamesr]

One comment that leaped out at me:

“There is no safe level of exposure,” said Marylia Kelley, the group’s executive director.

I realise she’s from Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, so I realise her agenda. However this kind of blanket statement suggests a lack of understanding of what the risks of radiation are, and the level of natural background radiation in our environment.

She would be receiving a far higher dose from the potassium naturally in her body, and the radon seeping up from the rocks under her feet than from any tritium emitted by the facility.
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/calculate.html

People often use the ‘Linear No Threshold’ model to extrapolate back from radiation effects at high & medium doses (ie Hiroshima & Nagasaki victims at various distances), to claim effects at low doses. But the statistics are very flimsy and the errorbars when you extrapolate that far mean you simply cannot say that that there is no safe level.