What is The Hiroshima Syndrome?


What is “The Hiroshima Syndrome”?

This is a phrase I have created to identify the source of the mortal fear of nuclear energy which grips a significant fraction of the world’s population and makes rational judgment virtually impossible. Why is such a provocative term being used? Because the problem started with the bombing of Hiroshima. The roots of the issue are three misconceptions which seem to be the foundation of all nuclear anxieties. Each can be historically traced to the atomic bombing of Japan...

  1. Confusion between reactors and bombs, which are entirely different technologies using distinctly different types of nuclear fuel.
  2. Confusion between bomb fallout and radiation itself.
  3. Mortal fear of radiation due to the no-safe-dose concept which was naively assumed subsequent to the study of Hiroshima/Nagasaki death data.

These three realms of misconception went 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 followed by mental images of the fallout victims of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. TMI also brought the no-safe-dose concept to the public mind for the first time. Chernobyl, and now Fukushima, have cemented the “unsafe at any dose” misconception firmly into a large number of people in the world, resulting in “radiophobia” (mortal fear of radiation) infecting millions, if not billions. These three misconceptions have become paradigm and have produced what can be understood as a severe psychological disorder impairing rational judgment. It generates phobic fear so stark that it consumes the mind. The condition itself - a mortal fear of nuclear energy - can be thus understood as “The Hiroshima Syndrome”.

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.