How has our understanding of radiation changed over time and why

does public understanding deviate from the scientific?

Llewellyn Schill

Senoir Project Advisor: Madison Neukirch

Abstract

Radiation is all around us, we can use to gnerate energy, treat cancer, and cook food. This paper
uses both a timeline of historical events pertaining to radiation and public’s reactions to it and a
scientific summary of radiation to determine where public perceptions of radiation have come
from and how they have changed overtime. This paper utilizes a wide range of sources inducing
print journalism, news broadcasts, historical analysis, primary sources, scientific journals, and
investigations. The trend observed in the public's perception of radiation is that it swings rapidly
from mysticism to apocalyptic concern. Through ancients related nuclear fission public
perception of radiation became more and more negative, affecting how we are able to take
advantage of radiation across the globe. Despite public concerns about radiation and nuclear
power it is imperative that we utilize them.
 Part I: Introduction

As the great Chemist and Physicist Marrie Curie once said, "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is

only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." This is the

concept that is key to our relationship with radiation, as it will always be a part of our lives. We

live on a radioactive planet, in a radioactive universe, surrounded by other radioactive humans. If

you are worried about microwaves, then like most people, you do not understand radiation and

fear it more than you justly should. Why is it that, for a time we all loved radiation and used it

everywhere we could, but now we fear it? Are we just smarter than the fools that would drink it?

Well, no we simply traded a lack of fear and caution with radiation, to a foolish hatred and fear

of it. We neglect to take full advantage of it when it's in our best interest out of fear. Public

perception of radiation changed not with our understanding of radiation, but through major

accidents and disasters.

Part II: Understanding the Science of Radiation

As this paper is focused on radiation, it is paramount that you as the reader have at least a

cursory understanding of the science behind radiation. So first and foremost let us start with the

structure of the atom. Atoms are composed of the positively charged protons, the neutrally

charged neutrons, and the negatively charged electrons. Together the protons and neutrons of an

atom comprise the center of the atom, the nucleus, which the electrons orbit. The atom’s element

is determined by the number of protons in the nucleus, one proton is hydrogen, two make

helium, three make lithium, and so on. The number of neutrons also affects the atom by changing

the isotope of the element as the number of neutrons in the nucleus affects the stability of the
element. This is why you will hear people say Uranium-235, instead of just uranium, the isotope

affects how the element will react, and can even determine if it is radioactive.

This brings us back to what exactly radioactivity is. In broad terms, radioactivity is an unstable

atom trying to become stable by either transmuting into a different element and throwing off

subatomic particles in the process or giving off energy in the form of electromagnetic waves. The

first of the two types of radioactivity described is particulate radiation, which occurs in two

ways, either through alpha decay or beta decay. In alpha decay, an atom, the parent nucleus,

throws off a smaller nucleus consisting of two neutrons and protons, this is known as an alpha

particle. Because the parent nucleus lost two protons and neutrons its element changes, becoming

the daughter particle of the decay. If the resulting daughter particle is a stable element and

isotope it will not undergo any forms of radioactive decay, if it is it will eventually again down

what is known as a decay chain till a resulting daughter nucleus is stable. In beta decay, unlike

alpha no proton or neutrons are thrown to change the element's isotope, instead they change.

Beta decay happens in two very similar ways, Beta Minus Decay and Beta Plus Decay. In beta

plus decay a proton becomes a neutron, throwing off a neutrino and a positron (beta particle) in

the process. In beta minus decay a neutron becomes a proton, throwing off an anti-neutrino and

an electron(beta particle). Like alpha decay the element of the atom will change, however, the

particle being thrown is smaller and lighter than an alpha particle. These are the two forms of

particulate radiation.

On the other hand, then there is electromagnetic radiation, which is far more varied.

Electromagnetic radiation refers to the change in position of the electrons around the nucleus.
When electromagnetic radiation is absorbed by the atom the electrons move further away from

the nucleus as they are more excited. The electrons will also move back closer to the nucleus

when electromagnetic energy is emitted from the atom. Basically, electromagnetic radiation

occurs when an atom emits electromagnetic energy to return to a more stable energy state.

Electromagnetic radiation exists on a spectrum, on one end there are sources like radio waves

and microwaves which are far lower in frequency, with longer wavelengths. On the more

dangerous side of the spectrum are sources such as x-rays and gamma rays which are extremely

high in frequency and have very short wavelengths.

These sources like Alpha and Beta particles are ionizing, meaning they will remove electrons

from the atoms of elements as they pass through them, ionizing the atom. In the human body, this

most often leads to the death of cells and a temporary decrease in white blood cell count.

However, this is also dependent on the dosage of the exposure, if you get a modern x-ray for

example you will not notice any change, and the likelihood of contracting cancer from it is

extremely small. Humans are exposed to levels of background radiation every day and unless it

is radon, we do not notice it, it's not enough to affect us. When it does affect us, the dosage, the

element it came from, and the method of exposure all affect how long the body will take to

recover, or if it will recover at all.

Part III:The History of Radioactivity

Paradigm Shift (1895 - 1903)

Radiation is a newer concept in the history of humanity, however, we as a species and our planet

as a whole have relied on it to survive. Rah, Apollo, hot ball of plasma at the center of our solar

system, yes, while the sun has played a major role in human culture and survival (ignore the
British) our discovery lies in a German physicist experimenting with vacuum tubes. The tubes

themselves had very little to do with the actual discovery.

In 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen was applying currents to different vacuum tubes when he noticed that

rays were penetrating a covered tube and reacting with a barium solution-covered screen. After

more experimentation, including capturing a photograph of his wife’s hand, he named these rays

X or x-rays, as a placeholder for their unknown origins, though they are occasionally referred to

as röntgen rays. Before we had any solid idea of what ‘x-rays’ were, doctors had already begun

implementing them in their practice by 1896. Interest among the scientific community also

flourished by this point, and many scientists were extinct to study these rays.

As such, only a few months after Röntgen’s discovery, in 1896 Paris, Henri Becquerel was

experimenting with his hypothesis that minerals made phosphorescent by visible light could emit

x-rays (this was not the case). “Phosphorescence is the ability of a crystal to absorb light and

re-emit light some time after the exciting light has been removed”(Royal Society of Chemistry).

This slow release of energy in the form of visible light is the safe process used by

glow-in-the-dark stars. Initially, he thought his hypothesis was confirmed when a mineral lying

atop a black-covered photographic plate exposed to sunlight displayed a clear image of the

uranium mineral. However, when extremely cloudy weather set over Paris for days, Becquerel

stopped his experiment and stored the uranium and covered photographic plates in a drawer.

After a few days, he developed the plate, expecting to see a weak lingering image of the

phosphorescence, instead, he saw an intense image the same as the sunlight experiment. With

this, Becquerel came to the correct conclusion that the uranium itself caused the exposure.
Looking back, this discovery was monumental for what was to come, however, there was little

interest from the scientific community about this discovery.

Becquerel’s work did however inspire Marie Curie to focus on the subject for her doctoral thesis.

Marie Curie performed numerous experiments to prove Becquerel’s observation that the uranium

itself was producing the rays. Whilst doing so she established that the amount of uranium present

directly correlated to the detected amount of radiation(a term she coined). With this established

she went further beyond Becquerel’s work and hypothesized that the ray-emitting property of

uranium was intrinsic to the structure of a uranium atom, it was a revolutionary idea to say that

the arrangement of atoms in a molecule does not affect its ability to emit radiation. This concept,

while simple, was a paradigm shift in human understanding of the atom. The understanding of it

at the time was that the atom was indivisible and undivided. Outside of this monumental

hypothesis, in 1898 Marie Curie discovered two new elements.

While studying a uranium pitchblende, Madam Curie observed that there was far more

radioactivity present than the amount of uranium would suggest. She rightly hypothesized that

there were more radioactive elements present in the pitchblende, and with the help of her

husband, they discovered polonium (named after her homeland of Poland) and radium(named

after the term radioactivity). Discovery did not equate to accessibility however and it took Marie

three more years to isolate one-tenth of a gram of radium in 1902. The discovery of two new

elements and Marie’s hypothesis shook the scientific community. Not only had two more

radioactive elements been discovered, but the mere existence of radiation put into question the

atomic model. The existence of radioactivity was divisive to say the least, while some doubted
the findings of the Currie for years, others jumped quickly to search for radioactivity or prove the

hypothesis of universal radioactivity. Universal radioactivity is the idea that radioactivity is a

property of all matter, safe to say it is not. Due to her work with Radiation and uranium Marie

Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

The Craze (1903- 1938)

While many fascinating discoveries had been made years earlier, the swell of public interest can

be traced to 1903 when Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize. Today the Nobel Prize is seen as a

crowning achievement of scientific endeavor, ask any fifth grader and they would probably know

what you are talking about, though I would have to advise against approaching random children.

