WILL THE NEXT RADIATION RELEASE KILL OFF NUCLEAR POWER?
Authored by Robert Hargraves via RealClear Wire,
July 10, 2023
Two AP1000 nuclear power reactors are powering up in Georgia, and several ventures are developing new generation reactors. The outlook for more nuclear power seems bright. But will there be some future failure that leaks radioactive material out? Yes, perfection is impossible; airplanes crash.
Will such a radiation event kill off nuclear power, as did the harmless Three Mile Island accident?
Yes, if we are guided by baseless fear. Regulators claim any radiation exposure is potentially harmful and so set unreasonably low limits. Media headlines frighten people about any radiation leaks, no matter how small. This article will contrast today’s regulatory limits with published, recommended protective actions to avoid harm to the public after a radiation release from a nuclear reactor accident.
Ionizing radiation harms by displacing electrons, breaking molecular bonds in cells. It is measured in Sieverts (Sv) or Grays, which are watt-seconds of energy absorbed, per kilogram of body weight. An intensive, brief 10 Sv dose is deadly, 1 Sv risks acute radiation sickness, and such a dose over 0.1 Sv can slightly increase future cancer risk.
U.S. regulations limit annual public radiation exposure from nuclear power to 0.001 Sv. The limit is 100X smaller than a brief, intensive dose that might cause cancer, and 1000X smaller than one requiring medical attention. This enormous safety margin was created politically by reducing limits in an attempt to reassure frightened people, but resulted in most people viewing 0.001 Sv as dangerous. Worse, regulators magnify fear with the ALARA rule (as low as reasonably achievable), claiming even lower exposures may cause cancer.
The regulators’ 0.001 Sv limit counts not just a single dose, but all radiation absorbed over an entire year, as if the harm were cumulative, without any biological repair during the year. In reality, repair takes place at DNA, cellular, and tissue levels in time scales of hours to days. DNA repair begins in seconds to minutes after exposure, and cellular repair within hours. How long does it take your cut finger to heal?
Radiation from the triple Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown killed no public citizens, but Japan’s government killed over 1,600 people with unnecessary evacuations. To prevent such future mistakes, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published Actions to Protect the Public in an Emergency due to Severe Conditions at a Light Water Reactor to protect the public from physical radiation harm, avoiding harm from fear based on regulators’ limits. This IAEA documented advice is directed to accident site responders working to protect people’s lives and health, independent of radiation limits promulgated by bureaucrats.
Chart 1 helps guide the accident response team and the public. IAEA’s green SAFE FOR EVERYONE, year-long, dose rate is 25 microSv/hour. This radiation exposure dose rate over a whole year totals to 0.2 Sv, 200X the regulators limit of 0.001 Sv/year, but is safe because the body repairs damage much more rapidly than 25 microSv/hour damages it.
Jack Devanney’s substack article tabulates observed harms and radiation doses to actual people in many studies. He observes that dose rates under 0.01 Sv/day did not exhibit statistically significant, detectable harm. The body’s intrinsic repair rate exceeds the radiation damage rate. Using a 10:1 safety margin he suggests 0.001 Sv/day safety limit. This is 40 microSv/hour, close to the IAEA SAFE FOR EVERYONE rate of 25 microSv/hour.
CHERNOBYL. The Chernobyl accident was deadly; 30 onsite workers with intensive doses over 2 Sv died. Cleanup workers exposed up to 0.3 Sv or more had slightly higher rates of cancer. Radioactive iodine dispersed into the food chain caused over 1,400 thyroid cancers leading to the deaths of 15 children; no other increases in public cancer rates was observed. Perhaps 200,000 people were evacuated. Radiation rates in the Chernobyl exclusion zone are now under 10 microSv/hour, not harmful to the 1,000 stubborn babushkas and others who still live there.
FUKUSHIMA. Within the stricken Fukushima power plants site, radiation peaked at 10,000 microSv/hour, dropping 90% in 10 hours. Outside the plant IAEA reported peak measured radiation of 170 microSv/hour 30 km northwest of the site. By the next month radiation dropped to less than 91 microSv/hour everywhere, provisionally safe by Chart 1 except in spots where radiation may have still exceeded 25 microSv/hour. There was no need to evacuate 164,000 people, leading to the deaths of over 1,600 people, and there was certainly no need to do it hastily.
THREE MILE ISLAND. Around Three Mile Island reactor accident the cumulative dose averaged only 15 microSv (likely under 25 microSv/hour everywhere), so there was no need to evacuate anyone. Nevertheless the accident was a factor in ending nuclear power plants construction in the U.S.
NATURAL RADIATION. The back of Chart 1 states the average annual dose rate from natural sources of radiation exposure fluctuates around 0.2 microSv/hour, but in some locations it can be up to 15 microSv/hour.
It’s dose rate, not dose, that matters. Harm results when dose rate exceeds repair rate. Regulators and the multi billion dollar radiation protection industry overstate radiation harm by orders of magnitude:
100X: 0.001 Sv/year regulatory limit vs observed intensive 0.1 Sv cancer threshold.
