The PDF version of the Two Lies piece at gordionknotbook.com is reasonably well referenced.
I'm not at all good with WYSIWYG editors, so I take too many short cuts when I bring the stuff over. Mea culpa. The Flop book goes into still more detail on the dose response datga.
I really think you are overemphasizing the importance of the linear no threshold assumption. It seems to me that LNT just doesn't have that much impact on actual regulation.
Everyone knows that realistically there must be some threshold below which the cancer risk due to radiation is insignificant, but unless we can actually demonstrate an upper bound on that threshold, there's no way to write it into the regulations. This is why essentially every country in the world uses LNT: they have no specific defensible alternative. But even using the LNT model, the health consequences to the public of a reactor accident are minor. We already know that Fukushima caused zero fatalities due to acute radiation poisoning, and based on the doses received by the public, the number of expected fatal cancers under the LNT hypothesis would be less than 100 (possible far less), compared with about 2200 who died due to the evacuation.
Finally, I think the suggestion that ALARA is used as a regulatory ratchet is also misleading. It refers to exposure levels, rather than risk, and so is relevant mainly to nuclear workers, not the public (since dose to the public is zero during normal operation). Plants comply with ALARA by monitoring doses and showing that they have considered reasonable ways to reduce worker exposure to radiation. Whether the plant is profitable is irrelevant. To the extent there is a regulatory ratchet at work, it is primarily in the form of new deterministic safety requirements, demands for more detailed safety analyses, licensing fees, environmental impact statements, and bureaucracy surrounding license renewals.
LNT is not only quantitatively wrong; in its denial of teh importance of dose rate,
it is qualitatively wrong, The combination means that in a release, an LNT based
estimate of the harm can easily be many orders of magnitude above reality.
We saw this at Chernobyl. People came up with LNT based estimaes of cancer
mortality of up to 50,000 people. But 30 + years later, we dont even see an increase in cancer incidence in the Ukrainian districts adjacent to the plant. A more realistic dose-response model
would have massive impact on policy, The GKG group offers Sigmoid No Threshold.
ALARA applies both to operating procedures and design requirements. On teh design side,
it's the statement that there are no limits. The regulator is free, nay mandated, to impose
any requirement that the plant can afford to comply with. It is true that the regulatory ratchet does not require ALARA, but it certainly speeds it up.
"...able to produce electricity at 0.27 cents per kWh in 1970. That's less than 3 cents/kWh in 2020 money."
These numbers make no sense - 27 cents in 1970 money would be worth a lot more today. Thought maybe you had switched them around but 27 cents per kWh today is pretty far from cheap as well so something is fishy here.
You missed the decimal point. But it turns out, I screwed up too. The actual TVA price in 1965 as reported by Bupp and Derian was 3.7 mills per kWh. That inflates to about 2.7 cents/kWh in 2020 dollars. Other comtemporaries such as Komanoff and Ehrlich, neither friends of nuclear, cite similar numbers. The full citation is Bupp and Derian, Light water: How the nuclear dream dissolved, page 90.
I just found you*. And this post is the best so far... (I'm reading chronologically, earliest to latest)
OK so LNT has to go! The facts seem overwhelming. Is there other data that's not so good? (Sorry to doubt your story, it seems right and I want to believe it, so I need to ask.)
*playing substack random walk, where you follow a trail of recommendations, to some new writer.
The Flop book which you can download from https;//gordianknotbook.com has a far more complete review of the data and the history. LNT has been vigorously defended by a large portion of the radiation protection establishment, against a growing challenge from others. You will have to your own review of the data and figure out who is right. When I did this, I started with the premise that it can't be too far off. But the more I got into it, I realized that in ignoring our ability to repair radiation damage made LNT completely wrong when the dose is spread over many repair periods.
Yeah thanks, I did find the web site. When thinking about science things I always want more data. Chernobyl, seems like the perfect test ground for radiation dose and mutations, cancers and such. (Well and the bombs we dropped on Japan, which point to not that much damage, if you live past the initial dose.) One unconnected question I have is, where do genetic mutations come from if not radiation?
You will need a biologist to answer that one. My guess is that radiation may have been important early on, but once we developed oxygen based metabolism, damage from Reactive Oxygen Species became more important. ROS damage is equivalent to about 200 mGy/d. But find somebody who knows.
After Hiroshima/Nagasaki some 70,000 bomb survivor pregnancies were carefully studied for genetic damage. No significant increase in genetic defects were found in the kids that were conceived after the bombs were dropped. We did see damage to kids that were in utero at that time.
