The Importance of Public Perceptions of Nuclear Radiation

Public Perception of Nuclear Radiation: Its Importance for Nuclear energy, RDD terrorism and Nuclear Disarmament

R.Rajaraman Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and Co-Chair, International Panel for Fissile Materials

Before discussing why and how the public needs to be better educated about the dangers of nuclear radiation, we must recall how their existing perceptions came to be.

Ever since the holocaust inflicted over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the specter of the damage that nuclear radiation can do to human beings has been deeply imbedded in the public psyche. While the exact count of fatalities still varies from estimate to estimate, roughly between 100,000 and 150,000 people died within days of those two terrible bombings. Most were killed by a combined onslaught of intense heat, blast wave, and nuclear radiation, any one of which hazard was dangerous enough to be potentially fatal.

The bomb blasts and the fires initiated within seconds by each of two nuclear weapons were much more intense than what a score of conventional bombs could have produced. Nevertheless, images of death and destruction caused by blasts and fires were not qualitatively new. Four years of exposure to the ongoing World War II had by then quite inured people to seeing towns being razed and buildings on fire. What was new and different was the effect of nuclear radiation.

Even after the damage due to the blast waves, heat waves and fires had been brought under control in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and fatalities caused by them began to taper down, the effects of radioactive damage continued to persist. They lingered for weeks, months and in terms of initiating cancer of various forms, for years. Gut-wrenching photographs of victims suffering from radiation sickness and of genetic deformation of children born to them were soon seen by millions of people around the world, along with accounts of the suffering from the victims and from commentators and experts.

Radiation sickness was a new form of horror, completely unfamiliar to people until then. There was also a scary mysteriousness to nuclear radiation. It can penetrate the body, destroy internal organs, cause cancer and induce grotesque birth defects. Yet it is invisible, odorless and colorless. There are few immediate external signs apart from some skin burns, especially at low but still eventually lethal dosage, of the terrible damage done to the interior of the body. The inability of normal human senses to detect nuclear radiation and the possibility of dreadful after- effects developing years later, has created an almost irrational dread in people's minds about radioactivity. Use of the phrase “irrational dread’ in connection with radioactive hazards may be offensive to some people. The phrase does carry the implication that perhaps the fear is sometimes out of proportion to the real and actual danger. Understandably this may be offensive to environmentalists, peoples’ groups and individuals who have been valiantly struggling for years to raise people’s consciousness about such hazards, particularly in the context of nuclear energy in the aftermath of Chernobyl and Fukushima.

But much as we do not wish to cause offense on this very sensitive and touchy area, we feel compelled to argue in this article that in some ways and for some situations the fear of radioactive hazards has been exaggerated. Furthermore this may have some harmful consequences for society.

The concern I will address is based on new developments in this millennium. For decades before that there was no real benefit to be had by ensuring that the public got a balanced education on the damage that radioactivity could or could not do. With the threat of a nuclear war looming real in the early years of the Cold War, the emphasis was on raising consciousness about radioactivity as much as possible. The governments of nuclear weapon states, particularly the UK and the US made a major effort towards developing civil defense measures, in the process educating the public about nuclear dangers through various do’s and don’ts in the event of a nuclear attack. The philosophy was that the more people were concerned about radioactivity, the better they are likely to take immediate precautions and avoid being exposed to it, should radioactive fallout be released into the atmosphere by a nuclear blast even far away.

In addition, public fear of nuclear hazards has also played an extremely valuable role for mankind as a whole in keeping nuclear war at bay, till today. Although this fear could not generate enough support for anti nuclear movements to stop the Cold Warriors from building up absurdly large arsenals, it has contributed to maintaining the “nuclear taboo”. There have been no nuclear bombings since 1945. We believe that as things stand today, no state actor would initiate a nuclear first attack, whether they have a stated policy of No-First-Use or not – even countries that are judged to be rogue states by the West. No responsible country seriously considers initiating a deliberate nuclear attack, notwithstanding all the US rhetoric of “keeping all options open”. Not even battlefield artillery nukes have been used so far, even though conventional bombs of similar explosive power are used without censure. Things may of course change for the worse if some state were to be taken over by suicidal groups—a possibility that cannot be ruled out.

