Radiation Myths Harming Public Health by Jay Lehr, February 24, 2010
I was recently invited to lunch by the editors of Newsweek magazine in New York City to discuss with them my views on what should be included in their next special issue on the nation's environmental priorities.
They were quite shocked when I told them that one of my top three, just behind applying DDT to stamp out malaria and improving drinking water supplies for impoverished nations, was reducing the unwarranted fear of low-level radiation that grips most of the world's population.
I was determined to call this issue to Newsweek's attention, because I had recently read Ed Hiserodt's new book, Underexposed. I cannot recommend this book too strongly, nor can I praise it articulately enough.
Identifies False Theory
Let us first examine the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) theory, by which we have been held hostage for so long.
To take it to an absurd extreme so you will easily understand it, the theory basically says that if 100 percent of a given population will die from a fall from a 100 foot cliff, and 50 percent would die when falling from a height of 50 feet, then we can expect that one person of a hundred would die when falling from a height of one foot.
Silly as this seems, we use the same theory when studying the effects of chemicals and heavy metal intake by humans. Substances such as mercury, lead, tin, cadmium, oxygen, fluorine, arsenic, and selenium are toxic in large quantities, yet critical to our health in small quantities.
We call the phenomenon of harm at high doses and help at low doses "hormesis," derived from the Greek word "hormo," which means to excite. Thus, a substance that excites a positive bodily response at a low dose and is harmful at high doses is considered hormetic. Vitamins and trace minerals clearly show the difference a dose makes. The same is true of sunlight, noise and stress.
Radiation Fears Unwarranted
A common measure of nuclear radiation is the millirem, or mrem. The average background radiation in the United States is 300 mrem per year, though higher at altitudes well above sea level, like Denver.
Low-level radiation is a "green issue." The media tends not to criticize their green friends who oppose any and all forms of radiation. Indeed, if low levels of radiation are realized to be benign, then there goes a central argument of anti-nuclear activists.
There is in fact no scientifically credible evidence that low-level radiation is harmful, yet there is substantial evidence that it actually inoculates the body to resist the negative effects of future high doses. At the same time, low-dose radiation appears to have positive effects in increasing immune system competency.
Hiserodt informs us that if we want to avoid our natural annual background radiation, we would have to move to Antarctica or live underwater in a nuclear submarine. We could also encourage people to move from the high plains of Colorado - where the cancer rates are low - to states where background radiation is low, but cancer rates are high.
But of course we are not going to do any of these things, because if an increase in low-level radiation caused any problems at all we would have seen the evidence long ago, in the form of dead bodies. If low-level radiation harmed human health, Deadwood, Colorado (elevation 11,000 feet) would be well known for its citizens' short life spans, but that is not the case. In fact, the opposite is true.
According to Hiserodt, the only people who think there is any real danger from low-level radiation are the regulators, antinuclear activists, environmental zealots and government scientists who cling to the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis.
Background Radiation Cuts Cancer
Hiserodt recounts how Dr. Bernard Cohen proved conclusively that geographic areas with slightly elevated levels of naturally occurring radon have a reduced incidence of lung cancer. The first of Cohen's studies was published in 1990, and an even more comprehensive study was reported in 1995. The wealth of evidence rocked the scientific community, most of whom had never bothered to question the Linear No-Threshold model.
Hiserodt exhaustively describes the many mice studies showing conclusively that the LNT model is absurd and that mice actually benefit from low-level radiation. He then explains that similar exposure among humans proves the very same thing.
The greatest proof, worth repeating, lies among the citizens of Nagasaki and Hiroshima - who were exposed to low-level radiation and went on to experience longer and healthier life spans than Japanese living elsewhere.
Study after study of nuclear power plant workers further illustrate the enhanced health of those working in an environment of low-level radiation. The most inclusive study, which was intended to show negative impacts on our nuclear workforce, began at Johns Hopkins University in 1980 and was reported 15 years ago. It conclusively showed positive effects of low-level radiation on 72,356 workers.
Perhaps the most telling real-world evidence of the benefits of low-level radiation is how the uneven distribution of background radiation around the world parallels the variations in human cancer rates. The higher the natural background radiation, the lower the local cancer rates.
Hiserodt briefly but clearly describes nuclear reactors, saying, "The new designs are even safer than the old - but how do you get safer than no deaths, no injuries, and no negative effects to the public from several thousand reactor years of operation with thousands of gigawatt hours of life enhancing electrical energy having been generated?"
Wasting Money, Lives
The question of whether tiny amounts of radiation must be avoided, even at great cost, is neither abstract nor trivial. Hundreds of billions of dollars are targeted to remediate U.S. sites even though there is no scientific basis for claiming any health or other benefit from removing low-level radiation.
Worldwide, Hiserodt tells us, the cost of such remediation has been estimated at more than a trillion dollars. This is in addition to the unquantifiable cost of lives lost by fear and avoidance of mammograms, irradiated food, and other beneficial uses of radiation.
I cannot recommend Hiserodt's book too highly. It addresses a subject few understand, but thanks to this author's comprehensive research and clear writing ability, you are now within a few dollars and a few hours of grasping this important subject.
- Jay Lehr, Ph.D. (lehr@heartland.org) is science director for The Heartland Institute
Showing posts with label linear no-threshold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label linear no-threshold. Show all posts
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Thursday, April 28, 2016
The "Linear Mafia's" Last Hurrah?
On June 29, 2005, a politicized committee appointed by the National Academy of Sciences issued a well-publicized report that is in total disagreement with the unanimous French Academy of Science and Academy of Medicine's May 2005 report. H. Josef Hebert, an Associated Press writer [as printed in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Little Rock, Ark., June 30, 2005, p. 2], summarized its conclusions:
"The preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer or other health problems and there is no threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless, a panel of prominent scientists concluded Wednesday.
"The finding by the National Academy of Sciences panel is viewed as critical because it is likely to significantly influence what radiation levels government agencies will allow at abandoned nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons production facilities and elsewhere.
"The nuclear industry... as well as some independent scientists, have argued that there is a threshold of very low level radiation where exposure is not harmful, or possibly even beneficial. They said current risk modeling may exaggerate the health impact.
"The panel, after five years of study, rejected that claim."
Needless to say, this report was met with outrage by the scientists who have incontrovertible evidence to the contrary - evidence that was simply ignored by a panel of the same Good Old Boys who held to the LNT hypothesis on earlier requests to examine the accumulating evidence. The reaction of Gerald Looney, M.D., a California physician, is typical:
"The medical profession is fully in favor of progress, but change is out of the question! I am embarrassed and frustrated by the rigid and reactionary viewpoints of my colleagues. Today's report carries the conclusion of a NAS panel of people who are old enough to know better but continue to support and promulgate the patently false Linear No-Threshold (LNT) hypothesis of radiation risk...
"Perhaps this myopic view could be tolerated a while longer, except that it has an increasingly harmful impact on future generations. The current public (and panel) phobia of even a single ionizing ray leads to an expectation of zero tolerance from current environmental and political leaders. Such fear and intolerance makes us easy prey and our cities potential and prolonged wastelands in the face of even a small dirty bomb producing a tiny and harmless, but definitely measurable, increased level of radioactivity over a wide area, thereby allowing a terrorist to literally hoist us on our own petard."
The doctor also has a frightening personal story to tell. He and his partner Nancy were scheduled for the type of whole-body scans (WBS) that the NAS panel's report recommends be avoided. Nancy took the advice of scientific colleagues who suggested she beware of ionizing radiation inherent in CT scans. Unfortunately, an asymptomatic cancer was already underway, and the lack of early treatment proved fatal. Dr. Looney was to take the scan, resulting in a cancer's being found on his kidney. That cancer was surgically removed, apparently successful.
Concerning the phobic position of the NAS, Dr. Looney writes:
"Public and professional policy, even when it comes from the National Academy of Sciences, seems clearly erroneous when a patient follows their official guidelines and advice but succumbs to curable pathology, while another patient ignores these same policies and thereby survives similar disease."
We began in the prologue with the sacrifice of my sister's fetus to an ignorance of low-level radiation effects, and we end with an avoidable death resulting from similar ignorance. Along the way, we saw, among many similar increases in life span and health, that a dose of 0.15 Gy would likely prevent 10,000 breast cancer deaths - with better than 99% certainty - if given to a million women.
How many more lives must be forfeited to a thoroughly discredited LNT before reason prevails?
"The preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer or other health problems and there is no threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless, a panel of prominent scientists concluded Wednesday.
"The finding by the National Academy of Sciences panel is viewed as critical because it is likely to significantly influence what radiation levels government agencies will allow at abandoned nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons production facilities and elsewhere.
"The nuclear industry... as well as some independent scientists, have argued that there is a threshold of very low level radiation where exposure is not harmful, or possibly even beneficial. They said current risk modeling may exaggerate the health impact.
"The panel, after five years of study, rejected that claim."
