“United States regulations continue to follow the linear no-threshold theory. It has the benefits of being simple and safe, but it can also be misinterpreted… After the Chernobyl accident, in 1986, anti-nuclear groups and scientists used the findings from the Japanese atomic-bomb survivors, extrapolated downward for the radio levels in Europe (caused by Chernobyl,) and predicted tens of thousands of deaths from cancer. Critics note that this is like taking a set of deaths from motorcyclists who drove a curve at a hundred miles an hour and making the assumption that, if people slow to ten miles an hour, they’ll die at a tenth of the original rate.”

Peter Hessler 
The Uranium Widows,
Sept. 13, 2010