The Total Dose Cult

There are two mathematically equivalent definitions of LNT:

A. The radiation harm model that assumes cancer incidence is proportional to total dose.

B. The radiation harm model that assumes that the only thing that counts is the total dose.

Each definition implies the other; but I much prefer to start with B. Not only does it emphasize that LNT claims how rapidly or how slowly that dose is received is irrelevant, which is biological nonsense; but it also exposes the apostasy of certain choir members.

In a recent post talking about the evacuations at Fukushima, sharp-eyed members of the choir noted something they found very disquieting about Table 1. The high end people in the hardest hit towns would accumulate a total dose of hundreds of millisieverts if they did not evacuate.

Table 1. SNT and LNT Compensation at Fukushima with Gy2Sv = 0.20

According to the GKG analysis of the release, the worst of the worst was the high end group in Okuma, a town right next to the plant. The GKG thinks the ambient outside dose for these people started out at 310 microGy per hour. Assuming a location factor of 0.2, the cumulative absorbed dose for someone who did not evacuate and who lived the next 40 years in the high end portion of Okuma would be 812 mSv. Someone who was a young child at the time of the release and spent her next 80 years in this part of Okuma would end up with well over 1000 mSv.

The worried choir members point out that these cumulative doses are higher than the 679 mSv or less that the worst hit plant personnel received during their heroic efforts to get the mess under control. How can this be they ask?

All members of the choir are required to be professing anti-LNTers. But the LNT devil is insidious. He has instructed his followers to talk only about "the dose". He speaks only of damage, and never of repair. This leads the faithful astray.

The difference of course is that the plant workers received most of their dose over a period of a week or so, sometimes less. Figure 1 shows an estimate of the dose rate profile for the two highest end Fukushima control room personnel. Since their dose was mainly from inhaled Iodine-131, the profile is largely determined by the effective half life of this isotope in the body, which is 7.3 days.

Figure 1. Concocted Internal I-131 Profile for 600 mSv Control Room Crew.

Our guess at the peak dose rate for these two men was around 50 mSv/d. The SNT Lost Life Expectancy for this profile is about 28 days.

Our steadfast citizens of Okuma will get their dose over 40 or more years, mostly external from Cesium-137 groundshine. After the first few weeks, their profile is largely determined by the half life of Cs-137 which is 30 years. Figure 2 shows an estimate of the first two years of their dose rate profile. Despite the 800 mSv total dose over 40 years, their SNT Lost Life Expectancy for that period is 140 minutes.

It is also true that, after the first 50 days, the dose rate drops off so slowly, that, in order to avoid large cumulative doses, an evacuee would have to banish herself for decades. In just about all cases, the stresses associated with this exile will be far, far more costly.

Figure 2. Okuma high end group, dose rate profile, first two years. Red is SNT mortality. Read right. LLE is Lost Life Expectancy.

The faithful must learn to think in terms of dose rate profile. I say again: renounce the LNT devil and think in terms of dose rate profile. Total dose is meaningful only if you are a member of the LNT cult. If you are shown a document that claims to study radiation harm but does not tell you the dose rate profiles, you can be sure that it was inspired by the Prince of Darkness, even if it claims to be anti-LNT.

Henceforth, any member of the choir who speaks of total dose as if it were meaningful will be brought before the Elders, denounced, and banished to Chad, where he will join the poor people who are forced to forego electricity, because nuclear is prohibitively expensive.