52X: regulatory yearlong biological repair assumption vs typical healing time.
ALARA: unknown whim.
Regulators should abandon cumulative, yearlong dose limits, and instead set dose rate limits consistent with biological repair times. The ALARA rule should be dropped. What should be the limit?
IAEA’s Chart 1 shows a 25 microSv/hour dose rate limit. Jack Devanney’s article suggested 40 microSv/hour. In 1934, the NCRP (National Commission on Radiation Protection) advised 40 microSv/hour (0.1 R/day in old units). Nearly 50 years later, NCRP founder Lauriston Taylor wrote “No one has been identifiably injured by radiation while working within the first numerical standards set by the NCRP and the ICRP in 1934.”
Nuclear power growth will end with the next radiation release unless we replace regulators with people who observe facts and consequences. The near century of concessions changing 1934 radiation limits from 40 microSv/hour to 0.001 Sv/year has not reduced harm one bit, but has increased public fear because the more restrictive limits have no evidential justification. Fear of nuclear power has killed many more people than radiation.
Nuclear power will be cheaper, ample, and less feared if regulators issue fact-based limits instead of conceding to protesters.
Dr. Hargraves teaches energy policy at Dartmouth’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and is a co-founder of a nuclear engineering company.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
HT/Yooper
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We should listen to Dr. Hargraves.
Dr. Hargraves is also part of an advanced nuclear energy startup.
I don’t think this undermines any of the facts he states, but it should be noted as a bias.
https://thorconpower.com/team-2/
L-NT is religious doctrine, not science.
I’ve been saying that for years, including having articles in ‘Nuclear News’ in the UK. But nothing changes. Even the nuclear industry won’t lobby the government to get the regulator to change the rules.
Sadly philip, the political blob only changes direction in favour of the people, rather than entrenched privilege, when it absolutely has to. The prevaillng view amongst the great uneducated of the Elites, was that GreenCrap was easier to sell to the public, and far more profitable, than nuclear power.
However a fool who would persist in his folly will become wise, and the spectre of total grid collapse now looms, and the green cow of renewables has had its udders milked dry, and the propsect of a country with no electricity at all facing Vladimir Putin (or similar), looms.
Hence the belated ‘discovery’ by the Uneducated Great, that nuclear radiation is nowhere near as dangerous as they had been telling everyone it was, and the development of politically acceptable nuclear reactors – SMRs – on the pretext that they are actually safer. When their real advantage is their ease of meeting regulatory requirements.
Heigh Ho! Interesting times.
LNT was justifiable in the early days of nuclear power, back when there was no data, no science.
Today we have loads of data and loads of science. All of it pointing to the fact that LNT has no basis in reality.
Good article by Dr. Hargraves. We put pencil dosimeters (quartz fiber discharge type) in the pockets of our geologists and field assistants, and never got above 10% of the monthly limit. We always checked the neighbors houses around a project, and found one with radon gas accumulation (open the doors and windows for 5 minutes each day, no matter if it’s snowing or not). It is entirely possible to operate nuclear projects, whether mining, fabricating, or operating with no risk to workers or neighbors. Bring it.
I live 30 miles due east (down wind) of the Palo Verde nuclear plant. I bought a geiger counter, not because of that but just in case China or Russia decide to risk it all. The thing is boring because it just sits there and ticks off no more than two or three counts per second. The only thing that’s exciting around here is a pre WWII piece of orange fiesta ware. The color is the result of Uranium that produce the unique orange color. It emits Beta radiation so it’s pretty well harmless with a foot or two distance between you and it.
You can get quite a kick from Coleman lantern mantles as well unless Coleman changed their production process recently. Thorium is the active ingredient.
Lantern mantles are still slightly radioactive. They are a convenient, inexpensive way to test if one’s Geiger counter or scintillometer is working.
It won’t take much lack of electricity in populous cities before dependable nuclear power is demanded. Renewables will become anchors.
The major problems with Nuclear Power are the consequences of corruption and incompetence in the building and management of such facilities, as well as the consequences of undpredictable natural disasters such as earthquakes and wars.
In other words, when things go wrong with a nuclear power plant, whatever the reasons, the consequences can be far more disastrous than the consequences of a coal-fired power plant going wrong.
In 2009, the Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam accident killed 75 people. Chernobyl, the worst nuclear powerplant accident, killed 34. The Machhu Dam-II collapse in India in 1979 killed thousands. The 1975 Banqian Dam failure killed 26,000 and over 100,000 subsequently died from famine. 180,000 people were evacuated in California because of the Oroville Dam spillway failure in 2017. The Generation III and III+ nuclear reactors that have been built in the last 20 years are many times safer (“orders of magnitude safer”) than the already extraordinarily safe nuclear reactors built 50 years ago.
Why are you comparing deaths from nuclear plant disasters to dam failures? My comparison was between nuclear power failures and coal-fired power failures.
