"Bill Daniels" bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote in message
. ..
This irrational fear of anything nuclear is getting to me.

I grew up in Alamogordo, NM 60 miles from the first atomic bomb test at
Trinity. The radiation was supposed to kill everybody and/or mothers were
supposed to birth two headed babies. I still have a little vial of
radioactive green glass created when the intense heat of the Trinity test
melted desert sand. I picked it up at ground zero in 1952. Nothing
happened to anyone except the area today is noted for healthy people and
its population of centenarians.

The era of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing saw more than 3000
explosions some as large as 50 megatons. That's way more nuclear
explosions than was expected in a hypothetical WWIII. It's as if the USSR
and the US agreed to bomb themselves instead of each other. We all carry
radioactive caesium 60, strontium 90 and a little plutonium in our bodies
as a result. Where are the mutated monsters or the piles of corpses? Why
has the cancer death rate actually decreased since the mid 1940's? Where
was 'nuclear winter'?

Radiation is a natural part of the environment. Granite rock is
radioactive. So is a cathode ray tube (CRT) that we all spent a lifetime
in front of. I live a mile above sea level in Colorado where cosmic
radiation is intense. Colorado is the healthiest state. We all,
especialy we pilots, spend out entire lives bathed in radioactivity but
where are the cases of radiation poisoning?

The Chernobyl reactor disaster is the worst possible scenario for a civil
power reactor. It was supposed to have killed 250,000 in Europe. Nobody
can find them. Death rates haven't changed. The best guess now is that
less than 30 were killed and those were workers at the plant or rescuers
without protective gear.

I thought it was hilarious when DHS stopped a freighter from Central
America because it set off their radiation detectors - it was full of
banana's. Banana trees concentrate naturally occurring radioactive
potassium in the fruit. Anybody plan to quit eating bananas?

Like almost anything, if you get too much of it, it will hurt you.
Current safety measures are quite enough - in fact they are probably
mega-overkill.

What IS an ongoing disaster is the burning of coal and oil because we are
afraid of nuclear power. Since the nuclear age began millions have
verifiably been killed by the production, transport and burnig of fossil
fuels. We may also have ruined our planet.

Bill Daniels


My sentiments exactly.

Al G