Fear of radioactivity has also played a tacit role in pushing for nuclear arms reduction in countries like the US, Russia and the UK.

Therefore there is no question that the fear of nuclear radiation deeply inculcated in the public has been a good thing, in the interests of public safety and also as a driving force behind continued efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals and fissile material stocks around the world. Having said that however, a time has come when the message to be conveyed to the public needs to be more nuanced, because of two separate, quite unrelated developments. One is the prospect of terrorists using an RDD Device (the “Dirty Bomb”), which is viewed by security experts as real possibility. The other development was what promised to be a “nuclear renaissance” thanks to increasing concerns about fossil fuel emissions and global warming--- a process that soon got stalled by the Fukushima accidents. The main cause of the setback has been the revival of the public fear of radioactive hazards, fortified and made more worldwide by the Fukushima explosions

Although these two developments are on quite different fronts each of them, for its own reasons, demands that the public carry a balanced impression of what radiation can and cannot do in different situations. They require us to re-think the strategy of public education about the hazards of radiation. While as a general rule, nuclear radiation is harmful to people, all forms of radiation in all situations cannot be covered by a single blanket condemnation. People have to understand the distinction in scale between a true fission generated nuclear explosion and a reactor explosion – even a large one like those in Chernobyl or Fukushima. And similarly the difference between those two and a Dirty Bomb exploded by a terrorist.

Let us take up both these topics, starting first with the “Dirty Bomb”, formally called a Radiation Dispersal Device (RDD). It refers to a terrorist blast in which a container full of hazardous nuclear material is exploded with conventional explosives. The explosion will release into the air the assorted radioactive material that the terrorist has gathered for the purpose. It is not a nuclear weapon, in the sense that there will be no nuclear fission and therefore will not cause even a fraction of the physical damage or radiation release that a nuclear weapon will. The scale of the blast and fire will be set by the conventional explosives in the bomb and may have a range of no more than a hundred feet. The casualties due to the radiation will also be far fewer than in a Chernobyl –type reactor explosion. Some of damage, in the form of latent cancer, will not be immediately visible. The zone of strongest radioactive dose will overlap with zone of physical damage. So the number of deaths due the radiation, over and above what the dynamite blast and fires would cause, can be contained if people are evacuated from the area soon enough. All in all, the RDD device is not a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD).

Nevertheless, it can be a very valuable part of the terrorist’s plans. The value addition obtained by lacing a conventional RDX bomb with radioactive junk is immense, and requires a far smaller effort than stealing fissile materials or a fully assembled nuclear weapon. The nuclear material used an RDD device needs not be fissile at all. It could be any radioactive material — hospital wastes, university research samples and so on --- material that is are far less seriously guarded than fissile materials like plutonium or enriched uranium and far easier to accumulate, in bits and pieces, Although the scale of physical damage will not be very different from that of conventional RDX blasts, there will be the additional radiation induced injuries. Depending on the quantity and type of radioactive isotopes used, dozens or even hundreds of cancer deaths can occur over the years due to the radiation released from the radioactive junk dispersed into the air. In addition, the entire area of several city blocks would remain contaminated by the radioactivity for a long time. So, apart from injury to humans, whatever activity was going on in that area would come to a grinding halt for months if not years. One can imagine the economic or political damage done if this dirty bomb were dropped on some financial or key administrative district. Therefore even if the Dirty Bomb were not a weapon of mass destruction it will certainly be a “weapon of mass disruption”.

Dirty Bomb and Panic as the weapon

A less discussed but perhaps far more serious consequence of a Dirty Bomb explosion will be the panic that would result at the site of the explosion, if the public became aware that radiation has been released. This panic will be strongest element of the damage that the dirty bomb can do, given the largely uneducated and irrational public fear of radiation that we mentioned at the beginning. Even though the police, doctors and first responders may carry radiation measurement counters and may be well educated about the actual extent and nature of radiation hazards, the damage due to panic would have been done even before they get there, if rumors of the bomb being radioactive were to spread on the spot. People will run helter-skelter, even in places well removed from the blast center. There can be massive stampede, traffic jams and riots.

Worse still, the terrorist need not even actually detonate a Dirty Bomb. It will suffice if he spreads the rumor that a particular conventional explosion is in fact a Dirty Bomb. There is no way the people present on the spot can tell the difference. Not even the police can, unless they routinely carry radiation detectors. This is what makes the Dirty bomb such a potent weapon. You dont even need one, but just enough misleading propaganda apparatus—agents planted near the site of an explosion mingling with the public and claiming that it is radioactive or that some future one will be.

A public over-anxious about radiation hazards will harm its own interests even beyond the immediate site of the Dirty Bomb explosion. People will desert the entire city even if the effects of radiation may, in objective terms, render only a few square kilometers significantly dangerous, except along the wind direction. Of course the civic authorizes should as quickly as possible announce the prevailing speed and direction of the winds and accordingly inform them where the radiation dangers continue to exist.

Even if such clear instructions were given in time by the authorities, the public may or may not believe them. Over the years, some distrust has been built up between the public and the officialdom on matters of environmental hazards. People don’t trust official assurances. Environmental disaster movies portraying governmental and industrial leadership as callously indifferent to the public welfare, with convincing portrayals by popular actors, although possibly motivated by a few genuine real life examples, has ended up painting essentially all industry and government agencies as untrustworthy villains in this regard. No assurances from them will persuade people from making up their own minds and playing it extra safe. Upon hearing of an RDD explosion in some part of their city, their idea of playing it safe would be dash out of town as quickly as possible by any mode of transport available -- a recipe for mayhem on the roads, airports and the railways. This could result in far more casualties that what the original terrorist weapon could have caused directly.

Similarly, even long after the explosion, when the attempts are made to decontaminate the affected area and return it to the activities it used to host, it will be difficult to persuade the public to return to that area. In today’s atmosphere such reluctance will be shown by all segments of the public—whether they be blue collar workers, shopkeepers, business managers or educated bureaucrats. If a financial hub like Wall Street or a transportation hub like Grand Central station were to be in the neighborhood of ground zero of the RDD attack they would remain unusable long after they have been cleaned up declared safe. This would be very detrimental to the public good.

It is clear that an important way to contain the damage in such cases is to educate the public about the actual, relatively smaller extent of damage that a dirty bomb will cause, as compared to a nuclear weapon or Chernobyl type of reactor explosion. It is vital to psychologically immunize the public, through a credible public education campaign, about the comparatively limited consequences of a dirty bomb, and its differences from a nuclear weapon. This must be done a in a balanced fashion so that their legitimate fear of radioactivity --so vital for their protection and survival, remains intact. They must be provided with accurate information on the likely radiological effects presented by such an event, and a clear and unambiguous set of emergency response instructions to deal with its consequences. As the US National Academy of Sciences has suggested, “To optimize the overall health and well being of the population, and to improve the overall response to terrorism events, it is necessary that [psychological reactions] be addressed preventively as well as throughout the phases of an event.”

Most countries, including India are actively training first responders and the police on detecting and handling radiation disasters. This of course is a must. But it should be emphasized again that the people on the spot during an explosion will be members of the general public, not the trained first responders. Unless the public is somehow trained to react without panic, the worst damage due to panic would have happened before the trained personnel even get to the spot.

