During the Australian Broadcasting Company documentary titled I Can Change Your Mind About … Climate there is a scene where Anthony Leiserowitz (via Skype video) shares some of what he has learned during his research about climate change attitudes with Nick Minchin and Anna Rose, the show’s protagonists. Here is how the producers of “I [...]
Does radiation really cause cancer? Conversation among professionals
One of the privileges of being a long time pronuclear activist on the Internet – an activity that I have been enjoying since “atomicrod” started posting in USENET discussion groups in the early 1990s – is that I often see communications between talented, highly qualified professionals that include information that is not well distributed in [...]
Radiation Doses – As Low As UnReasonably Achievable (ALAURA)
A friend tweeted a link to a terrific satire titled Roentgen Shrugged that was published in the March 2011 issue of Health Physics News. The piece describes what might happen to modern medical care in the foreseeable future if the radiation protection guild keeps ratcheting down allowable radiation dose exposure levels to an ever more [...]
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab announces breakthrough study of low radiation dose effects
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory issued a press release on December 20, 2011 titled New Take on Impacts of Low Dose Radiation: Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Evidence Suggesting Risk May Not Be Proportional to Dose at Low Dose Levels. The press release summarizes the results of a paper that has been published in the Proceedings [...]
Fission advocates should cooperate to dispel misinformation about radiation health effects
I correspond regularly with advocates for various nuclear fission technologies; there are many disagreements about the best way forward. The advocates can get pretty passionate about what they believe to be the weaknesses of competing technologies. There are times when I need to step in to remind them that their competitive target should be the [...]
What are radiation protection standards protecting us from?
By Ted Rockwell How are Permissible Radiation Limits Set? How Much is Science, How Much “Prudence”? U.S. Regulatory Report NCRP-136 examined the question of establishing permissible radiation limits. After looking at the data, it concluded that most people who get a small dose of nuclear radiation are not harmed by it, and in fact are [...]
Spirited debate about BEIR VII and Linear No Threshold (LNT) Dose Assumption
A few days ago, I wrote What should “Radioactive Wolves” teach critical thinkers? and promptly got really busy at work. I put in several “half-days” (Navy lingo for a 12 hour work day) and did not have much time for paying attention to Atomic Insights. When I finally got around to checking on things, there [...]
Risk below 100 mSv is so low you cannot measure it
One of my favorite jokes about the difference between scientists and engineers is the one in which a scientist and an engineer are both put into a room with a pot of gold on the other side. They are given the rules of the challenge – the gold will be given to the person who [...]
“Radiation is not a big threat to mankind” – Dr. Wade Allison addressing ACCJ
Dr. Wade Allison, the author of Radiation and Reason addressed the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) Food Safety meeting on October 3, 2011. Unlike Arnie Gundersen (sometimes misspelled as Gunderson), an unlicensed nuclear engineer from Vermont who has been working hard for several months to encourage an unreasonable fear of radiation, even at [...]
If fear of radiation is the most serious health risk, the cure is simple
On September 14, 2011, the BBC aired a documentary titled Fukushima Disaster: Is Nuclear Power Safe?. Near the end of the video, the host makes the statement that it is quite likely that the main health impacts of the event (leaving aside the direct effects of the initiating earthquake and tsunami) will be traceable to [...]