Needless to say, this report was met with outrage by the scientists who have incontrovertible evidence to the contrary - evidence that was simply ignored by a panel of the same Good Old Boys who held to the LNT hypothesis on earlier requests to examine the accumulating evidence. The reaction of Gerald Looney, M.D., a California physician, is typical:
"The medical profession is fully in favor of progress, but change is out of the question! I am embarrassed and frustrated by the rigid and reactionary viewpoints of my colleagues. Today's report carries the conclusion of a NAS panel of people who are old enough to know better but continue to support and promulgate the patently false Linear No-Threshold (LNT) hypothesis of radiation risk...
"Perhaps this myopic view could be tolerated a while longer, except that it has an increasingly harmful impact on future generations. The current public (and panel) phobia of even a single ionizing ray leads to an expectation of zero tolerance from current environmental and political leaders. Such fear and intolerance makes us easy prey and our cities potential and prolonged wastelands in the face of even a small dirty bomb producing a tiny and harmless, but definitely measurable, increased level of radioactivity over a wide area, thereby allowing a terrorist to literally hoist us on our own petard."
The doctor also has a frightening personal story to tell. He and his partner Nancy were scheduled for the type of whole-body scans (WBS) that the NAS panel's report recommends be avoided. Nancy took the advice of scientific colleagues who suggested she beware of ionizing radiation inherent in CT scans. Unfortunately, an asymptomatic cancer was already underway, and the lack of early treatment proved fatal. Dr. Looney was to take the scan, resulting in a cancer's being found on his kidney. That cancer was surgically removed, apparently successful.
Concerning the phobic position of the NAS, Dr. Looney writes:
"Public and professional policy, even when it comes from the National Academy of Sciences, seems clearly erroneous when a patient follows their official guidelines and advice but succumbs to curable pathology, while another patient ignores these same policies and thereby survives similar disease."
We began in the prologue with the sacrifice of my sister's fetus to an ignorance of low-level radiation effects, and we end with an avoidable death resulting from similar ignorance. Along the way, we saw, among many similar increases in life span and health, that a dose of 0.15 Gy would likely prevent 10,000 breast cancer deaths - with better than 99% certainty - if given to a million women.
How many more lives must be forfeited to a thoroughly discredited LNT before reason prevails?
Friday, April 15, 2016
Yes, You Can Be Too Careful (Part 2)
Bernard Cohen reports, in his book The Nuclear Energy Option, [Plenum Press, New York, 1990] that $100,000 in medical treatments or highway safety improvements would save a life. Government, meanwhile, spends - or requires the spending of - $2.5 billion (yes, that's billion) to save a life from radiation exposure at the cost of 25,000 less "obvious" lives. And it now appears that the life supposedly saved from low-level radiation wasn't saved at all, as it is surfacing that the decrease in hormetic range radiation is actually costing lives.
Another appalling case reported by Rod Adams, editor of Atomic Energy Insights, involved a project used to blast out "contaminated soil" near the nuclear reactor at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. Battling potentially lethal weather conditions, the task was completed at considerable risk to the workers and immense cost to taxpayers. So what was done with the offending material that may have caused a needed hormetic effect in the radiation-poor polar region? It was shipped (at another obscene cost to the taxpayers) to the United States, where it was used for parking lot fill in Port Hueneme, California.
Rather than trying to paraphrase the flowing and informative prose of Dr. Rockwell, here is a final example of government's mindless adherence to the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis - in his words:
"The question of whether tiny amounts of radiation must be avoided, even at great cost, is neither abstract nor trivial. Hundreds of billions of dollars are to be spent 'remediating' U.S. sites even though there is no scientific basis for claiming any health or other benefit. Worldwide, this cost has been estimated at more than a trillion dollars. [A more recent estimate, based on actual remediation projects, is $3 trillion worldwide, and $1 trillion for the United States alone. Using the figure of $20 million per life sacrificed, a trillion dollars is equal to 50,000 lives at the shrine of the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis.]
"This is in addition to the unquantifiable cost of lives lost by fear of mammograms, radioactive smoke detectors, irradiated food, or other beneficial uses of radiation. Most, if not all, of this cost would be saved if we did not try to reduce radiation levels below the natural radiation background, which is several hundred times lower than the lowest levels at which any health effects have been found."
Rockwell continues:
"But one person's wasted tax money is another's lucrative contract. Here's one example to remember. At some 46 sites in 14 states, there are some 82 million cubic feet of uranium tailings left over from the wartime weapons program. This material is what is left when you take as much uranium out of the natural ore as you can. It is now less radioactive than the original ore, and 20 times less radioactive than what the law calls "low-level waste." There is a lot of natural rock that is more radioactive. [Emphasis added.]
"The Dawn Mining Company was recently licensed to haul 35 million cubic feet of this material from the East Coast to a huge pit at its closed uranium mine near Ford, Washington. The material will travel to Spokane by train, then be transferred to trucks for the trip to the final destination. The company says this will require about 40 very large trucks, with six to nine axles and weighing 93,000 pounds each when loaded. These trucks will travel over the back roads each day for 260 days a year for five to seven years."
Of course, this doesn't include the expense of maintaining the roads under this unplanned-for load and the cost of the statistically certain accidents that will result from 93,000 pound trucks travelling some 5 million miles. But if you weren't lucky enough to get this contract, don't fret. There are another 47 million cubic feet of this material at other locations across the country. While you won't be producing any beneficial health effects, nobody really cares... and it's just taxpayers' money.
Even our state officials charged with insuring the public health are rebelling against the EPA and other heavy-handed federal government intrusions that have the force of law. For example, the EPA limit on radium-226 in drinking water is 5 pCi/l (0.18 Bq/l). The average adult will consume about one liter of water per day. Is there any evidence that 6 pCi/l will harm you? Not a whit. Yet to remove the radium is an expensive proposition borne by the local citizenry for an arbitrary, bureaucratic caprice. [A South Carolina rural water district manager recently told me that one of their wells tested at 5.6 pCi/l, requiring special treatment at a cost of $30,000 per year to the customer base for that single well.]
What evidence is there concerning the harm of ingesting radium - in addition to the fact that people have been drinking the water for hundreds of years without ill effects?
There is good evidence of a death from radium about sixty years ago. But it wasn't from drinking water with 6 pCi/l.
In 1928, an eccentric millionaire, Eben Byers, was so enthusiastic about the invigorating qualities of a radium-based patent medicine that he partook of three to four vials per day of Radithor. Each vial contained 3,500,000 pCi of radium - a 1,918-year supply according to the EPA's limitations. He eventually died of his addiction after ingesting an estimated 10 billion pCi - a 5,480,000-year dose consumed in three years.
Eben isn't the whole story, however. There were 400,000 to 500,000 vials of Radithor sold with no indication that it caused any problems whatsoever. With what other "poison" can you consume 700,000 times the government-dictated maximum dose and still walk away... not once, but on a regular basis? Could the poison be in the dose?
While support for the LNT and collective dose is rapidly waning in light of the evidence brought forth by Luckey, Cohen, and a growing flood of researchers, there are still those who will (or perhaps feel they must) defend these hypotheses. Do they do so with evidence, such as dose-response curves? Not once have I seen low-level evidence showing increased risk - unless it was an extrapolation from high-level data. The response is invariably the same: It is better to err on the side of safety than to take any chances on the possibility of an increased cancer risk.
If you're building a bridge, it doesn't cost much to increase its safety factor; a little more steel and concrete will do the trick. But the same doesn't go when building an airplane, as too great an emphasis on structural safety factors would keep the airplane from ever getting airborne. Regulators and bureaucrats - who are willing to see nuclear technology and hormesis research stay on the ground rather than expend the effort required to give a proper analysis to the overwhelming amount of data pointing to the threshold/hormesis models - are doing a great disservice to those whom they claim to be safeguarding. Whenever any of them starts feeling complacent about their rules and how they might be helping to save some theoretical life somewhere, I wish they would think a few seconds about a number - the number 100,000.
That's the lower estimate of unborn children who were aborted out of a totally unreasonable fear of their being "nuclear monsters" [after Chernobyl]. I wonder if those (almost) mothers sacrificed any Mozarts or Madame Curies or Salks on the altar of the LNT?
Another appalling case reported by Rod Adams, editor of Atomic Energy Insights, involved a project used to blast out "contaminated soil" near the nuclear reactor at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. Battling potentially lethal weather conditions, the task was completed at considerable risk to the workers and immense cost to taxpayers. So what was done with the offending material that may have caused a needed hormetic effect in the radiation-poor polar region? It was shipped (at another obscene cost to the taxpayers) to the United States, where it was used for parking lot fill in Port Hueneme, California.
Rather than trying to paraphrase the flowing and informative prose of Dr. Rockwell, here is a final example of government's mindless adherence to the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis - in his words:
"The question of whether tiny amounts of radiation must be avoided, even at great cost, is neither abstract nor trivial. Hundreds of billions of dollars are to be spent 'remediating' U.S. sites even though there is no scientific basis for claiming any health or other benefit. Worldwide, this cost has been estimated at more than a trillion dollars. [A more recent estimate, based on actual remediation projects, is $3 trillion worldwide, and $1 trillion for the United States alone. Using the figure of $20 million per life sacrificed, a trillion dollars is equal to 50,000 lives at the shrine of the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis.]
