br br br Because of the factors we have been discussing and perhaps some others, the public has become irrational over fear of radiation. Its understanding of radiation dangers has virtually lost all contact with the actual dangers as understood by scientists. Perhaps the best example of this was the howl of public protest when plans were announced more than a year after the accident at Three Mile Island to release the radioactive gas that had been sealed inside the containment structure of the damaged reactor. This was important so that some of the safety systems could be serviced, and it was obviously necessary before recovery work could begin. Releasing this gas would expose no one to as much as 1 mrem, and the exposure to most of the protesters would be a hundred times less. Simply traveling to a protest meeting exposed the attenders to far more danger than release of the gas; moreover, an appreciable number fled the area, traveling a hundred miles or more, at the time of the release. Recall that 1 mrem of radiation has the same risk as driving 5 miles or crossing a street five times on foot. Needless to say, the statements of fear by the protesters were transmitted to the national TV audience with no accompanying evidence that their fears were irrational. br br One disheartening aspect of that episode was the effort by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to handle it. An early survey of the local citizenry revealed that there was substantial fear of the release of the gas. The NRC therefore undertook a large program of public education, explaining how trivial the health risks were. When this public education campaign was completed, another poll of the local citizenry was taken. It showed that the public's fear was greater than it was before the campaign. The public's reaction on matters of radiation defied all rational explanation. br br One tragic consequence of this public irrationality was the impact it had on medical uses of radiation. Radioactive materials and accelerator radiation sources are widely used for medical diagnosis and therapy, saving tens of thousands of lives each year. Even those opposed to nuclear energy claim that there may be an average of only a few hundred lives lost per year from all aspects of nuclear power (see Chapter 6), whereas most estimates are more than 10 times lower. Thus manmade radiation is saving hundreds or thousands of times as many lives as it is destroying. But as a result of the public's irrationality, patients were refusing radiation procedures with growing frequency, and physicians were becoming more hesitant to use them.