Dr. Jerry Cuttler has been concentrating his research on the health effects of low dose radiation for more than 15 years. The events at Fukushima and the human tragedy of the poor decision making both during and after the release of modest quantities of radioactive material have reinforced the importance of his work. Dr. Cuttler…
After deliberating for a period of time approaching a decade, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a new draft Protective Action Manual that includes Protective Action Guides (PAG) for people responsible for responding to radioactive material releases that might come from one of the following sources: a fire in a major facility such…
On March 21, 2013, Ed Calabrese, professor of toxicology at the University of Massachusetts, gave a talk to Cato Institute titled A Looming Scientific Revolution in Environmental Regulation. During the talk he provided a brief history of dose response models, the evolution of regulations based on those models and then summarized his decades worth of…
The results of a study titled Mortality (1950–1999) and cancer incidence (1969–1999) of workers in the Port Hope cohort study exposed to a unique combination of radium, uranium and γ-ray doses have recently been published on BJM Open, which describes itself as follows: “An open access, online-only general medical journal dedicated to publishing research from…
By Robert Hargraves Nearly a million people each year die of breathing particulates from burning coal; the climate temperature may increase 2°C this century; more than a billion people have no electricity. Yet within our reach is a solution to these global crises of increasing air pollution deaths, climate change, and the growing populations of…
Communicating complex subjects is often easier in person or on video. As one of my visually oriented friends likes to say, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a good quality video can be worth 30,000 words per second. Here is a clear, short video that shows how natural gamma radiation surrounds us all…
Matt Wald responded to the comment I described in my post titled Too Hot to Touch – Matt Wald’s review of new book on nuclear waste issue. As a brief reminder, in that post I told him that he and the authors of Too Hot To Touch were misinforming the public by stating that the…
On Sunday, February 24, I gathered a group of fission fans to talk about a number of nuclear energy related topics. We discussed Romance of Radium and how perceptions about radiation have been molded over the 76 years since it was produced. Then, people had learned enough about the benefits of using power emitted from…
On Sunday, January 13, 2013, I had a conversation with Dr. Jerry Cuttler and Dr. A. David Rossin. Each of these distinguished gentlemen has a long history of working with ionizing radiation and studying its biological effects on human beings. Dr. Jerry Cuttler earned his PhD in 1964. He has performed radiation research, designed radiation…
By Engineer-Poet What’s this stuff called radiation? What’s it doing here? People make a big sensation, want us all to fear. With Japan so far away, why do they raise alarm? Is there cause for great emotion, can it cause you harm? “Radiation” as a noun means “what is radiated” Radio is radiation, be it…
Update I checked the NRC blog to find out that the comment that is the main subject of this post had not been approved by the moderator. I edited it to remove the supporting links and made a couple of other minor changes. It appeared right away. I have learned a valuable lesson; on many…
Ted Rockwell, one of my favorite nuclear energy professionals, recently shared the following comment on an email list that was discussing a recent report about the National Academy of Sciences effort to learn lessons from Fukushima. This fact should be stated loud and clear, right up front: In every “nuclear disaster”. radiation injured few if…