Forgive me. It’s been almost three months since I last wrote a long form blog or article about the importance of atomic energy as a useful tool for solving many of the world’s most complex and pressing problems. I’ve been stimulated to take a partial break from my blissful state of being a mostly retired…
During the holiday weekend, I finally got around to watching “The Martian.” Though it was a terrific, suspenseful drama, its treatment of the radioisotope thermal generator (RTG) was wrong on a number of levels. That was disappointing in the context of a high budget movie that has received numerous kudos for the significant effort its…
By Bill Sacks This is in response to Rosie Romero’s article in the January 27 issue of the GV News (p. B8), What you need to know about radon. It is wrong, just plain wrong. In the low concentrations encountered in homes, radon is not a cause of lung cancer, let alone “the second leading…
In November 2014, I spoke with Carmen Bigles, the founder of Coqui Pharmaceuticals, a company that is preparing to build a $330 million medical isotope production facility near Gainesville, FL. Since that discussion 11 months ago, Coqui has made steady progress in completing their construction and operating license application to the NRC for a class…
Tritium, also known as radioactive hydrogen, is an isotope that releases an 18 Kev beta particle. The isotopic half life is about 12 years. Among other possible production mechanisms, it is produced in low quantities and concentrations in any reactor where water is exposed to a neutron flux. The production rate is higher in heavy…
Coqui Radiopharmaceuticals is a start-up company founded in 2009 with a laser focus on solving a problem affecting the health of tens of thousands of people. The founder, Carmen Bigles, noticed that many of the patients arriving at her clinic had not been properly diagnosed and discovered that the reason for that condition was an…
While researching answers to comments made on the Atomic Insights post titled Healthy doses of radiation, I found a book titled Nuclear Shadowboxing: Legacies and Challenges. It includes a fascinating appendix titled Radiation, Pollution and Radiophobia that should be required reading for people who are interested in understanding more about the health effects of low…
If you want to know something about radiation and have a five minute time window, invest your available time by watching What is Radiation: Understanding Radiation With the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. In my opinion, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has lapped the competition. They are in a commanding lead as the true “gold standard”…
Update: A reader pointed out that the headline is inaccurate. The issue at WIPP is airborne contamination (by radioactive material), not airborne radiation. In order to be gentle with search engines and existing links, the headline will remain as is. End Update. On Friday, February 14 at 11:30 pm, a continuous air monitoring alarm went…
By NNadir I trust — and I hope I am justified in this — that no one wants a nuclear war. I know I don’t. We already have a set of environmental problems that are worse than a limited nuclear war, and may be facing an environmental crisis that might be as dire as a…
The media frenzy about the detection of water leaks from the vast tank farm that Tokyo Electric Power Company has been forced to build to store water used to cool the three damaged cores at their Fukushima Daiichi power station continues to sizzle, even in the face of the potential for US attack on Syria….
Correction: (Posted at 6:43 on 6/16/2013) I made a boneheaded error in the below computation and dropped an important prefix in my units. That error resulted in my final number being off by a factor of 1000; I wrote 0.001 mrem when it should have been 0.001 rem. I apologize for the math error. I…