Category: Factual & Arts TV
Date: 11.07.2006
Printable version
For the last 50 years the world has lived in fear of radiation. Hiroshima,
Nagasaki and accidents at nuclear power stations struck terror in people
everywhere - but Horizon: Nuclear Nightmares has
uncovered evidence to suggest these fears could be unfounded.
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Horizon: Nuclear Nightmares (Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ TWO, Thursday 13 July 2006) speaks to a number of scientists who are asking
whether we need to think again about the dangers of radiation as there is
evidence to suggest that there is a threshold below which radiation may be
harmless - or even beneficial.
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The programme examines in detail the aftermath of the ultimate nuclear nightmare - the explosion and fire 20 years ago at Chernobyl Reactor number four.
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The results of the investigation are astonishing. In the aftermath of Chernobyl experts predicted tens of thousands of deaths from
cancer.
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Yet, when the authoritative UN Chernobyl Forum report - compiled by
scientists from organisations such as the WHO - was published late last year it
put the total death toll from the accident at just 59.
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Fifty workers in the
plant died from acute radiation sickness and so far only nine cases of cancer
can be attributed to the accident.
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This is a huge discrepancy between prediction
and reality.
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Those predictions were based on a theory called the Linear no threshold (LNT)
model.
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This model was derived by studying the survivors of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, who received huge radiation doses; yet there is almost no data to
support the model at the sort of levels of radiation exposure caused by
Chernobyl.
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The LNT model is, the experts admit, little more than an informed
guess.
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Horizon's investigation has turned up evidence to suggest that there is a
threshold below which radiation may be harmless.
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There are many places on Earth
where the natural background radiation is tens or even hundreds of times higher
than in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
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Yet studies of populations who live in
these natural radiation hot spots have consistently failed to find any negative
health consequences.
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The programme also reports on the scientific experiments
that suggest that a little radiation may even protect against cancer by
stimulating the body's natural cancer defences. These ideas are controversial.
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What is accepted by all the experts Horizon
talked to is that for the victims of Chernobyl the real problem is not radiation - but radiophobia, the fear of radiation, which has caused acute psychological
trauma.
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Could we all find ourselves victims of radiophobia, as we fight shy of a
technology which may be vital in the fight to save our civilisation from the
effects of global warming?
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Horizon: Nuclear Nightmares, Thursday 13 July 2006, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ TWO, 9.00pm
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CD2
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