The notoriety that is widely held today was noticeably absent in its first years. It is common, and

rightly so, to celebrate Marie Curie's achievement of earning two a Nobel Prize in both

Chemistry and Physics, an achievement unmatched to this day, yet it was not the prizes that gave

her the notoriety, but her that gave the prizes notoriety. “The seven awards made in physics,

chemistry and medicine during the first two years of the prizes received little attention. But this

changed dramatically with the first award made to a woman, and to a married couple, which

handed the media material for all manner of romantic fantasies”(Aldersey-Wiliams 164). It

should be noted that Marie was originally excluded from the physics nomination that Becquerel

and Peire were given, non the less the Curries were brought into the public eye, along with their

newly isolated Radium.

To the public, and much of the scientific community, radiation in 1903 was largely a mystery. A

mystery that was elevated by the fact that we as humans can not detect it, in most cases we do
not feel any of it. Unlike an ant crawling along our skin or an inhaled breath, we can not see or

feel it on our own. This quality of radiation that may draw to mind concepts of Lovecraftian

horror(hopefully without the racism and classism) in the public’s mind was noticeably absent at

the time. Instead, it was almost seen as a magical or supernatural presence, this was especially

the case for the bone-revealing X-rays and the “luminous blue glow”(Aldersey-Williams 164) of

radium. In addition to its marvelous glow, radium was also used as a cancer treatment, it would

burn and kill sick(or healthy) tissue, and healthy tissue would grow back. When put together

these two aspects of radium is what led to its exponential rise in popularity.

Radium was put in practically everything, sometimes for a specific job or sometimes just

because it would sell a product, sometimes radium was not even present in the product. Radium

would be incorporated into makeup powders and lipsticks to give a glow to the lovely ladies,

razors to, well do nothing really but saying it had the ‘scientific edge’ sounded cool. It was a

valuable tool for illuminating clocks, watches, and the controls of airplanes. In a swell of

radioactive quackery, radium was incorporated into hair products for its ability to ‘regrow hair’,

they were put in toothpaste to protect the teeth and gums and added to drinking water. If one

could afford it, they would travel to radium hotels such as the Radium Place and naturally

occurring springs where they could immerse themselves in waters dissolved in radium and

springs full of radon gas. The public and the market ran with radium's ability to treat cancer and

blew up its healing capabilities to insane proportions.

The excitement over X-rays was also huge, not only for scientists and those with a medical

background but also for the public. X-rays were and are extremely fascinating, radiation passes
through you and we use that to see tissue, calcifications, fractures, whatever your toddler

swallowed, or in the author's case, verify that their toe is only sprained. However, on the more

capitalist side of X-ray uses, let's not think of the state of American health care please, is the

Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope. This tool was a later addition to the craze, only being introduced in the

1930’s. “They were sources of amusement for customers, and all family members with them, who

loved to see the bones of their toes inside the outline of their shoes. Typical exposure was about

15 seconds. On average that meant about 0.5 mSv, or one-sixth the average annual dose from

background radiation”(Lax, 45). Following the trend of radiation used to enforce beauty

standards is X-ray hair removal. Primarily used by the ladies this razor-free method predates the

use of lasers for hair removal. The basic principle was this, “A woman would sit for four minutes

with her chin in a holder while X-rays wove a delicate ozone smell about her. The hair on her

chin was gone”(Lienhard, 1:10). In both cases of Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope and hair removal

while the exposures go on for too long, at least they serve a purpose the same can not be said for

the x-rays used at carnivals and rented for birthday parties. At this time in history, x-rays were

seen as a form of good, educational entertainment, carnivals would set up booths to allow

patrons to see the always hidden bones of the living, and well-to-do parents would often rent

X-ray machines for their children's birthday parties.

Despite all the fun of glowing makeup and hairless faces people were getting hurt, there are

reasons behind many people's fear of radiation. Take the case of Eben Byers, a victim of

radioactive quackery. Eben Byers was an amateur golf champion and an alumnus of Yale

College. In 1927 at the age of forty-seven, he fell from his train car’s bunk. Due to persistent

pain from the fall, a doctor prescribed him Radthor, a ‘medication’ which was a solution of
radium and water. Byers took this solution multiple times a day, claiming it gave him a toned-up

feeling, however, he stopped after the feeling ceased in October 1930. Shortly thereafter he

began to experience headaches along with losing teeth and weight. By 1931 his whole lower up

jaw save for two front teeth and most of his lower jaw had been removed. Eben Byers then went

on to die of cancer caused by his radiation exposure in March 1932 at age 51.

The ability for things to glow be it from heat, phosphorescence, electricity, or radiation, is a

handy tool. As such the luminous glow of radium was quick to be utilized in clocks, watches,

and the switches of planes. While this may sound like cause for concern to the wearer and user of

these products, they were actually quite safe, as long as the watch was undamaged and intact,

most if not all of the alpha and beta radiation would be contained and the small release would be

quite negligible. The main risk was instead in the production as those who painted on the dials

were not properly told about the risks. Starting in 1917 the U.S. Radium Corporation began

extracting Radium ore to use in luminous paints they called Undark. The company hired

approximately 70 women to paint the watch dials, these workers would make approximately $90,

accounting for inflation, for the 250 watch faces they would paint per shift. The brushes used by

the painters would lose their shape after a couple of strokes, as such the women were encouraged

to use their lips and mouth to shape and wet the radium paint-covered brushes to return them to

the desired shape. To add to the exposure the workers would use the paint on their lips and teeth,

and wore dresses covered in dust from radium. The first sign to the girls that something was

wrong was through their teeth, many began to experience dental pain and loose teeth, along with

ulcers and lesions, cites of treatment or extracted teeth would not heal. Later on, many women

would develop bone fractures, anemia, and radium jaw(necrosis of the jaw). Some even began to
experience sterility and menstrual suppression. In 1922, Amelia (‘Mollie’) Maggia, was the first

dial painter to die, by 1924, 50 of the women were sick and 12 had died, in total over 50 women

died of radium poisoning.

Trying to pinpoint the exact date in which the health risks associated with radiation became

understood is not simple given the time period and scatter of scientists working with radiation

across the globe. This difficulty is worsened by the fact that as the trickles of understanding

seeped through the wall of unknowns, not everyone paid these puddles mind. However, once

again starting with X-rays, we can trace back our understanding of radiation’s inherent risks.

“Starting from 1896, several cases of visual system and skin diseases were reported”(Vardeu, Et

al.). Before radiation even had a name, humanity already knew that x-rays could cause harm. In

fact that same year, Wolfram Fuchs was recommending radiation protection precautions in the

American Western Electrician magazine. By 1900 it had already become practice to

cover(though not completely) the X-ray tubes to limit scattered radiation and to protect everyone

involved. In fact by 1905 x-ray ‘accessories’, such as glasses, gloves, tube casings, and

compartments, were being designed and sold for the purpose of x-ray protection. By 1906 the

British Röntgen Society began working towards a ‘Radium Standard’, so they could build units

of measurement for when individuals were undergoing treatments with X-rays. The focus was

not yet on a dosage’s effect on the human body, but precautions did begin to be taken. By 1913,

the German Röntgen Society had come out with radiation protection recommendations, along

with the statement, as translated by Helen Johnson that,

“Repeated irradiation of the human body, irrespective of which body part, is dangerous

and has already on many occasions led to serious damage and even death among
 radiologists. It is therefore essential for such persons themselves and their superiors and

employers to ensure that adequate safety devices are available at the workplaces and that

all these persons are properly instructed in the need to use these devices. The

latter-mentioned can best be taken care of by providing this information sheet openly at

all such workplaces.”

By 1913 it was understood that x-ray radiation could cause harm and rules were in place to

prevent them.

The understanding of risks related to particulate radiation took a little longer to be understood.

The radium Marrie Currie and the rest of the world were working with at the time was naturally

occurring radium, or radium 226. Radium 226 primarily emits alpha particles, as these particles

are heavy and not deeply penetrating, the big risk with radium was just that it could cause burns

when not handled properly. There was little thought as to what ailments could befall a person if it

entered the human body. Because of Radium’s nature, it took till 1920 for Marrie Currie herself

to start experiencing symptoms related to her exposure, she suspected that her ailments were tied

to her radiation exposure, but did not have enough definitive proof to support her suspicion.

Though she had already begun to implement safety precautions at her Radium

Insitute(1919-1934) at that point in time. In 1925 due to pathologist Harrison Martland’s work

with the radium girls that it was definitely proved that radium would injure the body from the

inside out. That same year Marrie Currie went on to take part in a French Academy of Medicine

commission that recommended regular blood tests, along with the use of lead screens and other

apparatuses for protection in all work with radiation. While Madam Curie enforced such rules, it

was too late for her; after having undergone surgery for her double cataract and often feeling ill,
she died of radiation-caused anemia on July 4, 1934, at the age of 66. The same year as her death

a standard tolerable daily dosage for radiation workers and researchers was determined.

