Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb blasts is good for you...

...in moderate doses, of course.

That was the very unfelicitous example that American Spectator contributor Tom Bethell used this past Monday on the Laura Ingraham show. He was making the case for expanding our nuclear power capacity, to wean ourselves off foreign oil. And he said that residents of outer districts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who received low doses of radiation from the two atomic bombs, were living longer than people further away, who received no dose.

Well, that's certainly counter-intuitive, if it's true. But I can't think of a worse way of trying to reassure the public about the risks of nuclear power. Just damn...