It also seems rather strange that as an ‘AGW skeptic’, I expect you would be aware of the great uncertainty regarding the effects of human activity on climate, yet you seem to be quite certain of the effects of nuclear accidents, and claim only 34 people died as a result of the Chernobyl accident.
Here’s a quote from a Wikipedia article addressing the issue.
“The Chernobyl disaster, considered the worst nuclear disaster in history, occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, then part of the Soviet Union, now in Ukraine. From 1986 onward, the total death toll of the disaster has lacked consensus; as peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet and other sources have noted, it remains contested.
There is considerable debate concerning the accurate number of projected deaths that have yet to occur due to the disaster’s long-term health effects; long-term death estimates range from up to 4,000 (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations) for the most exposed people of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, to 16,000 cases in total for all those exposed on the entire continent of Europe, with figures as high as 60,000 when including the relatively minor effects around the globe. “
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster
Another issue which should be considered is that the relatively few nuclear power plant disasters that have occurred so far, have been in developed countries where corruption and incompetence is relatively low. If nuclear power were to replace fossil fuels, world-wide, including less developed countries where corruption and incompetence is rife, one could expect more frequent disasters with wide-spread consequences.
“ (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations) ” All members of which are certified antinuke. Look at the Millions Rusia spent demonizing nuclear power in the EU to help the Antinukes shut down the NPPs, and increase the profit for Russian oil and NG.
The deaths caused by the Chernobyl event will be less than one percent, in the decimal points, and about equal to the deaths from skin melanomas caused by exposure to Sun light. – Are you living and working in a cave? – Even that would increase your exposure to radiation. Or flying in a plane, and a dozen other natural habits – Eating a Banana a day, eat two or three a day and you will have the same death probability of those downwind from Chernobyl Same if you live downwind from a coal power plant.
He’s your typical anti-nuclear activist. He’s been so scarred of what he doesn’t understand that his brain has completely shut down.
LOL Wikipedia!
There isn’t a single topic even slightly controversial where Wikipedia can’t be relied upon to exaggerate in the left-wing direction.
The number of people directly killed in Chernobyl isn’t uncertain. The number of people whose illnesses MIGHT have been exacerbated by the event is inherently unknowable and confounded by countless other events and conditions.
If you’re intent on quoting fantasy numbers, why not compare the effects of one nuclear accident against the effects of thousands of coal-fired plants spewing mercury and other heavy metals continuously for decades?
Thanks for calling out Wiki.
As to the effects of burning coal for electricity, it would nice to have a comprehensive cost benefit analysis, of deaths caused and lives saved, of coal, year by year as, for example, in the US, the regulations changed and the “spewing: decreased.
Of course, whatever number for “increased” incidence of cancer, etc. would require taking into account so many variables that the study would be impossible to give anything more that the “could have” types of outcomes common to Climate “pseudoscience”.
The continuous process of making modern houses in the US tighter and tighter and for people to spend more and more time in these tight houses MAY BE (Climate Science term of certainty) the cause of increased asthma, etc. that greens blame on fossil fuel use.
1960s, single glazed windows, almost no weather stripping at doors, economical electrical power, more “polluted” fresh air in homes, a healthier population.
Greens begin their command structure deciding how YOU shall live.
2023, you MUST show your house is tight. The only people who can afford fresh air replacement systems are the wealthy, what a surprise.
Poor people are bombarded in their own homes and apartments with all the chemicals from furnishings, carpet, the building materials themselves (the extensive use of laminated lumber, OSB, etc. which outgas), and cleaning compounds. Then the increased incidence of different cancers and diseases among the poor is blamed of whatever is politically most expedient at any given time with no proof, and the MSM broadcasts the lefts talking points as if they are fact.
Why do liberal, greens and Nick Stokes hate the poor so?
The Electric Power Research Institute has extensively studied the problems of co-risks from power generation. Chauncey Starr, in particular, looked at the actual and perceived risks of nuclear power.
Yes coal can be burned with virtually no pollution and I’m not opposed to it at all. Modern nuclear power vs Chernobyl is a similar comparison to East German brown coal power plants vs. an advanced fluidized bed coal power plant.
Just the same, it is completely obvious to me that deaths and illnesses from nuclear power are dwarfed by the effects of many decades of coal burning without adequate pollution controls.
I’m guessing you haven’t heard that a lot of dams are used for hydro power.
As to your figures, you have to consider the source.
The claims of thousands of deaths is not backed by any science.
Beyond that, there are the many problems with the design and operation of the Chernobyl plant that make it quite unique. Only someone who is interested in propaganda would attempt to compare it to any western nuclear plants, much less modern nuclear plants.
Do you not understand that recorded deaths are different from projected deaths? There is a good reason that “there is considerable debate concerning the accurate number of projected deaths that have yet to occur.” Nobody has a reliable crystal ball!