"This is in addition to the unquantifiable cost of lives lost by fear of mammograms, radioactive smoke detectors, irradiated food, or other beneficial uses of radiation. Most, if not all, of this cost would be saved if we did not try to reduce radiation levels below the natural radiation background, which is several hundred times lower than the lowest levels at which any health effects have been found."
Rockwell continues:
"But one person's wasted tax money is another's lucrative contract. Here's one example to remember. At some 46 sites in 14 states, there are some 82 million cubic feet of uranium tailings left over from the wartime weapons program. This material is what is left when you take as much uranium out of the natural ore as you can. It is now less radioactive than the original ore, and 20 times less radioactive than what the law calls "low-level waste." There is a lot of natural rock that is more radioactive. [Emphasis added.]
"The Dawn Mining Company was recently licensed to haul 35 million cubic feet of this material from the East Coast to a huge pit at its closed uranium mine near Ford, Washington. The material will travel to Spokane by train, then be transferred to trucks for the trip to the final destination. The company says this will require about 40 very large trucks, with six to nine axles and weighing 93,000 pounds each when loaded. These trucks will travel over the back roads each day for 260 days a year for five to seven years."
Of course, this doesn't include the expense of maintaining the roads under this unplanned-for load and the cost of the statistically certain accidents that will result from 93,000 pound trucks travelling some 5 million miles. But if you weren't lucky enough to get this contract, don't fret. There are another 47 million cubic feet of this material at other locations across the country. While you won't be producing any beneficial health effects, nobody really cares... and it's just taxpayers' money.
Even our state officials charged with insuring the public health are rebelling against the EPA and other heavy-handed federal government intrusions that have the force of law. For example, the EPA limit on radium-226 in drinking water is 5 pCi/l (0.18 Bq/l). The average adult will consume about one liter of water per day. Is there any evidence that 6 pCi/l will harm you? Not a whit. Yet to remove the radium is an expensive proposition borne by the local citizenry for an arbitrary, bureaucratic caprice. [A South Carolina rural water district manager recently told me that one of their wells tested at 5.6 pCi/l, requiring special treatment at a cost of $30,000 per year to the customer base for that single well.]
What evidence is there concerning the harm of ingesting radium - in addition to the fact that people have been drinking the water for hundreds of years without ill effects?
There is good evidence of a death from radium about sixty years ago. But it wasn't from drinking water with 6 pCi/l.
In 1928, an eccentric millionaire, Eben Byers, was so enthusiastic about the invigorating qualities of a radium-based patent medicine that he partook of three to four vials per day of Radithor. Each vial contained 3,500,000 pCi of radium - a 1,918-year supply according to the EPA's limitations. He eventually died of his addiction after ingesting an estimated 10 billion pCi - a 5,480,000-year dose consumed in three years.
Eben isn't the whole story, however. There were 400,000 to 500,000 vials of Radithor sold with no indication that it caused any problems whatsoever. With what other "poison" can you consume 700,000 times the government-dictated maximum dose and still walk away... not once, but on a regular basis? Could the poison be in the dose?
While support for the LNT and collective dose is rapidly waning in light of the evidence brought forth by Luckey, Cohen, and a growing flood of researchers, there are still those who will (or perhaps feel they must) defend these hypotheses. Do they do so with evidence, such as dose-response curves? Not once have I seen low-level evidence showing increased risk - unless it was an extrapolation from high-level data. The response is invariably the same: It is better to err on the side of safety than to take any chances on the possibility of an increased cancer risk.
If you're building a bridge, it doesn't cost much to increase its safety factor; a little more steel and concrete will do the trick. But the same doesn't go when building an airplane, as too great an emphasis on structural safety factors would keep the airplane from ever getting airborne. Regulators and bureaucrats - who are willing to see nuclear technology and hormesis research stay on the ground rather than expend the effort required to give a proper analysis to the overwhelming amount of data pointing to the threshold/hormesis models - are doing a great disservice to those whom they claim to be safeguarding. Whenever any of them starts feeling complacent about their rules and how they might be helping to save some theoretical life somewhere, I wish they would think a few seconds about a number - the number 100,000.
That's the lower estimate of unborn children who were aborted out of a totally unreasonable fear of their being "nuclear monsters" [after Chernobyl]. I wonder if those (almost) mothers sacrificed any Mozarts or Madame Curies or Salks on the altar of the LNT?
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Yes, You Can Be Too Careful
Hundreds of billions of dollars are to be spent 'remediating' U.S. sites even though there is no scientific basis for claiming any health or other benefit. - Theodore Rockwell
In 1988, and earthquake registering 7.9 on the Richter scale devastated Soviet Armenia, leaving more than 25,000 people dead. Four years earlier, in far more densely populated Mexico City, an 8.1 earthquake (with a 7.8 aftershock thirty-six hours later) killed 9,000 people.
Seven years after the Armenian quake, they were still trying to get electrical power to the cities for more than two hours per day; Mexican Power and Light restored power to its 3,200,000 customers in seventy-two hours.
While Mexico isn't exactly the most advanced country in our hemisphere, compared with the communist paradise of Armenia it is Beulahland. Its buildings were built to stronger, more earthquake-resistant standards; when people were trapped in collapsed buildings, there were tools to get them out, and power to run the tools. There were hospitals for the wounded, and sanitary conditions prevailed for the survivors. In short, Mexico had a superior infrastructure and was richer than Armenia. Its wealth saved the lives of thousands of people who would have otherwise died.
There have been many attempts to determine a reasonable estimate for the value of a human life in the United States. One of these I can remember set the figure at $20 million, contending that for every $20 million taken out of the economy, the lowered standard of living for all would cause the premature death of one person. [This sounds a lot like collective dose to me; except that we can - on occasions like Armenia - count the dead.]
While I can't vouch for this particular figure, the Armenian-Mexican situation shows clearly that there is a relationship of this nature. And it may be logically inferred from this that government, by wasting or compelling others to waste money, has a detrimental effect on the well-being of its citizens. [In 1980, Congress commissioned the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, which was expected to show that the utilities were responsible for acid rain. It found, to the amazement of the scientists involved, that this was not true. But Congress, which had paid $500 million for the study, ignored it and mandated scores of billions of dollars in unnecessary "scrubbers" to remove an insignificant fraction of power-plant emissions. At $20 million per life, politicians killed hundreds with this single vote.]
Theodore Rockwell, in an article "What's wrong with being cautious?" [from Nuclear News, June 1997. A large part of this chapter is blatantly taken from this excellent article.] suggests five different kinds of harm that originate in the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis:
Rockwell gives an example of a forklift driver who moved a small spent fuel cask from the fuel-storage pool to another location. As the cask had not been completely drained prior to being moved, some water was dribbled onto the blacktop along the way. But since storage pool water is defined as a hazardous contaminant - by the regulators, not plant employees who had earlier used the pool for unauthorized midnight swims - it was deemed necessary to dig up the entire path of the forklift, some two feet wide by one-half mile long. It doesn't stop here.
Because the paving contractor used thorium-rich slag from a local phosphate plant as aggregate in the new pavement, it was more radioactive than the material that had been dug up - which was marked with the ominous radiation symbol and hauled away for expensive, long-term burial. Fortunately, it was only taxpayers' money.
In 1988, and earthquake registering 7.9 on the Richter scale devastated Soviet Armenia, leaving more than 25,000 people dead. Four years earlier, in far more densely populated Mexico City, an 8.1 earthquake (with a 7.8 aftershock thirty-six hours later) killed 9,000 people.
Seven years after the Armenian quake, they were still trying to get electrical power to the cities for more than two hours per day; Mexican Power and Light restored power to its 3,200,000 customers in seventy-two hours.
While Mexico isn't exactly the most advanced country in our hemisphere, compared with the communist paradise of Armenia it is Beulahland. Its buildings were built to stronger, more earthquake-resistant standards; when people were trapped in collapsed buildings, there were tools to get them out, and power to run the tools. There were hospitals for the wounded, and sanitary conditions prevailed for the survivors. In short, Mexico had a superior infrastructure and was richer than Armenia. Its wealth saved the lives of thousands of people who would have otherwise died.
There have been many attempts to determine a reasonable estimate for the value of a human life in the United States. One of these I can remember set the figure at $20 million, contending that for every $20 million taken out of the economy, the lowered standard of living for all would cause the premature death of one person. [This sounds a lot like collective dose to me; except that we can - on occasions like Armenia - count the dead.]