How to train the general public of the dozens of cities and tourist resorts which could be potential Dirty Bomb targets in a large country like India or in the West is a huge problem that disaster managers will have to contend with. Nevertheless this has to be done, not only to mitigate the effects of a dirty bomb attack but equally, to reduce the motivation for the terrorist in resorting to one, by removing the element of panic from his arsenal. Nuclear energy programs and Reactor accidents

The other domain, where exaggerated fears of radioactivity can end up doing more harm than good to society as a whole, is nuclear power. As you all know, the development of civilian nuclear energy worldwide has had a roller coaster history. When the nuclear era dawned Atomic Energy seemed the ultimate solution to mankind’s energy needs. The US started building nuclear reactors rapidly. Europe, the Soviet Union followed suit. Thanks to Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program, developing countries were also encouraged to go nuclear.

But a few decades’ later skepticism and opposition began to gather against nuclear energy in many countries. The contributing factors to this downturn were:

(i) Major reactor accidents like the 3-mile Island in the US and Chernobyl in the USSR,

(ii) Greater safety and environmental consciousness, and the emergence of Green Parties in Europe, and

(iii) Awareness of complexity and expense of Reactor- decommissioning and Spent fuel disposal

Although some countries like France, Russia, China and India continued with their programs the biggest producer, the US, stopped licensing new reactors. After building 100 reactors by the 1970s, the US has not licensed any additional reactors since then. Germany also stopped increasing its nuclear capacity (We will return to Germany’s post-Fukushima nuclear policy later). Some advanced nations like Norway never went for nuclear power.

But with the start of the new Millennium with its own new concerns, there seemed to be a revival in nuclear energy’s fortunes, motivated by

(i) Growing concern over climate change due the high Carbon emission by coal and hydrocarbon fuels.

(ii) Improved reactor safety features and passage of two more decades of reactor use with no major accidents, making them ‘statistically’ safer (until Fukushima happened later).

The US government through its Nuclear Power 2010 Program and Energy Policy Act has initiated building of new nuclear power plants, and was expecting over 20 applications for 34 new plants. Other countries showed signs of following suit, especially smaller nations with no nuclear program as of then.

Then came Fukushima.

The nuclear reactor explosions at Fukushima are well known to all of you. It was caused by the twin blows of a magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011, which led to the collapse of the electric grid in the region, followed within an hour by a Tsunami wave of height variously estimated as between 9meters and 14 meters, which drowned out the emergency secondary power supply for pumping in the coolants. I need not recount here the emergency venting and other details.

It is the response of the public and the world media to those events that concerns us here. It illustrates our point that the public and media response was out of proportion to the danger, real and serious though the latter was.

First and foremost we must clarify that our comments are not intended to apply to fears about radioactive fallout by people living in Japan especially within a few hundred miles of Fukushima, including Tokyo. All the daily bulletins in Tokyo about contamination of drinking water or milk were fully justified and not paranoid. So were the decisions of the Japanese government, after perhaps some initial reluctance, to get to the bottom of possible lapses and failures of policy by the nuclear utilities. It has revealed many worrisome acts of commission and omission from which not only Japan but all other countries can learn. Indeed, anyone who saw the images of how the Japanese responded—without panic, with great discipline, dignity and stoicism --- to the massive death, damage and dislocation they suffered due to the earthquake and tsunami could not but admire them.

What we are concerned about was the level of anxiety in the rest of the world in the aftermath of the reactor explosion, which was quite disproportionate to the actual threat to other countries. Partly what happened was caused by the hand of fate. The “double whammy” of the earthquake and tsunami had already drawn hundreds of reporters and TV channels from all over the globe to the area to cover the massive natural disaster. Meanwhile everyone knew that there was a reactor complex there and quite justifiably the media began to raise the possibility of the reactors being affected. Soon the world‘s TV stations, already represented in full strength there because of the earthquake began focusing on the reactors. When the first reactor’s roof exploded it was seen live on TV screens in hundreds of millions of homes around the world. These were unprecedented images in the history of nuclear energy

