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…
An Atomic Insights reader pointed me to Joe Romm’s recent post titled False Balance Exposed: BBC Gives Too Much Weight to Fringe Views on Climate Change, Independent Review Finds. Duh. In that post, Joe discusses how an outside reviewer has determined that the BBCs strong desire to show impartiality can result in providing poor information…
Jerry Cuttler, a tireless researcher on the topic of the health effects of low level radiation, sent me an article titled Toward Improved Ionizing Radiation Safety Standards from the July 2011 issue of Health Physics, a peer-reviewed journal about radiation safety. (Unfortunately, like many peer reviewed journals, Health Physics is not available for free online….
On the 25th anniversary of the explosion that destroyed unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, Ralph Nader published a commentary in which he strongly supported the book titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. As part of his opinion piece, he made the following statement: “Dr. Yablokov, you are…
Yesterday, I received a copy of a letter from Ted Rockwell, a member of the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), to the leaders of that organization. After a year of counseling others to be patient while he works through channels, he has decided to take off the gloves and directly challenge the decision processes…
This is a guest post by Ted Rockwell. He wrote it in 1998, but the information and opinions remain valid today. The words between the lines below are Ted’s. Begin guest post FEAR OF RADIATION IS KILLING PEOPLE AND ENDANGERING THE PLANET TOO Theodore Rockwell MPR Associates, Inc., U.S.A. ABSTRACT We are permitting tens of…
An old friend shared this classic speech on a nuclear energy focused email list. I tracked down Margaret Maxey and obtained her permission to reprint it for you. The thoughts expressed are too important to keep hidden in private emails. Begin guest post. The LNT Hypothesis: Ethical Travesties Presenter: Margaret N. Maxey, Ph.D. Professor, Biomedical…
On September 26, 2010, I posted an article titled Radiation Hormesis – A Profound Truth That Might Induce a Few More Converts to Support Nuclear Energy in which I described how Lawrence Solomon of Energy Probe had been convinced by science that the low levels of radiation associated with nuclear power plant operation and uranium…
Ted Rockwell, Michael Stuart, Robert Margolis and Rod Adams discuss the Linear, No Threshold radiation dose assumption, the political controversy that it has generated, the costs it imposes and the people who think of the costs as a valued revenue stream. There is an assumption that underlies most of the world’s radiation protection standards called…
With the recent frantic coverage of the GAO’s “sting” of Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing procedures, the phrase “dirty bomb” is again being thrown about in the popular press. I thought it was time to make the following piece readily available in another location. You might be able to find a similar document somewhere else on…
There are times when I wish I was a resident of the UK, just so that I could pay BBC’s annual license fee and watch some of the programming that is rarely available outside of the country. Apparently, there was an episode of Horizon titled Nuclear Nightmares that aired at 2100 BST, BBC Two, on…