@Vincent,
The work ethic, competency, and safety attitude of NPP Construction and Operation is among the top of the US industries. Many of which were nuclear power plant operators in Navy Ships and Submarines or worked in the Navy Ship building yards. They had an attitude that their life depended upon the proper construction and operation of the Nuclear Reactor and ship.
I know all the TMI employes who went into the contaminated Containment Building, the contaminated RCS Sample station and the comminated containment spray pump room during and after the TMI accident and received the “Once in a Lifetime Dose,” to this date, none of them have succumbed to any radiation related cause which happened over 40 years ago, March 28, 1979. The majority of which are now well over 70 and approaching 80 years old.
The only deaths related to TMI-II, so far, as determined by the owner for various lawsuits are traffic accidents while evacuating the area and several heart attacks caused by the Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt and hyped-up Media spread disinformation relating the incident to “The China Syndrome,” I don’t think I saw a news cast durring that event that did not also have a video of an H-Bomb exploding. Jane Fonda had more airtime than any of the newscasters!
I think most people who have responded to my comment seem to think I am opposed in principle to nuclear power because it is inherently unsafe. However, I don’t believe this is the case. I believe we have the technology and understanding which enables us to construct, manage and operate nuclear power plants in a safe manner, and minimize the effects of accidents.
What I see as a major concern is the corruption and incompetence that exists in many countries
An analogy is the development of coal-fired power in India and China. In the West we tackled the problem of smog many decades ago, by introducing strict emission controls which, of course, increased the costs. However, when China began developing its economy, using lots of energy from coal, it didn’r use these ‘state-of-the-art’ emission controls, because it needed to reduce costs, for competitive purposes.
The consequences were massive air pollution in the cities, causing lots of health problems. I would be worried that a similar situation would occur if nuclear power became an alternative to coal, world-wide, in less developed countries where profit would more likely transcend safety.
That’s my point.
“What I see as a major concern is the corruption and incompetence that exists in many countries”
Starting with Obama ““Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” – making it economically impossible for utilities to move to the to move to the new “Advanced Ultra Super critical Coal fired plants. that burnt within single digits percentage point wise as NG power plants.
These are the ones China is building now [and in dozens of other countries] and without the regulations Obama passed for the sole purpose to eliminate coal fired power from the US. [And then he started attacking NG] The regulations were so restrictive that the emissions coming from the smokestack were an order of magnitude cleaner/purer than the air within hundreds of miles of the plant. The Coal power plant became Giant HEPA Filters. Your greatly improved health claims are pure hype.
The only solution to reduced CO2 is Nuclear power – PERIOD.
We have lost 20 years – over a hundred new NPPs could have been built and far exceeded the reduction of CO2 from the loss of coal, or the use of NG and CO2 side effects of Unreliable – Renewables [that require spinning reserves making CO2 and not electricity and costing you money] and renewables that need renewed every 15 years adding to the CO2.
Meanwhile, the Tectonic Plates are still shifting and spreading are making ten times as much CO2 as Humankind.
Read — Doug Hoffman/ Allen Simmons books “The Resilient Earth” and “The Energy Gap”
“The only solution to reduced CO2 is Nuclear power – PERIOD.”
I’m not concerned about CO2 emissions. I’m concerned about pollution and its effects on human health and the environment.
Advanced Ultra-supercritical coal plants are more expensive to build than conventional coal plants, but that greater expense is offset by their greater efficiency in producing more power from the same amount of coal.
The problem with the CAGW alarmists, as I’m sure you know, is that they believe CO2 is a pollutant. We do not have the technology to efficiently remove and store the CO2 emissions from the burning of coal, so in that sense you are correct that nuclear power is the best option to reduce CO2 emissions
However, I think you’ve missed the main point that all this concern about CO2, is a political issue involving control of the population based on the promotion of fear. The fear of nuclear disasters has existed for a long time since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and is based upon sound scientific evidence. It’s well established that high doses of radiation, without protection, cause serious health problems, and can also kill.
So ask yourself, why should any government that relies upon ‘fear’ to control the population, remove the fear of nuclear accidents in order to also remove the fear of the consequences of CO2 emnissions? No fear equates to no control. Got it?
In the French conservative reference journal website, the Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam (1) accident (2), was covered with a couple of paragraphs, almost boilerplate text. A local sport exhibition can have more coverage.
In France, when two workers got very superficial chemical burns by pouring an acidic cleaning agent in a dirty pipe near (not inside) a nuclear plant, it’s big news. Major TV coverage.
It’s just incredible. Seriously, I wouldn’t trust another person telling me these FACTS. (I fell dizzy writing that message.)
(1) world’s sixth-largest hydroelectric plant by average power generation according to WP
(2) during which 75 people died
The citizens of Canada have more to worry about than we’ll designed, constructed and operated nuclear power plants.
Currently, nearly half of them will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetimes and 28% of them will die of it.
Nothing attributable to nuclear power generation.
The difference between
maybe,if,canandHAS` is tested by applying a time interval and looking at the figures.Nature (like earthquakes and tsunamis) kills big time, nuclear is safe, if you must see that.