Panic spread all over. In New Delhi, SMS messages were circulated warning people not to go out in the rain lest they be showered by radioactivity coming from Japan. In China, people started consuming iodized salt in large and potentially harmful quantities. Assurances from the Chinese officials that fallout radiation in Beijing was well below danger levels did not make sufficient impact. Eventually, the WHO was compelled to call for calm on its Twitter page, which too did not work. Much farther away, drug stores in Russia's Far East and British Columbia reported shortages of iodine pills. California, always fertile soil for health paranoia, also joined in stocking up with iodine pills.

The biggest culprits responsible for this panic were the electronic and tabloid media around the globe. By the time the roof of Reactor no.1 exploded, the nuclear hazard occupied as much space-time in the media as the suffering and rehabilitation of the Japanese who had lost over 10,000 people as dead with many more injured and homeless from the tsunami/earthquake. This was despite the fact that not even one member of the public had, at that stage, died because of the reactor explosion. Without discounting in any way the importance or news value of a reactor building exploding, this was not balanced reporting.

Apart from this, there were daily reports of finding traces of fallout at various places in distant continents. I have no particular reason to doubt that these reports were correct. Radiation detecting techniques have come a long way since the early Geiger counters and minute traces of nuclear emissions can be detected far away.

Unfortunately, however, these reports typically failed to mention how small those doses were. In the first two weeks after Fukushima this writer scanned nearly a hundred such news reports. Almost none of those reports gave quantitative details—either on the amount of radioactivity emitted by those traces, or, for purposes of comparison, some information on how that dose matched against, say, ambient natural radioactivity (Average annual cumulative dose of 2.4 milliSieverts (mSv)) or standard medical procedures like CT Scans (about 10 mSv) or just X rays (less than 0.5 mSv). Knowing the prowess of even cub reporters in gathering information fast from their contacts and over the Net, I was not persuaded that this omission was due the urgency of filing reports. Rather, it may have been because such clarification could have diminished the “newsworthiness” of the item.

In fact the fallout in, say, California from Fukushima would have been minuscule, as could have been predicted in advance. The Chernobyl fallout has been studied extensively and what fell on the U.K. at that time was less dangerous, cancer-wise, than smoking a cigarette a year1.

I think it would be fair to say that largely as a result of such one-sided and partial (although technically not incorrect) news reports day after day following the Fukushima explosions , there descended a different kind of fallout around the globe – one of gloom and doom regarding all things nuclear—not just the bomb but also peaceful nuclear energy.

If this had resulted only in a few days of relatively harmless panic over the Fukushima explosions and a run on iodine pills, it would not matter so much. But in fact it made a big impact on one of the world’s most serious problems – of a looming energy scarcity which in turn has to be met without worsening global warming. It galvanized anti nuclear activists and NGO s into renewed opposition to nuclear energy, but now with far greater public support than ever before.

A groundswell of opinion was generated in many countries to demand that in the light of the Fukushima disaster their nuclear programs should be stopped or reversed. This trend was strengthened by the decision of the German government to completely close down its entire nuclear program within a decade. When a technologically advanced, and sophisticated country

1 The Daily Telegraph (London), Editorial, March 16, 2011 like Germany decides in its wisdom that nuclear energy is too dangerous, should other countries, especially developing nations, continue with their nuclear plans and programs? There was pressure on other countries to follow suit. With that also grew concern among utilities and reactor manufacturers in supplier nations that further investment in that area may be far too risky. For a while it looked that the nuclear renaissance had died stillborn.