While I can't vouch for this particular figure, the Armenian-Mexican situation shows clearly that there is a relationship of this nature. And it may be logically inferred from this that government, by wasting or compelling others to waste money, has a detrimental effect on the well-being of its citizens. [In 1980, Congress commissioned the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, which was expected to show that the utilities were responsible for acid rain. It found, to the amazement of the scientists involved, that this was not true. But Congress, which had paid $500 million for the study, ignored it and mandated scores of billions of dollars in unnecessary "scrubbers" to remove an insignificant fraction of power-plant emissions. At $20 million per life, politicians killed hundreds with this single vote.]
Theodore Rockwell, in an article "What's wrong with being cautious?" [from Nuclear News, June 1997. A large part of this chapter is blatantly taken from this excellent article.] suggests five different kinds of harm that originate in the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis:
- Billions of dollars wasted
- Ridiculous regulations imposed that degrade the credibility of science and government
- Destructive fear generated
- Detrimental health effects created
- Environmental degradation accelerated. (This final item refers to the incredible amount of ash and sludge - equal to about 100 truckloads per day - produced by a coal-fired 1,000 megawatt power plant, compared with less than a Volkswagen full per year of actual high-level wastes from an equal-sized nuclear plant.)
Rockwell gives an example of a forklift driver who moved a small spent fuel cask from the fuel-storage pool to another location. As the cask had not been completely drained prior to being moved, some water was dribbled onto the blacktop along the way. But since storage pool water is defined as a hazardous contaminant - by the regulators, not plant employees who had earlier used the pool for unauthorized midnight swims - it was deemed necessary to dig up the entire path of the forklift, some two feet wide by one-half mile long. It doesn't stop here.
Because the paving contractor used thorium-rich slag from a local phosphate plant as aggregate in the new pavement, it was more radioactive than the material that had been dug up - which was marked with the ominous radiation symbol and hauled away for expensive, long-term burial. Fortunately, it was only taxpayers' money.
Monday, April 4, 2016
Five Million Miles on a Pound of Plutonium?
In the early 1950s, when I was an almost-teenager reading all the popular magazines on science and mathematics I could read at the drugstore newsstand, there were articles on "atomic propulsion" for every conceivable vehicle from motorcycles to space ships. (Well, maybe not motorcycles.) A lot of the concepts were just that: concepts. Grandiose ideas sold magazines but would probably not have done much to power your fishing boat.
Only a few years later we learned the horrors of exposure to radiation. I can remember reading - even before age thirteen - not only the heart-rending stories of A-bomb victims, but also about the unfortunate Japanese fishermen who were accidentally exposed to H-bomb test fall-out. I thought they all had died. (Although billed by the press as "Lethally Exposed," except for the one who died from acute radiation sickness, none of the other twenty-two was a cancer fatality as of twenty-five yars after exposure.) [Kumatori, T. Ishihara, T., Hirshima, K., Sugiyama, H., Ishii, S., and Miyoshi, K. Follow-up studies over a twenty-five-year period on the Japanese fishermen exposed to radioactive fallout in 1954. The Medical Basis for Radiation Preparedness, Hubner, K.F., and Fry, A.A., editors, Elsevier, New York, 1980.]
It wasn't long after this that the "atomic power" articles, and much of the interest in nuclear technology, dried up. The Linear No-Threshold hypothesis was soon to send all of those ideas into the black hole of radiation avoidance - which later became radiation hysteria. Did we miss the "nuclear vehicle" boat because of our fears and the rules imposed on the nuclear industry? "What might have been" is truly an impossible question to answer. Thousands of independently acting entrepreneurs would have answered it for us, had they been given the chance.
Neither the pressurized water reactor (PWR) nor the boiling water reactor (BWR) - the mainstays of the U.S. nuclear power industry - are adaptable to smaller scale, mobile applications. A variation of the CANDU reactor principle would come closer by using low-boiling-point compounds such as CFCs to spin a turbine, but even that is a stretch for anything smaller than a large bus. (Not to say that it couldn't be done if technology is given a chance.)
But why worry about atomic-powered anythings? What we're currently using is working out pretty well, isn't it? True, but let's look for a moment at how we fuel our vehicles. And though I don't think we are in danger of "running out of oil" any time soon, it is logical to assume that the energy cost of obtaining oil will increase as the oil-bearing strata become more and more difficult to access.
If we take your politically incorrect sports utility vehicle out on the open road with one pound of gasoline in it, the heat energy content of the fuel will propel you about three miles. By comparison the heat energy in one pound of plutonium would take you some 5,420,000 miles down the road - using the same efficiency figure as the gasoline engine. [The efficiency would be lower using today's technology. But even at half or a quarter the already-low efficiencies of internal combustion engines, the incredible heat content of many radioactive isotopes makes for unbelievable comparisons to all fossil fuels.]
Since this is about thirty times more than the typical mechanical life of a vehicle, it is likely that any nuclear-powered vehicle would be fueled for life at the factory.
All well and good, you might say. But what about the lack of adaptability of power-plant technology to mobile vehicles? Good question. There are other nuclear technologies, besides trying to shrink a power plant, that would be interesting to explore. One of these is the radioisotope thermo-electric generator or RTG.
The RTG is based on a very simple physical principle known as thermoelectricity. ["Simple" in practice, as anyone can connect different types of wires together; the theory, known as the Seebeck effect, is a little more complicated.]
If you take two wires of different materials and connect their junctions in a loop, a current will flow when the temperature of the "hot junction" is greater than that of the "cold junction." In the RTG, a radioisotope supplies the heat, while a "heat sink" - such as you might find on the rear of a high-powered stereo amplifier - cools the cold junction. Any number of junctions can be connected in series (known as thermopile) to produce whatever voltage is desired, while connections are paralleled to increase the current flow. The inherent low voltage of the device can be increased with a dc-to-dc or dc-to-ac converter. [Transformers, used on alternating current circuits, do not work for direct current. A "dc-to-dc" converter chops the dc, making it appear to be ac, transforms it to a different voltage, and then rectifies it back to dc.]
An obvious advantage of the thermo-electric generator is its total lack of moving parts - since electrons don't count.
The Manhattan project scientists had inadvertently discovered this "warmness" of the plutonium 239 isotope. [Actually all radioactive isotopes generate heat as a byproduct of decay - but both the rate and the type of decay emissions are important. You really wouldn't want to cozy up with a strong gamma ray emitter.]
Project experimenters supposedly used the plutonium received from the Hanford reservation - gleaned and refined at an almost unbelievable price - as hand warmers. While alpha particles lose their energy too quickly to penetrate the skin, these atomic "shot-puts" collide with and agitate atoms with which they come in contact, hence the feeling of warmth.
As we might expect, the rate of decay of the isotope has much to do with an isotope's heat-producing potential. While bomb-grade plutonium 239 (with its 24,110-year half-life) is okay for hand warmers, another plutonium isotope (atomic weight 238, with a half-life of only 87.7 years) is the candidate of choice for our extraterrestrial deep-space probes. Plutonium 238 can really kick atoms around, to way beyond the boiling point of water. [Spacecraft power supplies operate at approximately 800 degrees Fahrenheit. RTG temperatures can exceed 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.]
This is not new technology. All deep-space probes must have some sort of nuclear power supply, as none of the alternatives are able to supply usable amounts of power for the years it takes to complete these missions. Batteries are out of the question for even short missions, and solar panels don't work well, since the energy available drops off as the square of the distance from the sun. A ten-by-ten-foot collector for Earth-Moon operations, for instance, would swell to tennis court size for missions to Jupiter, and blossom to the equivalent of more than two football fields for exploration of Neptune. Moreover, Earth-based solar cells are not easy to mount efficiently, even with a solid terra firma foundation. How about trying to maneuver football-field sized collector banks - structures and deployment mechanisms - in a zero-gravity environment? [Fuel cells would be find, except that the weight of the fuel - and its containers - would't allow for much else on the voyage. We might want to note, thanks to the science eduation given by the mission and movie Apollo 13, most of us are now well aware that fuel cells must carry their own oxidizer - which, in the case of oxygen, was not readily available in interlunar space.]
While the RTG has been the only practical choice for deep-space missions, anti-nuclear propagandists have portrayed it as a hazard to the entire human race because of its use of plutonium fuel. The misguided protesters wring their hands over seventy-two pounds of plutonium that they contend might somehow be released into the atmosphere and over the effect that might have on humankind. However, they totally ignore the fact that two to three tons of various vaporized (and hence, breathable) plutonium isotopes were injected into the biosphere by the Nagasaki bomb and the hundreds of above-ground tests just after World War II; yet the last time I looked, the human race was still alive and kicking.
While spacecraft have shown the reliability and longevity of the RTG, why haven't there been applications in transportation utilizing this technology? [Another very successful use of the plutonium RTG was in pacemakers. From 1973 through 1987, 155 radioisotope-powered pacemakers were implanted in a Newark Beth Israel Medical Center study. With a half-life of eighty-seven years, the nuclear devices outlasted battery operated devices - which required surgery for re-implantation - by many years and were ultra-reliable. And although "it has been shown beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no increased risk of malignancy in this group of patients" few, if any, new nuclear devices are being installed. Why? It's our good friend, the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis. See "The Nuclear Pacemaker: Is Renewed Interest Warranted?" American Journal of Cardiology, Oct. 1990.]