The ArtStudent™ asks ‘is it safe’ and receives the message ‘no amount of radiation is safe’ .
The Engineer asks ‘how safe is it?’ and receives the message ‘about a thousand times safer than sunbathing’…
How is it possible to get anything so wrong, apart from via: Projection
Nuclear constructions are THE most visible and highly scrutinised/watched human endeavours there ever were…
In comparison to (just one tiny example) the Contracts for Difference that UK windfarmers operate under
Nonsense.
The worst that can happen would be less than what happened in Fukushima, and that was very minor. ALL of the problems were caused by over reactions from local politicians.
You are really grabbing at straws here.
Clarification on Sievert vs Gray. The Gray is a unit of how much energy is absorbed by tissue and the Sievert is the energy absorbed times a weighting factor that varies with the type of ionizing radiation, e.g. alpha, beta, gamma, neutrons and various charged articles. The weighting is such that a dose of 1 Sievert is biologically equivalent of a dose of 1 Gray from gamma radiation. This is an update for Roentgen’s and REM.
If the anti-nuke folks had any idea of how many cosmic ray induced high energy particles reach the earth’s surface, they would spend their time deep underground and would swear off flying on jet airliners.
Deep underground there is radiation, too. The only “safe” place would probably be suspended 100 meters under the ocean surface, with a pure lead skin over your carefully constructed submarine. (Even ocean water contains minuscule amounts of radioactives.)
WO – and also stop eating bananas and Brazil nuts, or indeed anything containing Potassium (then you’d die from Potassium shortage, but at least it wouldn’t be from the dreaded radiation).
The cancer rates from nuclear radation from a dangerous reactor with no shielding, run into thousands a year. That’s why people should put on sun block and stay in the shade.
And avoid the renewable energy that is used to harvest its power.
Or buy a global parasol from Bill Gates!
Utter bunk.
Please re-read, but turn on your sarcasm detector first.
Working in x-ray departments, I was always amazed at people who questioned the amount of radiation from a chest x-ray while sporting a beautiful tan. SMH.
Correction. Gray is absorbed radiation energy in any material. Sievert is the ‘Dose Equivalent’ damage from radiation in living tissue after various weighting factors have been brought into play.
Now that’s an incentive for us to relentlessly publicize the rate of background radiation!
I first worked in a nuclear plant in 1966 and received my largest dose of radiation in 1968, in one quarter plus one day — about 9 Rems. I’m now an old guy and have problems converting Sieverts into something that relates to the radiation world I once lived in. (l know it’s easy, but I don’t do it frequently enough to easily relate it to doses/limits I used to know.) I don’t recall running into “Grays” before. Actually, my engineering graduation (1959) and entire career into the 1990s used units of measurement which are now obsolete and the new units remind me of using “furlongs per fortnight.” Goes along with our overall cultural destruction and renaming/redefining everything.
Seventy miles SE of me is the Columbia Generating Station that entered commercial operation in December 1984. Partial refueling, maintenance, and upgrades take place every other spring.
Raise your glass if you have ever heard of it.
I live in the middle of nowhere about the same distance from that station, but in the opposite direction.
When I was working for a consulting firm back in the mid-2000’s doing project costing for proposed nuclear projects in the southeast, I had occassion to talk an engineer assigned to Columbia Generating Station’s twenty year NRC license extension project. Their task was to extend the plant’s life from 40 years to 60 years.
He told me at the time that based on the studies that were then being done, it would be possible to extend the plant’s operating life beyond 60 years to 80 years, assuming the necessary maintenance and upgrades were always being performed.
Washington State’s energy policies focus on wind and solar, but still leave the door open for new-build nuclear. However, if another nuclear plant is ever built again in Washington State, it will be an SMR design of some kind, not an AP1000 size reactor.
I spent some time with an ENGINEER that also did the paperwork required for various nuclear plants in the US to get their regulation required renewals and worked on getting extensions. He and the company he worked for made good money.
While discussing “renewable “”energy””” he stated that wind generators provide “spinning reserves”. Yes he is a liberal and listens to NPR. Apparently no skepticism about what he hears on that leftist crap. When I explained all that was involved with wind generation and that wind does not even provide frequency stabilization, he said I must be wrong about that. I did not argue, but instead asked him, as a LICENSED ENGINEER, playing on any honor he may have, I know that is funny, to do the research after my wife and I had moved on to our next vacation location.
Makes me scared about what might be getting reapproved and/or extended.
BTW, they lived in Downer’s Grove outside of Chicago. They moved there when it was time for their first child to go to school. GG, no school bussing for racial integration, etc, Both white college educated liberals, living their values? As to virtue signaling, the wife was on her SECOND hybrid, and talking about going electric. She really talked that up. The last day we were there, I asked how much she had gotten in “tax deductions or other subsidies” on those two cars, and how it felt having minimum wage earners funding her cars? Just a parting shot, I couldn’t help myself.