With all of the death and injury related to radiation it would be reasonable to assume that the

market began to dwindle and that the public would distance themselves from radiation,

especially as doctors and scientists began to implement protections against it, but they did not.

The story of the Radium Girls started in 1917, five years in it was proven that radium was

making the workers ill, yet nothing changed, the public went on thinking radium was safe and

women kept on dying. The matter was not completely settled till 1938 when Catherine Wolfe

Donohue won a lawsuit against the Radium Corporation. The scientific community changed with

the injuries and death, attempting to keep their standards up to the research, but the public did

not change. Even with all the known risks and death, the story of the Radium Girls, Eben Buyers,

and even the death of ‘Our Lady of Radium’, Marie Currie did not cause a big change in public

perception.

New regulations for radioactive materials, limited their use and availability, but there was little

fear among the public. They continued to purchase radium watches even after the story of the

Radium Girls came out. Fiestaware, which contained natural uranium continued to be purchased

and used for mealtimes. The X-ray fluoroscopes continued to be used for shoe sizing till the

early 1950s. Radiation was seen as a mostly harmless tool, and thus the public would seek it out

even when it was illegal. In fact, the dangerous practice of x-ray hair removal was often illegal to

the degree of the abortion clinics of the time. “Women entered by the front door and left by the

back. A doctor with a black bag came and went. They thought it was an illegal abortion mill. It
turned out to be a secret X-ray hair removal clinic”(Lienhard, 1:54). The change for the public

did not come from the science or the laws, it came from the drops of a Little Boy and a Fat Man.

Now I Am Become Death (1938 -1949)

Radiation played a big role in saving lives during the First World War thanks to the application

of the X-ray, and once again it would play a big role in the Second World War and life after that.

In December 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann inadvertently discovered nuclear fission

during their bombardment of different elements with neutrons. While most elements' nuclei

would change slightly, the uranium split into two roughly equal elements, these two parts

however did not add up to weigh the original whole. Following Albert Einstein’s E=mc2, this

meant that the lost mass had been converted into kinetic energy. With those results, calculations

were done by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch determined that the amount of energy

released indicated a new type of process, ​fission. With this shortly came the realization that

during the process of fission some neutrons would ‘boil off’, which in the right circumstances

could cause a chain reaction. These findings were published in January 1939.

Following the findings of Meitner, Frisch, Hahn, and Strassmann many scientists realized that an

Atomic Bomb was possible. In 1939 Fermi and Szilárd used uranium to prove this concept. Once

the concept of an atomic bomb had been proved, Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt

warning of the likely development of a powerful bomb in the near future advising that,

“In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact

maintained between the Administration and the group of physicists working on chain

reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust with
 this task a person who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an inofficial

capacity.”

Three years later, on December 2, 1942, the world’s first self-sustaining chain reaction was

achieved. Finally, on July 16, 1945, the first Atomic Bomb was tested at the Trinity site.

Fission can be used to generate an incredible amount of relatively clean power, however, due to

the nature of man and war the focus was first turned only to its destructive capabilities. While the

discovery was made before Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, war was on the horizon, and any

further scientific advancements had been kept secret to keep them out of enemy hands, and in the

USA’s case the Russians as well. In fact, things were kept so secretive that the discovery of

Plutonium was not announced, even the wives of the scientists who discovered it had no clue

about it. “At the end of the war, some of the Manhattan Project workers and their wives got

together for a game of charades, which confirmed that secrecy had been maintained: ‘When the

husbands tried to act out the word ‘plutonium’, the wives were mystified; they'd never heard of

the stuff”(Aldersey-Williams, 75). The public was kept completely in the dark, they did not

know about the start of the project or developments related to the project until August of 1945.

At 8:15 am on August 6th, 1945 the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima Japan. This

was the first time a nuclear bomb was dropped on a population. Sixteen hours later President

Harry S. Truman released a statement declaring that the United States has successfully created

and deployed an Atomic Bomb. This was the first time the public had been told of its existence.

Three days later on August 9th, a second bomb, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki. In the

aftermath of the bombings, public perceptions of it in the United States were overwhelmingly
positive, with only 10% of individuals polled opposing the bomb in 1945. As Paul Fussell, who

was a 21-year-old second lieutenant being read for invasion put it;

“When the bombs dropped and news began to circulate that [the invasion] would not,

after all, take place, that we would not be obliged to run up the beaches near Tokyo

assault-firing while being mortared and shelled, for all the fake manliness of our facades

we cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow up to

adulthood after all.”

The bombs were seen as the reason the War had finally ended, saving the lives of American

soldiers.

This general public opinion lasted till August 21, 1946, when the New Yorker magazine released

an issue focused on the stories of survivors and the devastation caused by the bombings in Japan.

The bomb was a new weapon and so were many of its long-lasting consequences. Stories of

individuals surviving the basts only to die weeks or months later from radiation exposure were

horrifying. The idea that the death count of a weapon could continue to grow for years after its

use was a terrible new reality. At the same time debates began over the viability of harnessing

nuclear energy for everyday use, in fact, “Many magazines and newspapers in the late 1940s

were filled with breathless stories of the benefits of virtually free and unlimited energy and

predictions of everything from ‘atomic cars’ to ‘atomic medicines”(US Department of Energy

Office of History and Heritage Resources). A general positivity permeated the United States

population in regards to their new weapon, especially when it came to fears of communism.

Then on August 29, 1949, those ‘damn commies’ in Russia test-fired the first Soviet nuclear

device. The communists got the bomb.

Welcome To The Atomic Age

After the Atomic Bomb dropped humanity’s relationship to radiation changed. The capabilities

of the atom left the realm of simple glowing paint and medical examinations. The scale had

grown from the seemingly avoidable and optional to the looming specter of war and the hope of

cleaner cheaper energy. These polarizing developments in the realm of fusion complicated the

public’s understanding of radiation and the difference in the nature of bombs and power plants. A

confusion that grew with later accidents tied to said power plants.

While the United States continued testing Atomic Bombs in the years following the dropping of

Little Boy and Fat Man the focus had yet to shift to making more powerful bombs. In 1949,

preceding the announcement of the Soviet's success with the atomic bomb the United States

began the development of the Experimental Breeder Reactor-I or EBR-I. Then following the

Soviet Union’s dropping of an atomic bomb in August 1949, the United States began the

development of a much powerful thermonuclear bomb, or the H-Bomb in January of 1950. Both

power and destruction continued to develop alongside each other. By December of 1951, EBR-I

was generating enough electricity to light the entire building it was housed in, along with its

parking lot.(Idaho National Laboratories) Months later the United Kingdom became the world’s

third nuclear power and more significantly project Ivy Mike, was a success and the world's first

thermonuclear bomb was dropped. Less than a year later, in August 1953, the Soviet Union had

also dropped an H-bomb. Then by July of 1954, the world's first nuclear power plant, located in

Obninsk Russia, was connected to the Moscow power grid. Waters of change were churning

rapidly in the face of constant development. News of a developing power source blended with
the creation and spread of more and more powerful weaponry. For the public futurism mixed

with dystopian fallout and hellfire.

This was especially clear when we looked at children's toys and entertainment at the time. A time

when atomic energy labs and sci-fi ‘atomic’ toys were sold to children who were also expected

to watch Bert the Turtle educate them on duck and cover practices in the event of an atomic

attack. Created by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, the film encouraged young children

to, “Be sure to remember what Bert the Turtle just did friends, because every one of us must

learn to do the same thing, that’s what this film is all about duck and cover”(Duck and Cover,

1951). Yet this would not be the peak of nuclear fear.

Public confusion and fear continued to grow as news of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru, Lucky Dragon

No. 5 in English, accident came out. On March 1, 1954, the United States began the first of six

Operation Castle tests on the Bikini Atoll. The test that day, Castle Bravo, was twice as powerful

as the predictions proposed. The Lucky Dragon was a fishing vessel that operated outside of the

designated danger zone, however, due to the unprecedented power of the test, they found

themselves in the middle of the radioactive fallout for six hours. In the preceding hours, the

fishermen began to feel ill due to ARS. The men were hospitalized upon their return. One

crewman, Kuboyama Aikichi, died in September of 1953, the rest of the crew were not released

till May of 1955, though they suffered lifelong health effects.

In the weeks following the incident, the United States faced mounting pressure globally due to

their secrecy regarding their nuclear tests. In response, they released the previously internal film,
Operation Ivy. The film spans a little over an hour and focuses on the test of Ivy Mike, or the

H-Bomb.

“But at minute 54:39, everything changes. There is a final silent moment as we watch the

bomb drop. Then it goes off, and the terrifying destructive power of thermonuclear

weapons, which the world had never seen, becomes frighteningly real. With a roar

accompanied by ominous music, the massive fireball lights the sky like a false sun, and a

towering mushroom cloud slowly surges high into the atmosphere. This dramatic

sequence goes on with no narration for nearly two minutes”(Ropeik).

