When or eating dessert? Maybe that is true

When or eating dessert? Maybe that is true

When it comes to the topic of Nuclear Power everyone has an opinion, and they are either for or against it. There really is no middle ground, and that is evident in the essays written by two highly respected scientists. One of them, Dr.

John W. Gofman is a strong believer in the concept of exposure to radiation being fatal and dangerous to human health. Especially if the maximum allowed limit of nuclear radiation, 170 millirems/year, is reached. An opponent to Dr. Gofman is Dr.

Bernard L. Cohen, a nuclear physicist turned environmental scientist, and ardent supporter of the current scientific establishment. Dr. Cohen believes that the general public has been manipulated by irresponsible journalists and “sensation-seeking” scientists into thinking that any and all exposure to radiation is harmful to human health. In this critique I plan on reviewing some of the major issues brought up by each side and try to show how each author has distorted or skewed data. Then I plan on giving my interpretation and opinion on the future of nuclear power.

Dr. Gofman seems to have many confusing ideas about the concept of nuclear power. First of all he shoots down the government for giving money to nuclear industries and claims that doing this is “totally inappropriate for government.” I don’t know if Dr. Gofman understands that we are kind of running out of energy sources, and until we better develop things like solar power to make them more useful and economical, we may need energy sources like nuclear power in the very near future. Next he tries to convince the public that the nuclear supporters and groups like BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) lied about their findings of the number of deaths caused by radiation to be zero.

He goes through a x-ray radiation experiment where he finds the data of the BEIR committee to be off, but still doesn’t prove that their data on radiation deaths is wrong.In the second essay, Dr. Cohen tells us some information about what radiation is, and how dangerous it is in respect to everyday risks that we take. He somehow plots a table that shows that being exposed to a small amount of radiation is less dangerous than drinking a Pepsi or eating dessert? Maybe that is true to overall health, but I believe that the problem that we have with radiation is the fact that it causes cancernot that it makes us overweight. He basically just goes on to say that the minimal amount of radiation that is released from nuclear plants is not enough to be harmful to humans, making the point that air pollution from coal-burning power plants is a much greater health risk. I do believe that he needs to address the reality of what horrors would occur if one of these “safe” nuclear plants had a meltdown.

We have seen some gruesome effects of large amounts of radiation from the disaster at Chernobyl.In conclusion, I believe that nuclear power is something that should be seriously looked into as the power of the future. It can be extremely dangerous if not handled properly, but it can be extremely useful if maintained properly.