Message is reaching the public – radiation risks have been greatly exaggerated

An important message that has been discussed often by web publications like Hiroshima Syndrome, Yes Vermont Yankee, Canadian Energy Issues, Nuke Power Talk, Neutron Bytes, Atomic Power Review, and ANS Nuclear Cafe has jumped to the mainstream press in the form of a New York Times article by George Johnson titled When Radiation Isn’t the…

NRC calls off expensive search for witches

On September 8, 2015, the NRC announced that it would stop funding the National Academy of Sciences’s (NAS) five-year-long, multimillion dollar effort to create a method that could be used to study whether or not populations that are exposed to radiation doses that are a tiny fraction of average background radiation related to proximity to…

Fukushima – The Price of “No Safe Dose” Assumption

A friend pointed me to a heart-rending piece in the New York Review of Books titled Fukushima: The Price of Nuclear Power by Michael Ignatieff. The piece is a first hand account of a visit to Japan’s Fukushima prefecture; it includes vivid descriptions of the devastation caused by the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck…

The Left Needs to Reconsider its Automatic Position Against Nuclear Energy

by BILL SACKS and GREG MEYERSON As leftists who have studied the issue of nuclear energy for years, we want to reply to Robert Hunziker’s “Real Story” titled What’s Really Going on at Fukushima? (CounterPunch, June 15, 2015). It’s time for much of the left to reconsider a long-standing opposition to nuclear energy that often…

Leukemia and lymphoma study recently published in Lancet being strong challenged by SARI

A recent study published in Lancet Haematology claims to show that even extremely low doses of radiation increase the risk of leukemia and lymphoma. The study includes several statistical flaws, ignores the effects of medical exposures — which are of similar levels to occupational exposures — that change dramatically over the duration of the study,…

Atomic Show #240 – Prof Gerry Thomas radiation health effects

Gerry Thomas, Professor of Molecular Pathology of the Imperial College of London, has a subspecialty in the study of the health effects of radiation. She strongly believes that “public involvement and information is a key part of academic research,” and she is “actively involved in the public communication of research, particularly with respect to radiation…

Doctors petitioning NRC to revise radiation protection regulations

The wheels are in motion for an official review of radiation protection regulations at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Doctors who are radiation health specialists are challenging the NRC’s use of the linear, no-threshold (LNT) dose response model as the basis for those regulations and the associated direction to maintain radiation doses As Low As…

Romance of Radium – How did our relationship with radioactive material sour?

Romance of Radium – How did our relationship with radioactive material sour?

Note – This post was initially published on February 23, 2013. After attending the ANS President’s Special Session about the way we should communicate about radiation, I thought it would be worth repeating. Sometimes, we need to look outside of our immediate time and place to find “best practices” that we should emulate. Hitting road…

Atomic Show #239 – Sarah Laskow and the LNT model

In March 2015, Foreign Policy magazine published an article by Sarah Laskow titled The Mushroom Cloud and The X-Ray Machine. The article described the controversy over the radiation protection model known as the linear, no-threshold dose response. Ms. Laskow conducted some admirable literature research and talked with a number of well-known people. The ones that…

Consumer Reports Editor Clings to LNT to Spread Uncertainty About Radiology

Consumer Reports, a widely read magazine in the U. S., has published more than half a dozen articles in the past couple of years warning people that every CT scan carries with it the risk of causing cancer. Here are the headlines of those articles. Consumer Reports: January 03, 2013. Many patients unaware of radiation…

Professor Gerry Thomas explains radiation health risks

A friend whose Twitter handle is @ActinideAge just posted a link to Gerry Thomas Highlights Misconceptions over Health Impacts of Nuclear Accidents. (Embedded below.) Even though it was published in November 2014 on the UN University YouTube channel, it had received a grand total of 189 views at the time I visited on April 6,…

Time to stop consuming precious resources to harmonize occupational dose limits

Pressure groups and interested individuals have been striving for more than two decades to force the U. S. to reduce its occupational worker radiation protection limit from 50 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year. The primary justification for this effort is that in 1991 the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) issued publication 60 and provided their…