Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
The radioactive material was mined from the earth, so it was already in our environment.
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Not quite true, unfortunately. While there are a lot of radioactive materials in the environment (everything, basically), most aren't very radioactive. But if you take say uranium, with half-lives of 704 million (U-235) and 4.47 billion (U-238) years, and whack it with a bunch of neutrons so that it breaks apart into chunks (nuclear fission), some of those chunks are pretty radioactive.
The real problem isn't the radioactivity, which is easily managed. It's the hysterical reaction among a fraction of the public that greatly exaggerates the danger. Same thing as those anti-vaccine nut cases, who thought a small chance (now proven to be zero, as the initial reports were faked) of becoming autistic was somehow worse than death from disease.