The world could see what the bombs were capable of for themselves in a nice educational video

infused with a little dramatic flare, which did not dissuade fears. The film then goes on to

elaborate how the fireball of the bomb alone would “engulf about one-quarter of the island of

Manhattan”. While details of the atomic bombs' effects on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still

terrifying, it pales in comparison to the H-Bomb which was 1,000 times more powerful than its

predecessor.

While the atomic bomb did kill and maim far more people than Castle Bravo, it was the story of

an Un-Lucky Dragon and the release of Operation Ivy that brought those fears to the forefront of

public minds. Japanese media diligently reported on the story of the Lucky Dragon and said

reporting was picked up by international media sources. Besides the fears of the illness of the

fishermen came ecological fears. The radioactive fallout, or death ash, began the modern

movement for clean air concerns. By 1956 scientists were calling for a halt of atmospheric

nuclear tests, due to the threats they posed to the health of humans and the environment. The

environmental concerns were compounded when thousands of fish caught in the area were found
to be radioactivity-contaminated. Finally, this is where the fear and idea of radiation causing

horrible mutations came from. Gojira or Godilza as we all know and love him originates from

this accident. In the original movie, which came out mere months after the accident, it is implied

that Gojira was a prehistoric reptile awoken and mutated by hydrogen bomb testing. The

destruction that followed in the movie was based on the destruction of the Atomic and Hydrogen

Bombs.

By 1957 the cries for disarmament began to grow louder around the world. In the UK the

National Committee Against Nuclear Weapons Tests(NCANWT) formed from many smaller

groups that had been in existence prior. By May 12 1957 over 200 women marched from Hyde

Park to Trafalgar Square in protest. By the end of 1957 115 local groups had joined NCANWT.

Simultaneously the Labour Left’s H-Bomb Committee held a rally of over 4,000 and the

Emergency Committee for Direct Action Against Nuclear War or Direct Action Committee was

formed. Following the Direct Action Committee’s 52-mile march to the government's nuclear

weapons research establishment, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was founded, and the

three previously mentioned organizations were incorporated into it. In the following year protests

and demonstrations by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament would see 3,000 to 30,000

thousand participants. Today the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament remains one of “Europe's

biggest single-issue peace campaigns”(UK Foreign Affairs Committee).

Similar movements had been active worldwide, though one of the most notable being the Woman

Strike for Peace movement. The movement started on November 1st, 1961 when across sixty

cities, an estimated 50,000 women went on a one-day strike. The strike was in response to the
growing threat of nuclear war, including the dropping of the most powerful Nuclear bomb to

date, the Tsar Bomba, just days earlier. Following the demonstration on November 1st, Woman

Strike for Peace, or WSP was formed, recruiting more women to protest the bombs and

atmospheric testing. While the fallout from nuclear testing had been a well-known health risk

since the Luck Dragon Incident, fourteen members of WSP were called to testify before the

House Un-American Activities Committee in 1962 to defend their movement. In her statement,

Blanche Posner defended and defined the reasoning behind the movement's action,

“This movement was inspired and motivated by mothers' love for their children. When

they were putting their breakfast on the table, they saw not only Wheaties and milk, but

they also saw strontium 90 and iodine 131.They feared for the health and life of their

children.That is the only motivation. If you gentlemen have children or grandchildren,

you should be grateful to the Women Strike for Peace, or whatever peace movement is

working to stop nuclear testing. Every nuclear test has resulted in malformations, has

resulted in stillbirths, has resulted in leukemia, has resulted in cancer, has resulted in the

possibility of a nuclear holocaust”(Committee on Un-American Activities House 87th

Congress).

By the time of Blanche’s statement, Bert the Turtle had been teaching children to Duck and

Cover for over a decade, the story of the Lucky Dragon and film Operation Ivy had been in the

public eye for eight years, and just the year prior United States Congress voted to spend over 169

million dollars on fallout shelters for civilians. By that time tens of thousands of baby teeth had

been tested and identified to have traces amounts of radioactive material. By the 1950s it was

well known that your everyday milk could potentially be contaminated by radiation. While the
atomic age seemed to hold the promise of a better future, for many at the time it only spelled a

public health crisis. Luckily for everyone, by October of 1963, thanks in part to WSP there

would be an end to atmospheric testing with the Limited Test Ban Treaty. While the treaty had

little to no effect on the development of nuclear weapons, it did go a long way in containing

fallout from tests. Tests are now performed underground with the focus of reducing nuclear

fallout. The treaty remains to this day and has outlasted the Soviet Union, one of its key

members, and the Cold War.

Following the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, in

1968 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was created. There were very real fears that the

technology of nuclear bombs could soon become widespread knowledge.

“By the beginning of the 1960s, nuclear weapons technology had the potential to become

widespread. The science of exploding and fusing atoms had entered into public literature

via academic journals, and nuclear technology was no longer pursued only by

governments, but by private companies as well. Plutonium, the core of nuclear weapons,

was becoming easier to obtain and cheaper to process”(Office of the Historian).

The treaty was an agreement by nuclear weapon signatories to not share their technology, and for

non-nuclear weapons signatories to not revise nuclear weapons technology. It is also important to

note that all signatories agreed to share peaceful nuclear technology, such as that of nuclear

power facilities. The treaty was originally signed by 59 non-nuclear states and three of the five

nuclear powers of the time, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the United States. France and China

would not sign the treaty for a couple of decades. From there the world continued on, duck and

cover initiatives and fallout bunkers were fazed out as the atomic age came to a close. India
achieved the nuclear bomb, while other countries gave up and joined the Nuclear

Non-Proliferation Treaty. Protests continued against nuclear weapons, while the United States

and the Soviets played proxy wars across the globe. Nuclear fears had become less existential,

yet before the world could move into the time of MTV and the AIDs epidemic, a power plant in

Pennsylvania had a partial meltdown.

Whoopsie

In 1979 13% of the United States electricity was generated by the 70 nuclear power plants

operating in the country, with 126 more plants either planned or under construction as of January

31st, 1979. Among them was Three Mile Island. Three Mile Island is located near Harrisburg,

Pennsylvania, construction began on its two light water reactors in 1968, Unit One, and 1969,

Unit Two, respectively. Unit One was commissioned by September of 1974, while Unit Two was

not commissioned until December 30th of 1978, meaning it was operating for under three

months when the accident occurred.

While some may assume the accident was caused by a catastrophic mistake or an unavoidable

consequence of working with radiation, the real cause was far more mundane. On March 28th,

1979 at 4 am a release valve failed to close. The problem began when either an electrical or

mechanical failure of the feed-water pumps prevented the transport of water from the cooling

tower to the steam generators, which removed heat from the reactor core. When this occurred the

plant’s turbine generator, and closely after, the reactor to automatically shut down. This led to a

build-up of pressure in the nuclear piping system of the Unit which was easily dealt with by

opening the pilot-operated release valve. The problem came when the valve did not close after
the pressure fell to normal levels, instead, it continued to release the vital coolant into the reactor

coolant drain tank. Responding automatically to the loss, high-pressure injection pumps pushed

more water into the system, which escaped through the open valve into the pressurizer.

This set off alarm bells inside the control room, however, the plant staff had no clue about what

was causing the problem as the instruments indicated that the valve had been closed. There was

no instrument to indicate the water levels around the reactor, only the levels in the pressurizer, as

those continued to increase the staff assumed there was too much water in the system. In

response to this assumption, staff slowed the release of replacement water. This led to the

formation of and pumping of steam with the water through the system. The pumps began to

vibrate in response, which in turn caused the operations to shut off the pumps still believing that

the system was full of water. The reactor coolant boiled away, uncovering the reactor's fuel core

and damaging the fuel rods which in turn released radioactive material into the water. At that

point, the reactor overheated.

The loss of coolant water was stopped by closing a block valve between the relief valve and the

pressurizer at 6:22 am. The flow of water through the core's cooling system remained blocked

due to the presence of superheated gasses and steam. By the afternoon operators were attempting

to decrease the pressure in the reactor system so low-pressure emergency water could be put into

the system. By late afternoon they were injecting high-pressure water into the cooling system,

simultaneously increasing pressure and popping steam bubbles. Finally, by 7:50 pm forced

cooling was restored to the core after the restart of a reactor coolant pump. The following days

saw the careful transport of gasses to decay tanks and the slow removal of the hydrogen ‘bubble’

that had formed due to a chemical reaction between the water and the zircaloy metal tubes
present. By the following month, on April 27 the plant was in cold shut down- water was less

than 100c as opposed to the active 315c- and the core was then being cooled by a natural

convection of water. Later examination found that only approximately 45% of the core had

melted. While Three Mile Island is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in the

history of the United States it is important to note that no one died or faced any short or

long-term health effects from the accident. In fact the small amounts of radionuclides that were

released while the gasses were being transported into the decay tanks were first heavily filtered

so what escaped had a very short half-life and were biologically inert, there was no harm to

human health or the environment from the accident. In fact,

“the Pennsylvania Department of Health for 18 years maintained a registry of more than

30,000 people who lived within five miles of Three Mile Island at the time of the accident.