I'm a bit puzzled why you cite TMI as a evidence that the Teeny Weeny Lie is false? There was no significant release of radioactive material outside of the facility itself. At the time, my mother worked right across the river at Harrisburg International Airport and I was in college in Philly. Not long after, I took an unpopular position: TMI demonstrated that even if just about everything that could go or be done wrong did/was, the problem would remain contained.
Chernobyl: OK, that was a mess, but it was a piss-poor reactor design in a plant with no effective containment. We don't do that here.
Fukushima: Yeah. Obviously we need to re-asses where we put the emergency backup generators., and maybe water-cooled, solid-fueled reactors that require active cooling even after they're shut down aren't totally optimal when it comes to safety.
Thing is, these days are designs that re literally walk-away safe, and the Teeny Weeny Lie might not be false with them, even if we built 25,000 such plants?
TMI released 0.6 TBq of I-131 plus some other stuiff. Whether or not you consider that 'significant' is a judgement call, but the problem was NOT contained.
We built I think 8 water cooled, graphite moderated reactors at Hanford that had the same problem as the RBMK. It was possible to put them in an unstable state.
Walf-away safety does not mean no releases. It just means the reactor will shut itself down and cool itself without any operator intervention in an over-temp transient as long as nothing else goes wrong. Liquid fuel reactors probably increase the likelihood of a minor release.
And even if we were hubristic enough to think we could design a plant that will never have a release, along comes a war with precision guided bunker busters.
The Teeny Weeny Lie is false, and the attempts to make it true are not only futile, but much worse result in nuclear power being priced out of the market and replaced by far more dangerous fossil fuel plants. In order to get out of this mess, we must renounce both lies.
Given that the Rockefeller family made their millions from oil, how likely is it that the Rockefeller Foundation's campaign for LNT was intended to protect oil interests by strangling civilian nuclear power in its cradle, rather than just to stop nuclear weapons testing?
Thank you for a brilliant article.
Excellent article. Could you provide citations for the references?
Seconded, this would be really nice!
The PDF version of the Two Lies piece at gordionknotbook.com is reasonably well referenced.
I'm not at all good with WYSIWYG editors, so I take too many short cuts when I bring the stuff over. Mea culpa. The Flop book goes into still more detail on the dose response datga.
https://gordianknotbook.com
Link was misspelled above.
I really think you are overemphasizing the importance of the linear no threshold assumption. It seems to me that LNT just doesn't have that much impact on actual regulation.
Everyone knows that realistically there must be some threshold below which the cancer risk due to radiation is insignificant, but unless we can actually demonstrate an upper bound on that threshold, there's no way to write it into the regulations. This is why essentially every country in the world uses LNT: they have no specific defensible alternative. But even using the LNT model, the health consequences to the public of a reactor accident are minor. We already know that Fukushima caused zero fatalities due to acute radiation poisoning, and based on the doses received by the public, the number of expected fatal cancers under the LNT hypothesis would be less than 100 (possible far less), compared with about 2200 who died due to the evacuation.
Finally, I think the suggestion that ALARA is used as a regulatory ratchet is also misleading. It refers to exposure levels, rather than risk, and so is relevant mainly to nuclear workers, not the public (since dose to the public is zero during normal operation). Plants comply with ALARA by monitoring doses and showing that they have considered reasonable ways to reduce worker exposure to radiation. Whether the plant is profitable is irrelevant. To the extent there is a regulatory ratchet at work, it is primarily in the form of new deterministic safety requirements, demands for more detailed safety analyses, licensing fees, environmental impact statements, and bureaucracy surrounding license renewals.
dogiv
LNT is not only quantitatively wrong; in its denial of teh importance of dose rate,
it is qualitatively wrong, The combination means that in a release, an LNT based
estimate of the harm can easily be many orders of magnitude above reality.
We saw this at Chernobyl. People came up with LNT based estimaes of cancer
mortality of up to 50,000 people. But 30 + years later, we dont even see an increase in cancer incidence in the Ukrainian districts adjacent to the plant. A more realistic dose-response model
would have massive impact on policy, The GKG group offers Sigmoid No Threshold.
Pls see Compensating Radiation Harm at gordianknotbook.com.
ALARA applies both to operating procedures and design requirements. On teh design side,
it's the statement that there are no limits. The regulator is free, nay mandated, to impose
any requirement that the plant can afford to comply with. It is true that the regulatory ratchet does not require ALARA, but it certainly speeds it up.