It certainly doesn't require a rocket scientist to conceive of an RTG automobile that would have both a generator and auxiliary batteries available for acceleration and hills - yet would recharge itself, both while driving and while sitting all day in a parking lot. But if you remember the story about the Goianians, you may have already considered the possibility of being stoned whenever you pulled your Plutoniumobile out of the garage - not to mention having to deal with swarms of bureaucrats from every imaginable protective agency who would be on the spot to make sure no alpha ray is loosed on the public. With incentives like these for the buyer, entrepreneurs are not exactly standing in line to enter this market.
Want to get 5,420,000 miles to the pound? Me too. Sorry to say that's never going to happen, because the long-standing and difficult problem of squeezing actual energy from potential energy is fraught with some inconvenient impossibilities. But if we are to approach the theoretical limits of physical science, it will take an understanding of the real dangers of radiation, and getting the government out of the policing business. Plus, no doubt, many billions of dollars in research and development costs; but that's what capitalists do: invest their money to make profits from producing things that cause our lives to be more satisfying.
Oh, and not to worry. Manufacturers of nuclear-powered vehicles are not going to fry their customers with gamma rays any more than Campbell's would put botulin toxin in the soup.
It's not good for business.
Only a few years later we learned the horrors of exposure to radiation. I can remember reading - even before age thirteen - not only the heart-rending stories of A-bomb victims, but also about the unfortunate Japanese fishermen who were accidentally exposed to H-bomb test fall-out. I thought they all had died. (Although billed by the press as "Lethally Exposed," except for the one who died from acute radiation sickness, none of the other twenty-two was a cancer fatality as of twenty-five yars after exposure.) [Kumatori, T. Ishihara, T., Hirshima, K., Sugiyama, H., Ishii, S., and Miyoshi, K. Follow-up studies over a twenty-five-year period on the Japanese fishermen exposed to radioactive fallout in 1954. The Medical Basis for Radiation Preparedness, Hubner, K.F., and Fry, A.A., editors, Elsevier, New York, 1980.]
It wasn't long after this that the "atomic power" articles, and much of the interest in nuclear technology, dried up. The Linear No-Threshold hypothesis was soon to send all of those ideas into the black hole of radiation avoidance - which later became radiation hysteria. Did we miss the "nuclear vehicle" boat because of our fears and the rules imposed on the nuclear industry? "What might have been" is truly an impossible question to answer. Thousands of independently acting entrepreneurs would have answered it for us, had they been given the chance.
Neither the pressurized water reactor (PWR) nor the boiling water reactor (BWR) - the mainstays of the U.S. nuclear power industry - are adaptable to smaller scale, mobile applications. A variation of the CANDU reactor principle would come closer by using low-boiling-point compounds such as CFCs to spin a turbine, but even that is a stretch for anything smaller than a large bus. (Not to say that it couldn't be done if technology is given a chance.)
But why worry about atomic-powered anythings? What we're currently using is working out pretty well, isn't it? True, but let's look for a moment at how we fuel our vehicles. And though I don't think we are in danger of "running out of oil" any time soon, it is logical to assume that the energy cost of obtaining oil will increase as the oil-bearing strata become more and more difficult to access.
If we take your politically incorrect sports utility vehicle out on the open road with one pound of gasoline in it, the heat energy content of the fuel will propel you about three miles. By comparison the heat energy in one pound of plutonium would take you some 5,420,000 miles down the road - using the same efficiency figure as the gasoline engine. [The efficiency would be lower using today's technology. But even at half or a quarter the already-low efficiencies of internal combustion engines, the incredible heat content of many radioactive isotopes makes for unbelievable comparisons to all fossil fuels.]
Since this is about thirty times more than the typical mechanical life of a vehicle, it is likely that any nuclear-powered vehicle would be fueled for life at the factory.
All well and good, you might say. But what about the lack of adaptability of power-plant technology to mobile vehicles? Good question. There are other nuclear technologies, besides trying to shrink a power plant, that would be interesting to explore. One of these is the radioisotope thermo-electric generator or RTG.
The RTG is based on a very simple physical principle known as thermoelectricity. ["Simple" in practice, as anyone can connect different types of wires together; the theory, known as the Seebeck effect, is a little more complicated.]
If you take two wires of different materials and connect their junctions in a loop, a current will flow when the temperature of the "hot junction" is greater than that of the "cold junction." In the RTG, a radioisotope supplies the heat, while a "heat sink" - such as you might find on the rear of a high-powered stereo amplifier - cools the cold junction. Any number of junctions can be connected in series (known as thermopile) to produce whatever voltage is desired, while connections are paralleled to increase the current flow. The inherent low voltage of the device can be increased with a dc-to-dc or dc-to-ac converter. [Transformers, used on alternating current circuits, do not work for direct current. A "dc-to-dc" converter chops the dc, making it appear to be ac, transforms it to a different voltage, and then rectifies it back to dc.]
An obvious advantage of the thermo-electric generator is its total lack of moving parts - since electrons don't count.
The Manhattan project scientists had inadvertently discovered this "warmness" of the plutonium 239 isotope. [Actually all radioactive isotopes generate heat as a byproduct of decay - but both the rate and the type of decay emissions are important. You really wouldn't want to cozy up with a strong gamma ray emitter.]
Project experimenters supposedly used the plutonium received from the Hanford reservation - gleaned and refined at an almost unbelievable price - as hand warmers. While alpha particles lose their energy too quickly to penetrate the skin, these atomic "shot-puts" collide with and agitate atoms with which they come in contact, hence the feeling of warmth.
As we might expect, the rate of decay of the isotope has much to do with an isotope's heat-producing potential. While bomb-grade plutonium 239 (with its 24,110-year half-life) is okay for hand warmers, another plutonium isotope (atomic weight 238, with a half-life of only 87.7 years) is the candidate of choice for our extraterrestrial deep-space probes. Plutonium 238 can really kick atoms around, to way beyond the boiling point of water. [Spacecraft power supplies operate at approximately 800 degrees Fahrenheit. RTG temperatures can exceed 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.]
This is not new technology. All deep-space probes must have some sort of nuclear power supply, as none of the alternatives are able to supply usable amounts of power for the years it takes to complete these missions. Batteries are out of the question for even short missions, and solar panels don't work well, since the energy available drops off as the square of the distance from the sun. A ten-by-ten-foot collector for Earth-Moon operations, for instance, would swell to tennis court size for missions to Jupiter, and blossom to the equivalent of more than two football fields for exploration of Neptune. Moreover, Earth-based solar cells are not easy to mount efficiently, even with a solid terra firma foundation. How about trying to maneuver football-field sized collector banks - structures and deployment mechanisms - in a zero-gravity environment? [Fuel cells would be find, except that the weight of the fuel - and its containers - would't allow for much else on the voyage. We might want to note, thanks to the science eduation given by the mission and movie Apollo 13, most of us are now well aware that fuel cells must carry their own oxidizer - which, in the case of oxygen, was not readily available in interlunar space.]
While the RTG has been the only practical choice for deep-space missions, anti-nuclear propagandists have portrayed it as a hazard to the entire human race because of its use of plutonium fuel. The misguided protesters wring their hands over seventy-two pounds of plutonium that they contend might somehow be released into the atmosphere and over the effect that might have on humankind. However, they totally ignore the fact that two to three tons of various vaporized (and hence, breathable) plutonium isotopes were injected into the biosphere by the Nagasaki bomb and the hundreds of above-ground tests just after World War II; yet the last time I looked, the human race was still alive and kicking.
While spacecraft have shown the reliability and longevity of the RTG, why haven't there been applications in transportation utilizing this technology? [Another very successful use of the plutonium RTG was in pacemakers. From 1973 through 1987, 155 radioisotope-powered pacemakers were implanted in a Newark Beth Israel Medical Center study. With a half-life of eighty-seven years, the nuclear devices outlasted battery operated devices - which required surgery for re-implantation - by many years and were ultra-reliable. And although "it has been shown beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no increased risk of malignancy in this group of patients" few, if any, new nuclear devices are being installed. Why? It's our good friend, the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis. See "The Nuclear Pacemaker: Is Renewed Interest Warranted?" American Journal of Cardiology, Oct. 1990.]
It certainly doesn't require a rocket scientist to conceive of an RTG automobile that would have both a generator and auxiliary batteries available for acceleration and hills - yet would recharge itself, both while driving and while sitting all day in a parking lot. But if you remember the story about the Goianians, you may have already considered the possibility of being stoned whenever you pulled your Plutoniumobile out of the garage - not to mention having to deal with swarms of bureaucrats from every imaginable protective agency who would be on the spot to make sure no alpha ray is loosed on the public. With incentives like these for the buyer, entrepreneurs are not exactly standing in line to enter this market.