The state's registry was discontinued in mid-1997, without any evidence of unusual health

trends in the area. Indeed, more than a dozen major, independent health studies of the

accident showed no evidence of any abnormal number of cancers around TMI years after

the accident. The only detectable effect was psychological stress during and shortly after

the accident”(World Nuclear Association).

The only long-term consequences came in the form of the mental health of those nearby and the

way we perceive them today. So we need to know what the public thought.

The first Nuclear reactor meltdown actually occurred before the first nuclear power plant was in

use. Yet the reader and most people would be very hard-pressed to know when and where it

happened as it was not a big news story and nobody got hurt or died, it was in Ontario Canada

1954 by the way. We do not care about it, so what was different with Three Mile Island, it
occurred in Pennsylvania after all. There were many factors that played into the story that is now

a four-part docu-series on Netflix. The key factors however appear to be the very chaotic and

conflicting responses from the media, government originations, and the company that ran Three

Mile Island. To start off, the confusion partially began due to the slow response to alert officials

to what was going on. Local and state authorities knew nothing of the accident till seven am, and

an emergency was not declared to the public until seven twenty-four am, however, the danger

level remained unclear to the public. Conflicting information and ideas on what residents should

do heightened stress. Some were calling for an evacuation of 600,000 residents in 6 counties,

while others insisted on sheltering in place. To add to the fire of fear and confusion came claims

that the hydrogen bubble could explode and that if it did 45,000 people would be killed and

another quarter million would be injured. This claim was very wrong as the hydrogen bubble

never had a chance of reacting while in the reactor vessel and the biggest risk was only small

localized exploding or hydrogen puffs. These puffs would not have enough force to do any real

damage to the container either. Additionally, there were unfounded claims that if the core melted

down, the entire eastern Seaboard would be wiped out. This is simply not possible with a

meltdown, it is not even close to being possible with the most powerful nuclear bomb known to

man. Today the standard radius for an Emergency Planning Zone is 10 miles from a nuclear

power plant, not everyone who happens to live in the same time zone as one.

Much of this confusion was amplified due to the involvement of the media. The confusion was

so great that even short News segments would contradict themselves. Take for example a CBS

news report from early into the day of the accident, “There was no apparent serious

contamination of workers, but a nuclear safety group said that radiation inside the plant is at
eight times the deadly level. So strong that after passing through a three-foot thick concrete wall

it can be measured a mile away. (CBS News, March 28th, 1979)”Stating that there is no

contamination of the workers and then right after that saying there is eight times the delay of

radiation escaping over a mile away is both confusing and wrong. We know from studies that

human health and the environment were not harmed by this accident, but from the claims of this

‘nuclear safety’ group, you might assume that a nuclear bomb was slowly detonating. This

statement also makes no sense as if there was that much radiation at the plant the workers would

be dead. Two to ten sieverts of radiation exposure in a short-term dose will cause severe

radiation sickness and very likely death, if a human was exposed to eight times that amount it

would be noticeable almost immediately. This means that this claim from a reaction safety group

had no basis in reality. To add to the problem the general public felt that officials were lying and

trying to minimize a disaster. The public had lost almost all trust with reports on the first day that

approximately 40% of residents in a 15-mile radius had evacuated without any orders. It was not

until March 30th that the governor called for the evacuation of all women and children in the

area. There was no plan in place and the public reacted to the confusion and contractions with

mistrust in return. As one reporter at the time put it, “They’ve heard so much contradictory

technical jargon from officials that the first casualty of this accident may have been trust.”

Chaos was rampant as the Red Cross prepared for a mass exodus and priests were giving out

wartime-reserved general absolutions. It took till April 4th for the public to be told that the

hydrogen bubble would not explode. However, the governor did not lift the women and children

evacuation order until April 9th. By April 12th the Governor was calling on the 140,000

residents who had evacuated to return home.

The reason Three Mile Island is often thought of as a terrible disaster in the minds of the public

is due to the response to the accident, not the accident itself. Three Mile Island still had the

potential to be dangerous, and it did take over a decade and one billion dollars to clean up.

However, no one was injured and Unit One resumed operations from 1985 to 2019 when it was

permanently decommissioned. A lot of improvements have been made in the years following the

Three Mile Island accident, some in direct response to it. There have been improvements and

higher standards put in place for computer systems, personnel training, control rooms,

equipment, and evacuation strategies. In fact from 1985 to 1997 the number of significant events

per reactor unit decreased from 2.38 to just .10. Yet despite these improvements Three Mile

Island continues to flame the fires of fear and anti-nuclear power ideas. As another broadcast

from the time put it, “Not all the promotion in the world can erase the memories of central

Pennsylvania as the place where the worst fear of modern man almost came to pass.”A

statement that seems to hold in the eyes of the world even to this day. Fear is often stronger than

fact and after the events in what is now Ukraine, those fears have grown even greater.

On April 26th, 1986 the worst Nuclear Accident to date occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear

Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. At the time of Chernobyl’s accident, there were four

RBMK-1000 nuclear reactors operating at the Chernobyl power plant, with a fifth and sixth

reactor under construction at the time. The chain of events that led to the explosion at Chernobyl

was set into motion by a safety test. This test was the fourth attempt with all of its predecessors

failing. The test in question was meant to determine if the still-spinning turbines of the plant

could produce enough energy to sustain the coolant pumps in the small gap of time between a

power failure and the emergency generator kicking in.

While the disaster occurred on the 26th of April, the chain of events that led to the accident

occurred on the 25th of April. To perform the test the reactor had to be shut down, as such

operators began to reduce the power of Reactor Four at 1 am. By 2 pm on the 25th, the shutdown

was halted at 50% power to accommodate the energy needs in the area. The reactor continued to

operate at 50% power until 11:10 pm when operators were told they could continue to shut down

the reactor. At this point, the test was being conducted by the night crew, which was less

experienced and never properly trained on how to perform the test. With the go-ahead, the

operators set the reactor on auto control to keep it running at 22% power.

Unfortunately, by this point, the reactor was experiencing xenon poisoning, also known as xenon

build-up. Xenon naturally occurs in reactors as the product of iodine's decay, which itself is a

byproduct of the fission of uranium atoms. Xenon has a significant impact on the operations of a

nuclear power plant as it absorbs neutrons, when this happens two things occur. Firstly, the

power generated by the plant is reduced as there are fewer neutrons to collide with uranium.

Secondly, the xenon 135 becomes xenon 136 which means the xenon, at the least the difficult

poison type, has been burned out. When reactors are run, xenon is not a problem as the reactor

will operate at an equilibrium where the xenon being created is equivalent to the xenon being

burned out. The problem with xenon poisoning comes in when the xenon being produced

becomes greater than the amount being burned away.

In the case of Chernobyl when the operators set the reactor to reduce power to 22% it dropped

far below the point that the reactor is considered stable. This was due to the zenon poisoning in
the reactor, when power was reduced the overwhelming amount of xenon ate at the remaining

neutrons, and very little power was then generated by the neutrons.. At 12:28 am, in response to

the rapid and dangerous drop in power, operators removed almost all remaining control rods to

try to increase power. This decision both failed to raise power in the reactor significantly and

violated plant safety guidelines, at no time were most control rods to be removed, in the case of

Chernobyl only one was fully inserted. By 1 am the power had stabilized, though at a lower than

preferred level. Preparations for the test continued and safety systems such as the automatic

emergency shutdown system were disabled. At point and time, everything was in place for the

Chernobyl disaster to occur, as is clear by the fact that the timeline will continue in seconds

rather than minutes, never a good sign.

At 1:23:04 am the test at Chernobyl's no.4 reactor truly begins. Almost instantaneously the

operators noticed an unexpected power surge in the core. The test turned off the turbine

generator which reduced the electrical supply going towards the water pumps, which in turn

decreased the flow of water in the coolant pumps. The water was flowing weaker, allowing the

water in the coolant channels of the graphite-uranium fuel core to boil and convert into steam. In

the Chernobyl reactor, the coolant water was used in part as a moderator for the electrons. Like

xenon water is a neutron poison, it will absorb neutrons and reduce the power being generated,

no problem there, the problem does then come in however once the water has become steam.

Steam is not as dense or effective as a neutron absorber as its liquid counterpart, allowing for an

increase of excess electrons, this is why the electrical surge occurred.

