What is “The Hiroshima Syndrome”?
The Hiroshima Syndrome is psychological distress which may lead to a mortal fear of nuclear energy. It is based on fundamental beliefs resulting from one or more of three levels of confusion relative to reactors and bombs…
(1) Uranium is an explosive, thus a worst-case nuclear reactor accident could conceivably result in a nuclear detonation,
(2) Nuclear power plant atmospheric releases are the same as bomb fallout,
(3) There is no safe level of radiation exposure.
All three trace their historical roots to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first two come directly from the bombing itself, and the third from an assumption used to set regulatory standards which were based on an extrapolation made in the 1930s, and Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivor data compiled over the decade after WWII. Any and/or all of the three beliefs became widely held in populations around the world, largely due to cold war secrecy. Over the three-plus decades following WWII, the beliefs became paradigm…a foundation of understanding held without question or doubt…in the minds of many. The perceived threat of nuclear energy to human health, based on these paradigms, is routinely presented in apocalyptic terms spawned by nuclear weapon’s detonations.
The above are three realms of misconception which were uncorrected for nearly 35 years after Hiroshima in 1945. The first two misconceptions literally erupted into full-blown paranoia with the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, generating fears of a nuclear detonation combined with mental images of the fallout victims of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. TMI also brought the no-safe-radiation exposure concept to the public mind for the first time. Chernobyl, and now Fukushima, have cemented the “unsafe at any dose” misconception firmly into the minds of a large number of people in the world, resulting in “radiophobia” (mortal fear of radiation) infecting millions, if not billions. These three misconceptions have produced a psychological disorder impairing rational judgment, which in its most extreme condition becomes a mortal fear. It generates psychic fear so stark that it consumes the mind. “The Hiroshima Syndrome” can be thus understood as a mortal fear of nuclear energy.
This site has been created in the hope that these misconceptions can be corrected through education and the damage done by the Hiroshima Syndrome can be healed.
