The dose rate concept is still an average over the body. If an alpha particle dumps all its energy within 50 microns, and a typical human cell might be 25 microns across, the local dose rate is very high indeed on the cellular scale.
I'm curious - where is the pushback coming from? Reviews of the book? substack comments from new viewers?
One of our more intrepid missionaries talks to some of the big names in the radiation protection business and gets their reaction. At this point, I don't have permission to say more.
It was a plug saying basically I bought your book. How about support for me back. I’ve done a heck of a lot to promote nuclear energy over years. But I forgive you if you did not realize.
Agree the sievert is an ugly kluge, which is almost certainly wrong. There is no a priori reason for a linear relationship between low LET and high LET cancer incidence.
But it is also undisputable that an alpha gray does far more harm than a photon or eletron gray. And we are pretty sure we know why. The higly localized nature of alpha damage is far more likely to produce DSB's and DDSB's that the more evely spread low LET energy.
Would you have us ignore this massive difference? I regard sieverts as a lousy placeholder, a poor substitute until somebody comes up with something better. If you want to get rid of sieverts, a laudable enterprise, you need to be that somebody.
In fact, photons can cause DSBs indirectly through reactive oxygen species. To have a unit of biological activity, one must first precisely determine the biological effect.
I don't understand this topic as well as I would like, so the following may or may not be a fly in the ointment and could be a bit off topic, but I do wonder if this author, in future parts, may support LNT (BTW, I did not see DNA mentioned here at all) "I question neither Calabrese’s sincerity nor character, but I do question the historical accuracy of key aspects of his work and the absence of statistical analysis supporting it. Nor is this paper a defense of the LNT. It is a defense of the integrity of historical figures and committees. I do not expect anyone reading this article to change their ultimate views about the LNT, dose thresholds, hormesis, or supralinearity because of it. My hope is that they will support the addition of errata information and links to critiques on the series website." Title "False and Misleading Claims of Scientific Misconduct in Early Research into Radiation Dose-response: Part 1. Overlooking Key Historical Text" https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/fulltext/2025/06000/false_and_misleading_claims_of_scientific.9.aspx
Having said all this, I do believe and support "What is "unscientific", to put it as politely as possible, is continuing to promote a model after its foundational premise has been proven to be false." Therefore, this post may be off topic.
Calabrese has done tremendous work in uncovering the origins of LNT and its acceptance as the foundation for radiation protection after WW2. He has done a great job of showing how the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) played on the greed and self-protection of fruitfly geneticists to promote LNT.
But Calabrese spends less time on the motivation of the RF, which in their own words was to a make amends for the pivotal role they played in enabling the atomic bomb. The FLop book has a long section focusing on the RF and their statements. They used LNT and their geneticist pawns to end bomb testing.
This is important. For it also explains why so many people who knew LNT was nonsense kept quiet: either because they also were willing to break all the rules of scientific integrity in favor of the greater good of ending testing, or they did not want to be seen in favor of it. Even Lauriston Taylor, a towering figure who certainly knew LNT was rubbish, did not speak out against LNT until 1980. He was about 30 years too late.
AFAIK, Calabrese's ideas for a radiation harm model are based on hormesis combined with no explicit repair period. IMO, it is not a fully defined model.
I will add your book (at 116 pages) to my "to buy" list. AT $26 each, not a bad price for an individual interested in this topic, but not sure I can buy 10 copies to pass out for Christmas gifts, for example. And that would probably exhaust MY community of potentially receptive people in any case.
To clarify, when we are speaking of dosage rates, as say 20mS/day, the presumption is that net rate is continuous over that time period, with no [substantive] spikes or dips in the number of radioactive particles being "received"? And then there is DiogensesNJ's point about area/volume exposure at the biological level. Then again, the DNA disruption event appears to be followed fairly quickly with a DNA repair response, until the rate of damage overwhelms the cells or tissues.
Is there thus another assumption buried in the the discussion of averages? That the rate of DNA repair is the same in all cells or tissue types?