In response to the power surge operators, at 1:20:40 am operators hit the AZ-5 button to insert all

control rods simultaneously. The control rods used in Chernobyl and all RBMK reactors were

tipped with graphite on both ends, tipped being a generous definition as the graphite made up

two thirds of the control rod. The other third of the rods were boron which was positioned in

between the graphite with empty space isolating the boron on both sides. In a reactor boron and

graphite have opposing roles. Boron, like water and xenon, is a neutron-absorbing material, it

adds negative reactivity to a nuclear reaction. Graphite on the other hand is a moderator, it slows

down particles just enough to maintain a fission chain reaction, it adds positive reactivity to a

nuclear reactor. When the rods are deployed the graphite displaces the water, momentarily

increasing the energy output until the boron arrives, on the day of the accident the boron did not

get there in time. As the control rods were put in place simultaneously they pushed back the

remaining water and the newly formed steam, displacing subtractive reactivity with positive

reactivity, causing a rapid jump in power. This jump in power boiled more of the water into

steam, removing even more of the neutron poison, which increased the power, which then boiled

more water, which increased the power. This was a disastrous loop, the power kept rising while

many of the fuel rods began to fracture or jam on their way into the reactor, increasing pressure

inside. Finally at 1:23:58 am, driven by the runaway core gasses and steam built up, Chernobyl’s

reactor four exploded. The force of the explosion blew off the 1,000 ton roof of the building; its

displacement was accompanied by a fireball shooting off into the night sky. Red hot chunks of

graphite, nuclear fuel, and other materials landed around the facility causing fires to break out.

Approximately 50 tons of nuclear fuel evaporated into the air, and black clouds of radioactive

particles formed.
At 1:28 am, in response to the fire that broke out at Chernobyl and with no knowledge of the

radioactive fallout, firefighters arrived at the scene unprotected from the radiation. By 2:15 the

local soviet officials held an emergency meeting where they decided to block off all traffic in and

out of the nearby city of Pripyat. By 6:35 am all fires save for the still-blazing core had been

extinguished and reactor no.3 was shut down, with 1 and 2 set for shut down the next day. At this

point in time, no civilians have been told about the accident, or evacuated. No one besides

officials in the Soviet Union is privy to the ongoing disaster.

It was not until the following day, April 27th, 2 pm that evacuations began for people living in

Pripyat and other nearby towns and villages. This is the first news given to the public that an

accident had occurred, even then they were told that they would be able to return home. Even as

they began to evacuate their own citizens, the Soviet Union did not announce the disaster to the

rest of the world, and would not be the ones to do so. Surprisingly it was the Swedish who

announced the addition to the rest of the world on April 28th, after air monitors traced the large

amounts of radiation in the atmosphere to the USSR. This forces Soviet officials to admit to an

accident occurring, however, they downplay the severity of the accident. Unsurprisingly the

world did not believe the statement as can be illustrated by an ABC News Nightline story from

04/28/86:

Translation of The Telegraph Agency of the USSR News segment, spoken by ABC reporter:

“‘An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl Atomic Power Plant as one of the atomic

reactors was damaged. Measures are being undertaken to eliminate the consequences of

the accident. Aid is being given to those affected. A government commission has been set
 up.’ ABC News reporter: ‘Four ambiguous sentences that contain nothing about injuries

or deaths, but that's four more sentences than the Soviets usually provide. So Western

experts conclude it must be very bad indeed. The first the world knew of the accident was

when Scandinavians noticed radiation in the air over the weekend just passed. Not

enough to hurt anyone, but enough to frighten.”

Unlike the news coverage of the Three Mile Island meltdown, the coverage of the story, even as

the rest of the world was left to speculate, the news covering the story was quite calm in

comparison. Instead of the wild statements of seaboards being wiped out, the news was careful to

state that the radiation levels were safe. Later in the piece when they discuss the possibility of

fallout reaching the US, they talk to experts and make it clear that if any did, no one in the US

was at risk from it. The focus was more on the fact that the Soviets had not told anyone about the

accident, that they were downplaying it now as the rest of the world knew that there was most

likely a meltdown. The world was frustrated about the lack of clarity, but they were also worried

for the safety of those near the accident.

As ABC’s story continues to report it explains,

“Radiation from any source can attack the Thyroid, the Skin, the Lungs, the Spleen, the

Liver, the Kidneys, the Bone, the Muscel, the Reproductive organs. Its affects, cancers,

genetic mutations. Very little radiation has been detected in Finland, Sweden, Denmark,

it's a lot more than normal and alarming, but still not harmful to humans. However, close

to the Soviet plant, it must be another story. The chief nuclear scientist for the Electric
 Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California said tonight, ‘If the radioactivity is a

few millirems 700 miles away, I’d hate to be within ten miles of the site.”

Almost all of the danger of the accident was on the shoulders of the locals, so the world's

concern was mostly focused on them at the time. There were speculations of deaths and injuries,

some word that evacuations had hopefully begun, but the USSR was sharing nearly nothing. In

fact, it wasn’t until May 14th, 1986, weeks after the accident, the USSR leader Mikhail

Gorbachev addressed the topic of Chernobyl with the rest of the world.

By the time Gorbachev addressed the rest of the world, the exclusion zone around Chernobyl had

been established, the core was no longer burning, over 115,000 people had been evacuated, nine

had died, American doctors had been brought in to help treat some of the worst injuries and

800,00 workers were brought in to work on cleanup, bulldozing towns, shooting contaminated

animals and burying contaminated topsoil. Chernobyl was a disaster that took lives, scarred

thousands, and changed the perceptions of nuclear energy forever. Knowing the true number of

casualties caused by Chernobyl had been hard to determine due to both the USSR’s desire to

downplay as much as possible and speculation on whether some deaths were incidental or a

direct consequence of the accident. The general consensus across sources such as the World

Nuclear Association, the Government of Canada, the United States Nuclear Regulatory

Community, and the all-knowing Wikipedia, is that there were a total of thirty to thirty-one

deaths caused by Chernobyl in the first few months of the accident. Twenty-eight to Twenty-nine

of these deaths were caused by ARS(acute radiation sickness) and were of plant workers and
firefighters. The first two deaths were not caused by radiation exposure, but by the explosion of

reactor 4.

Beyond that things become quite dicey, as a lack of understanding of the nature of radiation has

skewed perceptions of those treating the exposed population and the lack of good medical

records before the accident. One of the greatest examples of this lack of understanding is the vast

amount of abortions that took place at the time of accident due to physicians in Europe and the

Soviet Union strongly recommending them to pregnant women out of fear that the children

would be born horribly mutated, a completely unsubstantiated claim. While it took years for the

134 individuals who were exposed to levels high enough to suffer from ARS most people

exposed are safe. As the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic

Radiation explains about their findings,​​

“Among the residents of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, there had been up

to the year 2005 more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and

adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases can be

expected during the next decades. Notwithstanding the influence of enhanced screening

regimes, many of those cancers were most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly

after the accident. Apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health

impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no

scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates

of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure.”

While Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster in history, its long-term impacts are not as

catastrophic as we or those affected by it think it to be. Remarkably of the 6,000 thyroid cancer
cases, only fifteen proved to be fatal. Today the worst effects of Chernobyl remain the mental

health of those impacted by it. As the IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei states,

“Studies have found that exposed populations had anxiety levels twice as high as normal,

with a greater incidence of depression and stress symptoms. Despite enormous relief

efforts by the affected governments and outside organizations, these populations came to

regard themselves not as ‘survivors’, but as victims, helpless, weak and lacking control

over their futures. Their circumstances were exacerbated by severe economic hardship,

the exodus of skilled workers (especially young people), the difficulty in delivering social

services, and the prevalence of misconceptions and myths regarding health risks.”

Chernobyl was a disaster, not from what happened at the plant, but how it was handled. Civilians

were kept in the dark for days while being forced to evacuate from their homes, forced to leave

behind pets and important keepsakes with no knowledge that they would never see them again.

Then of course living life in constant fear of an early death from radiation. For the survivors of

Chernobyl, the information given to them was either downplayed or over dramatic, at a time

when they were forced to leave home. While some may see the abandoned exclusion zone as the

biggest scar left by the accident, that land has become a practical nature preserve, and the

descendants of the dogs left behind are now being adopted, no the biggest scar is in the people.

People conditioned by trauma and pain to expect an early death, to see any mutation or illness as

a consequence of Chernobyl, to feel weaker than they truly are.

Chernobyl sits in our minds as the Great Case Against Nuclear, after all, it greatly impacted the

world’s perception of radiation. If the breakdown of how the Chernobyl accident did not make it
clear, Chernobyl had a very unique and poor design that countries like the United States would

never have allowed.

“No commercial reactor in the United States is designed anything like the RBMK reactor.