Want to get 5,420,000 miles to the pound? Me too. Sorry to say that's never going to happen, because the long-standing and difficult problem of squeezing actual energy from potential energy is fraught with some inconvenient impossibilities. But if we are to approach the theoretical limits of physical science, it will take an understanding of the real dangers of radiation, and getting the government out of the policing business. Plus, no doubt, many billions of dollars in research and development costs; but that's what capitalists do: invest their money to make profits from producing things that cause our lives to be more satisfying.
Oh, and not to worry. Manufacturers of nuclear-powered vehicles are not going to fry their customers with gamma rays any more than Campbell's would put botulin toxin in the soup.
It's not good for business.
Friday, April 1, 2016
SECURE and the IFR
Other low-temperature reactors - used for warming entire communities - are not new to the world... just to U.S. citizens with our abysmal lack of scientific knowledge. For instance, a Swedish and Finnish consortium has designed a 200 MW inherently safe reactor called SECURE - with no moving parts, not even control rods - as the reactivity level is controlled by the content of boric acid in the coolant/moderator. [Safe and Environmentally Clean Urban REactor]
Finally, there is another reactor design known as the Integral Fast Reactor, which I find fascinating, because it is fueled by natural uranium and is as close to a perpetual motion machine as we are likely to get. [See Integral Fast Reactor, available from Argonne National Laboratories, P.O. Box 2528, Idaho Falls, ID 83415.]
It operates in a vessel filled with liquid sodium (melting point, 208 degrees Fahrenheit), which is a much better heat-transfer agent than water - along with having certain desirable nuclear characteristics. It reportedly produces 100 to 200 times more electrical energy per pound of fuel than obtainable from existing plants. The prototype plant, at Idaho Falls, was designed to be virtually self-contained with the capability of fabricating, using and reprocessing the spent fuel "on-site." It is inherently safe from a meltdown, since the fuel assemblies are configured in such a manner as to shut down the reaction when the temperature increases above its maximum design point. As a test, the entire heat transfer system was shut down while operating at full power - without causing any harm to the reactor.
While it is unlikely that the fuel-processing part of the operation could be scaled down to community or residential proportions, the inherent safety of the reactor is intriguing, along with its use of natural (unenriched) uranium. It is likely that radiation would be an insignificant factor compared with keeping the sodium contained, since contact with either water or air causes some pretty nasty chemical reactions. (It is best kept submerged in kerosene or naphtha.)
As far as I know, a low-power, inherently safe reactor has not been designed for community or home use. Why? I suspect it's because the prevailing fear of low-level radiation would keep any reasonably intelligent investor in the "sow bellies futures" market where at least there is a chance of making a profit. Why design a product that will cost more in attorneys' fees each time you sell one than the sale price of the product itself? Although much of the technology is there and proven, it just won't happen in today's climate ruled by the Linear No-Threshold bureaucracy.
But if we can create an understanding of actual - as opposed to perceived - radiation dangers, the technology will surely flourish. Because of higher efficiencies? No, large power reactors operating at high temperatures have higher efficiencies than would a home or community reactor and are well suited for commercial and industrial power production - but they also have transmission losses, transformer losses, costs of installing and maintaining pole-line hardware, and other overhead expenses that can be eliminated by decentralization, especially for small, off-the-beaten-path residential customers who use only a few thousand kilowatt-hours per month.
Would we require a government program to make this happen? Not at all. Just get the government out of the way, and let market forces determine what is worthy and what is not. As Paul Johnson put it: "For capitalism merely occurs, if no one does anything to stop it. It is socialism that has to be constructed, and as a rule, forcibly imposed, thus providing a far bigger role for intellectuals in its genesis." ["The heartless loves of humankind," Wall Street Journal, January 5, 1987.]
Finally, there is another reactor design known as the Integral Fast Reactor, which I find fascinating, because it is fueled by natural uranium and is as close to a perpetual motion machine as we are likely to get. [See Integral Fast Reactor, available from Argonne National Laboratories, P.O. Box 2528, Idaho Falls, ID 83415.]
It operates in a vessel filled with liquid sodium (melting point, 208 degrees Fahrenheit), which is a much better heat-transfer agent than water - along with having certain desirable nuclear characteristics. It reportedly produces 100 to 200 times more electrical energy per pound of fuel than obtainable from existing plants. The prototype plant, at Idaho Falls, was designed to be virtually self-contained with the capability of fabricating, using and reprocessing the spent fuel "on-site." It is inherently safe from a meltdown, since the fuel assemblies are configured in such a manner as to shut down the reaction when the temperature increases above its maximum design point. As a test, the entire heat transfer system was shut down while operating at full power - without causing any harm to the reactor.
While it is unlikely that the fuel-processing part of the operation could be scaled down to community or residential proportions, the inherent safety of the reactor is intriguing, along with its use of natural (unenriched) uranium. It is likely that radiation would be an insignificant factor compared with keeping the sodium contained, since contact with either water or air causes some pretty nasty chemical reactions. (It is best kept submerged in kerosene or naphtha.)
As far as I know, a low-power, inherently safe reactor has not been designed for community or home use. Why? I suspect it's because the prevailing fear of low-level radiation would keep any reasonably intelligent investor in the "sow bellies futures" market where at least there is a chance of making a profit. Why design a product that will cost more in attorneys' fees each time you sell one than the sale price of the product itself? Although much of the technology is there and proven, it just won't happen in today's climate ruled by the Linear No-Threshold bureaucracy.
But if we can create an understanding of actual - as opposed to perceived - radiation dangers, the technology will surely flourish. Because of higher efficiencies? No, large power reactors operating at high temperatures have higher efficiencies than would a home or community reactor and are well suited for commercial and industrial power production - but they also have transmission losses, transformer losses, costs of installing and maintaining pole-line hardware, and other overhead expenses that can be eliminated by decentralization, especially for small, off-the-beaten-path residential customers who use only a few thousand kilowatt-hours per month.
Would we require a government program to make this happen? Not at all. Just get the government out of the way, and let market forces determine what is worthy and what is not. As Paul Johnson put it: "For capitalism merely occurs, if no one does anything to stop it. It is socialism that has to be constructed, and as a rule, forcibly imposed, thus providing a far bigger role for intellectuals in its genesis." ["The heartless loves of humankind," Wall Street Journal, January 5, 1987.]
Friday, March 25, 2016
What's Cookin' in Those Reactors
The use of thorium in CANDU type reactors would give earthlings sufficient energy to provide for the next seven ice ages. - Edward Teller [From "CANDU Is Really Remarkable," Power Projections, May, 1980.]
Evidence in the preceding chapters strongly indicates that hormetic stimulation from low levels of radiation has great potential for improving human health and vitality. For this to come about, we must be freed from the fears promoted by the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) theory and the principles of "collective dose."
Freedom from these unreasoned fears would also promote the growth of other nuclear technology, the most important of these probably being power generation. Availability of energy can be seen to coincide with both standard of living and health. The environmental primitivists would have us live in a pristine wilderness - precisely where we see the absolute worst of the human condition. (And no McDonald's.)
Many of us would be interested in achieving greater independence from the utility companies (often government monopolies) and the government itself. We see all manner of solar toys and wind generators in Mother Earth News, which promise energy independence. Sure, as long as you have a staff of electrical and mechanical engineers, plus thousands of acres to mount the collectors or turbines, and a maintenance crew of dozens to keep things running. But as we shall see, nuclear energy has the promise to free those of us who would opt out of the government/utility networks. And while I take aim at some utilities that have become slovenly where licensure requirements have virtually eliminated competition, these same utilities would be in the best position to be the providers of community or residential power sources, having both generation and customer knowledge.
Evidence in the preceding chapters strongly indicates that hormetic stimulation from low levels of radiation has great potential for improving human health and vitality. For this to come about, we must be freed from the fears promoted by the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) theory and the principles of "collective dose."
Freedom from these unreasoned fears would also promote the growth of other nuclear technology, the most important of these probably being power generation. Availability of energy can be seen to coincide with both standard of living and health. The environmental primitivists would have us live in a pristine wilderness - precisely where we see the absolute worst of the human condition. (And no McDonald's.)
Many of us would be interested in achieving greater independence from the utility companies (often government monopolies) and the government itself. We see all manner of solar toys and wind generators in Mother Earth News, which promise energy independence. Sure, as long as you have a staff of electrical and mechanical engineers, plus thousands of acres to mount the collectors or turbines, and a maintenance crew of dozens to keep things running. But as we shall see, nuclear energy has the promise to free those of us who would opt out of the government/utility networks. And while I take aim at some utilities that have become slovenly where licensure requirements have virtually eliminated competition, these same utilities would be in the best position to be the providers of community or residential power sources, having both generation and customer knowledge.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Keeping Abreast of the Evidence
Breast cancer is a pretty depressing matter. An estimated 44,300 women (and several thousand men) will die of breast cancer this year. It is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer death among women. Increased use of mammography is one of the reasons for the decline in death rates. In 1992 (the most recent statistics I could find), 67% of women over forty reported having at least one screening - up from only 22% in 1979.
