Importance of Radiation Safety

Exactly how vital is radiation safety?

After a team of researchers excavated Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, they discovered skeletons throughout the cities, unburied. The skeletons, carbon-dated to 2500 BC, are laid on the pavement, most of them holding hands, just as if wanting to comfort each other facing fast doom. So why haven't the bodies decayed? So why are not they eaten by animals?

The reply, it appears, is radioactivity.

Subsequent assessment clearly shows that the skeletons have a radioactivity at par with that from Nagasaki and Hiroshima! This directed scientists to the theory that it absolutely was an atomic launch that wiped out these ancient Indian towns. Wait, how could this have been possible at such a time? Could atomic engineering have been around even back then, therefore, how? These queries remain unanswered even to this very day.

Nowadays, experts are still unable to explain how the metropolitan areas that have once flourished in the Indus valley got decimated almost in a single day, and why radioactive ashes is found in the area. One thing is evident, however: the outcomes of radiation fallout are very horrible that thousands of years after, the skeletons found nevertheless show indications of radioactive poisoning.

This gives us to the modern-day concern of decontamination and decommissioning of industrial locations. Prior to information of the Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant hogged headlines around the globe, people couldn't have cared less about shielding themselves from radiation. Sure, all of us have some idea what the radiation is and just how dreadful its impacts could possibly be. But no one could have predicted the dreadful price of the radioactive fallout.

Should there be something that the catastrophe makes apparent, it's that the world needs to think again about how it is been dealing with outdated and unwanted reactors. There is absolutely no substitute. In any case, global safety is non-negotiable. A small collision with an improperly decommissioned reactor can take lots of lives, if not destroy towns.

In a short article, New Scientist estimates that there are more than 400 power reactors worldwide. Many, if not all, of them are about 27 years old while dozens have almost attained the end of their prosperous lives. At one point, these reactors would need to be decommissioned and decontaminated, dismantled ever so meticulously in order that none of their contents would ever pose threat to anyone or anything. It is a remarkably delicate, expensive, and time-consuming work that is wise to specialists. Put aside hiring a low-cost workforce. This highly special work can only be entrusted to skillfully developed. In a similar manner that only a cyclotron removal expert ought to be given with the management of cyclotrons, simply a radiological service provider ought to be permitted to take on the task of radiation safety, decontamination and decommissioning.