Cohen summarizes several of the differences: 1. A reactor which is unstable against a

loss of water could not be licensed in the United States. 2. A reactor which is unstable

against a temperature increase could not be licensed here. 3. A large power reactor

without a containment [structure] could not be licensed here. The absence of a

containment structure is especially important. As Cohen points out about Chernobyl,

‘Post-accident analyses indicate that if there had been a U.S.-style containment, none of

the radioactivity would have escaped, and there would have been no injuries or

deaths”(Nuclear Renewal, Richard Rhodes).

Chernobyl was a very specific disaster that demonstrated how important the design of a nuclear

reactor clearly was. That simple difference like a containment structure could change the

outcome completely. Many countries took this as a moment to change and improve the design

and safety of reactors worldwide, while other countries took it as a sign to stop all uses of

nuclear energy. Italy for example, was very interested in developing Nuclear Power, but scrapped

all of its plans after the Chernobyl disaster. Similarly, Switzerland held a vote four years after the

accident, where citizens voted against building more Nuclear Power Plants, however the four

previously existing plants were left operating. After Germany’s unification all Nuclear Power

Plants in East Germany were closed, with no plans to build new ones. Like Switzerland, in 1990,

Poland held a referendum, where 86% of the population voted against nuclear power plants.

IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei summarizes the struggle with nuclear opinion

succinctly,
 “A decade earlier, the accident at Three Mile Island had already cast doubt on the ability

of nuclear power plant operators to prevent severe accidents. Chernobyl had far greater

impact; the accident imprinted itself on public consciousness as proof that nuclear safety

was an oxymoron. Some countries decided to reduce or terminate further construction of

nuclear facilities, and the expansion of nuclear capacity came to a near standstill. It has

taken nearly two decades of strong safety performance to repair the industry’s

reputation.”

While the story of Chernobyl slowly fell from public concern as twenty years without a major

nuclear accident passed, allowing a repair in nuclear trust, things were about to change. Just 5

years, 6 months, and 6 days after the release of this statement the third member in the trifecta of

nuclear disasters occurred in the Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.

On March 11th, 2011 at 2:26 pm a magnitude 9 earthquake was detected off the eastern coast of

Japan, this was the fourth-largest earthquake humanity ever recorded, and the largest earthquake

ever recorded in Japan. In response to the detected earthquake, the reactors one, two, and three

went into automatic shutdown, the other reactors, four, five, and six were already shut down at

this time for maintenance. The plant at this point was reliant on emergency diesel generators to

keep the reactors cool. An hour later a 46-foot tsunami hits the Fukushima Daiichi power plant,

easily surpassing the 19-foot seawall. All generators, save for one underground generator, are

disabled, and most core cooling systems fail. The only system still operating was a battery and

steam system which had not been operated or tested in 40 years. By 9 pm on March 11th, an

evacuation is called for individuals within 1.9 miles of the plant. On March 12th, the evacuation
radius was first extended to 6.2 miles, and again to 12.4 miles as the situation in the three

reactors worsens. The ability to maintain cooling degrades in reactors one and two and fails in

reactor three, allowing the fuel rods to be exposed. By the 13th, the situation in Unit One is

declared to be a four(accident with local consequences) on the International Nuclear Event Scale,

a scale developed in 1990 to aid in the communication of nuclear power plant events. On

Monday, March 14th after a hydrogen explosion damaged two reactor systems, the International

Nuclear Event Scale level was raised to a 5(Accident with wider consequences), and some

believe it should be raised to a 6(serious accident). A little less than a month later the rating

would be shifted to a 7(major accident), the highest rating there is, as put together the incidents

at the separate reactors, and the complex of the clean-up warrant it. By the 17th workers begin

injecting and spraying seawater, which is later replaced with fresh water, and eventually is only

recycled water into the spent fuel pools of the various reactors until the closed circulation system

is completed on August 10th of 2011. On the second of April, a 20 cm crack leaking

contaminated water was discovered in a pit near reactor two; it was not plugged until the 6th of

April. It was not until the 16th of December, 2011 that all reactors were finally announced to be

in a cold shutdown and stable, it took till the 20th of December for that statement to be

confirmed by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

As these events unfolded the world was watching, and the world was worrying about the

consequences if those handling the Fukushima Daiichi accident failed. As one news station at the

time explained, “The operators of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power station in Japan have

warned that radiation levels could exceed those from the world’s worst nuclear disaster unless

the leaks are stopped. The warning came on the day Japanese nuclear officials raised the
severity of the incident to a maximum level seven, on par with Chernobyl.” While Fukushima

never reached the level of environmental disaster or cost to human lives that Chernobyl did, at

the time the thought that it could be just as bad if not worse terrified people. Fears grew so strong

that companies in North America have reported selling out of potassium iodide supplements,

which can prevent the body from absorbing radioactive iodine, while in the UK one chemical

manufacturer has reported a ‘surge’ in inquiries about the chemical(Guardian, March 2011). The

levels of radiation that reached the United States were not a hazard to human health and only

trace amounts of radiation from Fukushima ever reached the UK. Despite that, iodine sales

increased because people were scared.

Of the three major nuclear disasters, Fukushima took the longest to get under control, however,

no one lost their lives to the accident. However there were over 19,500 casualties caused by the

tsunami, and the trauma of both the natural disaster and the accident’s forced evacuation have

left a scar. While no one was hurt by the accident some 160,000 people were evacuated from

their homes. “As of July 2020, over 41,000 people from Fukushima were still living as

evacuees”(World Nuclear Association). Fukushima was only thirteen years ago, but compared to

Chernobyl it is still an incredibly fresh wound, many of those evacuees who were children at the

time of the incident are still under the drinking age in Japan(20 years).

Fukushima was a disaster, a disaster that tragically could have been avoided. While the obvious

solution to Fukushima seems to be, ‘don’t build nuclear power plants when there is seismic

activity and tsunamis, the same could be said for any coal, oil, or gas power plant as well. The

real problem with Fukushima is that it was not built as well as it should have been. After a
flooding incident occurred in Blayais Nuclear Power Plant in France, standards for safety

regarding large quantities of water changed. These standards included, protecting emergency

power supplies such as diesel generators and batteries, in watertight bunkers, or on higher

ground, ensuring watertight connections between said emergency power supplies and safety

system, and either improving the protection of seawater pumps or constructing a backup system,

all of which Fukushima Daiichi failed to do. The problem with Fukushima is that they knew

better and should have done better. There is no excuse for ignoring that ‘new scientific

knowledge had emerged about the likelihood of a large earthquake and resulting major tsunami

of some 15.7 meters at the Daiichi site. However, this had not yet led to any major action by

either the plant operator, Tepco, or government regulators, notably the Nuclear & Industrial

Safety Agency (NISA). Discussion was ongoing, but action minimal. The tsunami

countermeasures could also have been reviewed in accordance with International Atomic Energy

Agency (IAEA) guidelines which required taking into account high tsunami levels, but NISA

continued to allow the Fukushima plant to operate without sufficient countermeasures such as

moving the backup generators up the hill, sealing the lower part of the buildings, and having

some back-up for seawater pumps, despite clear warnings (World Nuclear Association).

Eighteen years before the accident they knew that there was a chance for a tsunami like

Fukushima to happen and they did nothing more to prepare the plant than they had when they

built it in the sixties. They had other accidents to learn from, an organization set up to make

nuclear safer for everyone, and yet they failed to listen to anything that meant they had to

improve. There were no lessons learned at Fukushima, no new flaws uncovered by the accident,

and nothing new to add to the catalog of nuclear safety other than staying up to date on the safety

procedures and designs of the originations that make it their job.

With all that being said, nuclear power’s reputation still suffered as a result. In direct response to

the accident at Fukushima, Germany made the decision to phase out the use of all the remaining

nuclear power plants by 2023. Along with Germany, Switzerland also made the decision to phase

out nuclear power in response to the Fukushima accident. Finally in the country of origin, with

strong protests against nuclear power following the accident and ongoing clean-up, Japan made

the choice to stop using its remaining 48 nuclear power plants by 2013. Two years later,

however, they allowed one reactor to resume functioning in 2015, and have begun moving back

towards the use of nuclear since. The accident at Fukushima Daiichi compounded fears and

distrust in radiation, so with no new major nuclear accidents, a growing focus on the climate

disaster, and no fundamental changes to our understanding of radiation, where are we now?

Where Are We?

Since Madame Marrie Curie's work with uranium, and her twin discoveries of polonium and

radium in 1898, we have discovered and identified 37 radioactive elements with no stable

isotope. Such as Plutonium which scientists developed with the focus of utilizing it in an atomic

bomb. Speaking of which, today nine countries have nuclear bombs. These countries are the

United States, Russia, Israel, North Korea, China, Pakistan, India, the UK, and France. In total,

there are a couple hundred less than 13,000 nuclear weapons in the global stockpile. While this

number is still quite high, it is far lower than the global peak of 63,000 nuclear weapons in 1985.