Downer’s Grove, 82.8% white, 5.7% Asian, 5.7% Hispanic. And that is for TODAY, not 30+ years ago when they moved there, probably 90% white then. True thru and thru college educated well to do liberals doing what WTD liberals do.
Then there is radiation hormesis, with hundreds of papers measuring benefits at low doses, not harms. Search “hormesis Calabrese” for reviews by a dominant toxicologist. Geoff S
The jury is still out on that one, with conflicting data on it . I wouldn’t bet a Nobel Prize on it being right, OR wrong…
Clearly you know nothing about hormesis. Learn from Calabrese.
It is the dose that makes the poison. Too little, as well as too much, kills.
I wonder about the down votes on your comments as I also think the jury is still out on radiation hormesis, i.e. not yet conclusively proven right or wrong for the general case.
Even if radiation hormesis were to be proven wrong, that would not necessarily prove that the LNT assumption is correct.
Erik,
The jury is back and the 100% verdict is that hormesis is an everyday mechanism for every living person. If you define it correctly, you get a Eureka moment. Think about medical drugs that have a positive effect. Every one of them is toxic at high doses. The dose harm/curve is a J-shape for (probably) every pharmaceutical. Think next of natural vitamins and natural hormones. Too little gives illness or death, too much is illness or death, in the middle is Goldilocks benefit that is for vitamins essential. Vitamin = vital for life. Geoff S
I think we’re talking about two different things. IIRC, radiation hormesis is a beneficial effect of “low” levels of radiation, versus no known harmful effects from low level radiation (i.e. there is a dose or dose rate threshold for harmful effects from radiation). From what I understand, there is evidence for radiation hormesis for some biological processes, but not sure if that’s true for all biological processes.
Erik,
Suggest you study the data rather than rely on a belief from memory. Geoff
Absolutely correct.
There are several European Spas whose waters are mildly radioactive. Perhaps most famously Badgastein and Hofgastein in Austria.
They have mountains of evidence of the benefits of “taking the waters” there, going back many decades. And not least the health and longativity of those who are born and live their lives there.
Compare and contrast Bill Gates and BigPharma’s “Safe and Effective” experimental Gene Therapy jabs.
It is likely that the latter, in 2.5 years, have already killed more people than all radiation deaths since Mme Curie.
My generation of LWR are doing just fine.
The US is the largest producer of electricity using fission. No one has even been hurt by US navy or our designs of commercial LWR. No plants have a problems meeting off site dose limits.
Apparently TMI did not kill off nuclear power. We built as many new nukes as we needed. Demand for electricity was greatly over estimated. Before TMI 1/3 of new nukes had been cancelled.
In 2008, 36 new nukes were on the NRC docket and facilities to import LNG wer being built. Subsequently, the shale oil boom produced natural gas as a waste product to be burned to make power.
The US gets about 20% of power from fission while France gets 75%. The share of nuclear depends on the amount of other sources of power.
Clearly having a diversifies sources of energy are important for the economy and national security. Wind and solar are for the idle rich.
‘Wind and solar’ are for the idle rich. Certainly not for the birds that’s for sure.
Why diversity of sources for electricity??
Diversity for diversity sake??
If 100% of electricity was from various nuclear plants, including those designed to vary output as are the reactors of US Naval vessels, why would we need any OTHER source of electricity.
Of course it might be better to build small coal, natural gas or oil power plants in remote areas to avoid building transmission lines, but then that is for a PURPOSE, with a financial analysis that shows the benefit of such, not just for diversity.
Diversity for what might happen. Like piping cracks, like coal piles freezing, like gas pipeline blowing up. A list of things that have happened.
Diverse and preferably indigenous sources of energy.
It’s great buying in “cheap” energy, when available.
Remember the aftermath of the Yom Kippur war?
Remember the Germans reliant on Russian energy and scared of those monster tsunamis in the Bavarian Lakes?
Never forget that if you adopt policies directly contrary to GangGreen, you won’t go far wrong.
Mention of the Yom Kippur war and the quadrupling of OPEC’s oil prices reminds me of the joke concerning Sheik Yamani, the Saudi Minister for Petroleum and Mineral Resources, from 1962 for very many years.
I’m sure older readers will remember it:-
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Yamani!
Yamani? Yamani who?
Yamani or your life!
Gotta admit. He did a good job for Saudi Arabia.
Cross country running again this monday on Dartmoor, as always, every week, volcanic granite mass, I occasionly sit on granite outcrops to take in the big sky view,
amalgamating all that continual elevated background radiation dosage if added onto that when in hospital over the years should have killed me by now ?
I worry that I may die at some stage in the future !
nice article
Worry not, low level radiation is good for you (radiation hormesis). Like most of us, you are likely to die of old age (or you may freeze to death because of government energy policy).
Nuff sed…
There are two scales that need to be explained. One is the calculus of health risk, including the health risk of not using nuclear. The other is the economic balance. How does cost of safety measures scale with dose limits? Of course that feeds back into the economic benefits, including an ability to afford better health care through having cheaper energy.