Let's say the actual repair period is a day. If that were the case, then it probably does not matter whether you got 20 mSv in one spike or 2 10 mSv spikes 5 minutes apart. Since the repair process takes time, it operates as a sort of short term smoother or integrator. This is sometimes called the Bunsen-Roscoe Law. But Bunsen-Roscoe is only really valid for periods that are a lot shorter than the repair time.
SNT in using the bomb survivor data for its repair period respone curve effectively assumes all the dose in each day is received like the bomb survivors got their dose. SNT pushes Bunsen-Roscoe way too hard. That's probably why it is so conservative, when the dose actually is received evenly over each day.
Put another way, SNT is lucky that its competition is LNT which is so horribly wrong, SNT looks pretty good in comparison.
A regulatory justification of this conservatism is that in the real world, "even" dose rates may not be so even. After a very big release, a resident might get say 2 mSv each day. But she won't actually get that evenly. She'll spend some time outdoors with a much higher dose rate than indoors. Or maybe she wanders close to a hot spot for a few minutes. SNT covers those possibilities by assuming the entire daily dose was received acutely.
SNT can be used for whole body doses such as external gamma from an NPP release. But it has also been used for thyroid doses from I-131 milk after Chernobyl in which case the organ of interest is a child's 10 g thyroid. It has alos been used for the dial painters in which case the organ of interest is the skeleton. Just like LNT. It depends on the type of exposure.
The dose rate concept is still an average over the body. If an alpha particle dumps all its energy within 50 microns, and a typical human cell might be 25 microns across, the local dose rate is very high indeed on the cellular scale.
I'm curious - where is the pushback coming from? Reviews of the book? substack comments from new viewers?
Dio,
One of our more intrepid missionaries talks to some of the big names in the radiation protection business and gets their reaction. At this point, I don't have permission to say more.
I will consider that good news, I think.
.
Hi Jack I bought your book. I hope people that matter read it.
Maybe buy my album
How do I buy your album, Rick? Can you share a link?
Thanks Todd. It’s instrumental. Piano, Flute and Bass
https://rickmaltese.bandcamp.com/album/not-in-a-paradise
It is listed on many platforms as RBG Trio Not In a Paradise
I should have axed the plug immediately as completely off topic.
Future such sales pitches will be summarily executed.
It was a plug saying basically I bought your book. How about support for me back. I’ve done a heck of a lot to promote nuclear energy over years. But I forgive you if you did not realize.
I dont need forgiveness. Off topic is off topic.
In the US nuclear navy, we called RBE, Quality Factor which was used to convert
Rad or Grays to REM
Alphas X 20
Fast neutrons X 10
Gamma X 1
Beta X 1
Alpha’s are big and highly charged, and cause a lot of damage in a short distance.
Just don’t ingest it and you’ll be fine.
I hope you can offer the book in electronic form, preferably Kindle. That way, I can always refer to it on my phone.
I've resisted this. The book is not well suited to floating format. The text and the figures
are so closely coupled that messing with the placement becomes distracting.
For reference purposes, I recommend the much longer and completer and indexed
Why Nuclear Power Has Been a Flop, which can be downloaded for free from
https://gordianknotbook.com albeit as a PDF.
First, we need to stop using the Sievert as a unit. The only way to describe the dose received is the Gray.
Second, a dose of 20 mGy in one day probably does nothing, but a dose of 2 mGy in one second can certainly cause cancer.
Daniel,
Agree the sievert is an ugly kluge, which is almost certainly wrong. There is no a priori reason for a linear relationship between low LET and high LET cancer incidence.
But it is also undisputable that an alpha gray does far more harm than a photon or eletron gray. And we are pretty sure we know why. The higly localized nature of alpha damage is far more likely to produce DSB's and DDSB's that the more evely spread low LET energy.
Would you have us ignore this massive difference? I regard sieverts as a lousy placeholder, a poor substitute until somebody comes up with something better. If you want to get rid of sieverts, a laudable enterprise, you need to be that somebody.
In fact, photons can cause DSBs indirectly through reactive oxygen species. To have a unit of biological activity, one must first precisely determine the biological effect.