No bombs have been dropped on any persons or populations since the attacks on Nagasaki and

Hiroshima at the tail end of the Second World War. Humanity has by a large margin used

radiation as a helpful tool, not a way to cause destruction. Today we use radiation for a myriad of
intentional purposes, that we understand the science behind, thankfully we’ve moved past

sticking radium in absolutely everything we can. We use Americium-241 in almost all smoke

detectors, which lowers the risk of death in a home fire by 55%(National Fire Protection

Association). We use UV-C light to efficiently kill and deactivate harmful microbes in everything

from phone cases to drinking water. X-rays are now highly controlled in the exposure they give

off and only last a few seconds, we use them to observe everything from bone injury to ensuring

a swallowed air pod makes it out safely. We use cobalt-60 and cesium-137 daily to help treat

cancer patients of all ages. We use carbon dating to help us understand the timeline of our world.

We use CT and PET scans to better understand the body and treat patients. We use wifi,

Bluetooth, and cellular to communicate with one another on a global scale. We go outside and

occasionally wear sunscreen to protect ourselves from the sun radiation as we hike, run, play

soccer in the parking lot, or just try to get a tan. We still use nuclear power to provide electricity

to homes, schools, and businesses.

Today there are 436 reactors in operation across the world. Together these reactors produce 10%

of the world's electricity. In France, nuclear power makes up 70% of the power generated there.

In the countries of Ukraine and Slovakia over 50% of the energy generated is from nuclear, and

in Belgium and Hungary, it is about half. In the United States, approximately 20% of our energy

is produced by nuclear power. Despite the fears of nuclear power caused by the accidents at

Three Miles Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and the blows they caused in the industry,

nuclear power remains a significant part of the energy sector in many countries and in the world

as a whole. In the past 40 years alone nuclear reactors have only improved in safety and

performance. While nuclear fission has not seen any big developments since the Shippingport
Atomic Power Station became the first plant to reach criticality in 1957, there has been a big

development with nuclear fusion.

Over a year ago now, in December 2022, scientists working the Lawrence Livermore National

Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California managed to create a nuclear fusion reaction

that generated more energy than it took to produce it. They were able to replicate the experiment

several times. While this marks a monumental milestone for both science and clean energy,

harnessing the power of fusion to fulfill our energy needs remains quite far in the future, and is

not viable in the here and now. Much to the probable disappointment of the CNN journalist who

wrote, “This marks another significant step in what could one day be an important solution to

the global climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.” While having fission

reactors would help our society with the climate crisis, it is a bit too far into the future to be a

viable solution to the dire situation we are currently in. So what should we do instead? Where

should we go with radiation now?

Where Should We Be Going?: A Case For More Nuclear Power

There are many applications for radiation today, and there are new ones always in development.

Currently the most important one is currently nuclear power In the fight against climate change

the biggest problem to contend with is humanities reliance on fossil fuels. “Fossil fuels – coal,

oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75

per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide

emissions”(United Nations Climate Action). Humans need to reduce the amount of fossil fuels

they use and fast, “we must cut planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution ‘by about 45% from
2010 levels by 2030,’ and reach net-zero emissions by 2050”(GreenPeace). The clear response to

this predicament would be to use more renewable energy, harness the power of solar,

geo-thermal, hydro and wind energy and completely do away with fossil fuels. While that sounds

like an amazing idea, renewables are not viable everywhere, and some like wind and

hydroelectric have their own environmental impacts.

Which brings us back to radiation and Specifically nuclear energy, a source of power that is

almost always absent from the conversion of moving away from fossil fuels. Nuclear energy is

an incredible option we have access to that can cut back our carbon emissions like crazy. One of

the best visuals to explain why nuclear is a great option is this graph from Our World In Data.

This graph displays the number of deaths per terawatt and the number of tons of greenhouse gas

emission per gigawatt of energy produced for seven different types of energy production. First,

looking to the right of the graph we can see that the fossil fuels coal(970 tones), oil(720 tones),

and natural gas(440 tones) produce the most greenhouse gas emissions. Which is to be expected
from the main contributors to climate change. What may be less expected is that despite nuclear

energy lack of renewability, it produces even less carbon emissions than its renewable

counterparts, only producing 6 tones of greenhouse gas emissions per one gigawatt hour, while

hydro, wind, solar, and biomass generate 24, 11, 53, 78-230 tones respectively. Looking at the

left side of the graph now we can also see that despite fears driven by Chernobyl and Fukushima,

nuclear energy is one of the safest options we have in terms of power generation. Once again as

expected from an industry that often requires their workers to go into mines, or live in the middle

of the ocean on an oil rig, has a lot of deaths. For each terawatt generated by natural gas there are

2.8 deaths, for oil 18.4 deaths, and for coal 24.6 deaths. For our clean energy we can see that

nuclear power is the second safest at 0.03 deaths per terawatt, only beaten by solar which sits at

0.02 deaths per terawatt. The other three energy options biomass, hydropower and wind all sit

higher than that on the death toll per terawatt, sitting at 4.6, 1.3, and 0.04 deaths respectively.

Nuclear is by far the best option we have for quickly and safely reducing our reliance on fossil

fuels, if we should be more nuclear focused, and yet because of avoidable accidents the world is

afraid of it. Despite our imminent need for cleaner and safer power, nuclear power only makes

up 10% of the world's power grid.

Part IV: Conclusion

The fear of radiation in the public consciousness came from accidents after the discovery of

fission. Less than a year after the discovery of X-rays humanity already knew that it could cause

harm, and yet the practice of using X-rays lasted for over fifty years. Even with the story of the

radium girls, people like Eben Byers still drank radium as a cure for pain. Even with the

dropping of the atomic bomb fears about radiation and fallout only became extremely strong in

the public when the sailors of the Lucky Dragon Number Five were injured and the film
Operation Ivy was released. Changing how atomic bombs are tested, shifting human concerns

more to the environment, and stirring more fear during the Cold War. Fears were further

cemented by the accidents of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi. With each

accident, the opinion of nuclear power and radiation as a whole degenerated further in the public

eye. Countries pulled away from nuclear development and decreased their dependence on it.

Despite the fact that the Fukushima and Chernobyl accidents were driven by poor choices made

by humans, and Three Mile Island was a valve malfunction, trust in fission has still degraded

even as it remains one of the cleanest and safest power options the world has. Public

understanding of radiation swung from a magical property to a Lovecraftian horror due a

misunderstanding of fission-related accidents. This has led humanity to underuse nuclear power

in the face of a climate crisis, preferring to hang their hopes on a technology that is far from

usable. While drinking radium was pretty stupid, so is our lack of utilizing nuclear power at a

time when humanity faces extinction from fossil fuels.

While fusion holds an amazing potential for future power generation not just on earth, but among

the stars as humanity pursues more space travel, it is just not ready. Fusion is exciting and evokes

a brighter future, but we do not have it right now and we will not have it for mass energy

production any time soon. What we do have is nuclear power, an extremely clean and safe type

of energy to produce. Unlike its renewable counterparts, a nuclear power plant can be built

virtually anywhere and requires far less space. We are at a point where we need to rapidly reduce

the amount of fossil fuels we use and we could do so easily if we used more nuclear energy. We

need to use more nuclear power going forward, but we also need more education about radiation

so that people will both want to use nuclear power and understand the world around them better.
Beyond the development of fusion, we need to improve our protections against radiation and

treatments for radiation sickness as we move towards more space travel. The Earth’s atmosphere

protects us from an incredible amount of radiation from space, but astronauts do not get that

protection. Astronauts who are in space for just six months revive the equivalent of 1,000 chest

X-rays in that time. They are exposed to many different kinds of radiation and that puts them at

more risk for cancer, nervous system damage, the loss of bone, and cardiovascular disease. Now

we are at a point where we want to develop bases on the moon and go to Mars, trips that will

take far longer than six months. If we ever get to Mars, the atmosphere is thinner than Earth and

astronauts will be exposed to far more radiation than they would on Earth. If we want to make

these plans safe for the people that will undertake these missions we need to improve our

protection from radiation. We need to make space travel safer by being able to block out more

radiation or at least being able to effectively treat radiation-induced illness. For the future

dreamed up by Nasa and all the Star Trek nerds we need to improve in these areas for space

travel to be viable.

Public perception of radiation changed not with our understanding of radiation, but through

major accidents and disasters. Humanity's relationship to radiation has never been simple, unlike

most things humans experience we can not detect radiation in any way on our own. It remains a

concept until it’s suddenly not, it becomes real when we can see the effects of it in action. Effects

that we only tend to notice when they are damaging and extremely destructive. Radiation is a

mystical lovecraftian concept, an often invisible force in the universe, yet one we all interact

with daily. Fear tends to dominate the conversation on radiation due to accidents of whose cause
and effect are typically not fully understood. To close this thesis and to move forward with

radiation and every discovery after we must remember the words of the one who introduced us to

radiation, in all its complicated glory, "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.

Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." Marie Curie.
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