But sadly, many women are still hesitant to have regular mammography examinations, often because they fear that X-rays from the mammograms will increase their chances of cancer. Doing their own risk assessment, they conclude the risk from "late detection" is less than that from radiation. And who is to blame them, in light of the commonly accepted dictum that all radiation is dangerous and cumulatively so? Besides, it costs time and money to have a mammogram - at least worrying about cancer is cheap.
"So," you say, " they should just consult a professional and ask about the dose they will receive from the mammogram and make the decision on that basis." Not as simple as that may sound. In researching this chapter I called four local mammography clinics with what I thought was a pretty simple question: "What is the dose of radiation received by a woman in the process of having a mammogram?" I had seen a figure before, but it seemed high to me.
I spoke with two mammography technicians and one nurse who relayed messages from their radiologists. The unanimous answer: "We don't know." One of them, however, was kind enough to put me in touch with a local health physicist, who said the dose was "negligible" - but, even better, offered to lend me some of his reference books. In one, I was able to find the range of exposures to a "gland" (their quotation marks) at a dept of 3 cm to be 0.04 to 0.49 cGy (40 to 490 mrem), which was consistent with the 0.15 cGy figure I had found earlier and was trying to confirm.
But the information I had was perplexing, as it mentioned the dose as 150 mrem per breast. It was much like the confusion I had when learning that radon gave an exposure of 24,000 mrem/year to the bronchial epithelium (which, of course, you now know is the windpipe). The borrowed volumes were quite illuminating, I found there is an official weighting factor that, when multiplied by the local dose gives the effective dose equivalent. And what does this tell you? It tells you the increase in your chances of contracting cancer if the Linear No-Threshold theory were true!
Using a weighting factor of 0.15 for each breast, a 150 mrem per breast exposure would be an equivalent "whole body" exposure totaling 45 mrem (0.045 cSv). [Exposure of the U.S. Population from Diagnostic Medical Radiation, NCRP Report #100, National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, Bethesda, Md.]
The figure - in my opinion - means nothing, but if we pretend it is accurate we can use it as a starting point for a "conventional" analysis.
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1989, an investigation by A.B. Miller and associates charted the doses received by 31,710 women who were irradiated in the course of repeated fluoroscopic examinations between 1930 and 1952. [Miller, A.B., et al. Mortality from breast cancer after irradiation during fluoroscopic examination in patients being treated for tuberculosis. New England Journal of Medicine, 321, 1285, 1989.]
In this Canadian study, one group - in Nova Scotia - was fluoroscoped facing the X-ray source. This results in a dose to the breast approximately twenty-five times that when faced away. The women facing the source had a significant increase in cancer risk - it tripled for each 100 cGy (100,000 mrad) of radiation absorbed.
The balance of the study was for all other provinces, with the results presented in Figure 28. Before going on, please remember that a normal annual U.S. background dose is 0.3 cGy, with the first data point on the graph at 5 cGy - about thirteen times this amount. The minimum mortality rate is at a value fifty times the annual background dose or the equivalent (using their figures) of 100 mammography exams.
On the basis of this evidence - which is almost certainly conservative, since the dose rate for fluoroscopy is much higher and, therefore, considered more traumatic to the breasts than present mammography techniques - women should have four or five mammograms per year.
Does that sound strange? That's nothing compared with the most unusual aspect of the study, namely its conclusion: The authors completely ignored the most statistically significant data points in the entire investigation, namely the 34% reduction in relative risk at 15 cGy and the 15% reduction at 24 cGy. Myron Pollycove, M.D., remarked regarding this omission:
"The decreased RR [risk rate] of breast cancer produced by low dose, low level radiation were rejected a priori by the choice of mathematical models that extrapolate the dose-risk relation from high dose exposures to low dose exposures."
[We met Dr. Pollycover back in Chapter 2. But since he is such an important player in the LNT controversy, allow me to remind you that he is professor emeritus in Laboratory Medicine and Radiology at the University of California at San Francisco, head of Nuclear Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, as well as a visiting medical fellow on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.]
To most of us that simply means the researchers, for whatever reason, chose to "spike" all results that indicated hormesis. Why? Probably because they were not even considering bio-positive data; they were looking for harmful effects... period. Pollycove continues:
"Nine hundred excess deaths from breast cancer are predicted theoretically from the exposure of one million women to 0.15 Gy. However, the quantified low dose data predicts with better than 99% confidence limits that instead of causing 900 deaths, a dose of 0.15 Gy would prevent 10,000 deaths in these million women."
Pardon me, but do you understand what this man - who has possibly the most impressive credentials in this entire debate - is saying? He is proclaiming that there is unmistakable evidence of hormesis in this study, which, if acted upon, might be developed into an effective weapon against breast cancer in millions of women, thousands of whom will die needlessly because of a theory that was never intended to apply to low-level radiation! It is a pity, a shame, a disgrace that the current ingrained reliance by regulators on the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis makes even a consideration of studying the hormesis phenomen extremely difficult, if not impossible.
But sadly, many women are still hesitant to have regular mammography examinations, often because they fear that X-rays from the mammograms will increase their chances of cancer. Doing their own risk assessment, they conclude the risk from "late detection" is less than that from radiation. And who is to blame them, in light of the commonly accepted dictum that all radiation is dangerous and cumulatively so? Besides, it costs time and money to have a mammogram - at least worrying about cancer is cheap.
"So," you say, " they should just consult a professional and ask about the dose they will receive from the mammogram and make the decision on that basis." Not as simple as that may sound. In researching this chapter I called four local mammography clinics with what I thought was a pretty simple question: "What is the dose of radiation received by a woman in the process of having a mammogram?" I had seen a figure before, but it seemed high to me.
I spoke with two mammography technicians and one nurse who relayed messages from their radiologists. The unanimous answer: "We don't know." One of them, however, was kind enough to put me in touch with a local health physicist, who said the dose was "negligible" - but, even better, offered to lend me some of his reference books. In one, I was able to find the range of exposures to a "gland" (their quotation marks) at a dept of 3 cm to be 0.04 to 0.49 cGy (40 to 490 mrem), which was consistent with the 0.15 cGy figure I had found earlier and was trying to confirm.
But the information I had was perplexing, as it mentioned the dose as 150 mrem per breast. It was much like the confusion I had when learning that radon gave an exposure of 24,000 mrem/year to the bronchial epithelium (which, of course, you now know is the windpipe). The borrowed volumes were quite illuminating, I found there is an official weighting factor that, when multiplied by the local dose gives the effective dose equivalent. And what does this tell you? It tells you the increase in your chances of contracting cancer if the Linear No-Threshold theory were true!
Using a weighting factor of 0.15 for each breast, a 150 mrem per breast exposure would be an equivalent "whole body" exposure totaling 45 mrem (0.045 cSv). [Exposure of the U.S. Population from Diagnostic Medical Radiation, NCRP Report #100, National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, Bethesda, Md.]
The figure - in my opinion - means nothing, but if we pretend it is accurate we can use it as a starting point for a "conventional" analysis.
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1989, an investigation by A.B. Miller and associates charted the doses received by 31,710 women who were irradiated in the course of repeated fluoroscopic examinations between 1930 and 1952. [Miller, A.B., et al. Mortality from breast cancer after irradiation during fluoroscopic examination in patients being treated for tuberculosis. New England Journal of Medicine, 321, 1285, 1989.]
In this Canadian study, one group - in Nova Scotia - was fluoroscoped facing the X-ray source. This results in a dose to the breast approximately twenty-five times that when faced away. The women facing the source had a significant increase in cancer risk - it tripled for each 100 cGy (100,000 mrad) of radiation absorbed.
Source for Figure 28 Incidence of Breast Cancer Death Following Fluoroscopic Examination: Miller, A.B., Howe, G.R., Sherman, G.J., Lindsay, J.P., Yaffe, M.J., Dinner, P.J., Risch, H.A., and Preston, D.L. Mortality from breast cancer after irradiation during fluoroscopic examination in patients being treated for tuberculosis. New England Journal of Medicine, 321:1285, 1989.
The balance of the study was for all other provinces, with the results presented in Figure 28. Before going on, please remember that a normal annual U.S. background dose is 0.3 cGy, with the first data point on the graph at 5 cGy - about thirteen times this amount. The minimum mortality rate is at a value fifty times the annual background dose or the equivalent (using their figures) of 100 mammography exams.
On the basis of this evidence - which is almost certainly conservative, since the dose rate for fluoroscopy is much higher and, therefore, considered more traumatic to the breasts than present mammography techniques - women should have four or five mammograms per year.
Does that sound strange? That's nothing compared with the most unusual aspect of the study, namely its conclusion: The authors completely ignored the most statistically significant data points in the entire investigation, namely the 34% reduction in relative risk at 15 cGy and the 15% reduction at 24 cGy. Myron Pollycove, M.D., remarked regarding this omission:
"The decreased RR [risk rate] of breast cancer produced by low dose, low level radiation were rejected a priori by the choice of mathematical models that extrapolate the dose-risk relation from high dose exposures to low dose exposures."
