What are the effects of radiation from power plants on the human body and the environment?

Answer 1

It depends on the type of radiation you mean. I'm assuming you mean a nuclear power plant, although I'll cover some of the effects that electromagnetic radiation can have.

Nuclear power plants are extremely regulated in the United States. They have total containment of the radiation used, and nothing leaks to the outside. These containment vessels have backups as well. Even in the worst accident in US history, 3-Mile Island, people were only partially exposed to between 8 and 100 millirem. Eight millirem is equivalent to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the amount you are exposed to naturally in a year (through natural sources such as the sun).

In all actuality, it is the radioactive material from coal-fired power plants that is the greatest health hazard to people. A 1,000MW power plant can release as much as 5.2 tons of uranium into the atmosphere in a year. The radioactive emission from this coal power plant is 100 times greater than a comparable nuclear power plant with the same electrical output; including processing output, the coal power plant's radiation output is over 3 times greater.

As for the electromagnetic radiation from power lines and such, the only relevant health effect found was a slight increase of childhood leukemia in homes built along high-power transmission lines. In fact, in normal adults, signs indicate the some fields can actually speed the healing of soft-tissue injuries.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_plant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident