Today’s recording is Horizon – Nuclear Nightmares.
It starts, as might be expected, with the explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl.
Some of the headlines were a bit much.
Tatiana lived in Pripyat, within sight of the Chernobyl power station. She was woken in the night by the sound of the explosion. She returned to the town with her daughter, with whom she was already pregnant when the reactor exploded. Although she was born healthy, they are still worried that the radiation might have a long term effect.
Then the programme looks back at a time when radiation wasn’t a feared as it is now. “This is radioactive iodine. I’m now going to drink this.”
Paul Frame demonstrates some items that were sold with the express purpose of irradiating drinking water.
Back then, Radium was a name meaning quality. He shows radioactive toothpaste, Radium cigarettes and Radium Condoms.
Antoine Brooks studied Hiroshima survivors, and tried to track how much cancer was caused by the blast, depending on people’s distance from ground zero. They found that exposure to radiation did increase risk of cancer, in a clear linear fashion.
The Queen opened the first UK nuclear power plant at Calder Hall in the mid-1950s.
The accident at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in America made headlines, even though there was no significant release of radiation.
But Chernobyl was the next event that allowed scientists to see how different rates of radiation affected a population. According to the Linear No Threshold model, it was expected that, given the number of people involved, and the differing levels of radiation, there could be 9000 deaths caused by the radiation. But the reality was different. The largest group of causalties were the emergency workers who went in to clean up the plant immediately after the explosion. They received the highest doses. Of this group, about 134 people got acute radiation syndrome, but of these, only 47 died as a result. Apart from these workers, there was another group of increased cancers, caused by radioactive iodine getting into dairy cattle, and then the milk, leading to increased incidence of thyroid cancer in children. This led to 9 more deaths by thyroid cancer. 56 deaths that could be linked to the radiation, far fewer than the 9000 projected deaths.
Professor Ron Chesser travelled to Chernobyl to survey the wildlife that still lived around the area. He was looking for damage in cells due to radiation. The compared the amount of DNA damage in animals living in the area, with a control group of animals from areas with no radiation. His result was surprising – they found no significant difference in DNA cell damage between the groups.
As a result of this research, it’s thought that at lower doses, radiation exposure is not a significant risk. The risk might not be linear, but at low doses, it’s a j-shaped curve where it’s even possible that the low radiation dose might protect against cancer risks.
Media Centre Description: Series exploring topical scientific issues investigates the truth behind our fear of radioactivity and asks whether our nuclear nightmares really are based on reality. From Hiroshima to Chernobyl scientists have been studying the impact of exposure to radiation for over 60 years and have always assumed that any level of radiation is bad. But now some scientists are questioning the power of radiation to cause cancer and finding evidence to suggest that it may have beneficial health effects.
Recorded from BBC TWO on Thursday 13 July 2006 21:00
BBC Genome: BBC TWO Thursday 13 July 2006 21:00
After this, there’s trailers for Tribe and Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe.
Then the recording stops during an episode of Coast which looks at the tidal phenomenon known as the Severn Bore.
VHiStory 