[We met Dr. Pollycover back in Chapter 2. But since he is such an important player in the LNT controversy, allow me to remind you that he is professor emeritus in Laboratory Medicine and Radiology at the University of California at San Francisco, head of Nuclear Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, as well as a visiting medical fellow on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.]
To most of us that simply means the researchers, for whatever reason, chose to "spike" all results that indicated hormesis. Why? Probably because they were not even considering bio-positive data; they were looking for harmful effects... period. Pollycove continues:
"Nine hundred excess deaths from breast cancer are predicted theoretically from the exposure of one million women to 0.15 Gy. However, the quantified low dose data predicts with better than 99% confidence limits that instead of causing 900 deaths, a dose of 0.15 Gy would prevent 10,000 deaths in these million women."
Pardon me, but do you understand what this man - who has possibly the most impressive credentials in this entire debate - is saying? He is proclaiming that there is unmistakable evidence of hormesis in this study, which, if acted upon, might be developed into an effective weapon against breast cancer in millions of women, thousands of whom will die needlessly because of a theory that was never intended to apply to low-level radiation! It is a pity, a shame, a disgrace that the current ingrained reliance by regulators on the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis makes even a consideration of studying the hormesis phenomen extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Friday, March 4, 2016
"Why Don't They Evacuate Norway?"
"Why don't they evacuate Norway?" - a question by UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) Member Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski in noting that the limits set for evacuating people from around Chernobyl were below the average background radiation in Norway, and far, far below the high background areas of Norway and many other places in the world.
On a planet where virtually nothing is distributed equally, we should be surprised if terrestrial sources of background radiation were somehow evenly allocated. And they are definitely not. As noted in Table 10 (in chapter 11), some places have more than 130 times the average background radiation of the United States, and since the U.S. average is considerably higher than the ambient radiation inn other locations, there is easily a factor of 150 difference between points on the earth.
Believers in the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) hypothesis tell us that all radiation is dangerous, and that the danger is proportional to the dose received. Hey, since we have all these different levels of background radiation across the globe, all they have to do to prove their theory is to demonstrate that as the background radiation increases, so does cancer incidence - and perhaps even other maladies that we haven't yet even considered might be caused or aggravated by additional exposure.
Sadly (for them), this is demonstrably untrue. More than that. There is a large body of evidence that points in the opposite direction - that we are "underexposed" and that exposure to additional radiation will increase our health and vitality. This chapter intends to show some of that evidence.
On a planet where virtually nothing is distributed equally, we should be surprised if terrestrial sources of background radiation were somehow evenly allocated. And they are definitely not. As noted in Table 10 (in chapter 11), some places have more than 130 times the average background radiation of the United States, and since the U.S. average is considerably higher than the ambient radiation inn other locations, there is easily a factor of 150 difference between points on the earth.
Believers in the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) hypothesis tell us that all radiation is dangerous, and that the danger is proportional to the dose received. Hey, since we have all these different levels of background radiation across the globe, all they have to do to prove their theory is to demonstrate that as the background radiation increases, so does cancer incidence - and perhaps even other maladies that we haven't yet even considered might be caused or aggravated by additional exposure.
Sadly (for them), this is demonstrably untrue. More than that. There is a large body of evidence that points in the opposite direction - that we are "underexposed" and that exposure to additional radiation will increase our health and vitality. This chapter intends to show some of that evidence.
Monday, January 11, 2016
A Slippery Slope
When we read the statistics on deaths involving automobile accidents, we are given the actual count of deaths as compiled by various law enforcement agencies. But when the anti-nuclear zealots tell us about the number of people who died as a result of radiation from exposure to, say, radon, they don't have a single victim they can point to with any degree of certainty. Their "statistical deaths" come from an extrapolation based on the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) theory. Just as with our falling analogy, they correctly note that very high exposures, like falling from very tall buildings, increase the likelihood of death (by cancer, in the case of radiation). Their argument falls apart when they try to extend, or extrapolate, the high-dose exposure to much lower exposures.
For a moment let's jump to an example detailed in a later chapter. Studies of the Japanese indicated that exposure to the equivalent of 100 SXR units (20 rem, if you're ahead of me) in a short time would double the number of leukemia deaths in a population of one million people, from the expected fifty deaths to one-hundred. The LNT extrapolation would predict one-tenth the increase in deaths (in this case, five) if the population were exposed to one-tenth that additional exposure (in this case, 10 SXR units).
Could they point to any bodies? No, they only have their theoretical corpses based on the LNT extrapolation. But in this case, there is actual data that completely contradict the LNT theory's prediction. Not only did the death rate not increase; it actually decreased - by an astounding 40%! To summarize:
Fifty deaths expected in unexposed population
Fifty-five deaths predicted by LNT extrapolation
Only thirty deaths occurred, according to actual data
* * *
Therein lies the crux of the hormesis/LNT controversy: Those who advocate the Linear No-Threshold theory base their belief on the extrapolation of high-level exposure responses down to low levels. But when low-level data are available, they almost always show a bio-positive - or stimulatory - response. It is this response, called hormesis, that we will be discussing in the next chapter.
For a moment let's jump to an example detailed in a later chapter. Studies of the Japanese indicated that exposure to the equivalent of 100 SXR units (20 rem, if you're ahead of me) in a short time would double the number of leukemia deaths in a population of one million people, from the expected fifty deaths to one-hundred. The LNT extrapolation would predict one-tenth the increase in deaths (in this case, five) if the population were exposed to one-tenth that additional exposure (in this case, 10 SXR units).
Could they point to any bodies? No, they only have their theoretical corpses based on the LNT extrapolation. But in this case, there is actual data that completely contradict the LNT theory's prediction. Not only did the death rate not increase; it actually decreased - by an astounding 40%! To summarize:
Fifty deaths expected in unexposed population
Fifty-five deaths predicted by LNT extrapolation
Only thirty deaths occurred, according to actual data
* * *
Therein lies the crux of the hormesis/LNT controversy: Those who advocate the Linear No-Threshold theory base their belief on the extrapolation of high-level exposure responses down to low levels. But when low-level data are available, they almost always show a bio-positive - or stimulatory - response. It is this response, called hormesis, that we will be discussing in the next chapter.
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Time Out for a Measurement
Why, in a book about hormesis are we branching off into areas of Linear No-Threshold theory and collective dose? Because the LNT and collective dose theories are both matters that directly affect public policy. Rules and laws are made on the basis of these outmoded theories, and such restrictions stand in the way of any growth of marketplace interest in hormesis either as a therapy or as an immune-system stimulant. Advocates of hormesis - and you will see they are both numerous and impressive - consider burial of the LNT the first step toward public consideration and investigation of the hormesis phenomenon. Others, however, see this as the death knell of their domains. Let's see a few examples of the consequences from our present public policy.
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Falling for the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) Theory
Sadly, and ironically, the change in our attitudes toward radiation is due to an assumption - an assumption originally made to protect us from excessive exposure, but which has turned into the real "nuclear monster." We will examine it in detail later, but for now it might be best explained with an analogy to falling.
If we have found that falling 100 feet to a concrete floor is fatal in 100% of the cases and falling from fifty feet is fatal in 50% of them, we might logically expect the risk from falling twenty-five feet would result in a 25% death rate. But let's go on. At one foot, according to this "linear relationship between falling and death," we would expect one percent of the victims to die. At one inch, about 0.1%.
Yeah? Do you really think that out of 10,000 people who fall an inch, ten of them will die? If this linear relationship were the case, we would have thousands of people die every day from "falling" off their bathroom scales. Manhattan would have innumerable bodies in the street every day from people "falling" off the curbs.
Everyone sees how ridiculous this "linear relationship" is in an activity like falling that we know about, yet we have been convinced to believe that this relationship is true for our response to ionizing radiation - a subject that very few of us understand. In later chapters we will look at the units that define radiation and how these compare to the "Linear No-Threshold" (LNT) theory of radiation at low doses. But first let's examine another scientific abomination: collective dose.
If we have found that falling 100 feet to a concrete floor is fatal in 100% of the cases and falling from fifty feet is fatal in 50% of them, we might logically expect the risk from falling twenty-five feet would result in a 25% death rate. But let's go on. At one foot, according to this "linear relationship between falling and death," we would expect one percent of the victims to die. At one inch, about 0.1%.
Yeah? Do you really think that out of 10,000 people who fall an inch, ten of them will die? If this linear relationship were the case, we would have thousands of people die every day from "falling" off their bathroom scales. Manhattan would have innumerable bodies in the street every day from people "falling" off the curbs.
Everyone sees how ridiculous this "linear relationship" is in an activity like falling that we know about, yet we have been convinced to believe that this relationship is true for our response to ionizing radiation - a subject that very few of us understand. In later chapters we will look at the units that define radiation and how these compare to the "Linear No-Threshold" (LNT) theory of radiation at low doses. But first let's examine another scientific abomination: collective dose.
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