I don't understand this topic as well as I would like, so the following may or may not be a fly in the ointment and could be a bit off topic, but I do wonder if this author, in future parts, may support LNT (BTW, I did not see DNA mentioned here at all) "I question neither Calabrese’s sincerity nor character, but I do question the historical accuracy of key aspects of his work and the absence of statistical analysis supporting it. Nor is this paper a defense of the LNT. It is a defense of the integrity of historical figures and committees. I do not expect anyone reading this article to change their ultimate views about the LNT, dose thresholds, hormesis, or supralinearity because of it. My hope is that they will support the addition of errata information and links to critiques on the series website." Title "False and Misleading Claims of Scientific Misconduct in Early Research into Radiation Dose-response: Part 1. Overlooking Key Historical Text" https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/fulltext/2025/06000/false_and_misleading_claims_of_scientific.9.aspx
Having said all this, I do believe and support "What is "unscientific", to put it as politely as possible, is continuing to promote a model after its foundational premise has been proven to be false." Therefore, this post may be off topic.
Calabrese has done tremendous work in uncovering the origins of LNT and its acceptance as the foundation for radiation protection after WW2. He has done a great job of showing how the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) played on the greed and self-protection of fruitfly geneticists to promote LNT.
But Calabrese spends less time on the motivation of the RF, which in their own words was to a make amends for the pivotal role they played in enabling the atomic bomb. The FLop book has a long section focusing on the RF and their statements. They used LNT and their geneticist pawns to end bomb testing.
This is important. For it also explains why so many people who knew LNT was nonsense kept quiet: either because they also were willing to break all the rules of scientific integrity in favor of the greater good of ending testing, or they did not want to be seen in favor of it. Even Lauriston Taylor, a towering figure who certainly knew LNT was rubbish, did not speak out against LNT until 1980. He was about 30 years too late.
AFAIK, Calabrese's ideas for a radiation harm model are based on hormesis combined with no explicit repair period. IMO, it is not a fully defined model.
I will add your book (at 116 pages) to my "to buy" list. AT $26 each, not a bad price for an individual interested in this topic, but not sure I can buy 10 copies to pass out for Christmas gifts, for example. And that would probably exhaust MY community of potentially receptive people in any case.
To clarify, when we are speaking of dosage rates, as say 20mS/day, the presumption is that net rate is continuous over that time period, with no [substantive] spikes or dips in the number of radioactive particles being "received"? And then there is DiogensesNJ's point about area/volume exposure at the biological level. Then again, the DNA disruption event appears to be followed fairly quickly with a DNA repair response, until the rate of damage overwhelms the cells or tissues.
Is there thus another assumption buried in the the discussion of averages? That the rate of DNA repair is the same in all cells or tissue types?
Ssri,
Good question on dose within a day.
Let's say the actual repair period is a day. If that were the case, then it probably does not matter whether you got 20 mSv in one spike or 2 10 mSv spikes 5 minutes apart. Since the repair process takes time, it operates as a sort of short term smoother or integrator. This is sometimes called the Bunsen-Roscoe Law. But Bunsen-Roscoe is only really valid for periods that are a lot shorter than the repair time.
SNT in using the bomb survivor data for its repair period respone curve effectively assumes all the dose in each day is received like the bomb survivors got their dose. SNT pushes Bunsen-Roscoe way too hard. That's probably why it is so conservative, when the dose actually is received evenly over each day.
Put another way, SNT is lucky that its competition is LNT which is so horribly wrong, SNT looks pretty good in comparison.
A regulatory justification of this conservatism is that in the real world, "even" dose rates may not be so even. After a very big release, a resident might get say 2 mSv each day. But she won't actually get that evenly. She'll spend some time outdoors with a much higher dose rate than indoors. Or maybe she wanders close to a hot spot for a few minutes. SNT covers those possibilities by assuming the entire daily dose was received acutely.
SNT can be used for whole body doses such as external gamma from an NPP release. But it has also been used for thyroid doses from I-131 milk after Chernobyl in which case the organ of interest is a child's 10 g thyroid. It has alos been used for the dial painters in which case the organ of interest is the skeleton. Just like LNT. It depends on the type of exposure.