That, we believe would be an over reaction and a retrograde development. We are not blindly advocating nuclear energy here, as against wind, solar and other renewable sources, nor claiming that it will substantially mitigate global warming. Admittedly, these are all debatable. Public discussion on them has been going on for years. And the pros and cons were well known, long before Fukushima. Nor are we arguing that there are no lessons to be learnt from Fukushima. Indeed there are several. Criteria for locating reactors in areas prone to natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes should be made even more stringent. In designing backup systems, as for instance for cooling the reactor, one should try to ensure that the different layers of back-up are not vulnerable to the same external disaster. Their utility as backups then fails, as happened in Fukushima. The problem of over-pressurization in containment vessels and the resultant need to vent radioactive gases has to be addressed more stringently. There is a long list which post –Fukushima safety reviews in many countries are addressing.

Furthermore, individuals and groups with anti-nuclear energy positions include some highly respected experts, who no doubt have good reasons for their opposition to nuclear energy, based on any number of plausible arguments—not just its radiation hazards, but its cost, the problems of waste disposal, etc. If governments are not paying sufficient attention to their arguments, it is fair to demand that they do.

But the overwhelming factor in shaping public opinion against nuclear energy was not these or other objective arguments. Each of them, whether it be the economics of nuclear power or even the actual extent of hazard that different low levels of radiation represent carries a vast literature with differing conclusions. To make one’s own educated judgment on any of them would require plowing through that literature and absorbing its essence—something that even most scientists are not in a position to do, let alone the lay public. Large protest movements have to be driven by emotions rather than logic. In their meetings and pamphlets the main strategy used to persuade the public to oppose nuclear energy was to stoke their fear of the radiation dangers. Gruesome images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki were freely mixed in with those of Fukushima, even though the two are vastly different in their levels of damage. Anecdotal accounts rather than comprehensive statistics of radiation induced cancers were offered. The dangers of a reactor accident were mixed up with those of a normally functioning plant. The credibility of nuclear utility spokesmen and government officials in the respective countries was ridiculed so that any attempt by them to rebut the arguments of the activists fell on pre-set deaf ears.

In places like India, the genuine public protest was a local phenomenon -- largely in areas like Jaitapur and Koodangulam where new nuclear plants are being built. It was primarily caused, not so much by fear of radiation hazards but by the displacement of the village people in those areas from their homes and established modes of livelihood, without adequate compensation or sensitivity. When the Fukushima disaster happened, anti-nuclear groups provided an alternative and more potent cover to the villagers for raising their otherwise legitimate frustrations. They sat in protest demanding the closure of the reactors being built there. This began steamrolling from “not in my backyard” to “not in my country”, with demands that the Indian government pullback from the ambitious nuclear energy expansion it was trying to put in motion, to meet its massive energy deficit.

The story was similar in some other countries. The most prominent example was Germany’s decision to completely phase out of its nuclear energy program within a decade, even though it will presumably continue to get nuclear-tainted power from neighboring France. What is more, some of the French reactors are located right across the German border posing almost as much of a threat to Germany as its own reactors would have. Nevertheless that was the sovereign decision of the German government, and I personally welcome it and admire them for it. The decision will not only fulfill their people’s preferences but also benefit the rest of the world. If there is any country in the world whose economy and technology can handle shelving all its nuclear energy and eventually replacing it by developing more benign sources like solar and wind or by reducing transmission losses, it is Germany. One hopes that the new technologies they introduce will become available to the rest of the world too.

What distressed me was not the German decision per se, but the manner in which it was taken— within a few days of the Fukushima explosions, and based not on a technical analysis of why Fukushima called for such closure, but only to appease of public fears of nuclear energy. That too, after having had a full examination of the nuclear program earlier and finding it safe enough to announce extension of life for some of its old reactors. It was not clear which aspect of the Fukushima explosion demanded the complete reversal of that policy, rather than just tightening safety features further. I believe that the compulsions of a regional election at that time also contributed to that speedy reversal .

