A Plug In Replacement for LNT
In our last post, we presented the Gordian Knot Group's version of what the American Nuclear Society's Position Statement on LNT should say. ANS Position Statements are limited to two pages, so they are usually accompanied by a Backgrounder, explaining the reasoning behind the Position Statement. This is necessary in this case, since our Position Statement recommended LNT be replaced with SNT without saying what SNT is.
The GKG's Backgrounder for its Position Statement has been uploaded to A Plug In Replacement for LNT. It's a bit long for an Substack post, and frankly I'm too lazy to translate it to Substack HTML. But it may be the best description of SNT yet. Please check it out.
By embracing the No Threshold doctrine, SNT takes away the LNTer's only defense, which is to require the thresholder to prove there is a threshold. It also turns the switch from LNT to SNT into an upgrade. It does not ask the LNTer to abandon his cherished No Threshold dogma. It only asks him to believe the RERF when the say their new bomb survivor data, based on much improved dosimetry, is clearly non-linear.\cite{grant-2017,brenner-2022} It only asks him for a tweak on LNT that allows the upgraded LNT to explain the lack of detectable harm when extremely large doses are received more or less evenly over long periods. It only asks him for a tweak on LNT that admits that space travel is possible.
It only asks him for an upgrade to LNT that makes the upgraded LNT consistent with our amazing ability to repair DNA damage, an ability about which we knew very little when LNT was adopted 75 years ago.
This is the best description to date of your model. It also makes me think that there is a much simpler model lurking underneath. The thought is that you add the dose for the time interval using the same data you use, and then take the limit of the expression as the interval goes to zero. LNT uses an infinite interval, you use one day, but what happens if one makes the interval one second, or a picosecond? It feels to me as though you could situate your concrete proposal between LNT and the limit as the interval tends to zero. Or you could go all the way to the limit by thinking of the dose-repair process as continuous instead of occurring in discrete intervals. There might be a clean closed form expression to be derived.
In my opinion, it is far more important to know that radiology is dangerous than to know that space travel is possible.