Dispelling the Fear
As we in South Bruce explore the opportunity to host Canada’s Deep Geological Repository (DGR) for spent nuclear fuel, I think we need to address an important issue. Many people have an unreasonably severe fear of radiation. We can’t see or feel radiation, and people are often naturally afraid of things they can’t sense. Many of us also grew up in the Cold War era, when our popular culture was preoccupied with the threat of atomic warfare, and our science fiction featured entire populations smitten with bizarre genetic mutations, supposedly from radioactive contamination. This is really the stuff of science fiction. Even in studies of the atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no such inter-generational effects were ever observed. But these fears of radiation persist until today in some circles.