Worldwide, the abandonment or significant roll back of nuclear energy expansion would have been a retrograde step, especially for developing nations whose per capita availability of electrical energy is a tenth of what, say, Germany enjoys. The world needs every source of energy including nuclear. If there is some danger associated with nuclear energy, there are other hazards associated with lack of electricity for the hundreds of millions of people in developing countries. In India over 30% of rural households and a hundred thousand villages do not have electricity. Unlit roads are unsafe for women, unlit homes are bad for children’s eyesight and education, rural hospitals with constant power breakdowns can be deadly and cooking with wooden sticks or cow dung is bad not just for global warming but also for the respiratory health of the women and girl children hunched over those stoves. The actual hazards of nuclear power have to be in balanced some meaningful sense against no power or alternate power sources, if available. True, using alternate sources maybe safer, but neither solar not wind energy, both of which are beginning to be used worldwide has matured into a universally available, inexpensive, grid friendly form. People who advocate going back to coal instead of nuclear do not offer data on how much cancer is caused by coal plants.

Fortunately many other countries, although initially taken aback by the Fukushima explosions, reacted more moderately. Variously, they ordered a review of all existing reactor safety procedures and of future expansion plans. That was perfectly in order. Eventually many of them have decided to go ahead cautiously with their reactor programs. India, China and Russia are major examples. So I believe has the US, although a recent ruling by their regulatory Board has suspended final decisions on licensing and relicensing applications for new and existing nuclear plants, pending a better plan for waste disposal. But the processing of the applications will continue.2

So the prospect of nuclear energy being globally abandoned seems to have been avoided thus far. But the process of implementing nuclear plans has become much more difficult in the face of the continuing and largely irrational fear of the public about radiation. Certainly nuclear energy carries its hazards. But this hazard has to be quantified in a manner which allows the pubic to compare it with other risks they have decided to live with and make some sort of a rational decision. For instance, India suffered one of world’s worst industrial disasters when a chemical factory in Bhopal leaked poisonous gases into the surroundings. Thousands were killed and many more seriously injured for life. One of the longest dedicated protest movements has been on for 25 years to demand help and compensation for the victims. Yet no one has called for the abandonment of all chemical industry involving poisonous material. In a modern industrial society that just cannot be done.

Is this undue fear of radioactivity the fault of the public? Certainly not. The public is not expected to have expertise in radiation hazards, and cannot be blamed if it fears radiation dangers excessively. In fact even among the best experts on radiation hazards, there is no full unanimity on the extent of damage that radiation can do, especially low level radiation persisting for years from fallout far from the explosion.

But governments and others who shape public opinion can be blamed for public ignorance. Unfortunately, sometimes they too pander to populist fears. The scientific community must also share the blame for not having stayed in communication with the general public over the decades to give them a balanced education on the benefits and hazards of nuclear energy. That would have won them the confidence of the people. School text books rarely touch upon radiation safety. This must change.

Governments as well as social activists must be pro-active in educating the public about nuclear hazards, but in a responsible and balanced manner. Neither bland assurances that there is no

2 NRC ruling credit neutral for U.P. public power Fri Aug 10, 2012 http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/10/idINWNA324320120810 danger, nor the stoking of hysterical fears will serve the public good. Raising people‘s consciousness about legitimate nuclear hazards, but doing this in such a way as not to contribute to panic will be an intellectual and pedagogical challenge, quite apart from the problems of implementation. But it must be done before some future Dirty Bomb attack or a nuclear accident results in additional deaths because of public ignorance about radiation hazards.

Finally, this is a good opportunity to demand greater transparency from nuclear establishments all over the world. That is overdue. The Fukushima disaster demonstrates the lack of credibility of nuclear agencies in the public's mind, as evidenced by the latter's lack of faith in official assurances. This is not an easy problem to solve. We live in an age where people want the benefits of extremely complex technology, whether it is cell phones or nuclear energy or genetically modified food, but are also suspicious of it, in some cases rightly. Yet they do not have the technical background for making up their own minds about them. They have to take someone’s word for it. Who will give them required assurances when the people best qualified to do so are increasingly disbelieved?