Yeah, and the press never seems to cover the fact that all those predicted cancers and mutations don't seem to actually happen.
The scarier predictions are all based on the LNT (Linear, No Threshold) model that says there's no safe level of radiation. But this can't be true; we humans live with widely varying levels of background radiation, and with the exception of radon it doesn't seem to greatly affect the cancer rate. (Radon seems to be dangerous mainly when combined with smoking.)
This actually makes some sense. Having gained the incentive to read about the mechanisms of cancer, it appears that genetic mutations during asexual reproduction (cell division) happen all the time for many reasons, with radiation being just one. So we've evolved mechanisms to detect and correct nearly all of them. It seems that nasty things happen only when these error-correction mechanisms are overwhelmed, possibly aided by a genetic predisposition. And that says there is a threshold for radiation exposure, below which there are likely no effects even in a large population.
The Health Physics Society has taken this position, saying that it is "inappropriate" to project health effects in a population where each individual has been exposed to 100 mSv or less.