An extension would be to look at geopolitical risk reduction arising from rebalancing the energy portfolio.
Rank the 100 significant ‘risks’ in your life. Nuclear Radiation doesn’t even get onto the list. Smarten up!
Obviously I failed to explain my point adequately. Health risk is largely covered in the article, that shows the regulatory standard is 2 orders of magnitude too tight. The consequence of that is nuclear is much more costly than it should be to meet the regulatory standard. What we need to understand is the tradeoff curve.
If we could cut nuclear cost by say 75% by adopting a standard that reflects risks accurately that would clearly be worthwhile. However, that is a tough sell. So we need to understand how much cost is saved at different levels of regulatory standard.
How much cost do we save by relaxing the standard by a factor of 2,5,10,20? 20 would still leave us 5 times below the laxest standard we should apply, which is the sort of safety margin that is usually built into such things as bridge design. If we save 50% of cost by relaxing by a factor of 2 then rather than trying to get to say 60% by relaxing by a factor of 10 it would make sense to start by selling the factor of 2 (leaving us 50 times as safe as we need be). If we have to go all the way to relaxing by a factor of 20 to achieve any significant saving it’s going to be much more difficult to achieve (but still worth doing).
If we don’t know what the cost map is then we can’t pick a route to get to the desired outcome, which is more, cheaper nuclear.
Chauncey Starr demonstrated that people tolerate risk in proportion to their perceived benefit. If the media isn’t telling the whole truth, it shouldn’t be surprising that people are afraid of nuclear power.
Indeed: the benefits of potentially cheaper, reliable power at very low risk of injury and death that far outscores other methods of power production are not sold, and nor are the enormous economic and social benefits of having a cheap energy supply. Instead we are encouraged to believe that hair shirts, poverty, hunger cold, loss of means of transport, loss of jobs and loss of homes are supposed to be preferable: inverted piffle if ever there was.
Of course, people tend to associate nuclear with weapons, and there is no doubt than in our current world we have a greatly increased risk of weapons being used. But the people of North Korea know that producing weapons is quite independent of decent power supply as the lights go out every night. The risks of war are in fact reduced by aiming for improvements in global living standards that nuclear power can help to bring about. If we don’t need to steal or sponge of others to survive, but instead get richer by making things and trading then we have no need of war as policy.
I wouldn’t use the AP1000 as an example of cheaper nuclear power. I worked on the AP1000s in South Carolina which were cancelled because of cost overruns and schedule delays. The completed plants in China and Georgia seem to be working well but unless dramatic improvements in component fabrication and construction promise significant cost reductions, no private organization in their right mind would consider building one. And good luck finding enough qualified workers to build more than one or two units at a time.
The future is with designs that can be manufactured like commercial airliners.
And yes, the LNT hypothesis is absurd.
” qualified workers “
I suspect this could be fixed. Didn’t our current President suggest coal miners could simply learn to code to transition to “jobs of the future”?
Now there are auto workers, and soon wind tower builders, that could transition.
I also suspect that “designs that can be manufactured like commercial airliners” will be possible and operational in 20 years.
The Climate™ won’t care, and I will have check-out before it happens.
If everything was regulated like nuclear energy, we would all be starving in the cold.
Hmmmmmm, the link here describes speculation and guesswork.
“””DNA repair begins in seconds to minutes after exposure, and cellular repair within hours. How long does it take your cut finger to heal?
You actually hit an enormous nail bang on its head with the ‘cut finger’ part of it though.
Anybody, everybody, run the experiment to investigate that.
It is because what heals your finger also protects against radiation (and lots of other shit as well)
The experiment: (esp for the over 40’s amongst the assembled throng) and doubly triply more so if you drink alcohol (any amount) or smoke
Find yourself a generous quantity of 1,000mg Vitamin C tablets (at least 200 of the ‘chewable’ ones)Then split them in half with some strong scissors (keep them dry)For the next month *at least*, pop down one of those halves every couple of your waking hours. (Don’t need be too religious about it)Don’t get paranoid, don’t expect instant miracles, just ‘be aware’ of yourselfTwo things especially though..Firstly = the thing about how rapidly cuts, scratches and bruises heal and disappearSecondly your mouth = if your teeth usually ‘ache’ or feel ‘fuzzy’ or are ‘a bit loose’ or gappy or, worst of all, bleed when you brush them – take especial noteUnless you are an avid consumer of animal products in the form of ‘Offal’ (liver kidney, black pudding), also get some 1,000mg tabs of Vitamin B Complex.
Chop those in half and take one half for breakfast and the other half at bedtime.
If you drink, Take Vitamin B Complex anyway. Period.
(Also applies if you’re on diuretic meds for anything, esp hypertension)
A 2 month experiment will cost less than £20 at UK supermarket prices – just see how it goes.
While you’re on, find some water-soluble Zinc tabs, just a half of a single one will do.