"...able to produce electricity at 0.27 cents per kWh in 1970. That's less than 3 cents/kWh in 2020 money."
These numbers make no sense - 27 cents in 1970 money would be worth a lot more today. Thought maybe you had switched them around but 27 cents per kWh today is pretty far from cheap as well so something is fishy here.
Mr P.
You missed the decimal point. But it turns out, I screwed up too. The actual TVA price in 1965 as reported by Bupp and Derian was 3.7 mills per kWh. That inflates to about 2.7 cents/kWh in 2020 dollars. Other comtemporaries such as Komanoff and Ehrlich, neither friends of nuclear, cite similar numbers. The full citation is Bupp and Derian, Light water: How the nuclear dream dissolved, page 90.
I just found you*. And this post is the best so far... (I'm reading chronologically, earliest to latest)
OK so LNT has to go! The facts seem overwhelming. Is there other data that's not so good? (Sorry to doubt your story, it seems right and I want to believe it, so I need to ask.)
*playing substack random walk, where you follow a trail of recommendations, to some new writer.
George,
The Flop book which you can download from https;//gordianknotbook.com has a far more complete review of the data and the history. LNT has been vigorously defended by a large portion of the radiation protection establishment, against a growing challenge from others. You will have to your own review of the data and figure out who is right. When I did this, I started with the premise that it can't be too far off. But the more I got into it, I realized that in ignoring our ability to repair radiation damage made LNT completely wrong when the dose is spread over many repair periods.
Yeah thanks, I did find the web site. When thinking about science things I always want more data. Chernobyl, seems like the perfect test ground for radiation dose and mutations, cancers and such. (Well and the bombs we dropped on Japan, which point to not that much damage, if you live past the initial dose.) One unconnected question I have is, where do genetic mutations come from if not radiation?
George,
You will need a biologist to answer that one. My guess is that radiation may have been important early on, but once we developed oxygen based metabolism, damage from Reactive Oxygen Species became more important. ROS damage is equivalent to about 200 mGy/d. But find somebody who knows.
After Hiroshima/Nagasaki some 70,000 bomb survivor pregnancies were carefully studied for genetic damage. No significant increase in genetic defects were found in the kids that were conceived after the bombs were dropped. We did see damage to kids that were in utero at that time.
I'm a bit puzzled why you cite TMI as a evidence that the Teeny Weeny Lie is false? There was no significant release of radioactive material outside of the facility itself. At the time, my mother worked right across the river at Harrisburg International Airport and I was in college in Philly. Not long after, I took an unpopular position: TMI demonstrated that even if just about everything that could go or be done wrong did/was, the problem would remain contained.
Chernobyl: OK, that was a mess, but it was a piss-poor reactor design in a plant with no effective containment. We don't do that here.
Fukushima: Yeah. Obviously we need to re-asses where we put the emergency backup generators., and maybe water-cooled, solid-fueled reactors that require active cooling even after they're shut down aren't totally optimal when it comes to safety.
Thing is, these days are designs that re literally walk-away safe, and the Teeny Weeny Lie might not be false with them, even if we built 25,000 such plants?
TMI released 0.6 TBq of I-131 plus some other stuiff. Whether or not you consider that 'significant' is a judgement call, but the problem was NOT contained.
We built I think 8 water cooled, graphite moderated reactors at Hanford that had the same problem as the RBMK. It was possible to put them in an unstable state.
Walf-away safety does not mean no releases. It just means the reactor will shut itself down and cool itself without any operator intervention in an over-temp transient as long as nothing else goes wrong. Liquid fuel reactors probably increase the likelihood of a minor release.
And even if we were hubristic enough to think we could design a plant that will never have a release, along comes a war with precision guided bunker busters.
The Teeny Weeny Lie is false, and the attempts to make it true are not only futile, but much worse result in nuclear power being priced out of the market and replaced by far more dangerous fossil fuel plants. In order to get out of this mess, we must renounce both lies.
Given that the Rockefeller family made their millions from oil, how likely is it that the Rockefeller Foundation's campaign for LNT was intended to protect oil interests by strangling civilian nuclear power in its cradle, rather than just to stop nuclear weapons testing?
George,
Near zero. Pls see https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/big-oil-and-nuclear-power
Big Oil make an immense bet on nuclear inthe 60's and took a big hit when nuclear flopped.
Blaming Big Oil for our problems is tragically distractive.