And Finally...

Many of us think in terms of our present energy situation and don't consider what benefits our world would have if the LNT did not cloud the minds of those who could do great works - if allowed to do so by the regulators. While the American Nuclear Society is still on the fence in regard to scrapping the LNT and recognizing the possibilities of hormesis, Gregg M. Taylor, the editor-in-chief of the organization's magazine - Nuclear News - wrote an absorbing editorial entitled, "We have met the solution, and it is us."

In this monograph, he noted that one of California's big problems - echoed in many countries around the world - is the availability of water for agricultural irrigation. Water from the Colorado River is coveted by all and is a constant source of political turmoil. But what if we built nuclear desalination plants, he asks, strategically located along the coast? They could be pollution free - with guppy rights properly observed.

One might wonder how this could dovetail into Dr. Cohen's extraction of uranium from the sea - surely there is a synergistic connection here as part of the desalination process could well be the initial step in obtaining the metal. How much more habitable - for people like you and me - would the Earth become if our deserts could be irrigated... at no cost except the premature use of the nuclear energy in uranium and thorium. They are going to lose their energy over time anyway - we're just appropriating it for our short-term use. Besides, a quarter of the uranium and two-thirds of the thorium would still have its energy when the sun flakes out on us in eight or ten billion years.

Editor Taylor also touches on another touchy subject: toxic wastes. Noting that most of us remember "disintegrators" from our sci-fi days, he observes that it takes only sufficient energy - which can be provided readily by clean nuclear sources - to reduce the most horrible kinds of toxic waste into its constituent atoms, which would totally lose their identity and could be recombined as the purest substances possible.

Let your mind roam free for a moment. What scourge of mankind might not be alleviated by sufficient energy availability?

• Floods and hurricanes? Better materials requiring more energy, high dikes - both a function of available energy.
• Starvation? Hydroponics from desalinated water.
• Locusts? Airplanes, chemicals, huge nuclear flyswatters (just kidding).

***

If man is to advance to another higher plateau - past the industrial and information revolutions - it can be done only in conjunction with an unencumbered access to energy. Otherwise, we are dooming generations to untold misery and suffering.

Do Nuclear Workers Glow in the Dark?

Mortality study of plutonium workers at Rocky Flats involving 7,112 workers from 1952 to 1979 gave cancer deaths at 64% of the expected number in the general population. - Nuclear News, December 1981

While the workers building bombs and those involved in electric power generation are in entirely different industries (except in the minds of anti-nuclear protesters), there are many similarities in their work environments. Of particular interest to us are the radiation levels (which are in the area where we would anticipate hormesis), the relatively accurate dosimetry (a fancy scientific word for measuring radiation exposure), and excellent follow-up on the health and longevity of the "participants." We'll look first at two Canadian studies of power plant workers and then at investigations of weapons plant workers by both American and British researchers.

Just in case I forget to mention it three or four times in the next few chapters, none of these investigations had any intention of even considering the possibility of hormesis. They were all expecting to prove a positive correlation between radiation and cancer. That's what a "smart" researcher does: makes sure the report comes out to reaffirm what the political authority footing the bill already believes. [Most experimentalists are dedicated scientists who let the data speak for themselves. But as in all other facets of life, there are some who play it "smart" to make sure they stay on the government payroll. It is these few that I refer to here.]

As you'll see, some researchers show data that offer evidence of the hormesis version of dose-response, but they conclude that there is a linear relation between radiation and exposure and any particular cancer you'd like to worry about.