Let it melt on the tip of your tongue and if it tastes **horrible** you’re OK
If you can’t taste it at all, you are Zinc Deficient = find yourself 15mg daily of Zinc Citrate to add into the mix
Those are the main components, not especially of your immune system, but your First Line of Defence = think James T Kirk ordering the shields to go up = they protect against germs, bacteria, virus and radiation all just exactly the same.
They soak up Free Radicals and so let your immune system get on with The Big Things
Look up ‘Apoptosis’.
Yet regulators refuse to outlaw living in Denver, medical x-rays and flying at 33,000 ft for hours, all of which exceed their limits of radiation dosages.
Support should be found for the dangers of radiation by looking at an elevation map of the US and correlating it with a map of cancers induced by radiation. One should find higher rates of cancer over granitic bedrock and high elevations, such as found around Denver. I have yet to see anyone make the claim.
For those readers who just ache to know just about all there is to know about the Health effects of radiation… here you go. And, yes, I wrote it many years ago, but it is still totally relevant.
https://www.nwmo.ca/-/media/Site/Reports/551_32_NWMO_background_paper.ashx
Enjoy. John K. Sutherland.
The document asks for a password when I try to open it. I tried using ‘hormesis’ but it didn’t take it.
The Health Physics Society, the professional society for those involved in nuclear radiation safety, has recently released a series of 20 ten or fifteen minute talks by a health physics expert explaining just how the ALARA and Linear NoThreshold (I.e. one gamma ray can cause cancer) philosophies were developed. The talks reveal how these appallingly ignorant and simply wrong concepts evolved through the efforts of a few extraordinarily arrogant individuals. They are truly worth listening to. The talks are available at HPS.org.
Robert Hargraves,
You have to use bad, inferential guesswork “scienc” of the modern pop science type to claim that there were 1,700 deaths from thyroid cancers caused by Chernobyl.
The only count that matters is the medical diagnosis on the death certificate.
Here is a lovely US example of this crooked science. It is about US deaths from lead poisoning.
The Lancet has a recent paper that led to CNN claiming “The researchers concluded that nearly 412,000 deaths every year in the US can be attributed to lead contamination.”
In 2018, CNN media reported
OTOH, we can use a count of death certificates with Pb poisoning as the cause .
Kaufman et al 2013 did that and estimated 10 deaths per year for years 1979-1998 in the USA and dropping.
…
Solid science gives 10 deaths a year.
Conjecture “science” gives 412,000 a year.
Something’s gotta give!
….
Geoff S
“The Lancet has a recent paper that led to CNN claiming “The researchers concluded that nearly 412,000 deaths every year in the US can be attributed to lead contamination.”
Does that include lead in 50 grain chunks traveling at 1.000 feet per second?
After many weeks of research into past literature, I have concluded – and can give example after example – that one of the main sources of objection to nuclear electricity started in earnest about 1955 with the main perpertrator being the warm and cuddly and giving philanthropy, the Rockefeller Foundation.
There was a massive corruption of science by people with power and money to capture part of the US nuclear future at the level of President Eisenhower. The grip has not relaxed, but now the facts are emerging.
See for example The History of the LNT Episode Guide (hps.org)
WUWT has, with usual diligence, already carried an article.
….
My prediction for the next big event for nuclear? It will be the unmasking of this corruption of science by power and money by the Rockefeller Foundation. Once the public sees what went on, they might be happier with a nuclear energy future.
Geoff S
p.s. I first went hands-on with the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle in 1971, so I include actual experience in my conjecture.
Just for context…my prostate cancer treatment involved two sessions of 10 grays.
KM,
You are lucky. A firend had treatment for AIDS that involved 27 sessions with at least 6 gays.
Geoff S
A tan from low level solar exposure protects against high level solar exposure. It isn’t cummulate radiation that does the harm. It is that first day in the sun after 6 months indoor during winter.
fredberple,
Yes, that is another example of hormesis that diehards are trying to insist is unproven.
Geoff S
Those who are having difficulty accessing my paper, can use an internet search for the title: ‘Health aspects of high level radioactive wastes.’Sand can access it from there, when my name shows up too.
ALARA is “Catch 22” on steroids with a Sledgehammer enforcement in a China shop.
Annually, Licensed Nuclear power plants are evaluated by INPO – Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. These plants are evaluated in compliance of the ALARA regulations. As there is no specific lower limit established by this “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” Plants are ranked on achieved value and then placed in the appropriate Quartile. Problem is that there are always going to be 25% of the plants in the lowest Quartile. NPP Managers have lost their job for the plant’s placement in the fourth Quartile and not achieving this mythical goal of avoiding the impossible. At several of the plants I worked at the Risk/Benefit value was $3,000 per man‐mSv. However, Hospitals also are required to comply with ALARA and they consider more than $450 per man‐mSv as too expensive.
NRC and EPA [Yes both have dose regulations] are the entities making Nuclear Power cost prohibitive.
Do people believe that?
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-soldiers-struck-radiation-sickness-after-digging-chernobyl-1797649
In French MSM, AFAIK, it has NOT been “debunked”. Nobody even criticized it.