It's not the people, it's the system. Radiophobia is the NRC's reason for being. If you are an NRC employee, you either buy into the system or find another job. Buying in means doing your best to keep the radiophobia alive regardless of what the science and the data say.
That's pretty sad. Jack. Pretty sad indeed. I'm thinking the only real solution is dissolving the NRC. They've done enough damage to demonstrate the necessity of that.
But the NRA is not a completely free market system. For one thing, we must avoid the American tort system which means a government mandated compensation system, which has to be administered by teh government. The NRA borrows a lot from the German system via the Nuclear Arbitration Board. The idea is that we cant have an autocratic single purpose (prevent a release) bureaucracy. Rather a consensus of competing interests is much more likely to come up with a system that does a reasonable job of balancing benefit and risk.
Hi Jack, I want to pick a bone with your article with respect to the fossil fuel deaths you mention. The air quality in the U.S. is very good thanks to emissions control equipment, and most of the country is in attainment for criteria pollutants. I think that applying an LNT metric to coal and gas emissions is also probably not accurate. What’s your perspective?
Good point. I would be very surprised if particulate health problems were linear in concentration. The millions of premature deaths is a bit of a cheap shot. The obvious question is how premature. If my life is shortened on average by a week by all the wild fire smoke I've breathed is that a premature death. Something like Lost Life Expectancy would be a much better metric. In my defense, if you follow the link, it really about the impact of poverty on health and why fossil fuel has been so beneficial in increasing life expectancy. Still cleaner is better, but only if it's at least as cheap.
I've had the same worry about LNT as applied to coal and gas emissions. We rely on the data published by Our World in Data, which seems to show a deadly response to low levels of pollution over large populations. If the data is actually from ecologic studies, not just some linear extrapolation, it is more convincing, but still subject to the same criticism of studies showing low levels of radiation are harmless. Any such study is theoretically vulnerable to the "ecologic fallacy".
I sure hope you're wrong, but since the NRC is populated with bureaucratic weenies, you're probably right.
Del,
It's not the people, it's the system. Radiophobia is the NRC's reason for being. If you are an NRC employee, you either buy into the system or find another job. Buying in means doing your best to keep the radiophobia alive regardless of what the science and the data say.
That's pretty sad. Jack. Pretty sad indeed. I'm thinking the only real solution is dissolving the NRC. They've done enough damage to demonstrate the necessity of that.
That's precisely what the NRA does.
https://gordianknotbook.com/download/underwriter-certification-of-nuclear-power/
But the NRA is not a completely free market system. For one thing, we must avoid the American tort system which means a government mandated compensation system, which has to be administered by teh government. The NRA borrows a lot from the German system via the Nuclear Arbitration Board. The idea is that we cant have an autocratic single purpose (prevent a release) bureaucracy. Rather a consensus of competing interests is much more likely to come up with a system that does a reasonable job of balancing benefit and risk.
Bingo
Hi Jack, I want to pick a bone with your article with respect to the fossil fuel deaths you mention. The air quality in the U.S. is very good thanks to emissions control equipment, and most of the country is in attainment for criteria pollutants. I think that applying an LNT metric to coal and gas emissions is also probably not accurate. What’s your perspective?
Isaac,
Good point. I would be very surprised if particulate health problems were linear in concentration. The millions of premature deaths is a bit of a cheap shot. The obvious question is how premature. If my life is shortened on average by a week by all the wild fire smoke I've breathed is that a premature death. Something like Lost Life Expectancy would be a much better metric. In my defense, if you follow the link, it really about the impact of poverty on health and why fossil fuel has been so beneficial in increasing life expectancy. Still cleaner is better, but only if it's at least as cheap.
I listened to this on the app so I didn’t even know there was a link. I’ll check it out
I've had the same worry about LNT as applied to coal and gas emissions. We rely on the data published by Our World in Data, which seems to show a deadly response to low levels of pollution over large populations. If the data is actually from ecologic studies, not just some linear extrapolation, it is more convincing, but still subject to the same criticism of studies showing low levels of radiation are harmless. Any such study is theoretically vulnerable to the "ecologic fallacy".
https://citizendium.org/wiki/Fear_of_radiation/Debate_Guide#LNT_and_radon,_Controversy_over_Figure_4
For a more optimistic view, see LNT is GONE by Kyle Hill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT5hYHdelmg
NRC now targeting 2026-07-02 for the publication of the new rules.
No idea why I expected a site that posts nonsense about radiation to have the date right. Mea culpa.